The family lives in a whitewashed house in Shkoder, a city of 96,000 people in Albania's northwest, near the Albanian Alps. Horse carts drive by on unpaved streets, vendors sell tomatoes on the sidewalks and men play dominoes in the parks. There is a university in Shkoder, it has restaurants and bars and women picking their way carefully across the cobblestones in high heels. But Shkoder is also a poor city with high unemployment, its outskirts smell of garbage and damp fields. Leonard's house has no running water.

Blood Feuds Still Prevalent in Albania. He can't bear to listen to Florian's stories about his classmates and the girls. His own friends. Related SPIEGEL ONLINE. Albania is in the southwestern portion of the Balkan Peninsula, bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the.

Spilled Blood Shkoder is just as deeply divided as the rest of the country. On the one hand, it is a place looking optimistically to the future; this week, Albania was given the green light by the European Commission as an EU accession candidate. On the other hand, it is a country where corruption, human trafficking and organized crime are all present. It is a country where blood feuds are still prevalent -- of the kind that could soon cost Leonard his life. 'Spilled blood must be met with spilled blood': Such is the edict of the Kanun, a set of traditional Albanian laws that stems from the 15th century.

It is a parallel system of justice focusing on honor, guilt and vengeance, and remains in effect in rural regions. And here in Shkoder. It threatens entire families, including children and teenagers. And the feuds that result often begin with a seemingly harmless quarrel. Sitting on a torn living room sofa one April morning, beneath a picture of Mother Mary hanging on the wall above, Leonard prepares to tell the story of the dispute which has become a roadblock to his life.

Making sweet Turkish coffee on a gas cooker for his guest, his face is pale and his expression is one of defiance, except when he smiles. He is happy for the visit. Any change of pace in this three-room house -- his prison -- is welcome. Four years ago, Leonard begins, there was a dispute over a water mill up in the mountains where the Qukaj family used to live. It centered on the question as to whether Leonard's family had to pay to use the water that flowed through the property of the neighbors, the Prroj family. The Prrojs thought they should be paid a fee and insulted the Qukajs, a serious blow to the family's honor.

To restore it, Leonard's uncle shot and killed a member of the Prroj family. Two years later, the Prrojs got their revenge by killing two members of the Qukaj family. The murders alternated, a member of the first clan would kill someone from the second, triggering a murder perpetrated by the second on the first. Leonard's cousin Marija was also killed two years ago. Coffee in hand, Leonard sits on the stairs leading out to the yard -- surrounded by a high wall -- to tell the story of his cousin. Marija's story is part of his own. Women in the Kanun are referred to derogatorily and seen primarily as producers of offspring.

Their lives are held to have little value, which is why they are not generally targeted in blood feuds. But Marija, who was 17 at the time of her slaying, was raking in her grandfather's fields wearing a shirt and pants. She looked like a boy, which is why she was murdered together with her grandfather. 'We're Going to Get You' Her death was widely publicized and Marija became a symbol of the senselessness of blood feuds and revealed the country's backwardness. There were even protest marches in the capital Tirana, but Leonard didn't go. 'Because in reality,' he says, 'Marija's death was a mistake.' The bullet had been meant for him. Echoes Of The Rainbow Soundtrack Download.