Summary

“He who is forgotten dies” reflects the deep meaning of Vajtimi, the Albanian mourning tradition practiced by Arvanite women, as described by Bellusci. The author recounts a powerful encounter in 1995 with Jorgjia Gjikas, an 85-year-old Arvanite mother from Bisha, Corinth, who sang a lament for her deceased daughter. Dressed in black, she embodied living grief and ancestral memory. Her spontaneous song, joined by other women, revealed mourning as a collective and spiritual act. The lament transformed pain into remembrance, linking past and present. Through this ritual, memory keeps the dead alive, giving mourning profound cultural and emotional power.

“He who is forgotten dies” is an Albanian phrase from the tradition of “Vajtimi” (mourning) of Arvanite women, according to Bellusci.

Over the years of my studies, I have conducted so many interviews that have deeply touched me and left a mark on my memory. I will never forget an Arbanist mother, 85 years old, Jorgjia Gjikas, who lived in Bisha (Corinth), who sang a lament for her daughter. I was in the Corinth area. In that basin there are three Arvanite villages: Përhora, Loutraki and Bisha. In Loutraki there are thermal waters and opposite Pehora is the village of Bisha.

I was told that that village was inhabited by the Calabrians. At first I was shocked – what about the Calabrians in these parts?! – but then I remembered that De Rada had written an article, where he showed that for the construction of the (Isthmus) Corinth canal, which connected the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea, many Arbanist women from Calabria had gone to work. In these three villages Albanian was spoken in Arbëro.

I met this woman on July 24, 1995, walking by chance through the streets of the village of Bisha. I noticed that she was wearing black clothes, an expression of the loss of a loved one. I approached her and started talking to her. She told me that her daughter had died at a very young age and that she had not been able to heal this wound. I asked her if she knew folklore.

She was silent for a moment and said: “I am still wearing black for the death of my daughter. I will sing the lament for her”. I turned on the recorder and she began to wail… She sang and her tears were flowing freely, while she tried to dry them with a handkerchief. Her cries were so piercing that several other women joined in.

I was stunned, seeing this bent mother, this Antigone of modern times, a unique testimony, a hereditary part of those mourning sirens of Arbëro antiquity. It is precisely this power of of the Arbëresh mourning, which takes on supernatural dimensions, in such a transformation that made that child of the eternal kingdom alive.

When she finished the oil, she thanked me, because I had been the vector that, in those moments, had connected her soul with the soul of her daughter. “He who is forgotten dies,” the Arbëresh mother, Jorgjia, told me at the end.

Reference

The Journey of an Arbëresh. Life, Works, Memories. Author: Antonio Bellusci. Interviewer and Reviewer: Ornela Radovicka. Editor: Elona Qose. Publisher: Tirana, Maluka