The World Turned Upside Down: Neno’s First Day in Rome
“On the First Day” is the story of what Neno saw in Rome — and more precisely, of what she made of it. Because Neno does not simply observe the city. She judges it, in real time, through the only framework she has: the values and expectations of the world she comes from.
AUTHOR & LITERARY HISTORYTRANSLATION
Albanika Press
8/18/20263 min read
The women have stayed through lunch. Neno is boiling inside — she could hardly tell them to get up and leave — but she goes on talking. Shano wants to hear about Rome. And so, picking up where the journey ended, Neno takes them to the first day.
The city at night with all its little lights, night turned into day. The tall houses, taller still, like the Devil’s tower. The automobiles rushing past. Her blood froze. She fell behind the others, partly because she was old, partly out of fear.
“On the First Day” is the story of what Neno saw in Rome — and more precisely, of what she made of it. Because Neno does not simply observe the city. She judges it, in real time, through the only framework she has: the values and expectations of the world she comes from.
The Violinist in the Café
The story’s central scene takes place in a café, where Neno and her granddaughter sit down after walking all day. The café is packed. Men and women everywhere, table after table. There is even music: a young woman playing the violin, made up all the way to her ears, who plays and then leaps to her feet to sing. She has a voice that pierced the world. The men’s eyes are on her.
Neno’s granddaughter asks if she likes the girl. Neno’s response is immediate:
“She is still a girl? What is she waiting for — when will she get married? She’s a spinster, her years are under her skin. And why is she made up like that, and to whom is she showing off…”
The question — to whom is she showing off — is the key to Neno’s entire response to what she sees in Rome. In her world, a woman’s appearance is calibrated to specific relationships and occasions: a bride dresses for her wedding, a woman dresses for guests, a daughter-in-law maintains her appearance within the household hierarchy. Public display for its own sake — for the pleasure of it, before a crowd of strangers — has no framework in Neno’s moral vocabulary. She is not hostile to beauty. She is bewildered by beauty without a designated recipient.
The Granddaughter’s Counter
The granddaughter tries to explain: in these places they don’t marry young; makeup is no problem; women work just like men. She says it plainly and without apology:
“It’s all right… men and women are the same. Why should they be afraid?”
Neno’s response is the most direct statement of her worldview in the story:
“Get out of my face… I can see you have grown bold in this place. The elder must be obeyed. The man has his place, the woman has hers.”
Words go in one ear and out the other. The granddaughter does not argue further. She does not need to. The story registers the exchange without commentary: an older woman’s framework meeting a younger woman’s settled certainty, and neither one moving.
What makes the scene work is that Kokalari does not take sides. She lets Neno’s outrage stand on its own terms, vivid and genuine. And she lets the granddaughter’s calm stand equally. The comedy is real — Neno bursting at the sight of the violinist, comparing Roman women to naked devils and the men to wretches who cannot put two words together. But the comedy does not diminish what Neno is experiencing: a genuine encounter with a social order she does not recognize, in which the roles she has lived by have been dissolved.
Women of My Age with Red Lips
The story closes with an observation that tips from outrage into something closer to bewilderment:
“Over there, dear ladies, it’s not only the young ones who wear makeup. Women of my age had their lips painted thick. A handbag in hand, wrapped in furs, with red nails, beads around their necks, and shoes with high heels… I didn’t know that even in old age a person could go wild.”
The detail is not simply comic. Neno has organized a great deal of her world around the authority of age — the elder must be obeyed, the elder sits at the head of the room, the elder sets the standards that the young must meet. In Rome, older women are not gatekeepers of order. They are as various, as visible, and as uncontained as anyone else. This too is something she has no framework for.
She will take it to her grave, she says, all that she has seen. The phrase carries both meanings: she cannot make sense of it, and she will not forget it. Rome has left a mark that Gjirokastra’s categories cannot quite absorb. The story ends with the guests finally leaving — may they break their necks — and Neno calling the daughters-in-law to set the lunch. Life resumes. But what she saw on the first day stays with her.
Old Neno’s Stories — the first English translation of Musine Kokalari’s work — is available now:
📖 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/old-nenos-stories-musine-kokalari/1149899284
📖 Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Old-Nenos-Stories-Selected-Literature/dp/B0GYGKL94G
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