Lucky

Not everyone has a gun!

She spoke after an hour, responding to my comment about the men on the street.
We had been taken by the crowd to meet Lushnje. She sat by her stall dressed in black. At first she did not want to talk and sat by the small shack watching the trucks waddle their way through the pot holes. There was some discussion as to whether she would be shy of foreigners and our translator encouraged us to use our few words of the language. She refused our money and sat focused on the road.

She was a traditional woman the men said shrugging, drifting away.

Men spoke to men. Women to women! This was proper - we had learned. It was only after the men had walked away from us that she spoke. Her English was perfect. She would tolerate me, the foreign man she said, as long as I sat on the edge of my wife’s conversation and did not speak.

At first the conversation circled around children. How long had we been married? Did we have sons? She listened while my wife told her about the endless tests.

My husband blamed the communists for everything!

She told us about the old days of the Party when they sat whispering in their apartment with the radio tuned illegally to an Italian station. She joked that half of the country had learnt Italian after years without news, though no one realised it until recently as they were scared to speak it to anyone else. She also learnt English after her husband died. She had followed the collapse of communism on the World Service. Her accent was definitely BBC.

Those nights with the radio had been exciting times. Freedom coming closer every day.

She had been pleased for her son more than for herself , for little Lully her granddaughter. For Lushnje freedom meant that chance to open this stall by the road. One day she knew this would be a great highway of Europe and everyone would stop and eat her food. She would be MacDonalds. This would be the thing she would give to her family for their future.

For the first few years nothing happened. The same people held power having ‘won’ in the election. Few outsiders came. The road was quiet and the young men started going abroad. Her son went, leaving his wife and Lully. After a year he stopped sending money.

The traffic on the road did grow after time; although without the communists to organise work parties the road soon disintegrated under the weight of the wheels. Advertising hoardings were erected at every junction and brightly coloured lorries heading for Greece rumbled past the stall. The potholes grew and the drains collapsed and eventually she had moved her stall back to keep it from being splashed by the open sewers.

The adverts focused them all on cigarettes and cars, on things they did not have. People started to talk about money as though it was a lemon ripening on a tree. In time there would be money and then they would have everything. People became impatient and started to talk about the first pyramid investment scheme.

It grew like a cancer un-obtrusively re-arranging things around itself. Having guaranteed its blood supply - the desire for goods - the cancer grew quickly diverting the whole country’s efforts into feeding its needs. Money was drawn out of bank accounts. Like the pied piper’s rats the fresh dollar bills danced their way towards the pyramids. Hard-earned savings were ripped out of the linings of mattresses. After the inflation set in the pyramid was the only investment that even retained its value and there was a second frenzy as people borrowed against their land, sinking every available coin into the schemes.

The stall had taught Lushnje about the return on investment. Despite having grown up under the communists she knew a thing or two about capitalism now. By autumn it was clear that something bad was coming. I stayed clear of the scheme .I decided to buy bananas instead.

That Winter was the worst.

Her neighbours banged on her door. They told her to come to the city centre with them to take the goods that they were owed. At first she had put on her coat but after she heard that the men had raided the old communist arsenals she became afraid. She lied and said she was ill. New Year was celebrated by a blaze. Anti-aircraft tracer bullets lit up the night. Lushnje and her daughter-in-law huddled under an upturned bed keeping her grandchild safe between them. The government collapsed and fled overseas taking the last of the money with it in a suitcase.

In spring bananas were hard currency. She did not mean to prosper. She avoided stolen goods but she could not help but receive a television in payment for a case of fruit. The men began to be fascinated by her financial acumen. She did not have to pay for the militia-men to stand by her stall with their Kalashnikovs. They wanted some of her magic and were prepared to believe in her miracle.

This was the year they christened her Lucky - she expanded into a vacuum and added to her stock. Money was scarce but still she prospered, drawing the attention to herself from outside of the town.

The first time they came was the middle of the night. They told her that she would have to pay protection and sprayed the front of her shop with graffiti and then later with bullets. The local men said she should not pay such bandits and insisted that she hire them as guards instead. Things got worse and she had a guard at her house. At night he would smoke on the porch and sleep during the day with his gun propped up behind the new television.

After the mayor arranged the ambush there was a celebration. The mafia had been caught unaware in their car. It burned for hours. The town centre was full of black smoke and the sound of their ammunition going off in the flames. People danced about and ducked when they heard the bullets explode. For some reason the Kalashnikov stayed behind Lushnje’s TV and the guard slept all day and all through that night as well.
When the summer came the wind was full of dust. The trucks continued to waddle along the road, throwing up grit on to her fruit. The guard and the gun had become part of their lives - everyone, it seemed, owned a Kalashnikov now. Housework went on around them. Women’s work. The flick of broom around soldiers boots. The daily battle with dirt and getting food for the table.

Her voice was so quiet.
I was leaning unashamedly into the women’s circle. I almost missed her whispered question.

Who is to blame?

For knocking the broom into the stock of the resting gun... for the guard leaving the safety catch off that morning... for the Russian designed hair trigger that released as the gun fell.... for the spray of bullets that wheeled out the gun.... for the amazing fact that the bullets ripped through the folds of her skirt without touching her as she stood frozen in the act of sweeping...?

No one came at the sound of gun fire. No one commented as the gun ripped a hole in her house. The guard did not stir from where he was sleeping. She stood mesmerised by her luck. By the miracle that had occurred.

It was only an hour later, when her daughter-in-law came home and found Lushnje still clutching the broom, that they realised that she had not been alone in the house. Little Lully had been playing quietly in her bedroom at the back. A single bullet ripping through the partition wall had been enough to kill the child.

The men continued to call her Lucky. To survive such a thing was clearly fate. They realised that she would pay no more money and the guard and the Kalashnikov were removed from her house.

She spoke only to women now, observing the tradition. Somehow though as other businesses withered, Lushnje continued to work her stall, watching the road.
She wished us luck as we stood up to leave. She told my wife that one day we would have children.

Bring them to see me she smiled. She turned, greeting the passers-by that came to her stall to eat byrek.

Not everyone has a gun! Not everyone has a gun!