A State Rape

By Visar Zhiti

(Excerpt from the book “Torn Hell” pg. 407)

         During the very last inspection on a gloomy day - the sun had not appeared at all as if it was out on sick leave, a photograph had fallen from a prisoner amidst the crowd near a heap of thrown-out trash.

          “What’s that? Bring it here!” The operative had barked. “What about this woman?”

            “Mine,” the prisoner had said.
          “Ah, she is beautiful, curvy, doesn’t look like she’s from the village,” the operative had licked his lips. The bloodhound. “Does she come to meet you? Hasn’t she divorced you, huh? It won’t be long till you hear words of her betraying you.”

          The prisoner froze.

          “Go now,” the operative ordered. “Leave the photograph with me.”

          “Never!” The prisoner wanted to strangle the whoremonger with his bear hands.

The inside guard pushed him away. One of the prisoner’s feet sank in the shallow water of a nearby puddle.

            After some time, when his brothers came to see him in prison in a low voice they said that his wife... the state security people hounded her… it was better not to think about her, forget her. “But this is a state rape!” The prisoner screamed.

            Luan Burimi, himself, told me this in despair, and in blighted hope said, “God’s will it isn’t true!”

Translated from the Albanian by Hilda Xhepa