Turtle Feet by Grozni Nikolai

Author:Grozni, Nikolai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

BOSNIAN BREAD!

TRY IT! ONLY 5 RUPEES!

Real bread tastes different

The sign was written in black marker and framed with green tape. As much as I was mad at Tsar for chopping my bed to pieces, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

“What do you think?” Tsar inquired, eyeing his creation with pride.

“Are you really going to sell bread?” I asked him, laughing harder and harder.

“Why the fuck do you have to be so negative!” Tsar exploded. “You’ve got a passport and money for a return ticket, and your parents will always bail you out if it came to it! I don’t have anything! This is my only shot at getting some independence.”

“I just wonder if bread’s the best thing to sell here,” I explained. “They have chapati masters sitting on every corner. And the price, too. Five rupees sounds like a lot, considering that you could get a paratha for three or four.”

“Give me a break,” Tsar said exasperated. “Chapati isn’t bread—it’s like eating shoes. There isn’t a single person who knows how to make bread here. You know this very well. Tell me one place in Dharamsala that sells bread— not hammered rubber pancakes, I’m talking about real bread.”

“I guess you’re right,” I agreed. “But how are you going to cook it? You need a big oven.”

“You are standing on it,” Tsar informed me, pointing at the mud floor and looking smug, as if he were about to give me a ride in his new Porsche.

“I really don’t get it,” I said, looking around. “It’s just a mud floor. Unless you’re planning to set your house on fire.”

Tsar walked back into the bedroom and picked up a cable sticking out of the floor. “All I need to do is plug this end into the lightbulb outlet. In five minutes, the kitchen floor is going to reach two hundred degrees Celsius.”

I looked at the floor again and this time I noticed that it wasn’t made of ordinary dried mud but of something more resilient, perhaps clay.

“I’ve buried a hundred electric coils like this one,” Tsar said, showing me a hollow metal pipe wrapped up with thin wires. “It took me a whole month to do this. Then I found some fresh clay to put on top. All I have to do now is knead the dough, break it into pieces, and spread the pieces across the floor.”

Tsar rubbed the palms of his hands together and ran his fingers down his chin, as if to say Who’s the king now?

“Have you tested it?” I asked him.

“Not yet. I’ve been waiting for the clay to dry. By the way, I’m going to test it tonight. We’ll do it together, since you’re sleeping over. I’ve made enough dough to bake about forty small loaves.”

“It’s a genius idea,” I admitted. “To turn the floor of your house into an oven! That’s pretty out-there. I’ve never heard of anything like that. How did you integrate all the coils into one electric circuit? It must’ve been very hard.

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