The Poets Society

By Semra Samet Aloski

He jumped from his improvised bed and looked up. The sky parted in two as if it was endeavouring to mirror his life. Neither the sky nor his life was ever a compact piece of peace since he had known about his being. Miaow…miaow…miaow…miaow. Was he awake, or dreaming?

In the heart of the resplendent Balkans, a land forged by relentless wars yet always welcoming those in need, a destitute wanderer finds solace. But this is not a tale that unfolds in ordinary fashion, for the human experience is a tapestry of contrasts. Within the pages of this extraordinary journey, a tapestry interwoven with melancholic humour and bittersweet poignancy, lie the unheard voices of characters yearning to be heard.

As if borne upon the wings of a time-travelling vessel, traversing lands and ages, the enigmatic Atom Butterfly stumbles upon an unassuming soul named Sevda, whose presence unexpectedly illuminates his existence. And so, their story commences – a tale of reminiscence, where childhood revisited unveils the battles fought during times of scarcity, when satisfaction eluded their grasp, and yet resilience prevailed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398494909

Semra Samet Aloski

The author, Semra Samet Aloski, was born in Yugoslavia. The state that no longer exists. She regards herself as a vigorous traveller of the 20th and 21st centuries. Semra Samet Aloski is the author of one poetry work titled Quest which was published in her parent’s Turkish voice and later transcribed into Macedonian by Asude Abdul Koçan and published with the loyalty of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia in 2017. She is likewise the author of the fiction Australian Saga (2016) published in the Macedonian voice by “Almanah” publishing house from Skopje-North Macedonia. The narrative Australian Saga (Австралиска сага) 2017 got on the shortlist for the distinguished “Novel of the Year” award presented by the daily “Utrinski Vesnik” from Skopje. It was the first narrative penned by a writer of Turkish ethnicity in the Macedonian language. The literary world, which enabled Aloski to turn into a writer with interest by the literati and book lovers, heeled the novel. Semra Samet Aloski lives in Australia. This year, 2022, is the 30th anniversary of her citizenship and marriage. She still regrets not having over two children. But that’s how life goes in cycles. She is hoping to have many grandchildren from her adorable daughters.

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About the Author

The author, Semra Samet Aloski, was born in Yugoslavia. The state that no longer exists. She regards herself as a vigorous traveller of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Semra Samet Aloski is the author of one poetry work titled Quest which was published in her parent’s Turkish voice and later transcribed into Macedonian by Asude Abdul Koçan and published with the loyalty of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia in 2017. She is likewise the author of the fiction Australian Saga (2016) published in the Macedonian voice by Almanah publishing house from Skopje-North Macedonia. The narrative Australian Saga (Австралиска сага) 2017 got on the shortlist for the distinguished Novel of the Year award presented by the daily Utrinski Vesnik from Skopje. It was the first narrative penned by a writer of Turkish ethnicity in the Macedonian language. The literary world, which enabled Aloski to turn into a writer with interest by the literati and book lovers, heeled the novel. Semra Samet Aloski lives in Australia. This year, 2022, is the 30th anniversary of her citizenship and marriage. She still regrets not having over two children. But that’s how life goes in cycles. She is hoping to have many grandchildren from her adorable daughters.

Dedication

Whom should I mention in this book that inspired me to write it? I think there is no need to mention anyone. I hear so many stories. The people love to open their hearts to me even though I warn them I’m a writer. I strongly believe there will be many people who might find my story relatable to their stories.

It happened with my first two LOTE books. My readers thought it was me, the main protagonist. Some of my readers DM’ed me to express their sorrow about what I have gone through.

Did I endeavour to calm them down and explain it was not me? No.

To prevent causing unnecessary extra anxiety that is unavoidable while writing, I’d love to stick to the dedication lines below:

‘There is a saying some writers live on lies, some of them using their life experiences undercover in the name of fiction. In this fiction novel, even though most of the geographical places are existent, the events and characters in this book are the fruit of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to reality is coincidental.’

The author, Semra Samet Aloski

Copyright Information ©

Semra Samet Aloski 2023

The right of Semra Samet Aloski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398494893 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398494909 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

2016, Somewhere on Planet Earth

It’s night-time and summer is in the air. A small town with a big soul is located somewhere in the Balkans, at the bottom of the beautiful Shar Mountain; yearning to grow into a metropolis.

It looks like no one has invited the groom to his wedding ceremony. All the guests know that the bride is hiding. Hundreds of curious eyes watch her high heels stuck in the thick red Persian carpet in the five-star hotel lobby. Where is the groom? The uninvited ageless man is wondering.

He could see the bride hiding her face behind a short, square and thick red silk scarf thrown over her head. He is the only one who knows that the bride didn’t wish to show up on her wedding day.

The ageless man can’t help. His legs are not moving. In a long white wedding dress, the bride’s body is sinking through the small hole in the thick red carpet, and she’s screaming for help. The curious eyes gazing at the sinking bride have disappeared. Hence, he could hear the wild laughter coming from the hotel reception.

Swiftly, an unexpected thunderstorm has swept the dream away and let the mountain wonder when the pretty small town and the lost groom will share the unfinished vision.

The bulbs attached on the top of the tall electric posts—which firmly stand on both riverbanks—are struggling to penetrate their weak light under the shamelessly split-along pair of pillars. Gazing from afar, the bridge posts resemble the masterly shaped legs of African elephants. Beautiful posts made of stone stand firmly below the womb, on one of the bridges inherited from the Ottoman times. It seems the history will survive in the name of the dowry bashfully laying over the river Bistrica. The water flows through the Shar Mountain spring, flowing through the bridge down towards the Bel Drim wetland.

The fishermen on the land and the trout in the water are no longer around—the fertile soil and the unpolluted nature endeavour to rest in peace only in the archived documentary movies. A hardly distinguishable new hot day or lazy late hot night looks as if suspended like a giant shimmering balloon right in front of the lost groom’s face. He sees the tomb of Sinan Pasha. But how is it possible?

There is a story that the river has changed the course to sink the grave as a punishment directed to Sinan Pasha. The story tells he had used processed stones from the orthodox monastery to build a mosque in Prizren, the second biggest city in Kosovo’s province in an ideal old beautiful country made of blood and honey. The gorgeous country, Yugoslavia; the only name the Yugoslavs from all walks of life—regardless of their ethnic, religious, sexual backgrounds—will ever let go or forget. Nonetheless, it’s just a legend. Which one? The Ottoman Empire or Yugoslavia?

The bridge walls standing firmly over the river, shyly glimpses with a nostalgic yearning towards the West and the East. On the bridge crevices and the uneven side, graffiti is all over the place. If the creative minds sharply study all those mind-blowing paintings, it may result in writing essays.

The lost-space groom has tilted his left shoulder to one of his large imaginal canvases exhibited at the National Gallery in London. His right shoulder is leaning on one of the fundamental pillars of the four bridges built by Yemen Fatih Sinan Pasha during his father Ali Bay’s reign 1440/1533 in the five and a half centuries of the Ottoman Empire. With half-closed eyes, he followed the steps of uninvited guests as they intertwined in the race, with their shadows while departing from Prizren’s Kamena Cuprija¹ in a short escape from the place of vandalism.

In the distance, it was as though he heard the call to cuddle a homeless kitten. Miaow…miaow…miaow…miaow…as if the orchestrated voice from a forgotten violin was following them. Or was someone crying nearby?

Or he was crying because his mother laughed when he said he wanted to play the violin.

The seriousness in her voice saying, ‘When you grow up, not now!’ wounded him. She continued to preach to him, ‘Amadeus Mozart learned to play the piano at the age of four! Your long fingers will suit piano keys, my son! We are all different, as different as the fingers on our hands. Don’t compare yourself with anyone else, son!’

Whilst crying his heart out, he mastered talking back to his mum, ‘That’s not fair Mum!’

‘Life is never fair son! Please, don’t forget! Always be the first version of yourself, instead of the second version of somebody else,’ his mum insisted.

‘I want to play violin, Mum!’ he cried.

‘No, you can’t!’ his mum firmly whispered.

He jumped from his improvised bed and looked up. The sky parted in two as if it was endeavouring to mirror his life. Neither the sky nor his life was ever a compact piece of peace since he had known about his being. Miaow…miaow…miaow…miaow. He was awake, wasn’t he?

His half-shut eyes glazed through the thick mist and met with a few streetlights. In the centre of the city, the homeless dogs were sleeping.

He heard a very familiar voice, ‘For art haters, it is vandalism, for art lovers it is surrealism.’ Was he day or night dreaming? He might have been losing his mind. Besides, after the long effort to adjust his memory of the present time, it was difficult for him to confirm whether he was in an inner piece of hell lost in paradise or an actual nightmare.

Finally, he had returned from his trip down memory lane, accompanied by the smell of his sweat and urine. He settled in a roofless home somewhere in South-Eastern Europe, in a city modestly observing its beauty surrounded by cold waters and green mountains. The river was flowing without interruption through the town nestled within the more magnificent Sarajevo valley of Bosnia and the Dinar Alps situated along the Miljacka River in the Balkan’s heart. All these beautiful fruits of Mother Earth seemed encompassed with the beautiful mountains: Jahorina, Bjelasnica, Igman, Treskavica and Trebevic.

The lost man again found himself in the middle of beautiful historical landmarks. It was for real. He felt like he was in one of his dreams also. The bridges over River Bistrica from his hometown were so similar to the decks presently surrounding him. It was overly emotional for him to dream of his hometown Prizren in the romantic city of Sarajevo. His dream was as big as the midnight sky. He desired his hometown Prizren cradled in the province of Kosovo. He dreamt of the tiny houses built so close to each other.

He noticed that from afar, the places seemed glued to each other. The windows of the houses were always open to catch the fresh air. In every courtyard behind the high walls that protected most families’ privacy. There were pots with beautiful flowers set up by the hosts proudly sitting by the stairs or hanging on the crumbling and refurbished houses’ exterior walls—lined up from both sides along the narrow roads.

The colours of the façades were reminiscent of the Ottoman days. The lonely man could see some freshly painted houses looked exceptionally clean despite the noticeably cracked Façades. In his childhood, the hometowns for him were all like fairy tales. It wasn’t always enjoyable for him. There was more oxygen in this gorgeous city. The city with a generous past had more motels on the open area to offer to homeless, he’d guess. The romantic town had proven for centuries that the East had loved the West without any prejudice, without the need for Danton’s laws of peace and love. On this side of the world, love had been ample for centuries.

The musical notes from the traditional love songs called sevdalinka from nearby cafés spoke the language everyone understood. The music that touched everyone, the religious people he appreciated no matter the religion they followed, and atheists like him were something integral, something that brought with it, the delicious scent of the glorious past. Perhaps that’s why the muezzin’s voice from the nearby mosque’s minaret, the bells of the Orthodox and Catholic Church, and somewhere between them, and the sound of silence from the Ashkenazi Synagogue didn’t annoy anyone.

He kept coughing, although he took breaths a lot easier since he moved to this part of the Balkans. With so much greenery on all sides, oxygen was available in enormous amounts. He tried to get up, but he found himself stuck between empty bottles of wine and baby bottles filled with misery. They were arranged above the ground as if they were corpses waiting for someone to gather them and bury them in history. The expression on his face was questioning: Who were the boys and the only girl in the gang?

Besides, how they dared to break the disturbing silence of his thoughts. He’d attentively listen to the accents in their speech slipping through his throat as if it was swallowing warm doughnuts in the shape of ping-pong balls smeared with honey that his grandmother used to cook for him during his childhood.

He wasn’t sure if he was alone or his grandmother woke him up.

‘Devran! Devran! Devran, come on, son, get up, it’s time for school!’

His name spilled across his ears and melted. He smelt a familiar smell coming from the paint tubes. The scent clogged his already clogged nostrils. A non-trivial trait about Devran was his hearing was betraying him, and he wasn’t able to listen very well without significant effort. He had those almost empty paint tubes with hardened water colours and scrubbing brushes and tattered canvases nibbled by mice. His domestic animals were mice and rats. He used to study them as if he was examining the German artist Albrecht Dürer, whose painted animals had unquestionably striking accuracy with animals in real life. Most of the time among those images, his constantly squinting eyes were drawing an empty stomach that coughed like a burrowing exhaust on an old engine.

A shaky puppy, no more than three months old, was lying gently next to his feet and licking his long dirty fingernails. The puppy was his only friend. The two homeless creatures seemed to have fled from the realistic artwork of Dürer.

And look at that now, look at those teenagers! Were they preaching on art? What were they painting this time?

With his right-hand punch tilted to the decayed cardboard box, he endeavoured to support the balance between his bones and skin before fixing his rheumatic elbows, which were shaking more vigorously than his shaking hands. Devran picked up the scattered soiled canvas on which he was painting his stormy journeys. All the drawings and paintings were coldly vibrating between the dream and reality.

Until the other day, he kept his artwork in the mouldy cardboard box. One of his colleagues (the homeless tenant living nearby under the bridge) had stolen the patchy oily mattress from under him while he was genuinely drunken and sleeping. Since then, he had no choice other than to use the cardboard box as his new bed. Devran had gotten the mattress—that he no longer had—from a graceful middle-aged, middle-height curvaceous woman with striking apple cheekbones on her ashen face. It was tough to figure out her actual age. The woman was one of those humans who would stubbornly age from the outside, and if the circumstances were different, he might have been able to find out more about her inner beauty at least. She must have lived nearby as well, but she wasn’t homeless. She never dropped coins in the dirty white baseball hat. She probably never carried coins on her. Powerwalking and dressed up in pastel colour sports gear from head to toe she stopped, took something out of her back pocket, bent down to her knees and looked straight into his eyes. With her right hand, she handed him over a fist full of cash, pressing them firmly into his right hand as she feared he might refuse, and walked away without any comment.

With one step, Devran directed his fragile body towards the east side of the bridge. He then drove his eyes away from the east side towards the west of the bridge. He faintly remembered that his life was neither in the east nor the west. He knew it was all real. He was not part of a floppy movie. He set up his ambiguous mind to believe he was always on the middle road as the unwanted tenant of his fate. Like any other lunatic who accuses the faith of their ruined life, Devran would try to find any excuse for all his committed crimes.

‘The fate, the guilty party!’ He heard the voice, the same voice he feared as always.

‘Oh fate, go with the needle and thread up and down, squeeze the new one, patch the old one. Everyone is the fashion designer of their fate!’ He only made it up. ‘Everyone is an architect of their own life.’

The little friend in his brain whispered, ‘I miss my old self, the way I might miss my dear friend. I wish to return to the man I once was.’

‘I feel as if someone forced me to wear clothes I haven’t chosen, and they’ve made me a man I never wished to become.’ It was not the same voice.

The voices seemed to be multiplying since he stopped drinking. He had few friends, and they were renting for free in all departments of his retired brain. The lights that formerly seemed very faded became more visible in his squinting eyes as a final point. Devran’s soul continued to wander between the dream and reality. He still wanted to believe that being homeless was a gift.

An old Bosnian man and his mature warm-hearted Serbian wife would come down to the bridge to bring Devran food. The old couple once told him that they wanted to take him home, but their adult children living in Western Europe had forbidden them to do so and asked them never again to mention their intention. They no longer came down to the bridge to bring him food or to accompany him. In his memories, they sat next to each other watching the scattered white stones which resembled cotton balls, standing out in the crystal-clear waters of the riverbed. For about forty days, Devran stayed under the Goat’s Bridge on the Miljacka River on the East of Sarajevo.

Some nasty people trained vulnerable children on thievery of stranger’s belongings, and Devran had become a victim of their antics. They stole his precious wristwatch gifted to him on his eighteenth birthday by his grandmother. He would not stop crying like a five-year-old child for days and nights. He was killing his pain for the loss by taking notes in pencil. He had three handmade notebooks glued into a thick, fragrant notebook that he always carried with him. He had to stop random passers-by from asking them what the day or the month was, sometimes he’d forget if he had jotted the information down.

On that same day, early in the morning, he picked up the folded rugs and placed them into a decayed backpack. He remembered that he might have been forgetting something more important which he should have packed instead. In the bottom of the dirty, smelly backpack, he found room for a tattered sleeping bag. He couldn’t recall when he found that sleeping bag dumped on the street, but he remembered it was in one of the nearby reconnaissance camps. He got excited to see some more space for a few philosophical books with ripped covers. Back in his mid-school years, at the end of the curriculum year, he was rewarded for his top performances in a few subjects by his teachers. Those books meant a lot to him. If there were no room in his backpack, the books would have replaced the rugs. There was also more room for a plastic cup, a black umbrella with dismembered strings, a sweater with unwoven threads and large holes around the elbows and several paintings signed with only two initials. Out of all the items in his bag, there was no room for his thick, patchy notebook. He turned the mouth of the backpack upside down. He shook all the things out onto the wet grass in between his widespread legs. He couldn’t decide what to keep and what to chuck in the bin. He never doubted that his most cherished belonging was his notebook.

On the spur of the moment, he heard the voice of his grandmother, who encouraged him not to delay his last choice. ‘Don’t touch the books, throw the sleeping bag!’

He didn’t know what to do. He would often reminisce back to his childhood. As quickly as a wink, with both hands, he firmly grasped his beloved notebook and placed it in the bottom of the backpack. He saved his most personal diary. Over the green grass, as green as the colour of a spring pea, he spread all his stumpy wealth. The beauty of the paint was palpable and visible by the tears of the morning spring rain.

The homeless man could feel how his strewn life was pouring in front of his feet. Devran continued to cherry-pick his belongings, waiting on the ground patiently. He folded the sleeping bag and squeezed it in between his palms. He wasn’t going to pollute the river, never again. Then, he walked straight back to the goat’s bushland. Somebody else might need a sleeping bag more than a pot full of gold. When he finally set up the entire backpack on his twisted back, he stood on his bare feet in the same spot he put the rucksack down, doubting if settling on this side of the world was a wise choice.

Before leaving, he looked deeply into the horizon that seemed very far behind the real world. His gaze was stuck on the horizon. He was hoping to see all his beloved family come out of the stray clouds in the sky. The two rings on each side of the lonely crescent resting curiously on the bridge seemed to have grown, and to him, they looked like sad round eyes that were trying to tell him they regretted seeing him leave.

Despite being aware that this beautiful river and greenery that he had immensely loved had saved him from becoming a hopeless mental case, he knew he still had to go away for good. The homeless man finally began walking towards the city. He didn’t want to think about hitchhiking.

He spoke his thoughts aloud, ‘Who would dare to take me into a car? Besides, people have become sensitive and merciless as much as they are towards a toilet seat!’ As he slowly walked away, he left behind the suburbia bushland with the hope of not coming back.

After several hours of walking, he had already reached downtown Sarajevo where he’d settle down in the new open-air motel. His new home was the Latin Bridge. Somehow, he felt honoured to become Gavrilo Princip’s new tenant. As a child, there wasn’t much that interested him in history and geography. In the fifth grade, he failed in the Serbian-Croatian class for the essay entitled: Hero or No Hero.

He knew that Gavrilo had carried out the well-planned assassination of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy successor. Although Devran had read a lot and without any doubt knew how to write well, he had failed his essay. Not because it was wrong but because he wrote the truth. The truth that Gavrilo Princip was a killer, not a hero. The professor asked him why he didn’t complete the piece, and without waiting for his answer, she had given him an order to finish the literature composition as homework when he returned home.

He ended the literature essay by adding a few sentences. ‘Gavrilo Princip is a killer because anyone who takes a hand of another person is a murderer! No one has the right to take life away from anyone. Only the one who gave us our life can take it, and that would be the god!’

The teacher asked him who helped him write the essay.

‘My grandmother,’ he briefly replied and handed a folded piece of paper to his teacher.

‘What is this?’ asked the teacher.

‘Read it. I have no clue?’ Devran answered.

It wrote, ‘There is neither glorification nor heroes in any war. I have taught my grandson that the glorification comes from actions that hinder any war, and heroes are the ones who carry out all those actions against the war!’

Devran under the Gavrilo Princip’s bridge trembled to remember the other beautiful bridges’ history over the rivers all over the Balkans. His pupils grew older in his dark blue eyes, and they seemed to be more moist and crispier than the iceberg to which the Titanic submerged.

It was difficult to tell why his eyes looked frightened. His tangled hair had fallen on his forehead. He tied his unwashed hair into a ponytail, letting it fall on his long neck. Years back, Devran had a posture that the army generals would have been jealous of, but now his wrinkled neck looked like a distinct state on his slightly hunched shoulders.

Through the cracks of the mirror, his sadness had fallen and dwindled. He kept dying and regenerating. He could see the deep facial lines of dried river beds, deep lines around the two sides of his thin nose and what was once full of tears of joy and smiles is no longer.

From afar, visible cracked lines over his full but now languid lips that passionately loved were looking into someone else’s reflection in the cracked mirror. All he wanted to see was his old self in the mirror. The hair on his unshaven beard matched the white strands seeping through the hair on his head.

Devran laughed out loud. No one but the cardboard box and canvases he was sitting on could hear his weak voice as it struggled to hit thirty decibels. Paradoxically in a hot summer, the nights of this fairy-tale city were cold. He continued to laugh.

Whenever his grandmother would have heard bad news on the television about matters that would have made her cry, she felt like saying, ‘After this news, we will hardly be able to laugh again in our life.’

Not long after, she would’ve gathered herself to add cheerfully, ‘We all laugh, we will all laugh again, but the more generous generations will never be young again, and the youth will never be the same again.’

Back then, Devran didn’t understand his grandmother, he was a little child. But he laughed now because he was no longer a child. He wasn’t one of those who were afraid of not only themselves but also from their shadows.

Furthermore, he was not someone to boast on every occasion that they are fearful of the Lord alone but afraid of their own shadow. They were the hypocrites who change social statuses for personal needs faster than the change in the weather. Devran was not scared of anyone except himself. He laughed again. He knelt to pet his only friend the German shepherd, this beautiful three-month-old puppy, whom he called Kurt after the name of someone he knew in his early childhood. Devran didn’t find Kurt, Kurt had found him. He had joined him when he was a cheerleader of his fate at the Miljacka River’s riverbed under the Goat’s Bridge.

A wild dog had killed his mother. Like a bolt of lightning on a sunny day, a strange thought fell on his head. ‘A female dog is a bitch. It’s a difficult word to pronounce when it comes to a mother, even though the subject was a four-legged animal.’ The impressive lightning dispersed in the second part of his mental note. He didn’t think the same for his father.

All he felt was, the dog will remain the dog. While looking around for food, he bumped into a big crowd. He had a good look and regretted his curiosity. He saw two male gypsies pushing homeless dogs into wrestling games while the female gypsy was parading around in front of the audience and begging them to place bets in her straw hat. The fights didn’t last long. The defeated dog dropped dead.

The winner kept licking the gifted bones for its victory. Nothing had changed since the era of David and Goliath. Bloody business, as usual. Just different movies with the same storyline. On the Principal Bridge, no one threw any coins into Devran’s begging can for him to get excited and throw the mercy back to heaven. There was nothing left to throw to heaven except his exhausted soul. The ignorant attitude of the random passers-by hurt him to the heart of his soul. Not only did they not chuck a penny in his begging can, with accelerated steps they would disappear from his homeless home leaving behind the echo of their words of insult while covering their nose and mouth with their freehand.

‘Man, you have no right to have a dog! You can’t look after yourself, how will you protect it and feed the poor puppy!’

The ignorance of the casual passers-by had hurt him to the bones. He felt embarrassed. His responsibility doubled, and it caused him a massive headache in the battle for a crust of bread and a glass of water to divide in two, one portion for his puppy Kurt, and one for himself.

In some cases, he craved jumping and bashing those passers-by or slightly biting and ripping them to pieces when offered money and food in replacement for the dog. Once, he had recognised one of the organisers of the bloody canine games among those bidders when he lived at Goat’s Bridge, back in the East of Sarajevo. They didn’t know he was ready to sacrifice his own life for his best friend Kurt. But he knew, even so, he would have survived to suffer the loss as the angel of death had given up taking him with him.

There was a girl who would pass by in front of Devran every day at the same time. She’d gaze stubbornly in his direction with a glance in her eyes that seemed absent but angry with the world. When she would’ve come close to him, that absence looked as alive as life. In her gaze, he saw a curious dove wondering if the shadow over his head was a shadow of a migratory bird, or the wings of a huge eagle that had not grasped properly and the victim was ready to fly away to its freedom.

Her looks were so familiar to him, but he couldn’t figure it out. Was she a TV reporter? Where did he get an idea that she might have been a TV reporter? When was the last time he watched TV? He didn’t need to watch the TV. Since the Balkan wars, the domestic and foreign TV crews were a big crowd chasing up all kinds of untold stories in this part of the world. Had she been a TV reporter, she would have dragged the cameraman and the tone master along. Or was she a journalist in the daily newspaper? Had she been a pure journalist, she would have carried at least one sharp pencil or a pen with a notebook in her back pocket. He attempted to adjust his thoughts. Those acute pens and pencils had belonged to previous centuries.

Smartphones have taken over. How did the homeless man forget was in the first 20 years of the new millennium? Smartphones have killed brilliant brains that stood firmly behind the statement that paper and a pen would not need a battery if anything goes wrong.

In her arms, the girl tightly clutched her books. She wore a big white canvas enclosed by wooden strips from both sides, wrapped in a cylindrical shape under one arm. That must have been the same girl who fled along with the boys. That little gang again disappeared as soon as they appeared, the same way as it whisked away the other night.

Devran yelled out a few names. That night he named her, Kamelia. He yelled out her name a few times. ‘Kamelia…Kamelia…Kamelia!’ The sound of the character he called instantly disappeared from his thoughts.

The girl’s silent steps vanished out of his sight at the same time. However, she remained an uninvited guest, as a handout in his nightmarish mind. When he got down under the bridge, in his nest, the bottle of brandy he had bought with the collected handout coins took him to the bottom of the drunken stage.

‘Let’s Live,’ with muffled coughing he slammed the empty bottle on one of the pillars on the bridge while losing his balance. His fragile tall body struck on the ground over a dispersed cardboard box. A seductively, beautiful, mysterious girl was sitting next to him. Was she?

He talked and talked. It seemed nothing could stop him from talking.

‘Didn’t you say you’re a painter?’ Devran asked with excitement.

‘Maybe, one day?’ The mysterious girl answered, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Do you study Fine Arts?’ Devran quizzed.

‘Sort of. I want to paint you,’ the mysterious girl insisted.

‘How will you paint me without a palette, paint and brushes?’

‘With my hands.’

‘Without tools, there is no craft! May I lend you some of my art instruments?’

‘Are you offering me your dry brushes with the plucked hair and the exhausted paint tubes?’

‘So, you are saying my painting gear is useless?’

‘I’m saying, are you in for a portrait?’

‘I am in, but only to draw me classically, with a pencil and charcoal.’

‘No problem, whatever suits you.’

‘Do you want me to draw you up in return?’

‘Yes, but how?’

‘Don’t judge, promise?’

‘You have my word of honour!’

‘I will paint you with the technique of the wall and floor mosaic.’

‘Shameless!’

‘Who, me?’

‘You don’t like a wordplay?’

‘Who plays with words? Me or you?’

‘Are you angry yet?’

‘Let it stand…it suits you!’

‘What did you say?’

‘You will paint me with a weary spirit worthy of mine?’

‘Don’t assume that.’

‘How tired could your soul be to consider a comparison with a homeless stranger?’

‘Pretty much!’

‘At your young age?’

‘Age is irrelevant, at least in my case! That’s my humble opinion!’

‘Well, do not be angry, do not frown those soft eyebrows seated so proudly over your brooding eyes.’

‘How do I know it is intelligent?’

‘So, I’ve heard that people with high foreheads have intelligence sharp as a razor and the skull does not endure weight, for instance, the hair.’

‘So much rubbish! I have heard this exact quote a hundred times.’

‘So, I’m repeating them?’

‘Yes, you are as frequent as the repetitive wars of the kings.’

‘Possibly. Who is the one who could muster up the courage to stop the show?’

‘You mean, to stop the repetitive words?’

‘Both the wars and the words.’

‘Doesn’t bother me much.’

‘Of course, it doesn’t concern you. Besides, I have another excellent quote for you. Women with high IQ are very forgetful.’

‘Are you trying to say, the smarter someone is, the shorter is their memory?’

‘Right! Let me try you.’

‘Try me? Is this another pun?’

‘Nope! Can you repeat what I said word by word?’

‘Why would I need to remember?’

‘I guess you don’t remember.’

‘I remember you offered to paint my portrait.’

‘Oh, good girl, good on you!’

‘Just let me know how much?’

‘Not much. Nothing!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course, I’m sure, for free. Art was not born to make money!’

‘Do you believe that artists created the arts on a hungry stomach?’

‘The most celebrated artists when they were penniless, hungry and demoralised, created masterpieces.’

‘You might be right. Most probably the same applies to writers, poets, sculptors, etc. The messier their lives are, the more successful they are in their creativeness.’

‘Can you name some of the classics?’

‘Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ted Hughes…and so on, so forth.’

‘You must have read them all?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘But there is more! How could you forget, Franz Kafka or Charles Dickens or Sylvia Plath? Few centuries have passed since they have passed away, their talent does not cease to amaze us.’

‘But I don’t think Tolstoy and the company had similarities with those we just mentioned.’

‘What do you know about Tolstoy, which I don’t know? I have never read him, to be honest.’

‘Oh fine, the flow of their extraordinary lives was not an obstacle for creating masterpieces. The talent they possessed and could brag on enabled them to take absolute advantage out of it with the considerable support of their housewives.’

‘Oh well. The most famous works are born from tragedies. And have you read a novel whose central theme is art?’

‘I think we already spoke about it?’

‘Did we? I might be boring for you. But you see, you are laughing.’

‘You are not a boring person. It’s just that you keep repeating.’

‘Correct, the saying around the high forehead is valid for bold, intelligent men. I never said I was referring to a female descendant.’

‘Let’s go back to the painting theme.’

‘Ok. You’re going to draw pain.’

‘Pain? I thought you were painting my portrait, not me yours?’

‘Oh, never mind. Ladies, go first. I’m going to answer your test questions.’

‘What test questions?’

‘At least, I get the option of multiple choices a, b, c, or d. Or there will be one questionnaire from you and one exclamation mark from me as astonishment that requires an answer.’

‘I would say it might be an awakening and there’s no need for testing.’

‘Oh, ok then, as you say, let’s keep focused while drawing the landscapes of our loud silence.’

‘Only Salvador Dali can paint the landscape of your silence.’

‘Oh, Salvador Dali, rest in peace my Dali. If I change the letter a in his last name, the Turkish reading will be Deli that stand for crazy. He was a crazy man, who’s not?’

‘I’m not!’

‘Good on you!’

‘Now that you switched the word, I’m assuming you’d want me to interpret your portrait as Anne, the daughter of Sigmund Freud?’

‘Come on, let’s go, stray girl. Let it be all the good! I am so desperately curious to find out what kind of portrait will come out of me.’

‘Ok! Please seat down and stay still.’

‘If I may add, you surprised me with your broad general knowledge.’

‘General knowledge?’

‘Let me elaborate. In the middle of our conversation, you stated that the colours and words were somewhat more intriguing with paintings and poetry.’

‘Yes, I did!’

‘So, what is the surprise all about?’

‘Why am I surprised? Attractive ladies’ minds are less likely to be trusted by men and women. External beauty that is intimidating is challenging to fit with spiritual grace, unfortunately.’

‘Only the chauvinists think that way?’

‘A witty charm with a great sense of humour.’ Devran couldn’t remember the last time he looked at a big mirror compared to that of the one in the palm of his hand. He could place thousands of brainy quotes and poems from great writers who, besides other literary forms, wrote novels with inexhaustible themes covering art and life. They were right when they said a picture was a silent thought and music was a loud thought.

---

¹ Prizren’s Stone Bridge↩︎

Sevda’s Story

Last night, a homeless man addressed me as Kamelia. I didn’t turn around. I ran away. But not from the name. I liked this name. I didn’t know what I was looking for at the homeless bridge. I was not looking for a job, that’s for sure. I’m studying English Language and Literature. It’s my last year and not long to go before graduation. I’m also studying part-time at the Academy of Fine Arts. Painting is my passion. I think I’ve had inherited the art love from my grandfather and my mother. I’ve not yet done a picture of myself. But I will certainly do it in the distant future. Maybe the day I learn to love myself above anything else. It took my mother half a century to learn. I’ll wait a long time to learn to draw a self-portrait without being burdened with the complexities of deep inferiority.

Recalling my early childhood memories, I painted the portrait as the sixth-best portrait in the class. From the rumours, I learned that my art teacher had sent my art piece to the international art festival in Japan, can’t recall the exact name of the city the festival might have taken place. I’m not quite sure why the school had kept it a secret.

A few months after the faded rumours, the art teacher requested the brushes and the colours to be left alone for a while as he had something important to announce during Fine Arts class. The portrait named Brigitte Bardot has returned to the school where it was born. I was honoured with a certificate with our school’s name written in bold letters. The money reward was well-deserved. I didn’t see the cheque. Not that my teacher didn’t proudly mention my name in front of the whole class, but I wished I could see my name on the honorary certificate written as well. The principal bought a piece of my art. I was so happy with his act and so proud of myself.

My initials on my award-winning piece might have faded, and I had never seen it again. Still, one of the many bitter memories from my childhood has remained for good. My looks externally and internally are like a feminine human. I have two legs, two arms that lie on the body and I have a head on my shoulders with all the necessary windows. I am a typical (whatever typical might be) product made of one of the fastest sperms in the race. What a cliché? The most consistent survive. Was it mythology or reality? ‘The winners never give up, those who give up never win.’ Someone more experienced in life said this, maybe a winner and perhaps a loser. My mother is always a winner in her orders and accomplishments. Who’s my father? Steve Jobs? I’m trying to be funny. I’m not. Anyhow, I didn’t know what I was looking for here, in an after-hours losers’ club.

June is the month in the curriculum year when students flirt with exams. They do not have time for themselves or time to flirt with colleagues. Sevda had just received excellent results from her English Literature exam. She walked out of her faculty and headed towards one of the bridges’ sunbathing over the River Miljacka. While cherry-chocolate coloured water flowing through the riverbed, tourists walked along the quay with their mouths open, drawing moving images in the air.

Sevda could see butterflies with open mouths in the form of astonishment due to the view reflected by the river’s colour. She could also see the river towering from the particular month’s sudden rains that always symbolised the summer’s naughtiness. She walked towards her house, located in the old part of the city. American poetry of the nineteenth century was bursting out loud from her full lips. She had named her neighbourhood street, The Mimar Sinan Mahalo and saved it in her heart. She was never embarrassed to speak her mind or recite poems out loud.

There were times she was not in the mood to recite classic poems loudly; instead, she would visit the homeless puppies around her neighbourhood. She has seen dogs and cats who had just opened their eyes to the world tortured by homeless kids. Sevda never understood what those kids have suffered in their short lives to make them so cruel. They’d pick the little animals’ eyes off, break their legs and chop their tails before they’d throw them into the river. She gave these kinds of humans the name of modern-day vampires because of their evil souls. Without warning, they’d run over those unprotected little creatures with the wheels of their expensive and trendy cars.

Her parents had seen worse. Something that was not done only to animals. While migratory birds were flying in the hot southern areas, in search of their temporary lodgings—the green parks that once were rich in life—were now lonely chops without a soul scattered with Mother Earth, that will soon produce concrete and deeper alienation.

She began to recite a poem by Emily Dickinson:

’I’m Nobody!

Who are you?

I’m Nobody!

Who are you?

Are you Nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Do not tell! They’d advertise—you know!

How dreary to be Somebody!

How public—like a frog—

To tell one’s name—the livelong June—

That an admiring God!

That an admiring God!’

She heard a warm voice pronouncing a familiar name. The name she heard melted in the smile on her face as if she was hit with the hot wind in the Sahara Desert. She stopped at the end of the bridge. She heard a male voice reciting her favourite writer’s poem. The same husky voice repeated, this time with endurance to increase the volume in his voice.

‘I’m nobody! Who are you?’

‘You’re Emily. Emily Dickinson. The famous poet! The American! But why do you have a British accent?’

‘The poetess was English in her previous life.’

‘You are funny! I do not believe in reincarnation!’

Being fascinated by the lyrics, she didn’t see the stranger straight away. He was sitting down with his legs crossed at the end of the bridge with his ripped jeans, and faded skin spattered with yellow stains over his skinny bones. But Sevda saw the irony of life begging for money in ripped clothes in the middle of daylight. Innovative fashion designers inspired by homeless people had made themselves billionaires, proudly collecting the cash under ceiling lights shining like diamonds over the catwalks. The diamonds never shine, they only reflect the light. His gaze shifted towards the neck of a soft voice that seemed to be afraid to call again in order not to break the proximity of the distance between the present times and nineteenth century American poetry. The raincoat he was wearing over his skinny bones and oversized hood over his head seemed like a child wearing it before his rich father gave it to him. The outfit on him looked as if a cow had chewed it.

A small paper banner with scribbled handwriting that once smelt of Balkan pastry was sitting between the holes on his sneakers with no shoelaces. The medium size letters read, ‘Have some mercy.’

His long nails were filthy. Next to a baseball hat, on an oval aluminium plate, the mysterious girl saw five coins. She bent down to see that it probably hadn’t seen water and soap in the last few years. It seemed to be some shaving equipment which almost certainly was left by someone who had put in only five marks to move quickly away from suffocating by the unpleasant odour scattered around the homeless place. The mysterious girl thought the coins she threw were already sitting peacefully on the plate. Still, the echo of the aluminium bowl embraced the coins. It made a sound as if they have been thrown from thousands of meters away. With meek steps, she walked away from the hooded homeless man. And one of the coins on the plate spoke, ‘I’m Mimar Sinan!’

‘Are you serious? The famous architect? Come on, get out of here.’

Don’t worry about me; tell me how the gentlefolk address you?

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does! If a person does not show a valid identity, they will choose to lie about it? Isn’t that, right? Do you not know how to lie?’

‘So, let me tell you the truth, from the other creatures you’ve met up to now, I’m the biggest liar. Are you surprised by what I am telling you?’

‘Yes, if the lie gets to repeat itself three times, everyone believes it is true. As it happens, the one who makes the lie believes that it is true.’

‘Who could be that?’

‘For instance, politicians. I’m not kidding at all, I can lie at large, but I will not lie to you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Have I ever lied to you?’

‘No! Whom had you lied to?’

‘For example, as a small child when I was going to a store to buy my grandmother cigarettes, I would have made a lie telling my friends that I was going to the library to borrow a few books. It’s not a big lie, but a small lie causes big lies, so a person is taught to lie. Once you learn to sham, you learn to steal. But let’s go back to you. Won’t you say your name? Go ahead, lie to me?’

‘No! I’m not telling you, my name!’

‘Is this your last decision?’

‘Last. Cold! Or to say shower! Should I add a battery? Spray shower faucet with cold water? You laughed again. We will laugh again, but we will never be young again!’

‘I don’t understand?’

‘Forget it. You have many more lives to follow. I hope as many experiences as cats.’

‘Nine!’

‘Well, then, let it be. Now listen to me. And let this be my first and the last decision. I’ll call you Kamelia. Ah, I caught you in the act, scoffed. I can tell you liked the name. Let me call you Kamelia, Sultan.’

‘No, no!’

‘Fork off! Oh, forgive me, I should not use profanities in front of young women. Do not get angry; do not bite your lips. I got it. You didn’t like the Sultan adjective.’

‘I got offended!’

‘Sharp! Let me say as sharp as a sabre! Cliché! Then, quick as a whip? Or as sharp and short as a razor! It hurts! What is it that hurts?’

‘The clichés? Jokes.’

‘Is it ok? Be alive and healthy Kamelia, as long as I surrender myself to you in a stained-glass technique, like it or not. Why did you hop aside?’

‘I need more space.’

‘More space, here out in the open air. The whole space is ours.’

‘I guess you are right?’

’Oh, is it because of the wave of my heavy breath that has stricken you? I know, and my clothes are stinking. I stink like preserved urine. Kids are calling me a stinky skunk. Look around me; I’m in a small zoo, bugs as big as rats, rats as giant as rabbits. Should I name them pets? I have me and my only friend, my dog Kurt Junior. I shouldn’t have been judging them. Children are the most honest when they are children. They do not know how to be political. But they know how to lie, if necessary, as the people say, white lies. Where did I stop?

‘Around hungry throats.’

‘Are you closing your ears? You do not want to hear the word politics. You object to talk. Do you hate politics? All I’m talking about it’s not politics, though? I just recalled George Orwell’s Animal Farm novel.’

‘What made you choose that novel as inspiration for the conversation?’

‘Because stories spiced up with politics are more comfortable to digest when they are happening in animal farms. In my case housed in the zoos! Didn’t Greek fabulist Aesop use the same technique in his fables? They say times change, and I assume people change more often than the times.’

‘You might be right, I’m learning, but I’m still young.’

‘I hated politics since my early school days. Most of my schoolmates were ass lickers. They were kissing the teachers’ asses to pass exams. Most of them end up in politics as a professional call. I was something else, and what else to expect of someone who from his earliest adolescence pushed his nose in philosophy and read and wrote poetry. This combination does not capture a good background for a politician.’

‘You agree, don’t you? You are nodding your head. You are approving of me. But unfortunately, in history, there are examples from people who were lovers of poetry in their early youth and read daily and wrote poetry themselves. When they threw themselves into the arms of politics, their spirit sank into tyranny. Can I read you one of my poems?’

‘Not now, please. I mostly prefer to read the classic novelists and poets who left indelible traces in world literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries!’

‘Oh, but you still read Sigmund Freud? Nancy Chodorow?’

‘Who is she? I have ever heard of her?’

‘She was a feminist, a sociologist, and a psychoanalyst!’

‘Let’s say you are one in all. You smiled. Oh, don’t tell me you are an undercover social worker sent by social security to test my ego? Brontë’s sister’s Wuthering Heights are snapping into my empty stomach, from all corners of the world. From the words’ psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, my body pours out with red streaks. Yes, that’s it, I’m getting chickenpox out of the blue!’

‘Professional name for chickenpox is measles.’

‘By the way, why do you want everyone to know about me? Why push me into the deep waters of my past? My childhood and adolescent life are most sacred to me!’

‘I don’t know,’ the mysterious girl whispered sadly.

It was the end of the conversation. Or was it? The sunset looked like a massive fire, but somehow it didn’t heat in this hot summer. It was lunchtime. Her parents were waiting for her. She was almost there, hand in hand with her mental notes and the cheeky smile on her face. Sevda’s parents were the parents which many children would love to have. Neighbours’ or relatives’ parents always look sweeter than your parents. There is no difference in parents’ opinions on the same matter; neighbours’ or relatives’ children are much more helpful than their own. It’s the same with parents. Different people with different lives, who have nothing in common, don’t necessarily compare. When will we learn that every person is born with happiness? Who is he who does not believe in it? Kamelia? What a lovely name, though.

Sevda, aka the mysterious girl, was born in 1990 and raised in a highly educated environment, hence a better-settled family. After the bloody Balkan fairy tale that occurred before the twenty-first century threshold, capitalism quietly and indeed crushed the good old socialism, thus, no one used the term high class.

Nonetheless, the word pal, which was one of the socialism symbols, was replaced with Mr and Mrs overnight. The gap between the classes became extremely transparent. It grew more extensive than the transparency between the people who once lived in harmony. In that part of the world, almost everything was topsy-turvy. At least, for the last fifty years or so. Her father retired an honourable lawyer and her mother a part-time psychiatrist with a doctor’s PhD. Her mother was proud of her employed status as an associate professor of psychiatry and psychoanalytic medicine at Sarajevo campuses. An interesting combination. Her father often joked on his behalf. He would say that if a lawyer marries a partner with a psychoanalysis career, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a brain X-ray.

When asked, why is that? He’d answer, ‘Only an excellent neurologist might have a rational explanation for the reason behind my choice to marry a psychiatrist and a senior psychoanalyst.’

Her mother would’ve laughed, but Sevda could never conclude whether her mother laughed out loud because her father has said something ridiculous or laughed out loud because the joke was hiding in the truth. Was there a deep connection in confusing one-way traffic between the heart, mind, and soul that belonged to her beloved mother?

Mental note:

‘I’m Fussy,’ said the Mind.

‘You just let go!’ said the Heart.

‘But now, I’m entirely lost!’

‘Follow me!’

‘But I’ve never been there before?’

‘Believe me. You will love that path.’

‘If you both don’t stop, I’ll show you the map!’

The Soul laughed.

It was an electrifying choice of describing her consistently anxious mother’s mood swings. That year during Ramadan (also known as Eid and Sugar Bayram) fell in the summer. Sevda and her parents weren’t religious to the extent that they’d practice daily, but they deeply respected their ancestors’ beliefs. Ramadan was a piece of her mother’s culture; therefore, they had embraced many centuries’ customs. In the most civilised way, they respected the tradition of their people’s culture, and language inherited from their ancestors without any desire to brag about it. Although they didn’t fast during the Holy Ramadan, they celebrated the end of the fast with an enormous feast.

For Sevda, passing the final exam after four years in university was the most significant award. For lunch, they were always together. Sevda’s father had retired from his life-long job but never formally. Every year to make the family happy, he would have to take three days off. That year, her father made her favourite food—Elbasan—with lamb cooked in yogurt and soup from the brewed lamb all served with creamy tomato, walnut, mint and pomegranate salad. When cooking or preparing fruit salads and all kinds of sweets, her mother would address him as a Cooking Maestro. He wouldn’t complain about her mockery. That day, her father put the baklava at the edge on the big dining table. Once they finished with the main course’s feast, her mother served it. Whenever something was delicious, only at home, of course; Sevda would gobble up the plates and often her dad would have teased her and joked that ‘There’s no need to wash the dishes since Sevda has already washed them by licking her fingers and the plates.’

Her mother took a thin knife and fork to take out the first piece of the baklava. She noticed that her husband had already cut the baklava into small pieces that were so boldly cut it was worth severe criticism.

‘Why did you cut it into cubes, it’s normal to cut the baklava pieces in a diamond shape, so the baklava looks more original?’ Her mother commented so comfortably as if she were the baklava chef from Gaziantep with a temporary job at a five-star hotel.

‘I beg your pardon, I had spent so much of my time to do it, and you think you have a right to complain? What’s wrong with the cube shape?’ Her father looked at her mother with astonishment, as if he had heard the worst insult in his entire life.

‘It’s all ok, I got used to the shape, but if you didn’t tell us that it was baklava, I would’ve thought that you had made börek in error,’ her mother giggled.

Her father’s facial expression was confused.

‘Instead of minced meat, you have wrapped the filo pastries with raisins and walnuts and poured sherbet all over them.’ Her mother laughed out loud at her joke.

‘You haven’t even tasted it yet, and you’re criticising it? Let me explain! Firstly, fill your mouth with one piece then act like a MasterChef’s jury member,’ her father spoke with an unusual voice.

‘Well, how am I going to try it when I can’t cut a piece of baklava? You’ve thrown sherbet over the baklava. Is sherbet as dense as an adhesive? Can’t I put the knife through it? It’s impossible to unglue the pieces! I might try cutting the baklava with an axe, and if that’s not good enough, I’ll use a jigsaw.’

‘With all due respect to your exaggeration, I wouldn’t be surprised if you took the baklava to a surgeon to perform a severe operation to separate it from the forbidden sexual relationship it has with the casserole,’ the father smiled sourly.

‘A great idea, only the surgical venture will save us from the shame of the guests leaving without getting a chance to enjoy the baklava,’ her mother