At the age of 16, living in a remote village in northern Albania, Shkurta Hasanpapaj faced being forced into marriage. There was just one way out and the young woman grasped it — she took the ancient, gender-bending oath to become a “sworn virgin.”
At a stroke, her life changed. She renounced sex, married life and parenthood, but in return she won the right to live as a man and lead her family in a fiercely patriarchal society.
Nearly seven decades later, Hasanpapaj prefers to go by the male form of her name, Shkurtan.
Photo: AFP
“I chose to be with the men,” she said, as short white hair poked from beneath a cap. “Those who like me call me Shkurtan, those who want to offend me use Shkurta.”
Seeing out the end of her life in a hospice in the northwestern city of Shkodra, Hasanpapaj is among the last of the sworn virgins — a social status once common in Albania and its neighboring nations in the Balkans.
Today experts estimate that fewer than 10 remain.
The exceptional life of the sworn virgin is rooted in the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a medieval code of conduct that was passed down orally among the clans of the craggy peaks and verdant valleys of northern Albania.
The Kanun, which also lays out the rules for the nation’s notorious blood feuds, allows two ways to become a virgjinesha, as sworn virgins are called in Albanian.
One possibility is when all the males in the family are dead or gone, and a girl takes the oath in order to take over male duties and rights.
The other is to invoke it to peacefully avoid an arranged marriage. Without the oath, blood can be shed. Refusing a proposal is seen as a major affront that can ignite a feud between the families of the would-be bride and suitor that can span generations.
Sworn virgins win the right to hold a job, smoke, knock back shots of fiery raki liquor at the bar, wear trousers and even make family decisions.
You do not have to “serve food with your head bowed” and “disappear without looking at the guests,” said 62-year-old Djana Rakipi, who also goes by the name Lali.
She was born in the remote Tropoja region in northern Albania, but now lives on the coast in Durres.
Dressed in a tie and military beret, Rakipi chain-smokes, has a crushing handshake and takes clear pleasure when the guard at the local port calls her “boss.”
Rakipi said that, for her, the oath was a form of liberty. The alternative path laid out for women in the Kanun is one of subservience, hard domestic labor and total lack of control.
“It was difficult for women to be part of life,” Rakipi said. “Being free was taboo.”
For Hasanpapaj, the pressure to change came early. She and her twin sister, born in 1932, were seen as a catastrophe by their parents, who had already had three sons die. Her sister was named Sose — “that’s enough” in Albanian.
During the post-World War II communist regime of Enver Hoxha, Hasanpapaj was a leader of the local branch of the communist party and headed up “a brigade of about 50 farmers.”
“I was tough,” she said.
Rakipi also feels nostalgia for the communist regime “that always recognized me as a man,” working as a soldier training students to assemble a Kalashnikov rifle. She later became a police officer.
Much like Hasanpapaj, Rakipi said “she doesn’t give a damn” about not having kids, and brushed off matters of sex and relationships.
“I am in love with nature, the sun. I paint,” Rakipi said. “What better love is there than that?”
Both the sworn virgins firmly reject homosexuality, with Rakipi saying it is “not moral.”
“Two men and two women getting married, that is the end of the world,” she added.
For British anthropologist Antonia Young, author of a book on sworn virgins, sexuality had nothing to do with the custom. The virgjinesha gained the privilege of being admitted into a male-only world, although their gender was never changed on their birth certificates.
“They were definitely within the masculine world. They mixed with men, they socialized with men, they drank with them, particularly in cafes,” Young said.
For any women today who might be tempted to taking the oath of becoming a sworn virgin, much of the significance of the act has been lost as so much has changed in Albanian society, Young said.
“It won’t be the same — it won’t be for the benefit of the family or the community,” she said. “It would just be for individual choice.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese