I'm still in a blogging frame of mind after all- perhaps I just need to round things off with an account of my return..

I'm not exactly pining because I'm all busy reconnecting with folk here, but I have been going over many moments and conversations in my head. At first I was fizzing with energy when I came back, talking a mile a minute (in a Slavic accent according to Mrs C, but no one else said so..) and practically bouncing off the walls. At first the London scene seemed suddenly exotic and novel with it's sushi bar next to a pizza place opposite a Cafe de Paris and a kebab house, with an African supermarket and some Thai cuisine place also a natural members of the street scene. It's good to be back where I'm not conspicuous in any way unless you count the knitting- I'm not outside the norm because it's kind've impossible to find a norm round here..

Poor Sir Smiley is currently being inducted into the next level of Bengaliness, preparing for the summer trip- he was gagging over the paan we made (we casually described to him the carcinogenic/ hallucenogenic properties beforehand, including stories of Cow's Bengali Dentist's Paan Cancer Book of Horror) and bolding biting into the 'bhut' or naga chilli he insisted on getting from Worldwide. Young Ray put the whole thing in his mouth like a madman and spent the next half an hour guzzling water and milk and sugar and all kinds, bellowing "PITY ME!" as my mother scolded.

We all looked like such tourists in the mishti shop as well oohing and aahing over the lacy patterns being formed by the jalabi-maker squeezing the batter into the vat of ghee. Bikey insistently recalled Sir Smiley's attention when the jalabi was lifted swiftly out of the oil and into the syrup- "you're missing the best part!" We're so hopelessly white inside..

Anyway I feel I triumphantly passed Sir Smiley's Bosnian testing- I mean my intonation and cases are pretty poor still but he acknowledged that I had picked up some conversation skills. I'm losing it already though so I need to find a Bosnian buddy in Manchester stat. I made a friend on the plan who didn't speak English but we still managed to sustain a conversation in Bosnian for 2 hours despite my limitations- I only resorted to drawing one picture, of a boat, to explain how Bengalis sometimes manage during monsoon. I think we didn't understand each other about 40% of the time but 60% comprehension turned out to be enough for happy social interaction.

I know I've been promising to put up photos forever and most of you have long stopped reading but they will come soon, soon. Because I'm not one for doing a whole slideshow description of my trip and I'd rather just integrate it all with stories of various events and refer people back to it if they're interested.

If I wasn't Muslim

We watched this in Bosnian class to learn about the conditional and feel despondent.

Vidimo se

I’m having a little trouble letting go- it wasn’t like this in Rome. Sometimes I feel like it would be best to secretly steal away like a thief in the night rather than undergo this painful goodbye process, even if it involves being showered with gifts. I was following Sehida and her husband around on their household errands all this evening like a stray dog that just won’t go away- from the supermarket, to another store to buy a kettle, and then on to delivering batteries to Djermana... But it’s more sad with those I know I will probably never see again, or at least not for years by which time they’ll have relegated me to some self-contained memory- the Anthropologist and Juliana are in this category even though I spent so much time with them. It happened like that with the Frenchies in Chateau Chinon and I lived with them for 6 months on a frozen and isolated mountain. Until around Wednesday home had seemed like an abstract, distant notion and I still had all the time in the world to spend here.

I know I was never patient enough to properly describe my experience in an intellectual way but really I was always learning from everyone and we would be continually exploring questions about language, culture, religion; comparing our experiences and our understanding- whether it was Physics Aida, or my Bosnian professor patiently translating Bosnian songs for me and explaining the psyche of Bosnian love songs (the lovesick boy will never directly address the object of his affections, he’ll chat to a bird instead, or write a letter only to erase his words- and so he goes on dreaming and yearning hopelessly for some angelic creature who has no clue he exists..) to the joyful and perhaps fanatical gleam in Suada’s eye as she takes me, at 2am, through the historical phonetic transformations that bring some order to the chaos of Bosnian’s 16 verb types. Not forgetting the crash course in The Macedonian Question I received through having coffee with the German crew.

So this will be my last blog from Sarajevo and possibly my last post altogether as I only started this up again to share stories with my people back home. Perhaps I have a few silent readers in Sarajevo but I doubt they’ll take an interest in my mundane Mancunian life. I was going to write this post in Bosnian and show off my newfound skills but my vanity is a contrary creature and fears mockery at the same time as wanting to boast and thus restrains me. The ultimate test of my ability will be if Sir Smiley doesn’t scoff at my attempts as he was wont to- I guess I’ll find out when I get to Manchester on Sunday. And if you’re reading this Sir Smiley tell me now if you’re pining for anything relatively lightweight – it will be your birthday after all...

Anyway all this scurrying around town bidding farewell means I must still tidy, cook, knit, wash, hoover, launder, and most of pack before 1am tomorrow and still make time for a few final meetings. In other words I must stop blogging.

Goodbye my Sarajevans, I will miss you all too much.