Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.5  There's no place like home

Gorana poked her head in at the door, dressed in a leotard.

Gorana: “Nadine, since the kafana is closed today, do you mind if I use it to practise dancing with Ketah? Grandfather won’t let me use his house.”

Nadine: “Go ahead! You know, there are plenty of unused houses in the village, just slowly crumbling because there’s nobody living inside to care about maintaining them. I’m sure if you asked the village council, something could be worked out.”

Gorana pouted. “The council does whatever the Elder manipulates them into doing. I don’t have any leverage. He’d have them set as a requirement that I obey his every stricture.”

Nadine thought for a moment. She knew Bahrudin wanted Gorana to have a house, but he also wanted her to feel she’d earned it. What could make her feel able to deal with him as an equal rather than a supplicant?

Nadine: “Right now the council is very grateful towards Heather, for all the work she’s doing. And I know Heather’s been going on at Elder Bahrudin about not getting a chance to see any of the local traditional dances. What if he asked you to put one on for her tomorrow evening, around the well? Don’t let him frame it as a favour done to you. You’re a free woman, an adult in her own right, and you don’t need his permission to dance, after all.”

Gorana: “That… that could work. I’ll talk to Merjem. Thank you, Miss Sabanagic!”

Gorana returned to the kafana’s stage, and Nadine returned to baking. Hmm, people could be manipulated into feeling gratitude when it wasn’t really earned, or not proportionate to the size of favour being done. Sincere gratitude would need to be linked to a sincere evaluation on the part of the giver of what thought and effort they actually put into producing the gift or service. Hmm. She let the idea carry on ticking over in the back of her mind while she continued to cook.

Mid-morning, Friday June 9th, 2045

She joined up with Heather as her drones neatly slotted a last piece of local limestone into a drywall barrier between fields that she was repairing, and together they made their way to Bahrudin’s house. In honour of the social visit, she’d put on the most conservative clothes in her wardrobe, and briefed Heather on what to expect. Heather had looked down at her tight-laced boots with a sigh, but had paid attention.

In the doorway they were met by Elder Bahrudin himself, who exchanged traditional greetings with them before inviting them in and handing them slippers. Careful not to step on the threshold itself or shake hands directly over it, they stepped in and changed footwear before being led not into the kitchen but instead into the main living area. The furniture was hand carved from wood, the floor was tiled with light brown hexagonal terracotta tile and was covered in cheerful goat-hair kilim rugs full of repeating geometric patterns in bright primary colours.

Nothing looked less than a century old, and most items looked like they might have been produced locally. Even the glorious lantern providing lighting had an old twisted electric cable winding down the chain suspending it from the ceiling, indicating that any electric bulb now in it was probably added later as an afterthought, and that it could be converted back to using lamp oil or candles with little fuss if the use of electricity turned out to be just a passing fad.

Merjem appeared from the kitchen with a tray, and they all sat down at a low table while she served them coffee. Nadine enquired about the health of each of their family members and was in turn asked about her brothers and their children. Merjem then turned to Heather.

Merjem: “How are your parents faring?”

Heather: “Morag, my mother, still does quirky illustrations for children’s books. Her authors know her personally, and insist upon her doing them rather than an expert style-clone. She’s had to retain a pretty fearsome Chinese law firm to go after anyone using an expert system to exactly duplicate her style. She says if anyone wants to profit off imitating her, they should at least have the politeness to do it themselves, so they learn something.”

Heather: “As a professor of marine biology, my father, Lyle, is in more demand than ever, and sells his consulting services virtually to countries around the world whose marine ecosystems have been hit by commercial bio-sabotage. He does complain about rarely getting to actually go swim there himself in person, though.”

Merjem: “They sound formidable. And your siblings?”

Heather: “Hugh, he’s the one who taught me hang-gliding, is a qualified pilot and aeronautical engineer. He still lives with my parents on Mull, overlooking Loch Linnhe. Or rather, that’s where his physical body is. He spends more time in velife than I do.”

Heather: “Hamish lives in Silicon Glen. Where do I start? He uses the bagpipes to play heavy metal. He explores abandoned underground spaces and performs his own poetry in them. He once smashed every window in a cathedral, filming it in slow motion, by exploding a banana. A thousand things. Nobody does himself harder or more thoroughly than Hamish MacQuarry. He’s a legend online. Offline he’s a doting father to three incredibly cute hellions.”

Merjem looked about to ask the age and birth weight of each child, before moving on to ask about cousins and second cousins. Heather, looking down at her empty cup and fidgeting, hastily added: “Can I help take these back into the kitchen. And, while there, if your fridge is playing up, maybe I could have a look at it?”

They all trooped through to the cooking area, which was dominated by a stone hemisphere with various semi-circular openings that served variously as a baking oven, a grilling oven large enough to take a whole pig, water heating for the entire house and a flat range used for boiling and warming. There was no microwave or toaster in sight. Indeed, the sole electrical appliance was a towering refrigeration unit that looked like it could store a month’s worth of rations for an entire squad of hungry men. Despite the now much faded regulation military camouflage paint, or perhaps because of that, it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Bahrudin: “Reduce, reuse, recycle. It wouldn’t have been ethical to leave it to rust away when a new home could be found for it.”

Merjem eyed him darkly, indicating that she personally might not have been adverse to something more modern, but held her peace.

Heather edged behind the machine, produced a long screwdriver and whipped off a cover. Holding the blade to something, she bent down until her ear was against the screwdriver’s handle then listened for a bit.

Heather: “Hah! Yep, there’s the *click*. Your compressor relay overloaded and now the dryer’s blocked.”

She took off her hat, passed the screwdriver over it twice, like a magic wand, and drew out a couple of items. “I’ll just be a jiffy” she said, before lying down on her side to better access the innards.

Merjem looked impressed. Bahrudin looked thoughtful, like one magician trying to work out the method behind a fellow magician’s trick.

True to her word, they were back in the living area with a fresh batch of coffee less than ten minutes later, Heather having taken nearly as long to clean her hands and trousers as she had to fix the fridge. Heather now watched, fascinated, as Merjem slowly taught her the traditional way to serve.

Merjem: “The ceramic cup with no handles, about the size of a sheep’s eyeball, is a fildzan. The larger brass pot, which may have a lid, is the secerluk and contains lumps of sugar. The tall glass of cold water is a čaša. The pitcher of boiling water is the serbetnjak.”

Heather, pointing to each in turn, recited: “fildzan. secerluk. čaša. serbetnjak.”

Merjem: “Good. However the heart of Bosnian coffee is the džezva.” and pointed to the tall ornate brass pot with a handle on its side.

Merjem: “You saw in the kitchen how I filled it with water and boiled it, before adding the pounded roast beans and then heating it again just until it produces a good head of foam?”

Heather nodded, and recited : “džezva. Heat, add, heat again.“

Merjem: “Yes. Heat again but never boil. The coffee itself is never boiled. Now, you pour hot water from the serbetnjak into your fildzan.”

Heather: “As a measure?”

Merjem: “As a measure, and to warm up the demitasse. Then you pour the water from your fildzan into the džezva and capture the foam with the serving spoon before pouring the underlying coffee back from the džezva into the fildzan.”

Heather: “Thus keeping the amount of liquid in the džezva constant. That’s not what Elder Bahrudin does at the kafana.”

Merjem sniffed. “He pours well enough, I suppose. For a man.”

Then she took the spoon of foam and used it to decorate the top of Heather’s cup with delicate swirls, finishing with a pinch of cocoa powder to add shading to the edges.

Heather sniffed it appreciatively. “That looks wonderful. Your skills are wasted here. You should let me build a female-only annex for Kafana Sabanagic, which you could manage as your husband manages the male half. I’m sure you could make at least as much profit as he does.”

Merjem looked startled.

Nadine: “I could split my evening sets, do one for the men and one for the women, any music you like. There’s so many beautiful love songs I never get to sing because the men have other preferences. I’ve always thought the women of the village were short changed by not having a space of their own.”

Merjem had a wistful look in her eyes but then shook her head. “I can’t. My duty is here, to look after the house. My husband. Gorana.”

Nadine took a sip of her water before starting on the coffee. Heather carefully copied her, and took a sugar cube to lick. Elder Bahrudin, Nadine noticed, was staying uncharacteristically silent, as though he were trying to avoid jinxing something. Was that encouragement?

Heather: “I notice you’ve put out five fildzan. Are you expecting Gorana back?”

Merjem: “It is tradition. You always put out a spare cup, to indicate that you’d welcome others to join you. It is all part of the ćeif, the timeless enjoyment you take from being in pleasant company.”

Heather: “I didn’t know there was even a word for that. I love learning about cultures that are new to me. I’m just sad I haven’t had a chance to see the traditional dancing or celebrations.”

Merjem took the cue, with a sly grin on her face. “Damat! There’s still time. You must ask Gorana to put on a performance tomorrow evening, before Ms MacQuarry has to leave.”

Elder Damat Bahrudin turned to his wife, a twinkle in his eye. “If I must, then I must. But she may ask a price of me - will you accept it?”

Merjem waved her hand, dismissively. “Of course. After all Ms MacQuarry has done for us, this is the least we can do for her. Nothing wrong with the correct sort of dance. My mother danced, you know, and I passed the steps onto Sumeja who passed them onto Gorana.”

Heather: “What other concepts do Bosnians have words for, that others do not?”

Nadine: “There’s sevdah which is the connection between souls caused by a shared intense melancholic longing for love.”

Heather: “As in sevdalinka? You literally sing the song of soul binding?”

Bahrudin: “That’s a poetic way of putting it. But yes, she does.”