Witness — Ian Colford

Uprooted by war and affected by loneliness and loss, Kostandin Bitri drifts from place to place, struggling to feel at ease in the foreign, strange, and sometimes alarming worlds in which he finds himself.Traumatic childhood events lead to his transportation to an Albanian orphanage and force him to adapt to new, bitter realities. A group of amateur musicians and a sympathetic landlord provide brief respite from loneliness and anxiety while stranded in Greece. A medical emergency in his apartment block brings him into contact with a young girl whose helplessness is an uncomfortable reminder of his own. A creative writing workshop renews in Kostandin a desire to document evidence of his existence, even though the process causes him to question his talents-and his instincts.Filled with moments of quiet revelation, the restrained yet realistic stories in Witness build a portrait of a conflicted man whose yearning for connection and closeness clash with the safely ironic distance he instinctively places between himself and others.