Lost Practises

Next to my grandparent’s house in Brcko there is a small, broken down shed. The inside is a plain concrete box, with one mostly blanket-covered window. There is an old oven and some cupboards at the back, and a small wooden hutch full of moorhens at the front near the open door.

I am 16, and my highest priority is my hair. My grandmother, Nura, is washing my hands and feet in a small tub of water and quietly praying. She gently drips water from her open hand onto the top of my head and I am devastated, because my GHD hair iron is 600 miles away in England. The moorhens are cooing gently in their straw beds.

I wince and say nothing as she covers my head with a dark green woven blanket. She is still gently praying, heating up lead in a ladle on the stovetop at the back. I can only see her silhouette moving about the room through the weave of the blanket, illuminated by the mid-day summer light coming in through the open door. My mother is standing in the doorway, arms folded, leaning on the doorframe and watching.

I hear a splash immediately in front of me, followed by a hissing sizzle. Searing hot splashes hit the blanket and I feel their fingerprints against my arms. I let out a tiny yelp. It happens again, the sizzle of molten lead hitting cold water in an old saucepan.

My grandma is searching for fear and curses. She pulls the solidified lead out of the water and holds it up to the light, looking for signs and symbols on the surface.

“Samo vidim zmije.” She says. (All I see is snakes) She does not know what this means.

She washes my hands and feet again, and passes prayer beads over my whole body like a hoop. I am sealed with prayer like saran wrap. This will protect me from snakes. I sit in the garden and sob because of the slight wave in my hair at the root. Nobody will think I’m pretty with my natural hair. Nobody does anyway, but I don’t want to give them another reason to write me off.

My great grandmother Ajsa knew all of the signs and symbols of this ritual - salivanje strave. People would travel for miles to come and see her read their fears, and to be healed. Nura is just an amateur in comparison, I am told many years later. What the patterns in the lead have to teach me is lost. There is no written guide to decipher their meanings. I have never melted metal. I have never asked it to look into me. Now my grandma is also gone, and there is lead flowing in my veins that calls out for purpose.