What does one think of when one hears about the Balkans? Each of something else. Some might think of sarmale, while I might think of soft cottage cheese, since I’ve recently learned that it’s a common product in the Balkan plateau. Even though each of us calls it differently. Even though I can swear that no milk is like that of the sheep that graze in the Carpathians.
What do I think about when I say Balkan? About disorientation? About orientation?
About Timișoara and Kolymbari. Naturally, I find it funny that the Republic of Moldova is included among the Balkan countries. This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a Slovenian poet who said that her people considered themselves Balkan only when it suited them, i.e. for projects and festivals dedicated to the Balkan culture. Otherwise, they call themselves Central-European. As far as I’m concerned, I have no doubts. I am Balkan whether it suits me or not.
One thing is clear in my mind: Balkan culture does not include Brâncuși or Kazantzakis - they are unquestionably part of the universal culture. So what do I think of when someone asks me about the Balkans?
Once I was at an international event and someone in the public asked me to say something about Balkan habits other than cuisine. I got stuck. I looked at them quietly for a few minutes, then I said, ‘Drums! Drums!’. It was their turn to get stuck. So I began to describe what I had in mind and in my heart, something I had been carrying with me everywhere since I was born: the dube (drums) of Baloșești. The dube that Sandu films whenever he has the opportunity, the dube that Ghena(die Popescu) dreams of filming at some point.
The dube are the most spectacular Christmas tradition. It may sound simple, but it isn’t. The dubași or dubăi are a kind of winter călușari 1 who give a specific performance. They can only be found on the Mureș Valley, at Săvârșin and in Țara Făgetului. There is no serious study about the dube in Țara Făgetului. Only a ten-minute film made in 1977, a year before my birth, by a TVR 2 team. A story my father used to tell. And the performance of the dube. Over an hour of dancing that they transmit from generation to generation. A few lăutari from Țara Făgetului who know the dube songs. A torogoată 3 , an accordion. Ten young people playing the dube. And the ever-present Capra 4 – the goat.
The goat that accompanies the dube does not resemble the one that TVR shows all December. Neither does it resemble the dance of the bear, which is a cruel thing inherited from the time when bears were tortured for fun. They were forced to jump on embers.
Here the goat only dances once throughout the programme, on a very clear song with old lyrics: ‘This is the sturdy goat/that lifts the bear up on its horns.’ Then the goat dies, the torogoată plays softly, the dubași call the goat, and the goat comes back to life. It’s been my favourite moment of the year since I was a child.
The dubăi (they are called dubași only by the people who also call the torogoată saxophone, but here I want to use the words I’ve learnt in the village) are călușari whose winter dance is linked to carol singing and wooing. They date back to the times when the wooing customs lasted from Christmas to Pentecost and could still explain what florile dalbe or leru-i ler 5 was. From the time when you could see apple blossoms on the table even on Christmas day. If you want to have some too, put apple twigs in a vase on Saint Nicholas Day, and they will bloom by Christmas.
The dubăi wear long white shirts, white woollen tunics, bells at their feet, and sheepskin hats, many of which are adorned with peacock feathers – I have no idea why. At the belt they always have male (meaning big) white handkerchiefs. They must have inherited them, because I haven’t seen handkerchiefs in shops since Alex got married and I learned that the godmother was supposed to bring a big white handkerchief to the church. So the dubăi are white, while the goat is coloured. And heavily adorned. In my childhood, the goats were dressed in counterpanes, on which fir branches, small bells and ivy vines were sewn. The musicians dress as they please, since they are not part of the dancing group. They are lăutari paid to go from house to house and to provide the soundtrack the coming of the dube, the leaving of the dube, the dance of the dube, the dance of the goat, the învârtita and the hora 6 of the dubăi, the Măcei (or the Matei). Where I come from, I let my rifle rust is a must, because my father asks for it instead of the traditional song. He does it because it was the favourite of my great-grandfather Alexander, who had raised him and had built the house where we receive the dube today.
Besides their music and dance performance, the dubăi also sing carols. It is great to listen to them sing two octaves lower, so confident they make the cobs jump in the barn. Almost every house they visit they are asked to sing Meie Lina la fântână 7 . In the end they sing Happy New Year and go to the next house. Usually, the villagers follow them from one house to another until late at night.
I’m just showing off, because I didn’t see the dube of Baloșești in my childhood. They weren’t there any longer. The last time they had been there was in my father’s youth. We were only visited by the dube of Tomești-Sat and Românești. The village of Baloșești was visited by the dube of Brănești – probably the best known and respected in the area. Last year I was in Bucovăț, where people adapted. Girls and boys beat dozens of drums of all sizes, as if they were Poderosa Aainjala (google it!), but the dube there have been set up recently.
But now I’m going back to the dube of Baloșești, probably the smallest band of dubăi. There are over 30 dubăi in Românești and Curtea, but only 10 or 12 in Baloșești. But I like them best. They sound older. They are the only ones in the area who also sing the lyrics of the Goat’s Dance and they don’t have a glass too many. They do everything very seriously. And I think they are the only ones who take very small boys with them. They teach them the customs when they are young and that’s great.
What seems very Balkan to me is that although there are dube in most villages of Țara Făgetului and on Valea Mureșului, starting with the ones known all over the country (The Săvârșin dube), each village has its specificity. No two dube are the same. No two dube sound the same. And only very close villages dress the same. Only the dube of Tomești-Sat, Românești and Baloșești dress in white. Those of Curtea also wear a sheepskin coat; in Bucovăț they wear jeans, whilst in Săvârșin they are dressed in folk costumes.
I would like to read a detailed study of the similarities and differences between the dube. About their specific performance, about how this tradition that fascinates me appeared. I always live in fear that in time they will disappear and the only documentation that will remain will be in a few films on YouTube. My husband, Alexandru Vakulovski, also uploaded some carefully made films on YouTube. They were shot in my yard, so you can check me if you like.
I have never dealt with more particular aspects. For example, I think that the shirts the dubăi wear (with grapes embroidered on lace) are made especially for them, but I can’t be sure. I have googled it may times – ‘male shirt in Mountain Banat’, ‘men’s shirt folk costume Banat’, ‘men’s shirt folk costume’ – but I haven’t found anything, which means the shirt must be very specific. I also searched ‘men’s shirt dubăi’, but I got links to shirts from Dubai – not at all Balkan, not at all funny. I also searched for ‘male shirt călușari’, but still got nothing.
To be honest, parts of the dubăi costume are lost. Others will be lost too, I’m sure. The woven belts were replaced with the Romanian flag when I was young. As for the shoes, each dubău wears what he has. Recently I’ve also seen shirts made of synthetic materials. For me, this is real suffering; for the reader, it is a big question mark about that shirt with embroidered grapes and the incredible dance of the dubăi.
Whenever we spend Christmas at Baloșești, while Sandu is filming, I watch the dubăi’s feet. Six drum beats, six steps. A fascinating synchronisation. Nobody misses a step. It would be impossible, since the drum tells them clearly when they have to make one jump or another. I can say in all sincerity that I have seen famous folk ensembles that fail to synchronize so well.
The dube have a leader. I have no idea if he is called a leader or otherwise. But he is easy to recognise. He carries an adorned pointer in his hand. A stick, we call it. A small, decorated collection box is tied to his palm with a narrow strap. While the dubăi, besides the belt, have an oblique strip over their right shoulder, their leader has two, one over each shoulder, forming an X over the white shirt. So the one with the X is the leader.
What I best liked in my childhood was the dance of the dube. They stand in a circle around the leader. At first glance, the leader seems to dance a different dance. His movements are different. He moves in the direction opposite to how the circle rotates. While the 6-8-10 dubăi are perfectly synchronized, regardless of the differences of age or height between them, their leader moves in the opposite direction and makes different steps, different jumps. You need to be either an initiate or very observant to realise that he takes the steps that the others will take in a few seconds. He practically performs the dance in the opposite direction, a few beats earlier than the circle, as if he were dictating their next moves. Once you know this, it’s fascinating. Like off-beat in music. Or like rounds, where the followers begin the same song in a different voice, a bar or two after the leader.
When I was little, I knew that first came the carollers, then the neighbours’ children who also sang carols, and then the Star singers. Sometime after lunch we heard the dube. It felt as if an earthquake was about to strike. We all ran to the gate to see the dubăi. They walked up the street, up the hill, to Liman, to Luncani, and in the evening they were to come to Tomești. The only fun I had in my first years of life was to run away from the goat. Long after midnight, before falling asleep, my ears pricked up at the last echoes of the dube. And I knew that the next year it would be the same.
Now I’m no longer so sure. Now I think of the dube of Baloșești as I think of the ruga in Baloșești, which I had the chance to experience, but which has disappeared in the meantime. At least in its original, almost mystical formula, in which it was held in my childhood.
This is, however, another story.
As anyone from Banat/Balkan knows, the word rugă comes from ‘rugăciune’ 8 and marks the village church dedication day. Today we only hear about rugă in Timișoara or Recaș and it no longer resembles what I knew a rugă was. The almost mystical element I was talking about was the Dinner.
For the rugă, folk music singers were invited and large open places were prepared for a kind of dancing. Why ‘a kind of dancing’ and not just ‘dancing’? Because rugă meant you also had dinner, whereas dancing was just music and… dancing.
But let’s speak about the Dinner now. The first thing was that you had to be very well prepared. Food was prepared like for a wedding. The traditional dishes: lașce (chicken soup with noodles), sarmale (stuffed cabbage leaves), roast with salad and mashed potatoes, cookies and lots of drinks. You had to have plenty of food, because your relatives were coming. At the end you slept on the floor.
I could speak about the ruga at Luncani, because they always had celebrities on stage. Big village, wealthy people, great rugă. They had a huge courtyard near the community centre, where the ruga was organised. I don’t remember if it had always been like that, but when I was little you had to buy a ticket. Naturally, tickets couldn’t be bought online then. The money for the tickets went to the musicians.
I could also speak about the festival at Liman, which was the rugă we, the ones in the Colony, organised. It was already compromised, since there was no dedication day to celebrate. Tomești-Colonie didn’t have a dedication day. Tomești-Colonie didn’t have an Orthodox church. One was built twenty years ago. In communism, Orthodox masses were held once a month in a small Roman-Catholic church. The Colony, registered officially as the Factory Colony, but which we all called Tomești, while Tomești we called Tomești- Sat (Tomești-Village), was born as the colony of the workers of the Glass Factory opened by the Germans in 1820.
At first, barracks were built, then houses, then blocks of flats. Then the Mayor’s Office in Baloșești was moved to the Germans. And so did the dispensary, the police, and the school. Then it became a commune. And so on and so forth. But we still didn’t have a church, since the Mayor’s Office moved after the Communists came.
During the ’70s, the Valea lui Liman tourist complex was opened and the Tomești ruga, nedeea, was held there. When I became a teenager, things evolved. On Saturday night there was a disco at Liman, the next day, the Banat Nedeea.
I could speak about the ruga at Zolt, where I bought a panpipe. Or about the one at Românești, which wasn’t held on the village dedication day, in October, but in July, on Saint Elijah Day, when we still had Balta Caldă (The Warm Pond). They wouldn’t issue permits to those who came with ‘a whole tribe’, as we used to say. It was a real fair. There I ate corn on the cob for the first time in the year, from there my father bought watermelon. There we bought the first Yo-yos, the ancestors of the Yo-yo toys. Small sawdust balls wrapped in coloured tin and tied with rubber bands. Gingerbread with a mirror in the middle. White or black toy mice with a resort and rubber bands. Sun glasses, metal rings, plastic rifles, water pistols and many more.
Balta Caldă vanished and so did the ruga. They became memories.
So I will tell you about the ruga at Baloșești, held on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of Mary, or ‘Măria Mică’, as people called it.
Like at Luncani, at Baloșești ruga was held in front of the community centre. In the hill or mountain areas, it is difficult to find a flat place for the rugă. In Baloșești there was no other place except that in front of the community centre.
The first dance took place in the presence of the priest. At six o’clock in the evening. I do not remember any famous folk stars. We had music, maybe well-known singers, but I can’t say that for sure. Everything was as clear as possible. Peopled danced on folk music until eleven at night, when the musicians stopped. The Dinner followed. The story element. The off-beat in music.
If you weren’t from the village, it was good to make friends with someone, so you wouldn’t be hungry. It was not good at all if you remained alone. In our area, even the July nights were cold. In September, we had the first frost, so they often moved the ruga in the community centre.
But if you had friends or danced with a villager who invites you to dinner, things were very different. I still remember those nights very clearly, although I was only 3 or 4 years old when my grandmother and great-grandfather were still alive. They both died in 1984. So my memories are before that year.
They removed the all the tables from the house and placed them in the courtyard, then they covered them with tablecloths. They brought not only chairs, but also the traditional benches with backrests, which usually stood near the very tall beds in the house. Those beds were about a meter high. Instead of a step, you climbed those beautiful benches that were as long as the beds.
The table had to be laid for at least twenty or thirty people. Whether your guests were closer or more distant relatives coming from other villages, you had to prepare a few places for strangers. Nobody was allowed to skip dinner, it would have been a great shame for the village if they did. I remember that sometimes my grandmother also put flowers on the table. Maybe she always did, I don’t remember. And her yellow plates and large bowls from the same set, for soup. All the day the cookies were cut, at least four or five kinds. They were arranged on trays and kept in a cool place.
At midnight the table was full, all seats taken. The village was screaming with joy. And from the plum rakia, maximum thirty percent alcohol content. But the atmosphere was special. You laid the table for whoever came, never knowing how many people will enter your yard. You offered a meal where no gifts were given, unlike at weddings. A meal that financially you cannot recover. No return, no gifts, no taxes. A meal offered at midnight to anyone who happened to visit your household. For me, this is a truly Balkan job. A table for cheerful people who eat and drink together, who joke and laugh, not knowing if ever in their life will they eat next to each other again or will see each other at another dinner, at another ruga, in another village.
I am sure the dogs must have barked from so much noise and the cats probably curled into a ball under the table or begged for the crispy chicken skin. Maybe an owl hooted in the oak tree forest behind the garden. But these things I don’t remember. I only remember the sadness, because we, the little ones, were sent to bed after Dinner. So we tried to behave like the grown-ups, we tried not to do bad things, not to be sleepy, in the hope that we would persuade someone to let us stay awake at least another hour, look, Cristina, Nea Bujor’s daughter, says she’s staying another hour, we can’t we stay too, we’re old enough for that.
But there was no way we could persuade anyone. After dinner, we had to go to sleep. The light that penetrated from the street through the open shutters, cheerful voices, someone calling for someone else. Are you going back to the rugă? Wait, we’re coming too. Grandmother was watching us.
Grandmother died when she was 56. Why didn’t she go to the rugă? Was she ill? I don’t believe so. If she had, she wouldn’t have laid the big table in the yard. Was he staying at home to keep an eye on us? This is another truly Balkan job, which I understood better from Kazantzakis: the aged woman. Not old, but aged by society, by mentality, by prejudices. Why should we go to the rugă? We’re old.
I don’t remember grandmother wearing white clothes, let alone coloured ones. Only black and brown. Undyed sheepskin coat. A headscarf. Did she have long hair? Did she have more than one set of clothes?
At Baloșești we still have some poneve, cergi, thick tablecloths, some of the yellow plates and bowls, two aluminium tablespoons ‘with a tip’. But no beautiful sweaters, no warm clothes, no winter coats, nothing from my grandmother. Just things for the household. Many things for the household.
Was my great-grandfather old at fifty? I remember him after he’d turned eighty. He still worked on the hill. He had a leather bag, loose, brown, wool slacks, probably a hemp shirt. The hat, the small felt hat. I remember him well, I loved him a lot, he called me Harmonica. But when the world had him age, I couldn’t say. Certainly not at 56, like it did with my grandmother.
My great-grandfather was her father and my father’s grandfather. A man to write a story about. A Zorba. A Balkan, even though he fought in the war on the Alps front, when Hemingway fought on the other side. He had been a soldier since he was 14. Then he became a forest ranger, then an architect, then a mayor, and finally he bought sheep and oxen. I think he was sick when I was born, because he no longer had sheep. I remember the oxen, Puiu and Florea, that’s what they were called. They were huge. But he didn’t keep them at home for a long time. I think he kept them in the stable near the field on the hill, near Pădurișcă, where he’d once kept his sheep. And I remember Băluțu, the huge and beautiful Bucovina Shepherd dog tied to the pear tree behind the house. Probably after my great-grandfather had sold the sheep.
I remember how we all went to Pădurișcă, and grandmother was making pancove 9 with cheese. Today, if I see ads for pancove or scovergi 10 at fairs, I turn my head away. I already know that the scovergi are not true scovergi, the pancove are not true pancove, and the ruga is not true ruga. And there is no Dinner. Who else is there to lay the table for thirty people, some of whom are strangers?
People have got used to complain of poverty. But people have never lived better than now. My grandparents and great-grandparents would not understand today’s poverty. And I think they would lay the table for Dinner on 8 September once again, because it is in their blood, part of their traditions, of the Balkan rural culture. Because you can’t greet the dubăi empty-handed. You don’t give them lașce, since they have to dance all night, but you still offer them something to eat. And you walk with the tray of sandwiches and cookies around the yard to serve those who accompany the dube, villagers or people from the neighbouring villages, who follow the dube from the first to the last house.
Why do I speak of all this? Maybe that’s what I understand by being Balkan. Home. My home, in which I grew up, the rhythm from the dube, on which I move my feet even in summer, if I suddenly hear it in my mind.
I have invited people to dinner, foreigners, people from other countries. The farther in the west was their country, the greater their surprise. Someone from a large group that I had invited in my small house told me: ‘It’s very touching that you’ve invited us, the house is something so intimate.’ What about the Dinner? I thought, but I didn’t say anything.
It’s in my nature. Laying the table and greeting the dube is something I inherited from my grandparents. When someone was in mourning, they received the dube in their houses, but they did not dance and the musicians sang only carols, and announced the Birth of our Lord. But you couldn’t turn down the dube. This is why I try to go home for Christmas every time I can. Because it is sad for the parents to receive the dube, but not to have their children beside them.
Now the parents call their children abroad on Facebook, so they can hear the dube. I don’t want that, though my dad called me a couple of times too. I don’t like it, I want to be there. I want to listen to the musicians from Făget playing Lăsai pușca ruginită in my great-grandfather’s yard.
Sometimes, when I feel nostalgic and watch the dube on YouTube I think I should have stayed at home, in my village. To mow the hay in summer. I know it sounds dramatic and exaggerated, but I sometimes feel like I should have done it. I should have stayed there and learn from my father how to clean the forest, why a spring dries out and how you can clean it. He could have shown me how to predict rain by the sunset colours. My mother could have shown me how to make pancove and scovergi, and lașce with eggs. And maybe instead of starving while trying to lose weight, I would have learned the dance of the dube and I would have danced for hours on end in the yard.
It’s not the area, it’s the inheritance, because I know for sure that many people born in the Balkans feel quite differently. They don’t want to come to Dinner; they want to be left alone, to barely hear what you have to tell them, to listen only to classical or rock music, to spend their days among concrete buildings, not in gardens or forests. Is it a Balkan matter or is it not? Is it really something specific to each area or only people coming from over the seas can sit at table for Dinner? Can they do it or not? Will they lay the table for Dinner or not? Will they appreciate the dubăi or will they just say, ‘This traditional stuff is not for me’? Will they denounce premature aging or will they pity it? Is it something about all the stories I have told you or is it just childhood? Is it me aging prematurely and opening my mouth to say, ‘In my time…’?
For me, Balkan culture is an image, a film, a collective poem: many people together in one place, songs of sadness and songs of joy, an exaggerated familiarity, an unsophisticated nature, something that is inherited. I remember how I felt when I saw the first documentaries with the Clejani Taraf, those old, authentic musicians. Nicolae Neacșu, who played as if something broke inside him, and inside you, although that thing about Corbea couldn’t be understood very clearly. How he got to prison. How Corbea suffered. How Corbea saved himself.
Balkan festivals bring together people who, regardless of their beliefs or opinions, seem to have the same mother. The first Balkan festival I attended abroad was in Ordu, in the east of Turkey, and was dedicated to the Black Sea. I sensed familiarity not only between writers, but also in their texts. Something not common, but similar, a kind of artistic intimacy. A kind of Dinner. I had incredible seven-course Dinners every night, with dube and torogoate.
At night, when we returned from the restaurants, Tozan sang traditional Turkish songs, but I didn’t know any doină, so I sang Psalm 142 on voice VI. I spent there four days, but it was of incredibly intense. I still feel as if I had spent a whole month there. I conquered everybody with my lying text about the sea. About the boat or the raft with which I could have crossed the sea. Lying dreams for a prose about the Black Sea. Travellers, Dinners, stories, music, shows, young people, readings in schools, trips outside the city, restaurants, authorities – all in four days, during which I barely slept seven hours.
The Balkans. Much more recently. This summer. Theodoris of Kolymbari, talking to us while he was lying on Mias Beach and searching for sea urchins that he crushed on the stones to eat some part of them. And I felt Scandinavian. Theodoris of Kolymbari, who told us about his life and about the beauty of Crete, about the miraculous sea urchin roe, about how the salt from the rocks is collected. Theodoris of Kolymbari, who invited us to his place to taste lamb cooked according to a traditional recipe. And who told us that someday he might visit Romania or Thailand. But then he spoke of his luck again. ‘I’m so lucky I was born here,’ he said. And he was right.
As am I.