1. I am standing in a ravine.
It is almost cave-like, with steep walls of earth and rock around us, and a church service is happening at the bottom.
This happens every July.
Of course, there is a reason we are all at a church service in a ravine. Before the parish in Dolac was officially allowed to establish a permanent parish base, people in the area used hidden valleys and ravines around Dolac to gather.
So there I am, thinking about the people who once gathered in places like this some 200 years ago.
And the priest starts quoting a song by Silvana Armenulić.
Now. I LIKE Silvana Armenulić.
It completely catches me off guard.
But I need you to picture the full scene with me.
We are in an almost cave-like ravine commemorating the people who worshipped this way generations ago.
And the priest is doing Silvana in iambic pentameter style.
Looking back, this was definitely the start of an interesting few weeks in Bosna.
…
Next: healing water.
Apparently, not too far away, there is a source of drinkable water that is believed to have healing POWER. ༄˖°..ೃ࿔*:･ Okay!
And if you read my last story about how I ended up in a water reservoir in Bosna, you would already know that I needed this healing water FAST.
My dad, my cousin and I set off to get some. But there was just one small problem.
The water was down a highway with NO SIDEWALK.
So there I am, pressed against the metal barricade in full Flat Stanley stance while actual traffic passes me.
Anyway. We get the water. We are walking back home. But this time we are taking a village route because the highway scared me.
And there is a man standing on the side of the road next to a cage full of pigeons.
Naturally. My cousin and I stop to talk to him.
I do not know this man. This man does not know me.
He looks at me for approximately three seconds and tells me I look like the people from [village].
Okay…
Then he starts naming people. My people.
WHAT ON EARTH?
And my dad isn’t even with my cousin and I at this point. He had stopped farther back to talk to someone else.
So this man has looked at my FACE and somehow figured this out entirely on his own.
I have just walked down a highway to retrieve allegedly healing water, and now a man standing beside a cage of pigeons is reconstructing my family tree.
And the worst part?
HE IS RIGHT.
My dad finally catches up, and I am looking at him.
I am looking at the man.
I am looking at the pigeons.
Then he starts talking about my straight teeth.
Sure.
Then he tells me his son dreams of Canadian citizenship.
Of course he does.
At this point I am just giggling because … whattttt???
So we continued home.
With our healing water.
…
Next: the town square incident.
This happened immediately after the healing water, and I was EXHAUSTED. The night before, we had stayed out late seeing DIVLJE JAGODE LIVE!!!
ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬
So when my extended family started trying to convince me to go to a live Sevdah Night in the town square, I said absolutely not. I was tired…
…But the next thing I know, I am in the car on the way to sevdah night.
I look down at my shoes. They are covered in dirt.
Excellent.
And because we still have no running water, I had already used the last of my clean “going out” clothes for the concert the night before. So I am attending Sevdah Night in hiking shoes and a random sweater I found in our village home.
Beautiful. Elegant. Resourceful. And perfectly prepared for an evening in the town square.
At some point during the sevdah performance, they start playing a song my dad and I both love, and he asks me to dance.
HOW COULD I SAY NO??? It is my dad!!! 😭
So I’m in the middle of the town square, in my hiking shoes and mystery-house sweater, dancing with my dad to a song we both love.
A woman stands off to the side, absolutely LOSING IT. She is thrilled. When the dance ends, she blows me a kiss and gives me this huge excited wave. I wave back. Lovely interaction. Goodnight.
I go home, go to bed, and in the morning, my sister texts me.
Apparently, I have made Bosnian news. And Facebook is spreading this video of my dad and me dancing.
I open it, and I’m laughing because the main concern in the comments seems to be who on earth these two people are. Meanwhile, I am staring at my phone thinking, THAT IS MY DAD 😭
And I genuinely did not understand why this was so interesting. We danced. In a town square. To music. What exactly are we investigating here?
It wasn’t until later, when we were talking about the video with friends and family, that someone finally explained what might have been happening. In the Bosniak communities they were familiar with, men and women traditionally wouldn’t hold hands directly while dancing like my dad and I had. Instead, they might dance with a marama held between them, or not dance together at all.
That possibility never even entered my mind. We were all listening to the same music, standing in the same town square, but the people watching us were reading this tiny interaction through social norms that had never even occurred to me.
Turns out there is usually a whole lot more happening behind a ten-second video than the comment section could ever know. Go figure!
Alsooo, WHERE were these cameras at the Divlje Jagode concert the night before, when I still had clean clothes????
I washed my laundry in the neighbouring home the next day.
…
Next: The return of Pigeon Man.
A few days pass, and we attend a dance festival.
I hadn’t been to this festival in about ten years, so I was really happy to be going again.
Last time, we didn’t have a car, which meant my mum, my sisters, and I walked EVERYWHERE. I am fairly certain we covered every street in central Bosnia on foot.
So, for old times’ sake, we walked to the festival.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, walking there means we have to walk back. Maximum post-festival debrief time.
Perfect.
The festival itself is great. There is music, there is dancing, and I am having the BEST time.
It is held in the middle of a village, in the courtyard beside an abandoned school. And I don’t know how else to explain it, but the whole scene is SO Eastern Euro summer nostalgia. A courtyard completely full of people, music playing, people dancing, and what feels like the entire village gathered in one place for the night.
Except, in the summer, it is never really just the people who live there. People come back. Cars with foreign plates start appearing everywhere. Families who now live in completely different countries somehow end up back in the same villages, at the same festivals, dancing beside people they might only see for a few weeks every year. For a little while, everyone overlaps again.
I think that is one of my favourite things about the diaspora. There are people scattered all over the place who somehow share this same summer routine of coming back. And when enough of us do, an abandoned school courtyard in the middle of a village can suddenly be completely packed again.
The best part is that everyone genuinely wants to be there. Nobody needs convincing. The music is loud, the dancing keeps going, and the whole village feels completely alive for the night.
It is SO specific. And I love it.
Unfortunately, there is no video evidence of some of my best footwork in the courtyard, despite what I can only describe as a remarkable personal performance. You’ll simply have to believe me.
♪ ヽ( ͡◔ ᴗ ͡◔ )┘ ♫
At some point, we are standing near the bar when we run into a woman.
She looks at me. Then she grabs my arm.
“You’re the girl with the straight teeth!”
Oh no.
PIGEON MAN.
Apparently, he had been talking.
She starts pulling me around by the arm, telling me that her neighbour had told her about me. The teeth. Canada. The whole thing.
And then, specifically, my Canadian citizenship enters the conversation.
Because apparently Canadian citizenship would be VERY GOOD for some of the men around here.
(⊙_⊙;) . . . Whaaattt????
I am laughing, but I am also slowly looking over my shoulder at my parents like, are we all hearing this???
Oh, they’re hearing it.
They are a few steps behind me, absolutely LOSING IT. Like, doubled over, cannot-help-themselves laughing while I am still being held by the arm and apparently introduced to the village as a dual citizenship opportunity.
Absolutely no help whatsoever.
Meanwhile, reasoning my way out of this conversation is proving to be, quite literally, like pulling teeth.
So instead, I continue smiling politely while this woman still has my arm and is now waving excitedly at actual people around the festival and pointing at me: “Iz Kanade!!!”
Please.
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole.
And all I can think is that I met Pigeon Man ONCE. For a few minutes. Days ago.
Eventually, I get my arm back.
Thank goodness we walked to the festival.
Because we had A LOT to discuss on the way home.
…
Next: The Smiths Would Have Loved Sv. Ana
Sv. Ana is a Catholic feast day, but where my family is from, it has grown into something much bigger than simply going to Mass. The diaspora returns, families visit the cemetery, and after the service, the whole thing spills into a loud celebration that carries on well into the night.
The cemetery sits on a fairly steep hill, covered in black gravestones that seem to climb with it. When we arrive, people are already settling themselves beside the graves of their families. I hold my great-aunt’s hand as she carefully sinks onto a little portable stool beside her husband’s grave. We leave her there and start making our way farther up the hill.
My dad and I eventually make it over to our family’s graves on the opposite side of the cemetery. He lights the candles one by one and places them beside the names carved into the black stone.
We have made it just in time for the service. Around us, people are still settling into whatever little patch of hillside belongs to their family. Someone is unfolding a chair. People are greeting each other as they find their places. Somewhere farther down the hill is my great-aunt, sitting with her family. I can spot friends and distant relatives scattered between the rows of black gravestones.
And then, slowly, all that movement starts to disappear.
The conversations quiet down. People stop moving between the graves. The candles beside us keep burning, and for the first time since we arrived, the whole hillside seems to settle.
The same priest who quoted Silvana Armenulić in a ravine a few days earlier is now speaking from the middle of a cemetery.
But sitting there beside my dad, surrounded by all those names and little burning candles, it is peaceful.
Strangely, genuinely peaceful.
I look toward the cemetery gates and, without really thinking about it, start humming Cemetry Gates by The Smiths in my head.
I know The Smiths did not write the song for Sv. Ana in Bosnia. But something about it feels almost too perfect.
Even the famously odd spelling of Cemetry feels appropriate here. Nothing about this day is going to be operating smoothly after this church service.
The second Mass ends, people start pouring through the actual cemetery gates toward the celebration on the opposite side of the hill. The silence disappears. The musicians start up. Everyone starts moving at once.
And somewhere in that crowd is my great-aunt.
Who we left on a portable stool.
Right.
I take one last big breath. Time to find my great-aunt and enter this chaos.
The musicians are already going wild when I take my great-aunt’s hand and help her down the steep cemetery hill toward the car. The celebration keeps going behind us, but leaving doesn’t really mean escaping the music.
☀︎ · · · → · · · ☾
Later that night, it is cold enough that I put that old sweater on again.
The laundry hanging outside is finally dry, and I am on the balcony bringing in the blankets and sheets before bed. They have that crisp feeling laundry gets after hanging outside all day, cool now from the mountain air and smelling unmistakably clean.
It is one of those summer nights where the heat of the day has disappeared completely. The air coming down from the hills is cold, and everything has that very clear feeling that the day is over.
Or should be.
Because beyond the balcony, the hills are dark, but little pockets of light are still scattered in different directions where people are still celebrating Sv. Ana.
And you can hear them.
Different musicians and singers seem to be competing for possession of the valley. The wind picks up one voice, carries it toward the house, drops it, and then brings another from somewhere else. Every few minutes, a different singer seems to have won.
Standing there, looking at all those little pockets of light, I think about how the celebration of Sv. Ana has never felt exclusively Catholic to me, even though the feast day itself is. The Mass, the cemetery, the candles and prayers are unmistakably Catholic. But after Mass, the celebration seems to spill outward. Growing up, I remember people from different communities in the area, like the Roma, joining the festivities too. By nightfall, you can look across the hills and see little celebrations everywhere, with music carrying between them whenever the wind allows.
Eventually, I finish folding the blankets and go looking for my dad. I find him sitting on the bench under the grapevine.
By this point, one singer in particular has been carrying across the valley for what feels like HOURS. We can roughly see where the music is coming from because a little pocket of light glows on the opposite hillside, almost directly across from the cemetery where we had been sitting earlier that day.
So I sit down with my dad, and we listen.
At some point, he comments on the singer’s impressive stamina.
That gives me the perfect opportunity to share a small piece of information I learned earlier that day.
“Unfortunately, I have reason to believe the singer has crooked teeth.”
My dad looks at me.
“How could you possibly know that?”
Well.
Because I know his father. PIGEON MAN.
The singer we have been listening to echo across the valley is Pigeon Man’s son.
We burst into laughter.
…
I don’t really have a neat conclusion for these stories. But for days, I had felt a little bit like a spectacle. Pigeon man’s neighbour could recognize me before I knew her. The Bosnian news documented my decision to wear an old sweater while I danced in the town square. People spoke about my Canadian citizenship like I had accomplished something extraordinary, even though I had done absolutely nothing to earn being born with it. And, unfortunately, the healing water didn’t cure the strange little feeling of guilt that came with that.
