Sarajevo Firewood by Paul Starkey

Author:Paul Starkey [Khatibi, Saïd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913043247
Publisher: Banipal Publishing

Silence Surrounds Me

I didn’t need more than twenty minutes to learn how to make coffee in the machine, and to prepare a good espresso, an Americano, and café au lait. Si Ahmad showed me where the other drinks were kept in a small refrigerator. We started work at seven in the morning. I put the orders on the counter and he served them to the few customers, who drank their coffee, repeating ‘živijo’ when they arrived and left. After two hours, we were joined by Janez, a close friend of my uncle. He worked on a honey farm and played the electric guitar in an amateur rock band in his leisure time. He took over from me and I was just his assistant until one in the afternoon, when the waiter Aljaž arrived, with his smiling face, and took Si Ahmad’s place, who disappeared behind the cash till.

I thought it was pleasant enough work. My uncle seemed content. He didn’t raise his voice when he repeated the orders to me and he didn’t grumble. When Janez arrived and took my place, I noticed that the orders increased and my uncle’s smile grew broader. I think Janez was used to working in the café for I could see him behaving spontaneously, knowing the places for everything and responding swiftly to the customers’ orders. Music would blare from the radio, which hung on the coffee machine with amplifiers fixed at the corners of Triglav, and it filled the place. It was local music, music whose words I did not understand, interrupted by news flashes. I wished Si Ahmad could put on a disk or tape of Algerian songs, which might please the customers and make them more curious to come back to the café.

My brain was only used to Algerian cafés, with their noise and shouting and arguments – cafés where the customers’ voices were raised and mingled with popular songs or the sighs of rai singers. I wasn’t used to the calm of cafés like the Triglav, with its gentle music. My ears had been accustomed to the songs of El Hachemi Guerouabi, Dahmane El Harrachi and El Hadj El Anka. Then, after adolescence and the changes in the face of the country, I discovered rai. I started to listen to Fadhéla and Sahraoui and Hasni and Mami and Nasro and especially Khaled, who freed Malika from her depression, without my stopping listening to chaabi music. To be from Algiers meant you had to know the songs of the masters of chaabi music, and know some of them off by heart; to extract proverbs and sayings from their words; to swap the taa and the thaa and the Taa, like saying tariq instead of Tariq, or taqil instead of thaqil; to use the diminutives of names, like Fatoom instead of Fatima, Buhaija instead of Bahja, or Muraiziq instead of Murawzaq; to eat sardines at least once a month; to wear a blue Shanghai suit, like the ones worn by the porters

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.