It never occurred to my mother that things could have been different for her. When she saw a problem, she thought only about how she could solve it herself, not whether she could appeal to others. The charisma she possessed, and the authority she commanded, made her independent from other people, sometimes too much. The only weapon she could offer to other women was her own strength. The only defence she passed on to me was her example. I grew up seeing how people were deferential to her, as if intimidated by her—not just the pupils in her class, the children in our neighbourhood, and us, her own children, but also quite a few adults, including men. I wondered where her power came from, and thought that perhaps she instilled fear in others because she was never scared of anything herself. But when I tried to be like her, and sought to control my fears, even dominate them, I struggled. I realized that she was an impossible model to follow. My mother did not fight and conquer her fears. She never knew fear in the first place.

his official contribution to the Albanian women’s cause had been a law to legalize sex work, something the Party abrogated shortly after the end of the war

It was not until many years later that something new occurred to me: how lonely she must have been. What also occurred to me around the same time was that perhaps she didn’t stand out after all; perhaps there were hundreds, even thousands of other women like her. They would have conducted their lives unaware of one another’s existence, content with their self-sufficiency, resentful of one another’s lack of courage, or aspiration, or resolve to fight. It was from either a failure of the relevant institutions or a lack of imagination that my mother lived all her life in a Socialist state convinced that one can only ever fight against others, never alongside them. I would have offered my sympathy, if I hadn’t thought she would feel insulted.