Fearless teacher helps children of Albania’s blood feuds

SHKODRA, Albania - Where most people, even police, fear to set foot, Liljana Luani takes books, household supplies and a lifetime of experience helping families marked for death.

The 56-year-old schoolteacher from Shkodra in northern Albania uses her spare time to travel to remote hillside villages where children trapped in a centuries-old tradition of blood feuds are hidden by their families.

The feuds, often related to criminal rivalry, stem from an ancient code of conduct known as the Kanun, a detailed but primitive form of self-administration. A cycle of reciprocal killings that lasts for generations might start from an incident as serious as murder or as minor as a land dispute.

When Luani visits a village, the guard dogs recognize her, and the people who live there barely react as she opens the metal gate and steps into a house. But the sense of danger is constant. “I am aware that my job is like walking through land mines. If I slip somewhere, my family will pay for it,” Luani said, speaking in the home of a young boy hidden away to protect him from a vendetta. She gave him a lesson in math, grammar and the ancient Greek tale of “The Odyssey.”

“I am a teacher, and teaching is not a profession for me,” she said. “It’s a mission.”

Typically, only men are targeted in blood feuds. The feuds were largely suppressed during communism but have been revived mainly in remote areas where the rule of law is perceived as weak. Victims are typically pursued over years and eventually ambushed, gunned down in the street, in a country awash with unlicensed weapons. Police don’t report figures on the motives for murders, but revenge killings are blamed for dozens of deaths every year.

Women are generally exempt, allowing Luani to travel without being targeted or followed. But postcommunist revenge killings have occasionally strayed from traditional rules and the male bloodline to include women, minors, multiple killings and the use of assassins.

Luani said she is still haunted by the memory of a teenage boy who insisted on attending school and was shot dead in an ambush. For that reason, she doesn’t give specifics about the students she visits or why they are embroiled in blood feuds because she’s scared that they will be identified. Associated Press journalists also met with some blood feud targets who asked not to be identified for fear they would be found and killed.

On a typical weekday, Luani finishes classes, cooks at home for her family, and then sets off into what locals call the “accursed mountains,” steep and inhospitable, traveling by taxi van for up to an hour to reach the stranded children.

Groups that track blood feuds estimate that several thousand people, including young children, live in isolation because of them. Treated by many as outcasts, they often only venture out at night to get firewood, food and other supplies.

“Confined children do not grow up the way normal children do,” Luani said. “They miss everything. They miss freedom. They grow up fearing they will be killed or are focused on how to kill. … Imagine that life.”

One recent visit was to a rundown house where a 40year-old woman lives with her three sons, ages 14 to 19. They use a small yard to grow vegetables and keep chickens and a cow.

Neighbors and relatives provided some assistance, while Luani persuaded the power company to offer electricity at a discount.

The woman’s husband is in jail for murder, and the family is unaccustomed to visitors. The mother cried frequently, while the two older boys disappeared into another room.

Luani teaches the youngest son, in the hope it will help him escape the cycle of violence.