Bread & Water

Hlebac ti; By your bread.
         Hleb ti jebem; F_ck your bread.
         Ko tebe kamenjema, ti njega hlebom; To him who stones return bread.
         Suvi hleb, dry bread was said to be the diet for the incarcerated; and, interestingly enough, the same was prescribed for the fast on Veliki Petak; Good (lit. Big) Friday.
         The day after’s French stick was a close enough approximation of the stipulated suvi.
         From childhood Bab had fasted Fridays; which for her merely entailed no meat or dairy. Possibly either/or both her parents fasted the same.
         When we began excavating the first, hidden half of her life, Bab told how she had fixed upon her practice. One day in childhood she had surreptitiously taken food from the larder; cheese or meat it must have been. There was no record of punishment, which likely meant there was none. Thereafter she had privately pledged to keep a Friday fast.
         In her father’s house at Savici the larder could only have been a shelf where bread, cheese and eggs were bound in a cloth. Greens her mother Ruza, Rose picked from the sides, where rocket and other leaves were plentiful, at least spring to autumn. Meat was consumed only occasionally in her father’s house; fish was brought up from the coast more regularly.
         Eggs were reserved for the son, George. The four girls could only watch him at his repast.
         Once George toyed with the youngest, Bosa: — See, here you have it. But he wouldn’t let the girl take the egg in her hand for a closer inspection.
         Remarkably, there was no jealousy at the brother’s precedence. Somehow the bonds of family superseded.
         Once Bab married it was party time, she was joshed in later years. The most eligible young man in the entire village, coming from the richest family, made quite a coup. That Bab had in fact been a great beauty herself, and her grandfather a village headman, greatly surprised.
         In old age when Bab’s appetite failed, when she was out of sorts, she was enjoined to cease scrimping and saving; to eat her fill.
         Nemoji zalit koricu hleba, Bab; Don’t deny yourself a crust of bread, Bab—as you were want to do, the implication.
            She had never in her life gone hungry, became her standard defense.
         The dictate of the rocky heights a thousand metres above sea level instilled great discipline and produced sturdy character. On the Equator seeing the honour the Malay young give their elders became completely bewitching from the outset.
         There were many reasons to attempt the fast on Good Friday; the Veliki, Good Friday marked by the Julian calendar of Eastern Christendom.
         In childhood we had attended St George in St Albans one or two Good Fridays, trekking over with the Jankovics from across the street. On one of those occasions cheeky Stevo Dakic had produced his coloured wooded egg that bested all our hard-boiled.
         Tough on the fangs the French hleb without the softening of dahl &etc. The cut pieces made a CLUNK in the metal dish that was supposed to catch crumbs. (Partaking at Wadi would have created too much of a spectacle.)
         Three years ago when a green Queenie mango had been presented by one of the men beneath Block 2 the particular variety had not been known. Now on Orthodox Good Friday, approaching the mid-point of the fast, opening the cupboard where four of the Queenies had been left on the shelf, the aroma was like a little cheating.
         The exercises helped with the discipline; for one thing they helped fill some of the vacancy from omitted meal-times. (The bamboo from the newly purchased exercise mat for the tummy-tighteners added further refreshment.)
         With Ramadan a week away the timing was excellent. It was difficult not to feel a little jealous of that unity and purpose at the evening iftar meals.


NB. Written on Eastern Orthodox Easter.