Beyond the Edge

 Beyond the Edge

By

P.I.Kapllani

Published by:

2010

Beyond the Edge By Perparim Kapllani 

Published by: In Our Words, Inc. 

inourwords.ca 

Author picture: Abhinav Misra 

Cover image: iStockphoto 

Editor: Cheryl Antao-Xavier 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication 

Kapllani, Perparim, 1966- 

Beyond the edge : stories / Perparim Kapllani. 

ISBN 978-1-926926-04-9 

I. Title. 

PS8621.A62B49 2010 C813'.6 C2010-907966-3 

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2010, Perparim Kapllani. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form, or stored on any device including digital media, except with the prior written permission of the publisher. Exceptions are granted for brief quotations utilized in critical articles or reviews with due credit given to the author. 

PRINTED IN CANADA 

 Table Of Content

Dedication

Acknowledgements

The Gypsy King 

One Dollar 

The Bridge on Bloor

Ashes to Ashes

My Sister Hanna 

A Fistful of Dirt 

The Talking Clocks 

The Chaser

Beyond the Edge 

The Sniper 

About The Author

Other Books From This Author

Dedication

For my mother Shqiponja 

thank you for all you did for me 

and continue to do for me in spite of the distance 

Acknowledgements 

When a Russian friend told me that he brought his father’s ashes to Canada, I was intrigued by his story and inspired to write "Ashes to Ashes.’ It is contrary to Albanian tradition to cremate bodies and the thought of this man, an immigrant, bringing the ashes of a loved one to his new country made me think that we all have unusual stories in our lives, some which we bring from a previous life. 

All we as writers need to do is observe, listen to the stories of those around us and sit at a computer and imagine our own unique, fascinating storyline. 

I once worked in a restaurant where I met a customer, an elderly man in his sixties, who described to me how he witnessed his mother being raped by their Serbian neighbors. He was a nine-year-old boy at the time, but he never forgot that horrific tragedy, which became a daily nightmare for the rest of his life. This was the basis for my story The Bridge on Bloor. This story was selected for the anthology Canadian Voices Volume I, published by Bookland Press, Toronto. 

Years ago I bought a triplex building, where a couple of tenants used to live. One of them died three years ago. He used to live alone, abandoned by his family and he left behind just one living thing, his cat. His death inspired the stories The Chaser and The Talking Clocks. 

I remember, when as a kid, I used to live next door to a Cham family, who were expelled from their home in Northern Greece. Their tragic story is the basis for "The Fistful of Dirt.’ The story is about the Albanian minority in Chameria in Northern Greece, who even today are not allowed to return to their homes. Over 7000 Albanian Chams were killed by the Greek military led by Zervas, while thousands were expelled from their homes. 

My Sister Hanna’ is a dramatic story about a young woman who committed suicide in Albania. Her home was located behind the building of the newspaper where I used to work. It happened that her husband was one of my former high school friends. He told me his story, how he taught his wife to use a gun, the same gun she used to kill herself. I was so deeply affected by that tragedy and my writer’s mind worked on the story for years until I came up with My Sister Hanna," the story of a brother who wants to avenge the death of his sister by killing his brother-in-law whom he blames for the tragedy. 

The story One Dollar was previously published in a collection of short stories written in the Albanian language Monedha e tmerrshme. This story is not based on actual events, but rather on a folk legend that a wife must be punished if she betrays her husband. In this story, the husband tries to drive his wife out of her mind using a psychological weapon of continually flipping a coin—a coin he took from his wife’s lover. 

In talking to a Vietnamese friend about gambling, he told me that he lost more than 300 grand at the casino. His wife had divorced him. She took their son with her and now lives with another man. His life was destroyed through gambling, he said, angry and frustrated. I got the story idea for The Sniper from him. 

These stories are therefore fiction—sadly, sometimes based on actual facts. 

I want to thank all these people whose stories inspired me, however unintentionally, to write my stories and go forward with my dream of publishing my second book in English. 

Special thanks to Archie D’Cruz, for publishing some of the stories at Chapter & Verse, an online Canadian literary website: chapterandverse.ca. Thanks to Jasmine D’Costa for including The Bridge on Bloor in Canadian Voices. 

Thank you very much to Cheryl Antao-Xavier, the publisher of In Our Words Inc., who pushed me to go ahead with this collection of short stories. 

Perparim Kapllani 

Toronto—December 2010 

The Gypsy King 

As I walk into the market square framed by many of the same old brick houses I remember from my childhood, the memories flood back so violently I feel weak and almost sink to the flagstoned ground. I have not come home to Elbasan city, to this market square, in seventeen years. 

The neighbors will not recognize my face. I hope they don’t. I hope they have forgotten the young boy who left the town with a heavy heart, burdened by a terrible guilt. But there will be some who will remember. The Gypsy King will never forget me. How can he when he lives with a daily reminder of me? 

It all seems the same. Even the changes are familiar. Each alteration in the neighborhood scenery, in the people who lived there was told to me in detail in Mama’s letters. Yes, in the ways that matter nothing has changed. As I walk slowly onwards even the flagstones of the square where I had played so often as a child have a reality steeped in poignant memories. I had walked along this pathway through the square so many times in my mind all these years. 

I smell the heavenly aroma of baking even before I see the bakery, the only one we ever went to, that once made my favorite dessert ballakume, a concoction of corn flour, sugar, eggs and butter that is only made here in this city. I have never been able to find it anywhere else in the hundreds of other bakeries I sought out in the many places I visited. 

As I walk past the low brick houses, I smell the flowers. I had forgotten this scent of the widow iris flowers, which grew wild in the surrounding hills in my day. Now they seem to blossom everywhere in wild abandon and the air is filled with their scent. This too, though I never looked for it, I have neither seen nor smelled elsewhere. 

I catch a glimpse of the Shkumbin River through a break in the trees. Haven’t swam there in years. Not since the incident with the Gypsy King. Since that day when our lives changed forever. 

I come to a stop before the house where Alma lived. Beautiful Alma, the girl with long black hair had lived here and studied with me at the Thoma Kalefi Elementary School. Mama wrote to tell me when she married two years ago and went to live in Italy with her new family. I had followed Alma’s journey to womanhood and out of my life forever—in my mind’s eye. Mama’s commentary provided the basic details and my own imagination had filled in the story as I wished it had played out. Yes, in my head it had been me who had taken her to Italy and taught her all that I had promised to teach her. 

Alma’s beautiful eyes aren’t peeking out from behind the curtained windows where she would wait for a sight of me. I walk on, having no interest to go there to visit her parents and younger siblings who Mama said still lived there. Her brother Artur is a doctor now and found a job in the capital, Tirana. He won’t need my help to learn French ever again. I always wondered if he remembered me. The boy whom he had once worshipped and followed and imitated in every detail must have now faded from his memory. He, a doctor in Tirana, had long since become the envy of his former mentor. What would he say if he knew how many, many times I had walked in his shoes, prayed that I could have had his ambition, his success in life, and especially his normal life. 

I walk on. Two houses down, the faded blue painted house with its shutters drawn down looks even more forlorn than I remember. Mama wrote that Buba has three kids and doesn’t leave home very often. In our childhood games, she used to play the famous pirate queen Teuta, and I would play her husband, King Agron, and we would enact the historical Illyrian Wars all around the market square. I remember how we hid in the bushes, and I had kissed her—twice. She would stand by my side as I fought the Gypsy King. 

Always my thoughts came back to the Gypsy King. The garden patch to the side of Buba’s house is gone, replaced by a rickety swing set. I walk on. 

Marsela, who lived next door, moved with her mother to Vlora city. She was the first girl I had ever kissed. I looked across at the house next to that, where Baci lived. I used to go to his house all the time. Mama wrote that he now works in Greece and never comes back even to visit. When we were kids, his older brother had come back from China filling their home with so many