- TIRANA (Reuters) - The oldest
woman in Albania -- and perhaps the world -- died at the age of 123 and
was buried beside the husband she resented being forced to marry at 14.
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- Born on August 22, 1880, Hava Rexha breathed her last
in the picturesque central Albanian village of Shushice, where she had
spent her whole life.
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- Wrapped in a faded shroud which she embroidered for herself
when her elderly husband died a few years after World War II, Rexha was
buried in the wooded Shushice cemetery.
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- Hundreds of people, who saw her as an icon of longevity,
joined her only surviving daughter, Vule, 80, and 120 other members of
her family to pay their last respects at a Muslim ceremony local reporters
described as "majestic."
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- Interviewed by Reuters a month before her 122nd birthday,
Rexha still resented her forced marriage at 14 to a man who was "about
60 and married twice before as well."
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- "I did not want a wedding. I didn't love my husband.
He was an old man," said Rexha, who had six children, four of whom
died in childhood.
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- Rexha spent her life carrying out tough farming jobs
and household chores -- pasturing livestock, raising children and never
taking a break. A devout Muslim who never touched alcohol, she smoked instead,
drank coffee and liked butter.
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- Media reports said the National Commercial Bank had been
giving Rexha a pension of $100 a month to help her grandson's needy family
to look after her, and that the bank had begun action to register her with
the Guinness Book of Records.
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- If Guinness Book officials had received and authenticated
her documents, she would have entered the records book as the oldest person
who ever lived, beating Frenchwoman Jeanne-Louise Calment who died in August
1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.
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