All the adults were smoking.
This is how I remember the Balkans.
Plastic chairs.
Apricots.
Somebody's uncle repairing something unnecessary.
Children running between parked cars
like tiny emotionally unstable diplomats.
The television inside talked constantly about danger.
Meanwhile outside:
watermelon,
heat,
neighbors yelling affectionately from balconies.
Nobody explained anything directly.
You learned history through atmosphere.
You learned fear
through lowered voices in kitchens.
You learned love
because everybody fed you constantly.
A woman from the third floor
once slapped my face lightly
for swearing
then gave me cake immediately after.
Regional parenting.
At night
my mother watered plants in silence.
Music drifted from somewhere distant.
Laughter too.
I think adults believed
if they kept talking loudly enough
the world would not collapse.
Honestly?
Reasonable strategy.
One evening, I asked my father:
"Are we going to die?"
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he lit another cigarette
and said:
"Finish your apricots."
I never asked again.
The apricots were good.
The war ended.
Somehow, both things are connected.
I think about that courtyard now
when I can't sleep.
Not the war.
Not the fear.
Just the apricots.
The plastic chairs.
The way my mother watered plants
like she was putting small bandages
on the whole country.
I am still that child, sometimes.
Running between parked cars.
Waiting for someone
to explain everything
with a piece of cake.