PASHE Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man.
She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father's baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural nort
hern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men.
Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority – including the obligation to avenge her father's death.
She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.
"Back then, it was better to be a man, because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing," said Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. "Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman."
The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home.
By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men,
even though most kept their female names. They were not ridiculed, but were accepted in public life.
"Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life," said Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo. "It was about surviving in a world where men rule."
Keqi said she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered. Her four brothers opposed the Communist government of Enver Hoxha,the ruler for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.
Keqi said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked on construction sites and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their "uncle's" permission.
When she was recently hospitalised for surgery, the other woman in her room was horrified to be sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was male.
Being the man of the house also made her responsible for avenging her father's death, she said. When her father's killer, by then 80, was released from prison five years ago, Keqi said, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead.
Then the man's family took revenge and killed her nephew. "I always dreamed of avenging my father's death," she said.
"Of course I have regrets, my nephew was killed. But if you kill me, I have to kill you."
In Albania the Kanun is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Albanian cultural historians said the adherence to medieval customs was a byproduct of the country's previous isolation. But they stressed the role of the Albanian woman was changing.
"The Albanian woman today is a sort of minister of economics, a minister of affection and a minister of interior who controls who does what," said Ilir Yzeiri, who writes about Albanian folklore.
Some sworn virgins bemoan the changes. Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard,who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters, said she looked back with nostalgia on the Hoxha era.
During Communist times, she was a senior army officer, training women as combat soldiers. Now, she lamented, women do not know their place.
"Today women go out half-naked to the disco," said Rakipi. "I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can't clean, I can't iron, I can't cook. That is a woman's work."
The full article contains 770 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
