Year 1985. Everyone is talking about 16-year-old Ali Kajaci who tragically died in a fire while grazing with his aunt on a mountain pasture at 2000 meters. Ali’s stepmother, their neighbor and aunt Emine, claims that the child perished in this accident due to the neglect of Fatma Kajaci. After this painful incident, when Fatma Kajaci hears the accusations from her relatives and neighbors, she vehemently protests and leaves her village. She starts living in a stone house on the mountain pastures, far away from people. Every tree she plants, she names “Ali,” as if she wants to keep him alive. The surroundings of the house turn into a forest.
She says the incident happened in 1985 when she was around 50 years old and living with her brother’s son, Ali Kajaci, who was 16 years old at the time and suffered from seizures, on the mountain pasture of Karakisrak, which is 2000 meters high in Tonja. “Like every morning, we went out of the house with our two cows and calf for grazing. I brought the cows back home, opened the door, and saw Ali in flames.”
