Ruritanian Revenge and Realityrnby Barry BaldwinrnLand of Albania! Let me bend mine eyesrnOn thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!rn—Byron, Childe Harolde’s PilgrimagernALBANLN ANARCHY! BALKAN BLOODBATH! Typicalrnbanners to newspaper stories of the riots and virtualrncivil war that gripped “Europe’s most bizarre country” duringrn1997, culminating in the forced resignation of Sali Berisha, thernfirst noncommunist president, and the return of seven-foot,rngun-toting King Leka I Zogu who threatens to take by bulletsrnthe monarchy denied to him by votes. No need for bewilderment.rnThis, after all, is the country in which the villagers of Vilanrnrecently met in solemn conclave to decide if the unusualrnpregnancy of a mule meant that the devil was in its stomachrnsignaling the Apocalypse.rnThe gjakmarrja (“taking of blood”) is a centuries-old institutionrnthat explains most of the country’s history, recent and remote.rnIn his Eskili, Ky Humbes I Madh {Aeschylus, The GreatrnLoser—yet to be translated into English), Albania’s best-knownrnauthor, Ismail Kadare, explains the Oresteia’s cycle of familyrnmurder and revenge in terms of his own nation’s blood feuds.rnTrue, he ignores some differences of principle and detail. InrnGreece, a death could be avenged by the clan rather than a relative.rnCompensation might be in goods or labor, or the killer(s)rnmerely cursed and exiled. Albanian rules exclude women,rnhence no counterparts to Clytemnestra and Electra.rnGeography is here a factor. The blood feuds of Albania centerrnon the Northern Highlands—the Rrafsh or plateau —ratherrnthan the regions contiguous with Greece, which is one reasonrnfor continuing North-South mutual incomprehension andrnconflict. Still, ancient Epirus (Albania) was identified withrnbloody vendettas. According to Plutarch’s Life ofPyrrhus (ofrn”pyrrhic victory” fame), “the chieftains and clans of Epirusrnwere perpetually at war because plots and jealousies are naturalrnto them.” His countrymen nicknamed Pyrrhus “The Eagle”;rnBarry Baldwin, a professor of classics at the University of Calgary,rnwas recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada.rnAlbanians call their country Shqiperia—Land of the Eagles.rnCertainly, by juxtaposing Albanian blood-feud regulations withrnAeschylean verses, Kadare makes a cogent correlation.rnThis is an ancient tragicomedy. Albanians did not have arncountry until modern times, being successively ruled byrnGreeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks. For centuries, justicernmeant the fight for freedom firom occupation—the home of thernbrave is the land of the free. The national hero Skanderbegrncampaigned for Christian Byzantium against the Turks. In difrnferent circumstances, he would have been on the other side—rnhe had converted to Islam before returning to Christianity.rnDreams of independence were bound up with language and religion.rnIt is no coincidence that the oldest Albanian texts werernwritten by priests and nationalists to aid Roman Catholic clergyrnand to pursue the right to be educated in their own tongue, anrnissue that boiled over in late Ottoman times and remains therndominant one for Albanian minorities in Kosovo and Macedonia.rnThe new country was made fissiparous by its geography,rnhistory, language, and religions. Like many another nation, itrnhas a North-South divide based on a river (the Shkumbi), differentrndialects of the same language (Gheg in the North, Toskrnin the South—communist harmonization was less than 100rnpercent effective), and religion—the North is predominantlyrnChristian, the South Islamic. Hence Northern support forrnBerisha and violent opposition from the South where communismrnwas also strongest—Enver Hoxha himself was a Tosk.rnLike Skanderbeg and Zog, Hoxha was basically a bandit chiefrnwho forcibly united the land (first liquidating the rival noncommunistrnand pro-monarchy resistance groups from WorldrnWar II) and played on national pride in independence and thernfear of losing it to either America or Russia. Which explains thernendless purges of “tiaitors” and “polyagents,” most famously thernmysterious death (murder? suicide?) of Mehmet Shehu inrn1981 (Albania is the only country in which every security min-rn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn