One rainy autumn, Arben finished his dictionary. It was not a thick book of dry definitions. It was a slender volume with a leather cover the color of honey. Every entry was written in gold ink, and next to each word, the vowels were drawn as little birds, fish, or open mouths.
Disappointed, he closed the book and left it on a bench. A young girl named Era, no more than seven years old, picked it up. She couldn’t read well, but she saw the picture of a bird next to the letter . She opened her mouth and sang the vowel: Eeeee — clear as a morning bell.
Arben took the book to the main square of Tirana. He opened it to the letter , the schwa — the most humble and most Albanian of vowels, the one foreigners cannot hear. He whispered its sound: uh . Fjalori I Gjuhes Shqipe Me Zanore
Dr. Arben Cela died happily a year later, the dictionary clutched to his chest. But the book did not die. It was copied by hand, then printed, then digitized. Every school in every Albanian-speaking land kept a copy of Fjalori i Gjuhës Shqipe me Zanore — not because it was practical, but because it was a reminder:
Word spread. Children, adults, and the elderly gathered in the square. Arben, awakened from his disappointment, stood on a crate and opened the dictionary to a random page: (flower). He drew out the u and the e : Luuu-leeee . One rainy autumn, Arben finished his dictionary
The last entry: (star). The vowel that sounds like no other, the tight, bright point of light in the throat.
Nothing happened.
In a high, stone-walled tower in the old quarter of Gjirokastër, an aging linguist named Dr. Arben Cela spent forty years compiling a singular work: Fjalori i Gjuhës Shqipe me Zanore — The Dictionary of the Albanian Language with Vowels.