The Good Daughter (2 page)

I'd been looking forward to Grade Six camp the whole year. We went to a farm in Victoria's countryside and I had fantasies of milking cows and riding horses, but what I hadn't envisioned was my camp leader and his wife. On the first day Mr Howard did a roll-call. When it was my turn the conversation went something like this:

Mr Howard: ‘That's an interesting name. Where are you from?'

Me: ‘Thornbury.'

Mr Howard: ‘No.' He laughs. ‘Which country?'

Me: ‘Australia.'

Mr Howard: ‘Your name isn't Australian.'

Me: ‘It's Bosnian.'

Mr Howard: ‘Ah, so you're Bosnian.'

That should have been the end of the story, but then I met his wife.

Mrs Howard: ‘Where is your name from?'

Me: ‘I'm Bosnian.'

Mrs Howard: ‘When did you come to Australia?'

Me: ‘I was born here.'

Mrs Howard: ‘So you're Australian.'

Me: ‘Yes.'

While I had many conversations that went along these lines, what made this so different was that Kristy Newman, my Grade Six nemesis, witnessed both. She made the three-day camp a nightmare. Her favourite torment was to ask me snidely: ‘What are you? Retarded, stupid or both?' She kept calling me Sabiha-No-Country.

When I came home from camp I told Mum I wanted to change my name to something more Australian. By the time I began high school everyone knew me as Sammie Omerovic. But now that we were embracing our ethnic roots I was Sabiha again…

‘Bahra!' My grandfather was getting angrier with Mum.

‘There's nothing suitable here.' Mum closed my wardrobe doors. ‘Find something in my room.'

‘Mum…' I whined.

‘Please Sabiha.' Mum gave me a harried look and went to answer Dido.

I sighed as I rummaged through Mum's wardrobe. It used to be fun playing dress-ups in here, but now it would be a disaster. Mum was a few inches taller than I was and her figure was fuller. Anything I put on would hang like a sack.

As I pushed her clothes along a parcel fell at my feet. I knelt and picked up a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. I pulled one out, but it was written in Bosnian and I couldn't understand much. I glanced at the last page and saw it was signed ‘Darko'. Another old boyfriend? But this name didn't ring any bells…I returned the letter to its envelope and tossed the bundle back to the bottom of the wardrobe. I'd make sure to come back and try to decipher them later.

‘How did you go?' Mum asked as she rushed in.

‘There's nothing here that will fit me.' I shut the wardrobe doors.

‘Nice try.' Mum opened the doors.

‘No way!' I cringed as Mum held out the dress to me. And that's how I ended up at the
zabava
without a speck of make-up and wearing the dorkiest outfit in the history of female fashion.

‘Nice dress,' snickered my cousin Adnan when I sat in the chair next to him. I stiffened. His sister Merisa glanced over and gave me a dismissive once-over. She was wearing a silver silk suit-jacket and skirt that was fitted around her tall willowy body. At twenty years old, she'd managed to toe the line between modesty and good taste without looking frumpy. Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky.

Adnan pinched a fold of fabric between his fingers. ‘For your birthday I'll get you a subscription to
Vogue
.'

I went red. It was one of Mum's ‘conservative' dresses. On her it was knee-length, with a scooped neckline, and almost skin-tight; but on my thinner frame the hem reached my calves and the neckline was too low, so Mum had insisted I wear a top underneath. I looked like an op-shop reject.

‘Read between the lines, buddy.' I lifted my hand, joining my thumb and little finger and keeping my other three fingers in a straight line. I caught my aunt's eye across the table. Guiltily, I put my hand down by my side.

‘You look nice!' she called out.

I forced a smile. ‘Thanks.' Adnan smothered a laugh. I elbowed him. Having a family was way overrated.

I looked around the room to see what other people were wearing. If you say you're Muslim most people assume the stereotype of the turban-wearing, bearded Arab man or the
hijab
-wearing, subjugated Arab woman. They don't get that there are 1.5 billion people practising Islam in fifty-seven languages and that each ethnic group has a different way of expressing their religion. Since the Balkan War, people know about Bosnia, but not about Bosnians. They don't understand why the women aren't covered up and the men aren't turbaned.

I hadn't known either, but since Dido had moved in, his pet project was to educate me about my ‘roots'. He told me that Bosnians were ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century, that most Bosnians converted from the Bosnian Church to Islam, and that as a result we have a lot of Turkish words in our vocabulary and dress like Turks in Western fashion. So now I felt a whole lot clearer and a whole lot more confused about my identity.

Most of the people at the
zabava
were wearing regular clothes. The men were in suits and the women wore loose outfits with no skin showing. There were a few older women who were covered up, but instead of the
hijab
they wore a headscarf. Single young men wore jeans and a shirt. Adnan said he'd tried to do the same, but Auntie Zehra ordered him to change into a suit.

I turned and groaned. Safet and his sister Safeta were making their way over to our table. It was the Bosnian tradition to use one name in the family and add variations to it, the most common being an ‘a' to make names female.

‘
Selam Aleykum
,' Mum uttered the Arabic greeting ‘Peace be unto you'.

‘
Aleykumu Selam
,' Safet returned the greeting. Bosnians speak a Southern Slavic language, like most people in the Balkans, but they use a few Arabic words and greetings that they learn because all Muslims pray in Arabic.

Mum introduced Safet as her special friend. In private she called him her boyfriend, even though they'd only been going out for a month. I was reserving judgment.

The men shook hands with Safet, my Uncle Hakija making a point of greeting him with
Zdravo
, ‘Hello', to needle my grandfather. Uncle Hakija was still a fervent communist and a thorn in Dido's side. Dido explained that it was an insult to use non-Muslim greetings among Muslims. These were reserved for mixed company only.

I turned to find Safeta standing behind me, holding out her arms. I leaned in for the kiss on the cheeks, another custom. We were pretty relaxed about it. I used to have a Turkish friend and I've never seen so much cheek-kissing. They have the whole three-kiss thing down pat. We used to do the three-kiss thing too, but we dropped it because the Serbs have the same practice with their three-fingered crossing of the chest.

Usually I managed to avoid kissing, but Safeta was trying to impress and was over-compensating. She thought she had to win me over. She didn't know that Mum's boyfriends never lasted and that I'd stopped caring one way or another.

Safet and Safeta sat on the seats we'd been saving for them. Dido watched Safet with approval. Safet used to be a university professor before the war and was considered a catch, even though he worked as a taxi driver in Australia—that is, when he chose to work.

Soon after the preliminaries they moved onto their favourite game. Safet and Safeta were originally from Prijedor, while Mum's family came from Banja Luka, an hour away.

‘Do you know Ishmael Sahovic and his wife Husna?' Safet asked, ash hanging off his cigarette. My Auntie and Uncle looked blank.

‘He has a daughter Esma and a son Faruk,' Safeta added. Auntie and Uncle shook their heads.

They could do this forever, trying to find a tenuous link, a friend of a friend of a second cousin whose mother was related by marriage to their grandfather five generations back.

When I called this the ‘Connect the Bosnian Game', Mum told me off. She said that in Bosnia everyone knew his or her neighbours within a twenty-kilometre radius. Bosnia and Herzegovina was half the size of Tasmania with a population of 4.1 million, so even if you were dropped on the other side of the country by direction-challenged aliens, chances were you'd come across people who knew someone you did.

Now that everyone was scattered to the four corners of the world this was the only way they had of learning about their former neighbours and creating a sense of community. They also trawled the telephone directories looking for possible relatives. When they found someone with the same surname they'd call to sniff out if there was a family connection.

Mum told me that Bosnians who arrived in Australia during the 1970s were so desperate for kinship that anyone with the same surname would become a cousin, whether they were a blood relative or not. Now there was a larger population and no need to make claims like that.

As they talked I opened my bag and found my mobile. I typed in a message: ‘Hope you're having a better time than me. Love Sammie.' I scrolled to Kathleen's name and pressed ‘Send'. Kathleen was my best friend. We'd been friends since primary school when Mum and I lived in Thornbury.

During the summer holidays we'd seen each other regularly. She visited me once, but my grandfather was less than welcoming, so mostly I travelled down her way and we met in the city or hit the op-shops and cafés around Brunswick Street, in Fitzroy.

In the week since I'd started Year 10 at my new school, St Albans High, we hadn't spoken much. I was used to seeing her every day, and then we'd call each other after school, and send emails and text messages. I missed her. I returned my mobile to my handbag. When I tuned back into the conversation they were talking about the war. Again. I was so sick of hearing about the war.

‘I was on the front line,' Uncle Hakija said. ‘That's where I got injured.' He touched his stomach. There was a collective sigh from the group.

There weren't many men who could claim hero status. Most men fled with their families when the war broke out. When he arrived in Australia, Uncle Hakija had surgery to repair the damage to his gut. He attempted working for a few years, but his health was frail and he was in too much pain. Now he tended the garden and ran errands, while Auntie Zehra and my cousin Merisa worked as cleaners. In Bosnia, Hakija had been a veterinarian and Zehra a nurse.

‘I lost my wife and two daughters. My oldest would be Sabiha's age.' It was Safet's turn and he glanced at me. We all shook our heads on cue.

‘My fiancé was a police officer in Prijedor,' Safeta said. ‘After the Serbs seized the city he was arrested, with all the other officials and non-Serb leaders. I never heard from him. They were probably sent to Omarska. Omarska.' We all looked down, remembering the television images of emaciated men staring at the camera through steel fences. Omarska was the Serb-run concentration camp in which Bosnians were imprisoned, the Bosnian equivalent of Auschwitz. Even though I was sick of the constant talk about the war, when I remembered those images, I realised why they couldn't let it go.

I turned away and watched the folk dancing on what passed as the dance floor. When Mum talked about attending the
zabava
I'd imagined a fancy ball, instead we were in a high school gym. There were folding tables and plastic chairs laid out in long rows from one end of the gym to the other, with an aisle down the middle.

In the canteen attached to the gym the women were preparing the food. Heavy clouds of cigarette smoke hung over the tables, blending with the smell of sweat, onions and cooked meat. On the stage behind me a folk band were producing an ear-piercing tune. Some people would call it music, but I wasn't one of them.

The folk dancing had looked deceptively easy: dance in a circle holding hands as if you're in a conga line and shuffle your feet in a quick two-step. But when Mum dragged me into the circle to get me dancing it felt like I was jumping on a pogo stick. For some reason I lacked the necessary rhythm to transform the simple moves into a high-spirited jig. Mum had natural rhythm. Her cheeks were flushed, a wide smile on her face as her feet kicked in unison with the other dancers.

As we walked back to our table a man stared at us. ‘Isn't that Mustafa?' I asked Mum as we sat. Another ex-boyfriend —he'd lasted nearly a year and was one of the rare guys I'd liked. I smiled and raised my hand to wave.

‘Don't!' Mum slapped my hand. ‘He's with his wife.'

A little girl about eight years old was on his lap. His wife noticed me staring. I turned away and met my aunt's gaze.

Auntie Zehra cast Mum a scathing look. Mum blushed. Auntie looked like she was about to get stuck into her sister.

‘I'm hungry,' I exclaimed loudly.

Uncle Hakija and Adnan stood to get
chevapi
and soft drinks. I loved
chevapi
, the grilled skinless sausages made with minced beef or lamb, garlic and spices, and served on a Turkish roll with diced onion. While we were eating they resumed their conversation.

Uncle Hakija had a toothpick between his lips. ‘The war happened because of who we are. It's backward the way everyone's identity is decided by his or her religious beliefs. We call Bosnian Catholics Croatians, or Orthodox Bosnians Serbs, even if their family has lived in Bosnia for centuries.'

Uncle Hakija's theory was that there were no problems when former Yugoslavia existed under the communist President Tito who led the Partisans to defeat the Nazis in World War II. The tension started when Tito died in 1980 and communism was eroded, as everyone sought independence.

Dido thumped the table. ‘Those Orthodox Bosnians
are
Serbs. If they weren't, why did they rise up in the
coup d' état
, even though they'd been living in Bosnia all their lives?'

‘Just like you were a Muslim all your life.' Uncle Hakija was making a dig at Dido's previous life as a communist. Dido was now a Born-Again-Muslim like a lot of Bosnians since the war.