"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 83"
The morning mist curled around the peaks of the Albanian Alps, where stone villages clung to mountain slopes and shepherds called to their flocks in a language older than Latin. Su Yao's car navigated hairpin turns along roads carved into cliffs, passing women in red woolen fustanella skirts and embroidered vests selling cheeses at roadside huts, until it reached a Gheg Albanian community nestled in a valley. In a courtyard surrounded by beech trees, a group of weavers sat on wooden benches, their fingers flying as they stitched thick wool thread into a conical skirt. Their leader, a 65-year-old woman with silver braids and a xhubleta (traditional embroidered skirt) cinched at the waist named Shpresa, looked up as they approached, holding a finished piece—vibrant reds, blacks, and golds adorned with geometric patterns and eagle motifs that seemed to reflect the rugged landscape. "You've come for the xhubleta," she said, her Gheg dialect guttural yet musical like the lahuta (Albanian lute), gesturing to piles of skirts laid out on woven straw mats.
The Gheg people of northern Albania have crafted xhubleta for over 500 years, a craft intertwined with their tribal codes (kanun) and wedding rituals. The xhubleta—a cone-shaped skirt worn by unmarried women—serves as both clothing and a social marker: its embroidery density indicates family wealth, patterns denote tribal affiliation (Kastrati, Hoti, or Shala), and the number of horizontal stripes reveals the wearer's age. Each motif carries symbolic weight: eight-pointed stars represent the sun god Zojz, zigzags symbolize mountain paths, and double-headed eagles honor Skanderbeg (national hero). Woven from wool of local sheep and dyed with plants from the Alps, each xhubleta requires up to 18 months of work, with stitching done during winter evenings when "the spirits of ancestors guide the needle." Dyes are made from regional flora: madder root for red, walnut hulls for brown, and woad for blue, with recipes guarded by baba (female elders) through oral tradition. The process begins with a besa (oath) to preserve tribal secrets and includes kângë (folk songs) sung while stitching to "infuse the cloth with fati (fate)." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this warrior craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Gheg traditions while adding durability to the wool fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "tribal honor" and "innovation" was as different as the Alps' granite and the Adriatic's foam.
Shpresa's granddaughter, Lira, a 24-year-old who documented Gheg textiles while studying Balkan anthropology, held up a xhubleta with a pattern of interlocking crosses and eagles—motifs of the Kastrati tribe. "This is for a bukë e kripë (bread and salt ceremony) welcoming a bride," she said, tracing the motifs that declare tribal loyalty. "My grandmother dyed the threads during Dita e Verës (Summer Day) when the mountain passes open—too many eagles, and the cloth brings arrogance; too few, and it loses protection. You don't just make xhubleta—you weave the honor of your tribe into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought industrial embroidery machines and synthetic thread blends, intending to mass-produce simplified xhubleta patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Balkan heritage" fashion line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-stitched eagle motifs, the women froze, their bone needles clattering to the stone floor. Shpresa's brother, Genti, a 70-year-old kapedan (tribal chief) with a silver mustache and a pistol tucked into his belt, stood and slammed his fist on the worktable. "You think machines can capture the nder (honor) of our bloodlines?" he roared, his voice echoing off the mountains. "Xhubleta carries the tears of mothers and the pride of warriors. Your metal has no tears, no pride—it's a bullet, not a banner."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Gheg weavers shear sheep during St. George's Day, offering the first fleece to the mountain spirits to "bless the wool with strength." The wool is washed in glacial streams, where women leave coins as payment to the water nymphs, and spun on wheels made from beech wood carved with tribal symbols. Dyes are prepared in copper cauldrons over fires of pine cones, with each color mixed according to kanun law—red is dyed at dawn for "valor," black at dusk for "mourning." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from salt waters that drown our rivers," Shpresa said, dropping the sample into a bowl of rakia (fruit brandy). "It will never hold the besa of our people."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the madder root dye, turning it a rusty brown and causing the wool fibers to fray. "It angers the mountain spirits," Lira said, holding up a ruined swatch where the eagle pattern had blurred. "Our xhubleta grows more sacred with each generation, like a kulla (tower house) that defends the valley. This will decay like a broken oath, erasing our tribal identity."
Then disaster struck: record-breaking rains triggered flash floods in the valley, washing away the madder root fields and destroying the weavers' embroidery supplies. The stored wool, kept in a stone kulla cellar, was soaked by groundwater, and their supply of rare yellow dye (made from saffron traded from Macedonia) was ruined. With the Krusevo Republic Day approaching—when unmarried women wear new xhubleta to honor freedom—the community faced a crisis of both culture and pride. Genti, performing a purification ritual by sacrificing a lamb and reciting kanun verses, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something foreign to our sacred mountains," he chanted, as smoke from the sacrifice curled toward the peaks. "Now the gods are angry, and they take back their plants."
That night, Su Yao sat with Shpresa in her stone house, where a cast-iron pot of fërgesë (cheese and pepper stew) simmered over a wood stove, filling the air with the scent of garlic and thyme. The walls were hung with xhubleta skirts and black-and-white photos of partisans, and a small shrine held a portrait of Skanderbeg and a bottle of rakia. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping boza (fermented grain drink) from a pottery cup. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Shpresa smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of byrek (savory pie) filled with spinach. "The floods are not your fault," she said. "The mountains give and take—that is the fati of our people. My grandmother used to say that even wet wool can be dried, like a broken besa can be mended. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that xhubleta can tell new stories, without losing our Gheg heart. Young people buy jeans from Tirana. We need to show them our stitching still speaks to our warriors."
Su Yao nodded, hope flickering like the stove's flame. "What if we start over? We'll help replant the madder root on terraced slopes, dry the soaked wool, and trade for new woad from Kosovo. We'll learn to stitch xhubleta by hand, singing your kângë songs. We won't copy your tribal patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your eagles with our ocean waves, honoring both your mountains and the sea. And we'll let Genti swear a besa on the metal thread, so it carries our shared honor."
Lira, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her woolen socks rustling on the stone floor. "You'd really learn to stitch the gjurmë e kullës (tower house tracks) pattern? It takes 50,000 stitches for one skirt—your hands will cramp, your eyes will strain from the dark wool."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the kanun laws you recite while working. Respect means honoring your code."
Over the next six months, the team immersed themselves in Gheg life. They helped build stone retaining walls around the madder fields, their hands blistered from lifting rocks, and trekked with Genti to a hidden mountain meadow to collect wild woad, learning to identify plants by the kanun's descriptions. They sat on wooden benches, stitching until their shoulders ached, as the women sang kângë about blood feuds and freedom fighters. "Each stitch must be pulled with the same force as a warrior's oath," Shpresa said, demonstrating the needle technique. "Too loose, and the pattern betrays the tribe; too tight, and the wool breaks. Like nder—unyielding but not cruel."
They learned to dye wool in copper cauldrons over pine fires, their clothes stained red and blue as Lira taught them to add olive oil to the madder dye to "make the color last like our grudges." "You have to stir the dye 12 times for the 12 tribes," she said, her arm moving in a rhythmic circle. "Each stir honors a clan that fought for our mountains." They practiced the chain stitch that forms the xhubleta's distinctive stripes, their progress slow but steady as Shpresa's 89-year-old mother, Drita, who remembered the Italian occupation, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The stripes must be straight like our besa," she said, her gnarled fingers adjusting a thread. "A crooked line means a crooked heart."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and madder dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of beeswax and pine resin, a mixture Ghegs use to waterproof leather pouches. The wax sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the resin added a subtle fragrance that Genti declared "smells like mountain freedom" after swearing the besa. "It's like giving the thread a Gheg soul," she said, showing Shpresa a swatch where the red now blazed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Albania's rivers flow to the Adriatic, designed a new pattern called "Eagles and Tides," merging double-headed eagle motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The eagles' wings gradually transform into ocean swells, symbolizing how Gheg resilience connects to maritime courage. "It honors your warriors and our sailors," she said, and Genti nodded, pressing the fabric to his chest in a gesture of acceptance. "A true warrior respects both mountain and sea," he said. "This cloth understands our nder."
As the madder root sprouted new growth and the valley dried out, the community held a Krusevo Republic Day celebration, with men in fustanella dancing the valle and women in xhubleta singing patriotic songs. They unveiled their first collaborative xhubleta at the village square, where it caught the sunlight like a banner of red and gold. The skirt featured the "Eagles and Tides" pattern, its wool fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like sunlight on snow, and traditional tribal borders that seemed to pulse with warrior energy.
Shpresa helped Su Yao fasten the xhubleta around her waist with a leather belt, as Genti led the community in a besa oath. "This skirt has two honors," she said, her voice rising with the lahuta music. "One from our Alps, one from your sea. But both carry the nder of those who fight for home."
As the team's car drove away from the valley, Lira ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of wool dyed red with madder, stitched with a tiny eagle and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in pine needles. "To remember us by," read a note in Gheg Albanian and English. "Remember that mountains and sea both demand loyalty—like your thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Albanian Alps faded into the distance, the setting sun painting the peaks in hues of purple and gold. She thought of the hours spent stitching in the stone courtyard, the kângë songs that seemed to carry the voices of Gheg warriors, the way the metal thread had finally learned to stand firm alongside the wool. The Ghegs had taught her that tradition isn't about endless feuds—it's about carrying tribal honor forward with integrity, letting old patterns evolve while staying rooted in the kanun's code of respect.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Guatemalan team: photos of Xochitl holding their collaborative huipil at a solstice ceremony. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new eagle—Albanian peaks and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a lahuta played a haunting melody that echoed across the mountains, a reminder of the music that connects all warrior peoples. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless tribes to honor, countless stories of resilience to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the mountains, honoring the besa—the tapestry would only grow more unbreakable, a testament to the beauty of all things bound by thread and honor.