Chapter 44
The Ramona Club
Leaving for the night, my friend Lejla turned in the doorway of my hotel room and looked at me, her eyebrows angled with serious thought. Her white T-shirt shouted bold black advice: FRANKIE SAY RELAX. She glanced at six-year-old Branka sleeping on my bed in her Smurfette dress. She had a full day coming up so Branka would stay the night with me.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. Her expression made me apprehensive. There are stretches of time when I forget about being in the war, and there are suddenly moments like this when I know Sarajevo is always with me. An uninvited dinner guest blending into the wallpaper until suddenly piping up to mention he poisoned the soup. I lowered my voice. “Is Irena okay?”
“Irena?” Lejla’s voice tripped on the name of her best friend still in Bosnia. “She is fine. Will you make bosanski lonac again on Sunday?”
Of course.
“Will you make double the amount?”
She liked it, she really liked it! Bien s?r!
“My mother uses more fresh parsley on top,” she informed me gruffly. She held out her hand palm down and rubbed her thumb back and forth over her fingertips. “How do you say?”
“Sprinkled?”
“Sprinkled.” She repeated the word a few times. “Do not be so stingy with the paprika.”
People who have opinions are the best kind.
On Sunday I borrowed an extra hot plate from the Nigerian sculptor down the hall. I arranged it with mine on a small folding table I bought at Les Puces flea market along with a proper knife, an enormous stockpot, a giant frying pan, and a cutting board that covers my desk. The board had to be strapped to the roof of Kirby’s miniature Citro?n along with the table. Voilà! La petite kitchen.
Along with bosanski lonac, I decided to make ?evapi, a sausage recipe from a Balkan cookbook sent to me by a brilliant bookseller in America. Don’t be stingy with the paprika? Mission accomplished! While the bosanski lonac simmered, I massaged baking soda and cold water into the ground beef to tenderize the mixture. I’d returned to the Yugoslavian embassy to ask for advice, and the receptionist told me this technique is what gives the little sausages their smooth texture. That and having the butcher grind the meat twice.
“If there is any left…” The receptionist said this shyly as I was leaving.
I bought containers to take leftovers to this apple-cheeked woman, and for Lejla since I assumed that was why she wanted me to double the bosanski lonac. But she had something else in mind. When she arrived, she wasn’t alone.
“This is Merjema. She is a Muslim refugee.” Lejla frowned, adding, “As you know it is not the same as being a Christian refugee in Western Europe.”
On CNN Muslim women in burkas are the subjugated wives of terrorists. In the H?tel La Louisiane, economics major Merjema wore a string tie with an Oxford shirt, stone-washed jeans, and high-tops.
I sent Branka downstairs to the hotel kitchen to borrow an extra bowl. We spread the sunflower-yellow tablecloth on the floor. My heart pounded. Lejla is my friend, and I’m sure that’s why she liked the bosanski lonac so much. No matter how bad food is, we taste it with generosity if it’s made for us by a friend with a tender heart.
Merjema didn’t know me. Her judgment would be objective.
Branka set out the dishes as if we had dinner with friends on the floor every night. She begged to light the honeysuckle candle that Lejla had brought. Her pale eyes grew wide as she used the match to ignite the wick. Despite being a child of war, she’s still young enough for innocent pleasures. A shiny striped snail in the garden at the Musée Rodin. A cup of cocoa at Christian Constant. A dancing candle flame.
I set out store-bought flatbread to eat with the sausages along with raw onion slices and a jar of ajvar, a thick sauce of roasted red peppers and eggplant that I got from Apple Cheeks at the embassy. Lejla was right about more paprika in the bosanski lonac. It lured the essence of the beef to the surface where it bounced enthusiastically off the freshness of the parsley.
The ?evapi was already off to a rough start since I didn’t have a grill and had to pull a MacGyver with the frying pan. And I should have used a mixture of beef and lamb or beef and pork, but I wasn’t sure if Lejla eats pork, and I can’t bring myself to serve Mary’s little lamb on a dinner table. The problem with using only one kind of meat is the risk of dryness, but the baking soda seemed to do the trick. I worried I’d traveled too South of the Border on the cayenne. Mom’s chorizo makes my mouth euphoric with stinging pain, but I don’t think that’s the goal of Yugoslavian cuisine.
As we ate, the silence around our indoor picnic grew. The night was stuffy with unseasonal spring heat. The open windows called in vain for a breeze. Did Merjema like the meal? Did she hate it? Branka ate like usual, snuffling happily like a little piglet. She doesn’t count because her favorite meal is the canned sloppy joe Kirby buys her at The General Store on rue de Grenelle. Merjema ate slowly. Lejla had a funny grin on her face. Was she embarrassed for me?
World peace didn’t depend on this meal. Why did I feel like it did?
As I refilled Merjema’s glass of iced tea, she said, “When Lejla told me an American made bosanski lonac almost as good as her mother’s, I did not believe her.” She smiled. “I believe her.”
Her praise was the breeze I’d been waiting for. It whisked into the room, and conversation unfurled like a flag catching a current of air. We talked about the food and they told me how in Bosnia it’s considered important to “eat something with a spoon every day” because it’s healthy. And apparently ?evapi is rarely eaten at home for a regular meal. It’s more like a barbecue food. Plus it’s too heavy. Then Lejla explained how she’s never seen ajvar in a ?evap restaurant. ?evapi is usually served with raw onions and a scoop of kajmak, which is a kind of clotted cream, and ajvar is served with regular bread or on an appetizer tray. I thought about how complex Mexican food is and felt a little thrill at how much there is to learn about Bosnian cuisine.
After a while Lejla told Merjema how I helped rescue books from the burning library, and Merjema told us her father is an Islamic scholar. When she was young he took her to the library and showed her ancient Arabic manuscripts. She said the jeweled colors of the illuminated pages were so enticing her father would laugh and threaten to tie her hands behind her back with her hair ribbon so she wouldn’t touch them. Filling another piece of flatbread with ?evapi, she said softly, “I wish I had touched them.” As if this could have changed their fate.
When I set out a bowl of bright, jammy strawberries, Lejla clapped her hands and murmured, “When I was little strawberries meant summer was on the way.”
“We spent holidays on the Adriatic,” Merjema said, her full lips shining with red juice.
“My family has a cottage near Dubrovnik on the sea,” Lejla told her, and then murmured sadly, “I wonder what has happened to it.” They talked about their childhoods, slipping in and out of English until they left me altogether. I couldn’t understand their words, but I understood they had found a way back home.
I eased away from the tablecloth. I put a finger to my lips, shh, and beckoned Branka to the bed. We made a nest of pillows, and I read to her, keeping my voice low. Being quiet became a game, and whenever Ramona did something funny, instead of laughing, Branka’s warm body shivered against mine.
The room grew dark. I turned on the small bedside lamp. On the wall, Degas’ Cambodian dancers seemed to sway in the dusk. I read until Branka grew heavy at my side. I closed the book and looked up. How long had Lejla and Merjema been listening to me?
“You will keep reading?” Lejla whispered.
I kept reading.
About Beezus and Ramona to two dark-haired refugees living in a foreign country a stone’s throw from the war-torn home they love. They sipped the elderflower cordial Merjema had brought, and I waited for them to get tired and tell me to stop. They didn’t. I read into midnight. I read until the book was finished. When I closed it, Lejla held out her hand. She took a purple pen out of her satchel and drew a butterfly on the last page.