How I’ve Learned to Taste the World, on Pennies
Bread can — and does — sustain us, even under the most economically stretched conditions
It’s 2:15 a.m. and I am humming the tune of “Ederlezi,” approaching the Suada and Olga Bridge toward the Grbavica district of Sarajevo, Bosnia, where I have rented a room. Grbavica had suffered heavy shelling in the 1990s when Sarajevo was under siege by nationalist Serbs. Window sills bloom with flowers now, even though the acned walls keep the war alive. I’ve just exited a kafana, where the music has me swaying but the snacks left me hungry. I pull up my jacket collar to my ears and skip a few steps to enter the pekara on the ground floor of one scarred building. White light bright, and warm enough to loosen my stiff shoulders, the half-empty shelves promise to meet my meager needs. Burek — meat or spinach stuffed into a coiled flaky pie — would see me through yet another night.
“Eine burek molim,” I tell the woman at the counter, mixing fragments of German and Bosnian. She packs the two burek in a paper bag. “Kako?” She utters a word, pauses, then raises four fingers: That’s 4 Bosnian convertible marks (KM). Or, about 2 euros. Or, in a currency that I convert mentally, which makes me happy, approximately 170 Indian rupees.
