“Old Bread”

By Charlotte Morgaine
Strolling through the little side streets, tucked away in between the new high rise apartment blocs, constructed on amazingly small sections of land, in the old neighborhood of the city where we used to live years ago when the girls were still only little girls, I tried hard to visualize, in my mind’s eye, how this residential block had been in those days. Many of the former five story apartment blocs have been replaced by new ones which have also devoured, under tons of reinforced concrete, all the old, familiar landmarks like the local children’s nursery and kindergarten with its lovely green lawn and the brightly colored flower pots on the window ledges.
I remember one amusing detail about this particularly nursery. It became “famous” for its very large sandpit, and its unusually enterprising woman manager who organized the transportation by horse and cart of a wagon load of sand from Kavaja every now and then. She had been refused permission to touch the sand on the Durres beach. I don’t believe I ever saw a sandpit anywhere else in the country in those years. The nursery’s cook was a friend of mine and I remember her relating that as much as the parents hated the pit, because the children came home so messy, the children adored it.
“Deliberately” creating conditions for children to get their clothes dirty, in other words, allowing children to have fun, and make a mess and soil themselves, was just not part of parental psyche. It’s strange when you think about it. Elsewhere, a mother, when washing heavily soiled clothes her child wore to nursery the day before, shakes her head whilst tucking them into the washer, but is also content, because obviously the child had a good time. Unbelievable, as it may seem, the woman manager of that nursery was eventually “moved on” to another kindergarten somewhere in the city under the pretext that the sand pit was interfering with the disciplining of the children!
Anyway, the nursery and its sandpit and its “over-emancipated” manager live on only in the memories of the old neighborhood now and like me, most of them have moved on too. Unconsciously, I know I was seeking my special landmark, the bakery, with its wonderful old oven and rickety old wooden shelves that would lean dangerously outwards towards the counter, groaning and squeaking under the weight of the heavy roast pans of crispy golden-brown oven backed chicken and rice, or chicken and potatoes; or the round flat, shallow pie tins bearing the golden pastry pies with every manner of filling, from sweet pumpkin filling to tomato and onion, with a little mince meat thrown in (scarce in those days).
The elderly couple who used to run the bakery back then made the best little, round loaves of maize flour bread. Golden yellow, soft, when freshly baked. I would rush down there in the morning and buy a loaf before catching the bus to work. In the Winter it was so warm in there I could hardly bring myself to leave the shelter, the red furnace of the fire, the wonderful fragrances of freshly baked bread that wafted through the street, and rush on down the road to the bus stop. I loved to chatter to both of them and catch up on the neighborhood gossip.
It was still there, and there was a queue outside the little door. Now, there was a brand new aluminum sign hanging over the little door and a metallic chimney that ran up five stories to the top of the building. On reaching the queue, I peeked inside. The same oven and even the same old counter, the stone floor had been covered in new tiles and there were spanking new wooden shelves nailed to brightly colored walls. My eyes ran over the queue looking for a familiar face. Not finding one I asked one of the elderly women if the Murati’s still ran the bakery. Yes, she said, Clirim, the son of the old couple, and his wife.
When my turn came in the queue, I looked at the young man and explained that I hadn’t bought anything to be baked and I wasn’t there to buy a loaf of bread, but that I was just passing by and had once knew his parents and had wanted to say hello. He smiled warmly back and said he knew me only too well. He was the same age as my elder daughter and had gone to primary school with her. He remembered us all. His parents had both passed away, which seemed strange, twenty odd years ago, they hadn’t seemed so old to me. The young man told me how he had been living and working in Greece for years and had worked in a series of bakeries over there, and even ended up managing one. Now, he had come home and had bought the old bakery. He said he would gradually renovate the interior and turn it into a small, neighborhood coffee and cake/biscuit shop. I wished him all the best of luck and walked slowly down the slope towards the bus stop. Neat little bread loaf tins were being pulled out of the over. Breaking off a corner of a steaming, square loaf of maize flour bread, he handed it to me asking me to try it. I munched slowly, looked at him slowly and said it was very nice, but like his old parents, there was just nothing else like “old bread.”
I often do that now, wander around the old neighborhood and visit the elderly neighbors, they love being remembered, but I love talking to them too, because they relate little fragments of my life to me as well; episodes with my children; how they saw my family from their point of view; how neighborhood gossip filled in all the little gaps of knowledge missing about our family, funny little twists and turns. But it all fits and I do love “belonging.”