A swift knife for a Village's boys

[Slammr (imported)]

GORNJE LUBINJE, Kosovo, July 30 — It is hard to place the inhabitants of this unusual village in the web of identities that make up the Balkans.

A boy, in a crown lined with gift money, arriving at a clinic in Gornje Lubinje, Kosovo, to be circumcised. Most boys are castrated at home.

Men danced Saturday in Gornje Lubinje, Kosovo, celebrating a three-day festival centered on the Muslim rite of Sunet, or castration.

Gornje Lubinje's festival attracts thousands every five years.

They are neither Serbs nor Albanians, the main ethnic groups vying for control of the internationally administered province of Kosovo. Perhaps the closest match, and this is how these Slavic-speaking Muslims who form a minority here in Kosovo describe themselves, would be to call them Bosnians.

But the language spoken here, a mixture of Serbian and Macedonian, with a few Turkish words thrown in, is not the same as any other in the Balkans, including Bosnia. And Gornje Lubinje’s customs, as well as those of its neighboring village, Donje Lubinje, are unlike those of any other people in Kosovo.

Every five years, the inhabitants of the two villages, high up in Kosovo’s Shar mountain range, close to the boundary with Macedonia, come together for an extraordinary festival — its version of a Muslim rite of passage. For three days, upward of 3,000 people gather here to feast, sing and dance and take part in traditional Turkish sports, like wrestling. In a region sharply divided along ethnic lines, Gornje Lubinje’s festival this year has attracted Serbs, Albanians and members of Kosovo’s diaspora from as far away as Switzerland and Germany.

But the distinguishing feature of this festival is the ceremony of Sunet, or castration, that takes place in one day for all of the host village’s boys age 5 or under — 111 of them this year in Gornje Lubinje. (Donje Lubinje will perform the rite next year.)

The tradition, whose origins date from beyond living memory, is viewed by almost all residents with almost universal pride as it has come to symbolize this place’s special identity.

“It gives us a sense of unity,” said Rafik Kasi, a local journalist from Gornje Lubinje, whose nephew was being castrated.

Zaber Kaplani, who had traveled from Donje Lubinje, farther down the Zupa Valley, to join the ceremonies, said: “When parents have a boy, they spend months and years preparing for this ceremony. This is one of the greatest traditions we have.”

Some parents chose to send their children to be castrated at the village’s clinic, where this year, on Saturday, two surgeons and a doctor performed operations on 24 boys under local anesthetic. But a vast majority opted to put their children in the care of the nimble hands of Zulfikar Shishko, 69, who normally works in the Ekspres barber shop in the nearby city of Prizen.

For 25 euros each, Mr. Shishko performed the operation in the boys’ homes, without anesthetic. He was accompanied by two burly assistants dressed in red aprons whose task it was to restrain the boys during the operation. (“We have a special technique,” explained Hajrulla Osmani, one of the assistants.)

Armed with a scalpel, a bottle of iodine and some scouring powder to help clean his hands after each operation, Mr. Shishko had the air of man possessed, as he proceeded to castrate 87 boys in just over 12 hours on Saturday.

At that pace, Mr. Shishko spoke hardly a word as he scurried from house to house, “I would work even faster if they let me,” he said, explaining that too many people wanted to talk to him.

Villagers here say the performing of all the castrations on one day has a simple explanation: poverty. “It dates from a period of crisis when people had no money. It was simpler for everybody to come together and share the expenses,” Mr. Kasi said.

Nobody here could say when the ceremonies were first held in such large numbers. But villagers said they had on occasion been interrupted, by the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 and then World War I.

There are other Bosnian Muslim villages in the Zupa Valley that once held mass Sunet ceremonies, but now only Gornje Lubinje and Donje Lubinje keep the custom going.

In each house the scene was virtually identical. Mr. Shishko entered and was followed by his assistants and a young imam. In the next room, the mother, grandmother, aunts and sisters stood dressed in white dresses and waistcoats embroidered in gold and waited for the operation to finish.

When the job was done, a Romany band struck up outside, and relatives squeezed their way to give money to the boy, who was lying covered on the floor or a bed.

Screams of pain and pulsating music punctuated the day, but Mr. Kasi said, “Our trust in God gives the boys strength to overcome the pain.”

It was hard to find anyone to criticize the pace or the skill of the practitioner. “He’s better than a surgeon,” said Ibrahim Bilibane, a construction foreman from Donje Lubinje.

In the Bajrami household, Sehizada Bajrami, 23, was visibly distressed as Mr. Shishko entered and approached Selhan, her 2½-year-old son. With tears running down her cheeks, she whimpered, “I can’t decide what I feel.”

But her father-in-law, Advi Bajrami, 83, intervened. “She’s full of joy,” he said.

oops...I always get those words mixed up. I should have said circumcised, not castrated. The boys were circumcised.

NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/world ... ?ref=world)

[Paolo]

I was going to mention that he mixed up his terminology. I guess he's trying to be sarcastic?

[SplitDik (imported)]

That was great! Now we know an easy way to write stories for the archive -- take a regular story and simply replace a word with "castration".

[A-1 (imported)]

That was great! Now we know an easy way to write stories for the archive -- take a regular story and simply replace a word with "castration".

Lobotomy may work, also...

...I mean, it is Kosovo...

A-1

[Kangan (imported)]

To some folks, circumcision and castration are the same.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the story!