She Who Remains

Set in a remote Albanian village in the Accursed Mountains, the novel unfolds as testimony given by Matija, a 33-year-old sworn virgin, to a visiting journalist. A sworn virgin, known in Albanian as a burrnesha, is a woman in patriarchal Balkan societies who takes a vow of lifelong chastity under the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, a collection of archaic laws, in exchange for assuming a male identity and gaining the rights and freedoms reserved for men. Matija, whose birth name is Bekija, is the last remaining sworn virgin in her village, possibly in all of Albania.

The narrative opens with the murder of Bekija's father, Murash. The brother of Nemanja, Bekija's arranged groom, arrives and shoots Murash dead by the wild pomegranate trees, declaring "my brother sends his best." Bekija, now called Matija, must ask the ritual Kanun question: "what have you brought me, a wound or death." This event, presented first, is the consequence of a chain of decisions the novel traces backward through interwoven flashbacks.

Before Bekija's birth, her mother carries twins, a boy and a girl. Murash desperately wants a son; the Bulgarian phrase he repeats, iskam sin, means both "I wish for a boy" and "I wish for blue." At the hospital, doctors discover the male fetus has vanished; only the female survives. Murash refuses to touch Bekija for her first year but eventually bonds with her, marveling at her strength and calling her "daddy's boy." Her brother, Sále, born later, is frail and sensitive, preferring catalogs and dancing to guns. Murash berates and abuses him.

Murash's favoritism pits the siblings against each other. When Bekija accidentally kills a wild rabbit by holding it too close to a burning stove, she blames Sále. In letters years later, Sále recounts being severely beaten and suspects Bekija framed him to preserve her status as "daddy's boy." Bekija, confessing to the journalist, reveals that Murash discovered her lie and beat her instead.

During summer visits from Bulgaria, Dhana, the great-granddaughter of a neighbor, becomes inseparable from Bekija. They meet at the village water mill, where Dhana reads aloud to Bekija, who has never learned to read. They share identical birthmarks above the heart. Bekija's chronic stomach pain vanishes only when Dhana reads to her. Then one summer, Dhana stops coming.

When Bekija reaches marrying age, Murash arranges her wedding to Nemanja, someone she has never met. He reminds her that the Kanun requires a bullet in the bride's trousseau: If the bride is not a virgin on her wedding night, the groom must kill her with it. That evening, Bekija goes to the village dairy. In Part One, the scene is narrated as a violent assault. Part Two retells it with nearly identical language, revealing the truth: It was Dhana who entered. Their encounter is tender and passionate. Afterward, there is blood. Bekija is no longer "pure" and faces death on her wedding night. She returns home, takes the bullet from the trousseau, places it in her father's fur coat, wakes Murash, and declares she will become a sworn virgin.

Before a 12-man council of elders, Bekija renounces womanhood, swears lifelong chastity, and takes the name Matija. Her hair is cut and her dresses burned. She receives a shotgun and a watch. The cancelled wedding stains Nemanja's honor, triggering a blood feud: Under the Kanun, Nemanja's family must kill a man from Bekija's family. Murash tells Bekija she must choose who receives the black armband, the mark of a death sentence: him or Sále. Bekija ties the armband on Sále's arm.

That same night, Dhana comes to the house carrying a letter asking Bekija to run away to Bulgaria with her. Sále intercepts the letter, keeping it as revenge for being sentenced to death, then flees before dawn. Murash, having expected his son's escape, ties the armband on his own arm. He is granted a besa, a one-month truce, and spends his remaining days building an enormous dovecote. When the besa expires, Nemanja's brother ambushes Murash at dusk and kills him.

In the present, Matija lives alone with Nura the cow and her father's pigeons. She asks the journalist to read letters from Sále, now living in Sofia under the name Mihail. Over four letters, Sále presses Bekija for the truth about the dairy and confesses to intercepting Dhana's letter 16 years earlier. He reveals that Dhana lives in Sofia and is leaving for a writer's residency in London. Inside his final letter is Dhana's original note, in which she asked Bekija to meet her and flee together; if Bekija did not come, Dhana would leave forever. Bekija, unable to read, never knew the letter existed. She burns her possessions, puts on her father's fur coat, her grandmother's blue dress, and the patent leather shoes, tells a neighbor to care for Nura, and frees the pigeons. She walks away from the village, refusing to look back: "Home is where they clip your wings."

Part Two opens with the retelling of the true dairy scene, then follows Bekija to Sofia. Sále meets her at the bus station, where she emerges in a blue dress and patent leather shoes, clumsy on heeled feet. She falls, and they embrace on the cold floor. At his apartment, Bekija ignores the women's clothes Sále offers and puts on his trousers and shirt. She collapses with severe stomach pain and is rushed to the hospital.

Surgeons discover the remnants of a partially formed twin inside Bekija's abdominal cavity, a rare condition called fetus in fetu, in which one fetus absorbs the other in the womb. The male twin her parents mourned was inside her body for 33 years. Bekija is shattered, calling herself a murderer. Dhana, called to the hospital by Sále, holds her and insists she bears no blame: "There's one thing a person can't be guilty of and that is of having been born."

During recovery, Dhana visits daily, reading aloud as she did years ago. Bekija tells her everything, and Dhana sobs, realizing she was an unwitting accomplice to the chain of deaths. They profess their unchanged love and spend the night together. Bekija wakes to find Dhana gone. A letter read aloud by Sále reveals that Dhana departed for her residency in England. Dhana writes that they are destined to be "eternally separated by something" and to bear responsibility for the indirect murders. She signs the letter "Eternally yours."

Bekija returns to Albania by bus, throwing the patent leather shoes into a field and walking barefoot to the village. Inside the house, she finds only ashes. She collapses, screams, then falls silent. She takes a small stool and a rope from the wall.

The perspective shifts. Dhana gets off a bus and follows the trails to Bekija's house. She enters calling Bekija's name. The house is silent except for Nura's bellowing. Dhana follows the sound to the stable and gasps, but what she finds is not what she feared. Bekija sits on the stool, alive, holding the rope tied around the front legs of a newborn calf. Nura has just given birth. The two women embrace in silence. The calf finds its mother's teat and suckles. In this moment, beside the image of new life, they discover joy, and within that joy, love, "and in the center of this love is the immeasurable, that, which is eternal, that, which cannot be called by name" (146).