I’ve just eaten my lunch, a cevapcici (a kind of meatball-sausage in bread with onions). That’s what I was told to do by Alexander, get a cevapcici at Bascarsija. So here I am.
It was good, but heavy to digest and now I’m sitting lazily in my chair, listening to the prayer song from the nearby mosque. It is beautiful. (Seriously, I don’t understand how some people in Stockholm are against allowing the mosques to sound their prayer calls once a week. It creates something melodious on top of the city sounds that otherwise tend to only consist of engines and other noise.)
I’m watching the pigeons being fed, courting and flying in processions on Bascarsija or, as it is generally called in English, Pigeon’s Square. It is funny, how the males behave, all puffed up and dancing around a chosen female – and then the female just flies away, possibly wanting to be chased and courted some more.
And I wonder how it would be to be courted like that, persistently, and then having to choose. The rules are simple. I’m afraid, though, that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. In some cultures, the courting rituals resemble the pidgeon’s, but in Sweden they are so much more haphazard and irregular and almost random. And I’m afraid I know no other way. If I found myself being pursued, I would probably just think the guy was mad.
Katja Malmborg 