You know how it used to be like? The large area under Majevica, with orchards of plums and apples, and a small village, only several houses.
One of them is mine, small and weary. Wooden beams on stone foundations, and the space between them filled with adobe, coated with mud, and then painted.
Here you can read the text written by Maida Halilović for Divithana.com:
Alongside the house are stairs, wooden, high, all the way to the porch. Several windows on facades, with two wings, wooden joinery and iron knobs. Uncovered floors, only a blanket here and there to wrap a child in it. And a petroleum lamp on the window. When Ramadan comes, it finds the scrubbed ceilings and joinery. All jobs that could be delayed were delayed. One must sow, one must ripe. Lips get chapped, bloody, but you cannot drink water.
People worked for a daily wage, so whatever you could not get from your own garden you would buy in the store or at the market. You bring a dozen eggs, buy a cup of oil and some petroleum for the lamp, so you do not have sahur in the dark. Couple days before Ramadan, guys and girls from the village clean the mosque, so that it would greet Ramadan in a new light.
No one was happier while waiting the iftar time than children, who would line up on the hills and wait to see the light of the lanterns on the minaret of the wooden mosque.
As soon as they would see the lanterns, the fields would echo: “iftar, iftar!” In the house, around a wooden table, the words would be heard: “It is time, bismillah”. An order was respected during the iftar – the oldest one sitting at the table would start eating first, and then the others. People ate what they had: broths made of flour, potatoes and other vegetables, compote…
The mosque was far from my small, painted house so, if we wanted to make it to the Tarawih prayer on time, we had to get going a little before the Maghrib prayer. Somewhere on the way, we would stop by at some neighbor’s house to have iftar. As soon as we would enter the yard, we would hear “welcome, welcome, it is so nice of you to come”. If there was not enough food, something else would be cooked, so that no one stays hungry. And in the mosque, the entire village came to Tarawih.
Ramadan used to have a different scent. If we look for an answer to the initially posed question of how Ramadan looked like before, the most beautiful answer would be: prosperity.
Ramadan truly is special.
(Source: radiosarajevo.ba, divithana.com/photo: radiosarajevo.ba)
