A Cowboy-Bosniak Wedding

“Fuck this. They throw shit parties. I’m not going tomorrow.” 

So declares Alma-the-bride’s father, current interstate trucker, former Bosnian freedom fighter. Though it is the eve of his daughter’s wedding, he appears resolute.

I listen to him say this in room 204 of Reno, Nevada’s Peppermill Resort Spa Casino. The suite is reserved for him, his wife and son Tarik. My mom and I have our own, just down the hall, but their room hosts our reunion. Inside 204 is pita, and Heineken. It’s lively, initially. 

The atmosphere sours once Alma’s father issues his threat. Everyone else present objects in our language, but I was busy eating our food, pita. It is rude to speak with a full mouth.

Plus, as I chew, I realize I agree with his generalizations about how they host. I was under no illusions. Tomorrow couldn’t be one of our shindigs, even if one of them was technically of our blood. Months ago, when mom initially invited me as her plus-one, the first question I asked was whether the groom was ours as well. 

“Unfortunately, he’s a cowboy,” said mom.

“Cowboy? Like, his family has a ranch?”

“No. Like they are white.”

We, my relatives and Alma’s, are also “white,” but we are Islamic Bosanci, faithful to a unique form of submission. Though alcohol is openly consumed, during the month of Ramadan, we’re sneaky. Hijabs? Those are worn primarily by Arab tourists, glad to see a sanctuary of their religion in the West. Long before Merkel’s migrants, we were Europe’s Muslims. Us Bosniaks were the ones facing Islamophobia, and on a much grander scale. 

Regardless, skin-tone similarities with the groom didn’t make me excited to RSVP for some mixed-marriage B.S. I wanted a repeat of my sole wedding experience to date, which was authentically Balkan.

During that “culturally pure” ceremony in Portland, I, the youngster, was conscripted by the men to stand outside of the holy building and hold a tray with several dozen shots of rakija, our booze. Each attendee ordered me to cheers with them before they had to sit through service. That’s where my memories cease.

I do remember, this wasn’t an “ethnically clean” affair. I stood in front of a Cathedral; the service was Catholic, the betrothed were Croatians. Orthodox Serbians and Muslims like me received “save-the-dates.” Our gods have different names, but we speak the same lingo, drink the same booze, and used to be citizens of the same red republic, before it broke up into seven disparate, ethno-centric nations. At least the old “Brotherhood and Unity” ideology of Socialist Yugoslavia lives on amongst the region’s most nostalgic expats.

I considered what likely awaited me in Nevada. I told mom, “Yeah… not my scene.”

“Remember how close we were with Alma’s family? The least you could do is come,” Mom pleaded.

True. My progenitors and Alma’s parents had felt alien as refugees in SoCal, before they discovered each other and subsequently remembered community. Finally, someone else who could make pita!

This common heritage was justification enough to “keep in touch,” even after my family moved to the Pacific Northwest. Yet lack of proximity meant an increase in privacy, so when I suggested that Dušan, my new stepdad, accompany mom to Nevada instead of me, she panicked.

“Alma’s family knows I divorced your dad, not that I remarried someone named Dušan.”

“So? It might be a nice surprise for them! You found love again! Or for the first time!” 

“No. Alma’s father will explode. You know how I haven’t told my parents yet? To people like them, our people, I’m a traitor, a Bosniak who married a Serbian Cetnik. Please, keep my joy secret.”

Thus I had agreed to go to Reno because 25 years ago, my stepdad and Alma’s babo fought on opposing sides of a civil war. 

And now, Alma’s father was saying he wouldn’t attend the wedding!

Swallowing the pita in room 204, I tell him, “We’re already in this fucking desert, might as well go, right?” 

“No. Americans. Always same. Shit parties. They only drink Lite.” He replies, gripping a Heineken. 

I examine the presents in 204. “Is that rakija? Once the ranch hands try our liquor, the vibe will turn Balkan!”

“No. Tonight showed tomorrow’s truth.”

Apparently, prior to our reunion, the groom’s mother had invited Alma’s parents to an intimate family gathering, an attempt to foster solidarity amongst in-laws before they’d have to appear together in public. It had failed.

“What happened?” I ask.

“That pita you’re eating? They ate pizza instead.” Alma’s father spits on 204’s shaggy carpet. 

“Pizza?” Did I mishear?

“Pepperoni.” Spit, take two. “Fuck their mothers.”

Technically, one of the mothers cursed by Alma’s father was in the room with us, present! 

This mother—his wife—chimes in. “He’s embarrassed to go because—” 

“Don’t listen. She’s an ignorant peasant.” 

“—He has nothing to wear!” 

“What?” I wonder aloud.

Alma’s mother opens their luggage. “Look at what he packed! Flip flops, shorts…”

“True. I forgot some clothes. I… was too busy helping with pita.” Alma’s father’s eyes dart down.

An interesting admission from the chauvinist. In the homeland, anachronistic gender roles are celebrated, i.e. a bachelorette cannot be “good enough” for a groom’s grandmother unless she can craft pita. The revelation that Alma’s father had assisted with “domestic work” was proof that he didn’t necessarily disapprove of his daughter’s hubbie. He was willing to give this cowboy a chance. Part of him must want to go!

I make use of my assumption and propose, “How about we go to the mall tomorrow, before the wedding, and help you pick some clothes out?”

“Maybe…”

---

Mom and I depart 204.

“Alma’s parents were so offended no one tried their pita… Thank you for eating,” my mom says.

I had been eating pita gluttonously, mechanically, not to be polite, but because the ambiguously-dosed edible my roommate had handed to me prior to my flight from PDX finally activated while in 204.

I try to cover for Alma. “Yeah but you heard, the cowboy-groom’s ma & pa treated everyone to pizza.”

“… Pepperoni for Muslims? Alma obviously wants an American wedding, with American food, music, etc.”

“I thought Alma hired a taco truck for tomorrow,” I say as we arrive at our room. The furniture, the art, it’s all suspiciously familiar. 

“That’s not the point! Alma’s parents spent time, preparing pita, bringing our liquor, with the hope that Alma would be… ”

“A bridge to Bosnia?” I suggest.

“Yes! Instead, she hides as ‘fully assimilated,’” Mom continues.

“Hiding? What about you?”

“What, with Dušan? Had I remarried some Muslim, to please my relatives and Bosniak friends, that would be hiding. They are happier thinking that I’m single, and I’m happiest with Dušan. Camouflage is not cowering.”

“Fair enough.” I don’t want to press the point. During the war, Dušan bore the same coat of arms as the sniper who shot and killed my mom’s brother. A teen attempting to collect his household’s bread ration was a legitimate target in those days. 

Mom goes on. “By the way, do you think you could spend some time with Tarik?” 

“Why?” I ask.

“His parents think you might be a positive influence.”

“We both work at pizzerias…”

“You went to college! You lived in China! You can speak ours! He hasn’t even left his parents’ apartment yet, and he’s 22.”

Somewhat true. He could also speak ours, but Tarik’s use of our tongue was akin to matricide.

“I’m to motivate?”

“Maybe just listen. He’s had problems with theft, narcotics…” Mom sounds sad.

Meanwhile, my brain gets pumped. 

I see the dispensary across the street. I know that weed is legal in NV, but I’m broke. I figure, kill two birds, please my kin and get stoned.

“Yes ma’am!”

---

Mom woke me at 8. “We must get coffee with Alma’s family,” she explains. 

This Balkan ritual (collective caffeine) is somewhat tainted by the brand we drink, Dutch Bros. Whereas our joe is Turkish, strong, bitter, unfiltered, the majority of our party accedes to Tarik’s insistence on patronizing the Starbucks clone.

Coffee is awkward. Alma’s father speaks ad nauseum, on how this isn’t kafa, how Alma and Tarik aren’t Bosniaks, and how much he wants to move to Kentucky. 

“Oh yeah? I saw Louisville hosted the latest season of Top Chef. It appears to be modernizing!” I say, when he first mentions the idea.

“Fuck the city. Kentucky has land.”

“We’re not moving to Kentucky.” His wife says. Tarik nods in agreement.

“Yes we are.”

As soon as everyone’s straws start to slurp, I suggest that our parents walk back to the Spa separately. “I’ll stay behind with Tarik, to catch up.”

I wink at mom.

Belatedly leaving Dutch Bros, Tarik and I find ourselves surrounded by pawn shops emblazoned with advertisements. ”Cash for gift cards.” “We accept dental gold.” The parents are in front, but my wet finger indicates the breeze will carry evidence of our malfeasance in the opposite direction. We start smoking a blunt.

“You know, I think my dad is fucked.” Tarik says while lighting up. 

“Dude, everyone who lived through that war is. My parents were stuck in Sarajevo, during the siege. I try using history to excuse their worst behavior,” I say. 

“How did they survive?”

“Four years of no running water, no electricity? Four years of covering windows with aluminum foil so that snipers couldn’t scope their apartment? No idea. Luck?”

Unwilling to share that unlike Tarik’s father, my dad had been too chicken to enlist, I return to the present. I see a cross in front of a sleazy motel. “Hahaha what the fuck is that?” I ask, changing topics.

Before I know it, Tarik starts saying the prayer for the dead, a recitation which Muslims are Quranically ordered to recite in the presence of skeletons. His palms raise upwards. His lips mouth Arabic.

Damn. I forgot Tarik takes Islam a tad more serious than I do. I always hated the performative aspect of our religion, so I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to say.

And this was a performance, albeit one for an uninterested crowd. I’m convinced that Tarik is compensating for the criticisms his father lobbed over mochas.

Still, Tarik knows how to act. To cover my ineptitude, I interrupt his silent, heavenly appeal.

“You sure a person rests in that soil?… It might just house a housepet…” I propose, with confidence.

“What makes you think that?” Tarik responds, after finishing the necessary verse.

“There’s no name on this mini cruci, there aren’t even years listed. And it’s in front of a Super 8.”

“Yeah but, you never know. Plus, it’s our way. That’s what my dad says. It’s what Bosnians in Bosnia would do.”

“Well… Bosnia’s not ours. We share it. The official designation of ‘our’ country is Bosnia & Herzegovina, yet even that is a sham, since ‘Republika Srpska’ is the unlisted third portion of that ‘federation’. A president for each ‘ethnicity,’ Serb, Croat, and Bosniak… It’s fucked that the ‘eastern district’ of ‘our’ capital Sarajevo, the Serbian pocket, has murals glorifying Milosevic…” By the end of my rant, I’m breathless, sweating. 

“OK, sure, Bosnia isn’t a State for us like Israel is for them.” Tarik replies.

“Them?” 

“Them. But still, my dad, you know, he like, fought to defend our right to be there, in Europe.”

Alma’s father… Endlessly complex, or maybe, just simple? 

I had been wondering why, having secured a somewhat safe haven for people of his faith, that staunch nationalist still decided to raise his children abroad, removed from the culture he had voluntarily toiled to preserve. 

Maybe Alma’s father was dissatisfied by the fact that his army only succeeded in making B&H one-third Bosniak. The end of the war didn’t lead to independence, or any sense of victory. In the most optimistic analysis, the Dayton Agreement ensured Bosnia’s historical, multi-ethnic status quo would be maintained. At worst, the “ethnicities” residing there are simply living through a prolonged ceasefire.

Alma’s father probably figured, even if his new family wasn’t geographically there, in the so-called motherland, he could foster a domain reminiscent of his dream country easier in a thoroughly foreign land. A bubble, in Irvine, CA, free from any reminders of the war, might facilitate the life he craved. Bosnia sans &.

His kids would learn the language and speak it inside the house. His wife would shut the fuck up and cook. It didn’t matter that the next-door neighbor was a tatted homosexual or a thrice-divorced Mexican. Under his roof, his descendants would end up as time capsules, vessels void of self-discovery, bots purposed only to preserve relics like the recitation of the prayer for the dead, recipes for Pita, immune to entropy or evolution. 

Unfortunately, for him, he had failed. During kafa, I heard Tarik’s father mumble “if Alma or Tarik had any desire to visit Bosnia, they wouldn’t fit in.”

True. Were his kids to travel to their “homeland,” they would be conspicuous. California’s culture had seeped in. Alma had hella tattoos, and Tarik was a “drug addict.” 

“Americanized” children might be the source of Alma’s father’s malaise, but why did he consider Kentucky the solution?

Did he seek “land” to nullify California’s noxious effects? A renewed attempt to create the idyllic Bosnian environment, deeper in America’s hinterlands? Or did Alma’s father commit to such an unappealing destination with the secret hope that his family would refuse to join? A divorce with no paperwork?

Complex, or simple? 

Probably just traumatized from having lived through a genocide. 

---

After the blunt, we headed off to meet our ‘rents for brekky. During my flight, a local from Reno seated next to me recommended “Joseph’s with an F” as a premier a.m. destination. Only after the hostess seated us did the coincidence of several Bosnians dining at an Austrian bakery hit.

It was in our capital that a Serb killed their Archduke Franz Ferdinand! 

Stoned, staring at the menu, I feel a temptation to get the Denver omelet, but sitting next to a PTSD-inflicted veteran, I experience immense pressure to obey, i.e, to not eat ham.

“Corned beef hash please!” I proclaim.

I didn’t want to undo the pride Alma’s father had supposedly felt when he heard my fluency. Being celebrated as a “Bosniak in America” by a person who fought for our cause was way better than being seen as that identity’s degraded form, a Bosnian-American.

Plus, conforming allowed me to feel as though I was a worthy member of a tribe. Unique, but not alone.

Finishing our meal, we drive to the Reno Town Mall. I sit outside with Tarik, we vape while parents shop.

“How’d it go?” I ask, once I see our elders, bags in tow.

Alma’s father’s smile exposes a lack of teeth, but the expression is still legible, genuine. 

“Your mother has good taste. See these shoes? This shirt?”

---

We return to the hotel in high spirits and decide to reconvene in the lobby prior to the ceremony. I nap. 

“Let’s go.” Mother shakes me awake. We wait downstairs until only Alma’s mother and brother appear, exiting the nearby elevator.

“I don’t know what to do,” says Alma’s mother. They are dressed for the occasion, but their eyes scream dread.

My mom and I listen as they recount how Alma’s father spent the day stewing in 204.

Alma didn’t serve the pita. She married a cowboy. Those stains on her body? Desecration she spent my money on. So called “skin art.” She bought a house here. Two days later, still no tour. She didn’t call today, to ask us how we slept. She didn’t do anything! Why should I go?

I did find it rude that, in the 24 I’d spent with her family, Alma was nowhere to be found. Still, I wanted to go get drunk for free. I say, “Who cares! Let’s order an Uber, and have a good time.”

“Maybe…” Alma’s mother begins calculating whether an appearance w/o her husband might be a bad omen for the newlyweds.

Soon enough, Alma’s father exits the same elevator, and pretends not to see us. He beelines it to the lobby’s “coffee station.” 

“Ayy! Let’s go!” I yell in his direction. I figure, if he really doesn’t want to be convinced, he would have ordered room service brew. 

“I refuse.”

“But I need you to bring your gift!” I plead, as a wino, or as someone who wants to see father and daughter together?

“Hahaha, no.” He smiles.

I have a chance!

“Look, I don’t care. If you decide to go with us, I get to drink rakija. If not, I don’t have to pay extra for an XL Uber.”

“Hahahaha.”

“Do it for Alma!” someone else interrupts.

“No. I go get espresso.”

Fuck! I was on the verge of getting him to enact the ethical (attend his daughter’s wedding) by enticing him as a Bosnian (let’s get fucked up!). But no. Someone tried to guilt trip him, and it failed. 

I give up, knowing we are stubborn.

“OK, well, have fun tonight!” I say to him. To the rest, “Shall we wait outside?”

Perhaps it is best that Alma’s father stayed at The Peppermill. He would have confronted homosexuals, Blacks, bi-racials, balkans, the tatted and the straight-edge, intermingling. He would have been subject to mass consumption of Bud Lite. 

I was having a great time, once I found IPAs. Plus, the last time I had seen Alma, she was suicidal. Sharing the dancefloor with her now? I saw an individual beaming. 

I look around. Her mother is sulking. Tarik? Taking the calamity of the situation like a standard twenty one-year-old. 

“Homie, I just chugged a fuck-ton of mojito. Can we go to where the port-o-potties are so that I can hit your nic stick secretly?” Tarik whispers, spraying booze on my lobe.

At the Honey Buckets, he inhales and says, “This is fucked!”

“I know bud! But you came here for your sister. She’s probably really hurt your dad didn’t show…”

“Nah, she doesn’t give a fuck, about any of us. Alma didn’t even allow me to bring my girlfriend, because ‘Nicole would stress our parents out’, she said.”

Interesting. I had assumed that Alma’s slights were deliberate acts of revenge. Yet, if Alma was actively seeking to cause her parents maximum discomfort, wouldn’t she have gleefully invited this “Nicole” along for the ride?

“Alright, well… Let’s meet some strangers, that’s always fun.” I respond.

“I got a blunt tucked in my pants. Think people are down to smoke?”

“Burn it, and they will come.”

We light up. Like moths to a flame, a congregation forms.

“Can I take a hit?” Says a rando. 

“Absolutely! Who are you, my man?” Tarik replies. 

“Oh, I’m the groom’s brother.”

“No way! Yo, you’re like, my bro in law, or some shit!”

I excuse myself and rejoin the floor. I dance, until mom tells me to order an Uber. 

The car ride is quiet. Tarik makes some noise, moaning as his head lies limp. 

Upon arriving at our spa casino, Tarik and I book it to the little men’s room. He attempts to vom into a urinal but misjudges the distance, and I laugh.

Lying down in 415, mom shows me a .jpg, sent to her phone; Tarik’s father, the subject, sitting on a chair in 204, watching TV. I count seven Heinekens. The scene is meant to provoke pity, but I laugh.

---

Mom and I wake up early, to say our goodbyes.

“It was a pleasure to see you and your family,” I say to Alma’s father.

“Good to see you too.” He responds, rocking flip flops. They drive away. 

With five hours to kill before our flight back, I ask my mom if she wants to return to Josef’s.

“Good idea.”

While I browse the menu, she’s receiving texts.

“Listen to what Alma’s mother wrote to me. ‘We’ve stopped three times. Tarik keeps vomiting. No one is speaking.’ Imagine a nine-hour car ride in those conditions…” My mom says.

“Jesus…”

The waitress comes by. We order.

“What a disaster. I feel so bad for Alma’s mother,” mom continues.

“Why?”

“Last night, whenever someone asked ‘Where’s your husband?’ she lied, saying ‘He wasn’t feeling well.’”

“I don’t feel bad! She chose to attend, even though she was just as offended as her husband was. In a weird way, the people I admire most are Alma and her father. Alma decided nothing was going to ruin her day.”

“Ungrateful… Acting like that, after all her parents did…”

Our food arrives. I’m salivating. Eggs. Peppers. Onions. Ham. 

Before I dig in, I make my point. “What did they do? Her parents survived a war, then mated. Trapped in a terrible marriage, it brain-fucked both kids. Alma moved out as soon as she could, made her own life in a different state, why should she care whether her dad came?”

My mom knows there is some truth in this. She asks me to clarify, breaking the yolks of her benedict. “You admire the dad?”

I pause. 

“I don’t know if ‘admire’ is the right word. I doubt it’s something I’d want to emulate, not attending my own child’s wedding. I think ‘respect’ is more accurate. It took balls. Alone in 204, drinking, probably because of how difficult it was to stick to his ideals. No compromise.”

“You’re applauding his stubbornness?”

“Maybe. Or maybe his conviction. In his eyes, this wedding was no Cowboy-Bosniak affair, it was 100 percent American, so he disowned it.” 

There’s still enough time for dessert, but not much else to say. Sharing a plated pastry, I think we’re both grateful to have had this mini-vacation together. I feel like I’m the one ending it by ordering the Uber for Reno-Tahoe International, but it’s OK. Back home, mom lives only 30 minutes away. ▩

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