Bread and Brotherhood

Thin crowd opposite Mehran. Chap cleaning the grimed table surface unasked was nice. Through the city the harshness can strike sharply some days, all the dark young lads loitering through Chinatown. Many must be, could only be, illegals on the loose, hanging about awaiting an opening, an opportunity. Hardship and struggle.

            The stray dogs around Chow Kit hold the attention for many reasons. The other night one sitting on his tail on a lane-marker made one jittery for long minutes, before he finally moved off.

Lad just now at the nan stand sweating profusely without any other outward sign. How could he not be? There was a recall of some kind of sleeves employed by the lads at the clay ovens—gas-bottle fuelled in recent time.

The warmth of the greetings among the Baluch have nothing to do with ceremony or custom—it is the brotherhood, the sharing of the endeavour that gives a chance for successful endurance in very trying conditions. Belief and its specifics, Islam, is important, but serves ultimately to bolster this primary. How much it can achieve. The strength provided.

            Ah! The lad procured the sleeve from somewhere, one for the right forearm. It is with the right that he dabs the dough onto the inner wall of the oven. Hairy forearms; thick beard trimmed. There is a poem of Lawrence’s where the observation falls upon the forearms of the barman serving up solace to customers.

            The corpulent tall man in his early sixties who normally takes two nan for his supper currently cleaning his mouth and throat with a large glass of water. Risen from his table and turned aside over the little garden bed, half a minute gargles before spitting out. Seven or eight times and still not done. Companions politely ignore him.

            Re-used cooking oil here has been an unavoidable thought. And the chap does need to curb his voraciousness. A couple of nights ago a companion who had been perfunctorily offered a portion surreptitiously watched the tearing of the bread and the wolfing.

            When the nan arrived the chap expertly folded the disk in half before tearing in two and proceeding to shovel even with the heat stinging fingertips.

Colour tone aside, gesture, manner, bearing, the authoritative way of speaking, all fitted within any of the folds of the Montenegrin hills.

            By your bread, is a common Serbian saying, a strong oath. In the teaching of Christ and his ways up on Village Uble, Boka Kotorska, one was enjoined to return bread to the one who threw stone.

            Thirty years ago when the Afghans in their mountains were first sighted on Australian television the identification was immediate..