The Games of my Childhood

By Bajruzin Hajro Planjac

The Games of my childhood; trilogy is a wonderfully written book with twenty stories about one boy and his adventures. Brilliant plots, lucid lines, passability of the text and vividness of the words these are the main instruments used by the writer to introduce us with the main part of his life. His growing up and childhood in Pousorje whi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9789360497613

Book preview

The Games of my Childhood

BajruzinHajroPlanjac

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2023

Content Copyright © BajruzinHajroPlanjac

ISBN

All rights reserved.

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

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

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.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

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Contents

A Writer With Two Names

My Friends

The Games Of My Childhood

My House

It Is Forbidden To Sit Like That

New Sneakers

Grandma’s Banknote

A Tax Collector Ilija

Bail

Reveille At My Grandpa’s

Grahoran

The Count

The Girl With The Pigtails

The Storm From Grandpa Edem

Trip To Odzak

My Uncle’s Story

Nails

Encounter With Childhood

How I Become A Poet

And How I Become A Writer

About the Author

A Writer With Two Names

M

y name is  Bajruzin Hajro Planjac.

I am a writer. I write mostly about my magical childhood and my books are read with great zeal by children but also parents.

When I was a little boy, my mother called me her gold, and my father called me macho.

I come from Bobare, the most beautiful part of blossomly white Pousorje, near ancient Tešanj, the prettiest town on this Earth and I bring to you the warmest welcome.

I was born after Sadika and Sadeta, and before Minka, like the only male child in the family of Alem and Salka, two days before the beginning of spring, that year when man first ventured into space.

My name should be Ekrem. Ekrem Planjac.

That was the name that my parents planned to give me, but destiny did not accept it.

Тwo or three days before I was born, in my neighborhood, our neighbor gave birth and gave to her son, my name, Ekrem. I was stolen even before my birth. They stole my name.

I should not be born.

My good mother, while she was pregnant, doctors told her to abort the baby. They told her that something was wrong with the baby and that I have a tumor.

She did not listen to them, lucky me. She escaped from the hospital, in the 5th month of her pregnancy beginning God to born a male child, who would be smart and healthy.

God fulfilled her wish. He gave her me. 

So my good mother, because she did not want to have two Ekrems in one neighborhood, decided to name me Bajruzin, after the village teacher Bajruzin Mehinović, who was beautiful and very handsome. Later my mother told me that one had to admire him. And he was so smart...like a teacher.

Normally, so that I become in future so smart and beautiful.

Then like destiny: my jealous father came home after twenty days, from work in Zenica, and heard my name. He decided, jealously to name me Hajro, after a wealthy man, bey Hajro Mujčić who owned half of Pousorje.

Normally,  I become a strong and wealthy man.

So I inherited a beauty and brain of a young teacher, a strength and corpulence from well-known bey. 

I inherited my surname Planjac from my ancestors, who came into my Bobare, from the nearby village Planje, and because of that people called them Planjac.

My grandfather Mehmed moved here.

He was mobilized by king Aleksandar Karađorđević, who mobilized many young men in Bosnia, which was at that time joined to the Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians, and Slovenians, mobilized in the war on the Thessaloniki front.

Because he was a tremendous soldier, like his descendant, he got numerous awards, that stood for years on my grandfather's attic and a hundred land acres, in the golden Posorje.

Later, citizens named him Mehmed Agha. His older son Meho, was Serbian, and the youngest one, Salko, my father, was  Croatian, and they went together on Fridays to the mosque for  prayer. My aunts, and his sisters, were religiously undefined.

Tito and his communists later confiscated -stole from grandfather in the agrarian reform,  half of his properties. They say that their grandfather died soon after that, because of sadness. He was buried like Serbian on the place of honor, in the yard of the old mosque. Older citizens say that no one had such a big funeral.

My grandfather Mehmed-age, who was a real hero to me, was the first businessman in the region. He held a watermill on Usora, and he told me that our ancestors had a surname Đulić. When I was young, I took from our table, two pieces of bread, two cookies, and two apples…justifying myself that I was taking this for two of us, one for Bajruzin and the other from Hajro, so I grew up very fast.

I grew up tending livestock and playing around miracle whisper of blue-green Usora, which wiggled through Pousorje, like it was some big snake. Boys and I liked it so much and gave it all our free time, searching for peace and pleasure in its rapids and whirlpools. In daylight, one could see there the shiny son, and in the nights the marvelous moon. We always found our piece in its shores or drawings. My mother encouraged me to go to school, for studying, and becoming a teacher, a professor, a doctor, and a father… Father encouraged me to become a contractor, a private owner, to work for myself, and be the boss.

I listened to them and finished school as a professor and a doctor, and I also become a private owner. I am my the boss. I am so happy because of that.

When I grew up and started to write songs and stories, and in my new book I will tell you why I became a poet and how I became a writer. I was a guest at the elementary school in Zenica. Students knew that they would meet a writer, but they did not remember my name. 

Bajzurin, Hajruzin! – one boy stammered while he was trying to explain who I was.  That writer with two names, the one who wrote  „A habet's cabin,  and „The secrets from my grandfather's mill, the other boy interrupts him, that boy with a black, curly hair who could not remember my two beautiful names but he remembered my books. That happened to me very often, and people could not remember my name BajruzinHajroPlanjac. They used to ask what is my name and what my surname, and if I was from Albania or  Kosovo. I think customs officers, read more than once my name and surname on the passport. However, when you are with me thank everything is good that happens around you. And you could hang out with a skinny Ekrem – an electrician. Ekrem Planjac.

Maybe I should become a skinny electrician, and Ekrem a handsome writer for children and young people. Beautiful and smart like a teacher,  handsome and mature like a bey.

And maybe I should not be born.

Destiny decided all that.

The alive man could not escape from it.

My Friends

I

t seemed to me that one of the most important things, besides health, is to have good friends. Real friends. When I was a boy I had them. Later, when I grew up, that friendship started to pale like rainbow colors over Pousorje, when the rain stops.

It seemed to me that I know forever Sehid Gumeni, SejoPešo, Memsa Okac, Ekrem Pitar, Nihu Guzlu, Meho Gnjeco, Refko Bagar, Selim Cicko, Rile Paprika, Nikola Filip's... They are my