Translated from the Bosnian by Ena Selimović
OUR HOME HAD NO PAST
Our home had no past. I recall no family get-togethers, no dinners, lunches, holidays, no walks on Trebević, no trips to Faletići to see my aunt Rabija—not a single moment when someone brought up the past, when anything was so much as mentioned about the past. In the home of Mehmed Sidran, the past didn’t exist. It was as though there was something in my father’s family history that called for shame, so dense were the sullen clouds of silence over everything.
“Imagine, I went to school with nanule on my feet!” Dad would say on rare occasion, and only in those moments did the past, passing over his tongue, flick its own.
I imagined him, his feet…
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The Paris Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2024 (250)