THE ADVOCATE 699
VOL. 80 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2022
question—how has the blood feud evolved? Drenica, you’re the matriarch,
you’ve seen several generations of its bloody consequences—can you give
me the play by play? Each murder, each abduction, each bludgeoning?
“Let me stop you right there, Drenica. Kirill, give her my apologies but I
actually don’t want to hear the whole history. I’ve heard enough already to
know how this is going to go. Again, it’s ‘I think’, or ‘I heard’, or ‘maybe this
happened’, or ‘then someone told me that they said this or that’. Are you
beginning to see the problem? If I went to the Hoxhaj family and asked them
these same questions, I bet I’d get almost identical answers. He said, she
said, I think, they’re mistaken, this is how it happened, no that is how it happened—
it never ends!
“OK, one final question—this one’s for you, Gijon. Where does everything
stand right now? Why are you all huddled in your home—like hundreds,
thousands of other families in the country? Why is it so hard for Albanians
to seek asylum in the EU? Why does the Hoxhaj family want to murder one
of you to reclaim their honour?
“Let me repeat what Gijon just said, because I think it’s that important.
They believe that to defend their honour, they must seek vengeance on our family.
But they are mistaken; our families are even, so there is no longer any need
for vengeance. Let that sink in for a moment—they are mistaken.
“Now that you’re seeing the problem, let me show you the solution. It’s
really quite simple: you need a system that is secure, immutable, unanimous
and distributed. A completely trustless system where you don’t have
to trust the Hoxhaj, and they don’t have to trust you. Instead, you can both
put your trust in technology. You can both trust Blockchain for Bloodfeuds.
“Blockchain for Bloodfeuds is the only way to fix this, trust me. No more
wondering about how things started, no more worrying about what the
score is, no more agonizing over if the Hoxhaj have a different tally. Think
about it—a constant cycle of vengeance and retribution, broken, just like
that. Imagine if the Montagues and Capulets had this technology? Neither
Romeo nor Juliet would have died!
“Fair enough, maybe they wouldn’t have even gotten together in the first
place—forbidden fruit tasting sweeter and all that. And I do acknowledge—
as Kirill so helpfully pointed out, going above and beyond his clearly
defined role as a translator—that they were fictional characters and Shakespeare
wasn’t known for writing plays about cutting-edge technology which
contributed to civil stability and drove progress …
“All of these are fair points. And I know you might be a little skeptical
about joining the pilot program of Blockchain for Bloodfeuds. But think
about the world you’ll gain when this works. Yussef, wouldn’t you like to be