Sunday story/ The woman's granddaughter

2024-05-05 15:38:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

Dawn Xhafka

-Don't spend this evening with friends. We will go to Viola's place, she has invited us for dinner. It became a new house, - the woman told me already in the morning.

-Of course honey, - I said with sincerity and joy.

Viola is her granddaughter. I met him for the first time ten years ago. There was a knock on our door one afternoon and when I opened it, a man, a woman and a little girl appeared in front of me.

- I'm Viola, - said the woman.

I was talking to my mind, which Viola are you, but then I hear the woman:

-Come in, soul.

Then I learned the details. Viola was the daughter of Jeta, the woman's uncle's sister, but because they were so closely related, he called her niece. A few months ago, she came with her husband from Korça to Tirana. She had competed for the position of teacher, she had won. Then a house for rent and I walk at the pace of the capital.

-Actually, we came for Dawn, - started her husband.

- Order, speak! -I told.

- You are friends with the director of schools in Korça. You created a job opportunity for Viola, we want to go back there. In Tirana, we can't make it. The rent, the oyster garden, subscription, I'm more out of work than I can't find.

I kept quiet for a while and asked the woman:

- Do you remember when we came to Tirana with the two twin girls?

- Wow, where are those days forgotten? We entered a 50 square meter apartment. Nothing inside. Except for two bed springs that a friend of Gim's brought. At a pantry we filled a pot with beans and brought out four plates that we had taken from the city we fled. We didn't have a table or chairs. We put the suitcase on the ground and on the plates of beans. On the side each of Enver's three books as a chair. And we got into the dishes of the plama. So we pushed for a few days until we found an authorization for a bedroom. Then we bought four chairs and that's how we started. Just like the people on the bus. They push and push until the door closes. Ugh, ugh everyone does. But no one comes down. They get used to that awkwardness until the right station.

There was a little silence, but Viola reminded me of the principal of the schools in Korça.

-I will send you a CV. There we will stay at my mother's house. We don't pay rent.

- I have some cousins ??from the village and they will bring us some meat and some milk, - said the husband.

I felt sorry for the little chick. He would worry when he grew up that his parents removed him from Tirana.

- Hey, it was messy when we washed the sheets, - I started to tell from my beginnings in the capital. - We didn't have a washing machine and we put a kettle of water in the kerosene furnace. Inside, we pressed the sheets and applied three Rrogozhine soaps. We let it boil for three hours. Then we rinsed them in a colander and squeezed them. Hahah, I headed inside the bathroom, Tasha at the end of the corridor, because it was a doll house. She twisted the sheet to the left, I to the right. River water on the floor. Well, we were tired, but we managed.

Viola saw me as that student of the first bank. Her husband lowered his head from time to time.

- We were sorry when Gimin was fired. His profession is office work. He didn't know anything else, but he was driven by the need to earn money. And one day he came happy. He had hired a friend of his, who was engaged in trade, to unload the barges he was bringing from Turkey. - the woman was telling.

He wasn't making it up. For months I bested the porter. Only the woman knew. The girls didn't know that I was fired from my office job.

The conversation then turned to problems and responsibilities. The couple listened to us attentively. I felt sorry for them that it looked like we were taking them to the exam. We were not asking them, but pushing them towards an exam that they had with them. I understood that they were in the midst of stress, creating a new stereotype, and being welcomed by the few facilities that the province brought to them. They were on the knife's edge that separated courage from laziness, danger from status quo, routine from dream, slumber from hope.

When their daughter was falling asleep, they went and said to us with their heads down:

-Good night!

Then it was as if they were forgotten. Even for the director of the schools in Korça, they didn't take me to jail. I was worried and asked the woman:

- He didn't run away. Here they are. If they don't have time to visit. That Viola does two or three jobs. The husband has opened his own business. Not who knows, but that brings them a modest income. she said laughing.

- Our lectures have been worth it, - I replied.

- You are the only one to talk, - he laughed.

- And to make twins, - I laughed.

He kissed me suddenly.

So I looked forward to today's dinner with great pleasure. I feel like I'm going to my students' prom. I was very happy that Viola and her husband made it, but also that Tirana has their beautiful daughter, Jola, with sky blue eyes...