Nurija lives with her husband and son in a little room in her in-laws' house; they offered it to their son on the occasion of his marriage.

She's fond of hair clips, and manages to do her hair up so that it looks like a bird's nest hovering over her head. She likes clothes with huge, bright flowers. Instead of eyebrows, she has two black lines drawn with eyeliner, rising up around her temples and, if I'm not mistaken, right into her hair. There's a beauty mark above her lips—always carefully painted. All in all, a not-unattractive woman in her early thirties.

They had a baby before they'd been married a full year—as is expected of newlywed couples in Albania. If you wait any longer, people start trying to figure out which one of you is sterile.

Nurija didn't give anyone any reason to gossip.

She and her husband were still young. Their bedroom smelled of hair spray. The bottle of perfume they'd been given as a wedding present wasn't empty yet. Such things had to be smuggled into the country by State-employed truck drivers importing and exporting for the government. They'd buy luxury goods cheaply while they were in other countries, and then come back and sell them at enormous profits.

The perfume gives off a strong smell. It'd probably give you a headache. But I have good reason to try and put up with it. It's worth the discomfort, in my opinion.

Her husband's lips are almost always moist, though I've never seen him lick them (this is one of the many mysteries of life). His hair is so tousled, it looks like he's got a head of cabbage on his neck—one of those purple cabbages. He stares at me silently; he doesn't really appreciate my visits. Without saying a word, he disappears into the little room where Nurija—no doubt—is waiting for him. You can tell, by the way he shuffles to the bedroom that he's feeling nervous—the nervous anticipation of a man about to consummate his marriage. He's almost in raptures as his key turns in the lock, sweating so profusely that the narrow hallway outside his bedroom—where Nurija is waiting, expecting him—gets filled with the stink of his joyful anticipation, as well as a little black-market perfume. I try to distinguish between the two smells as I wait for Nurija, who keeps me sitting in the hallway for hours, since I'm so young …But there's a reason I'm willing to endure the delay. It's worthwhile, in my opinion.

Her son is a tiny creature with the same sad eyes and moist lips as his father. He was born already looking like he'd been starved. It's all there, written on his face: he is destined to work himself to death at some dreary job. Life won't have much more to offer him. He'll sleep with a maximum of two women. Basically, he's condemned to eke out a pretty miserable existence under the sun.

A sense of quiet resignation emanates from this little being, and whenever I look at him, I feel so sad that I get a stomachache. Yes, whenever I look in his direction, I want to do something nice for him, give him a treat, whisper kind words in his ear.

And I've done so. To the extent I'm able. I've spoken to him, and I've given him candies to eat and toys to play with, but he refuses to take them. He stares back at me suspiciously, like his father, and I've come to realize that I've got to give it up. I may arouse suspicion if I continue to devote so much attention to him.

But I have a good reason to put up with all the melancholy radiating out of this kid. It's worthwhile, in my opinion.

Nurija is a teacher at an elementary school in a village that's probably not too far from Tirana. She travels back and forth every day on a freight train with no doors or windows—she's lucky to have a ride for most of the way. There's a particular treasure at her school that's survived entirely by chance—she found it, and now she's bringing it to me, piece by piece, every day. She isn't interested in it herself. Every day she brings me a piece of the great stockpile of dreams I imagine, or at least hope, is infinite. She gives it to me piece by piece because she's ransoming it. She wants to get the highest price she can.

"I brought you what you wanted today," she says, "just what you wanted."

My hands break into a sweat. My stomach contracts.

"Let me have a look, just a look. Let me touch it, just a little … please?"

"We have an agreement, don't we? You can only have it if you give me … you-know-what in return."

She lets me have a peek at the object of my desire. yes, it's exactly what I've been wanting, and it's so thick that it'll last me at least a month—even longer if I read it twice.

The asking price is what I find in my mother's locked closet: golden earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces, and other valuables. Mother inherited jewelry from my grandmother, and some of it dates from her marriage to Father. At any rate, all her valuables are in the locked closet. No one ever uses them, so why shouldn't I exhange them for something useful? Something I really need?

Mother doesn't notice a thing. She's too preoccupied with her looks. So I take everything to Nurija's, bit by bit. And, thank God, I get dreams in return, dreams I can disappear into.

On my way to school, I make a short detour to Nurija's to pay for this latest installment. Mother has become suspicious of our friendship. She seems me go in.

"What are you doing at that poor family's house all the time?" she asks. "God, you're just like your grandmother. She always wanted to be around people too," she adds with a tinge of contempt in her voice. (Mother prefers solitude because it seems to give her an air of nobility).

"Genes never lie," she says. "You didn't get any of my twenty-three chromosomes. All forty-six are your father's."

After my short stopover at Nurija's, I go to school. Sometimes instead of a lesson, they tell us folktales. I love folktales, but there's one little problem: my country's folktales all seem to be about partisans who, whenever they get captured by the Nazis, swallow the Party's orders (the handwritten instructions they were supposed to distribute to the people) so that their secrets don't fall into the hands of the enemy. Thus, our partisan swallows a whole sheet of paper, gets tortured, but doesn't reveal the wherabouts of his friends and comrades. He dies and the white snow turns blood-red. Our German enemy hears the Albanian partisan speak his last words, under the shadow of death: "Long live Albania, long live the Communist Party, down with the Nazis!" He only dies after finishing every last word of the above. The German Torturer is in awe. Such courage and love for one's country gives even him food for thought.

If the folktales are about animals, then the partisan is always a lion, and the Italian fascist or the German Nazi is a wolf or jackal. In the end, the lion always eats one or the other.

I also learned, in one of these stories, that the Ionian Sea (you know the Ionian Sea—that crystal-clear, azure part of the Mediterranean that bathes Albania, Greece, and part of Southern Italy?) was named after an Albanian partisan called Ion. Now you know this too. When he died for his fatherland, his blood turned the deep sea a dark red. I wonder what the sea was called before Ion's blood changed its color. I guess it didn't have a name, then. I also wonder what the Italians and the Greeks think about having their sea named after an Albanian partisan. They probably have partisans of their own, but maybe none of them died at sea.

I notice that Nurija is wearing a big, shiny, golden ring on her finger. She explains to me, with great satisfaction, that she had it made from one of the rings I gave her.

"It was too big for me," she says, "so I had it melted down and then recast to fit my finger. Isn't it beautiful? Now it's thicker than ever and much more impressive."

She's knitting a sweater with a black-and-white diamond pattern. I stole the wool for it from my house. She looks happy with me, but she wants more.

"Have a look at your aunt's place and at your grandmother's. Besides, they probably have some nice shiny things, too."

I promise that I'll have a look. In exchange, I'll receive the most wonderful present on earth: Grimm's Fairy Tales. This type of book no longer exists in Albania. Fairy tales with princesses and magic wands are counterrevolutionary. But forbidden things can be so enticing!

I get the book and am completely thrilled. Pure and utter joy.

In the end, Mother found out that I'd stolen her jewelry. She came and got me at school, dragged me home in my school clothes, and gave me such a beating that my face felt three thousand degrees hotter.

I was interrogated by her for days. Then by Grandmother.

I was forced to tell them about everything I'd given to Nurija.

"Here's a pen and paper. Write it all down. Everything!"

I wrote down a description of every object I'd given her. But that wasn't the end of my suffering. Grandfather went on and on about it every evening:
"Think carefully. What else did you give her? Try to remember. That can't be all of it. There are other things missing …"

I had no choice but to invent other presents. How else could I convince them that the list was complete, and that there was nothing more to add?

We'll never get that wool back. Such good lamb's wool, too," sighed Mother. "She's mixed it with another kind of wool and made a sweater out of it. And she melted my ring down with copper to enlarge it. What a waste!"

Mother came over to me. I knew exactly what was going to happen. Another slap and my cheeks were burning again. My eyes saw into the black vaults of heaven, comets shooting by.

I was allowed to keep the book.

We get vaccinations at school. Three days after the shot, I develop a high fever and my whole body starts to itch. I'm covered in red spots and they itch so terribly that I want to scratch them all day. In the middle of the night, I say to my mother: "Mommy, I'm dying, I"m going to die!"

The doctor won't touch me. "She has leprosy," he says, and vanishes.

I spend a feverish night in bed as the itching slowly subsides. Blood tests reveal that I have acute hepatitis. My liver's swollen up like a balloon and my eyes are all yellow. My vaccination had been for hepatitis, too.

I take my book with me and am sent to the hospital. Quarantine requires a stay of at least twenty-one days.

I enjoy the attention Grandmother gives me—expressed by way of meatballs in tomato sauce—as well as the kisses from my mother. I devour the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm every evening, reading them over and over. I keep the book under my pillow. When I wake up one morning, however, the book is gone. I ask everyone: "Has anyone seen my book? An old book with brittle pages? Does anyone know where it is?"

Someone has stolen it.

I'm discharged from the hospital without the book, but in exchange, I've got little breasts that began to grow during the three weeks of my incarceration. They hurt. My whole body looks different now.

In addition, there's blood flowing down the insides of my thighs. I'm disappointed to see that it's not as dark as the blood of our fallen partisan. Were my ideals not lofty enough? Would it seem redder if I dribbled three or four drops into the snow?

At any rate, I'm not talking to Nurija anymore.