Eqerem

I

The rooftop was the largest open space in the camp. The prisoners assembled there twice a day for roll-calls and three times, at the start of each shift, to wait for the squad of duty guards that escorted us to the mine. Its surface, the size of two or three volleyball courts, was spread with concrete and enclosed by iron railings. The roof covered the baths, latrines, the store for our work-­clothes, and the private kitchen. Below it stretched the perimeter fence, with its watchtowers, and then a slope that fell ever more steeply down to the stream. Opposite, above the stream, rose a range of high hills covered with scrub, climbing ever higher towards the towering peak of Munelle. This range of hills was the only landscape visible from the camp that was not ringed with wire and watchtowers. It was a tall, natural wall that blocked the horizon from the north-west to the northeast, and the prisoners gazed every day at its grim sameness and ponderous bulk. Only three isolated houses were visible on this hillside, very far apart, from which several shepherds’ tracks descended, appearing and disappearing through the scrub and bracken. These paths met below at the bridge over the stream, which lay as far as our eyes could see from the rooftop.

It was only during the morning wait on the rooftop that the monotony of the landscape was broken for a few moments, when a young girl who lived in one of the three houses would climb down the slope. Her descent, from the moment she appeared until she reached the bridge over the stream and vanished from sight, took some time.

People said she worked in the mine administration. Some­one had given her the nickname ‘the Doe’, and that is what everybody called her. Occasionally, some women of Mirdita in their local costume would appear on the hillside opposite, but not even the prisoners’ ravenous sexual stare could penetrate their trousers, wrapped around with skirts. The Doe was the only woman ever to appear on that hillside dressed simply in trousers that emphasised her fine, round thighs, with muscles that swelled as she leaned her weight on the stony steps of the path.

The prisoners on the rooftop could see her as soon as she emerged from her house, which was a long way off. At first, she was a barely distinguishable smudge among the rocks and undergrowth. Her admirers knew precisely at what point she first appeared, and would follow her from there, while the less devoted watched her only after she came close, when nobody could resist her appeal. The boldest shouted after her, and others exchanged remarks or followed her with their eyes, lost for words. In the imagination of those shorn heads watching from behind the barbed wire, it was as if a vast nude figure of the Doe had spread over the entire hillside, flying rather than walking.

* * *

I noticed Eqerem a few days after I arrived at the camp, just after I had watched the Doe’s descent for the first time. She had crossed the bridge and disappeared from view, when a tall, slender prisoner whom some called Pandi and some ‘Pignose’ joined his two thumbs above and his two index fingers below to form the symbol of a vagina, and shouted, ‘Suzi, come on Suzi!’ The prisoners who were familiar with this game made a space, and a strange creature, different from the other prisoners, came out from the crowd. As soon as he saw this vagina in the air, he removed his cap and charged towards it with head forward, as if he were going to butt his way inside. Pandi backed off a little, not allowing him to touch it, and so began Eqerem’s dance. His feet and hands moved in a regular rhythm, but the main movement was of his extraordinary head, and became more aggressive and more ecstatic as it approached the ‘vagina’. Pandi fell back and twirled