The summer of olive oil and pine trees

Back in 1993 I had a life-changing experience. A short story of what unfolded. A story of how I started working for Ramo Gorana in the green market of Ulqin.

It was spring of 1993 when I started noticing something is wrong with me. I started having headaches when exposed to direct sunlight and eventually, within few weeks or months, headaches were becoming difficult to bear. I was spending days in that early summer in a room with drawn curtains, so no sun would enter to aggravate my pain. My mum and my grandma were doing shifts in putting napkins in my eyes. We couldn’t figure it out whether warm or cold napkins were alleviating my pain.

We did visit a doctor, but Kosovo in 1993 was under apartheid. Dirt poor, under Serbian military occupation, and no state hospitals were open to most Albanians. My parents were of modest middle class before the break-up of former Yugoslavia - dad was a constitutional lawyer, mum was a conservator of old books at National Library, but both got fired from their jobs in 1991, after Milosevic took over Kosovo in a violent series of actions that ultimately brought wars, genocide and mayhem.

But in 1993, as war was raging in Croatia and Bosnia, Kosovo was a political appendix of Europe and Kosovo’s political leadership was exercising a futile, Ghandi-like peaceful resistance.

So whatever meagre medical analysis was available, left the doctor at loss. He didn’t quite know what is my ailment but he did recommend for me to go to Slovenia to check my brain. The proposal was impossible. Both practically due to the wars in neighborhood, as well as financially. We just didn’t have the money.

So parents asked for a second opinion (always ask for a second medical opinion). The second doctor had a far more prosaic explanation for my unbearable pains: I had a severe sinus inflammation. His recommendation: “Let the boy spend time in Ulqin under pine trees and in the waters of the Adriatic sea”.

As it happens, I did have my aunt Vera living in this southern Montenegrin town populated with Albanians, the famous pirates in Dolcinium of the medieval times. It was a far cheaper proposition than going for a brain operation in Slovenia.

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Ramadan Gorana, known as Ramo to his family and friends, was from Ulqin. He was the son of Hamid Gorana, a famous trader and a rather wealthy man from Ulqin. He was also the brother of Avdo Gorana, my aunt Vera’s husband. He had married in Sarajevo and worked as a programmer in Energo-Invest, an industrial giant in Bosnia and former Yugoslavia. He was maybe one of the first ever people using computers in matters of economy. He lived with his wife Rabije and his children Nadir and Naxha in Bosnia, but as Serbian occupation of Bosnia escalated to a full-fledged genocide, Ramo came back to his old birthplace. He started selling olive oil in Ulqin, in an area that was famous for its olive trees since Roman empire.

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I went to Ulqin to find a remedy for my headaches. Aunt Vera, cooked most incredible meals but I did need some pocket-money to afford living as a 14-year old boy, with a fledgling interest in the fledgling nightlife in this corner of Mediterranean.

Ramo offered me a job.

And this is how I started selling olive oil in market of Ulqin. I used to wake up at 6:30–7, go to market where Ramo had a stand and I was selling olive oil and small trinkets to tourists who were frequently as poor buyers as we were poor sellers. Mostly Kosovars, some Serbs and an odd German humanitarian worker.

We had agreed for me to have 10% from sales, but as it happened, I did quite well in sales. A blond, talkative kid with curly hair, surrounded with old women of Ulqin wearing their long white traditional scarves. They were selling local tomatoes, cheese, mandarines.

After a while, I started spending bit more than my agreed 10%, buying cebapa and burek. Ramo was tolerating these small transgressions, but was also giving me advice on pitching for higher price of different oils (some are good for sun tanning, some others for salads. Some bottles had cantarion or St John’s worts, some bottles had thick texture, deep olive green color and the taste of heaven.)

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I made money that — and the following summer. I started going to the high school and life path took another direction. I got a scholarship to study in Oslo in a nice high school, courtesy of the Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide and a Quaker friend Kristin Eskeland. And that’s an entirely different story.

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But that summer of 1993, Ramo Gorana tought me a thing or two about olive oil. About pride of earning your own money, the joy of finishing work and running at lunch time to the beach to jump in azure waters by the old Albatros hotel, collecting pine nuts with my baby brother Dren and cousin Hamid, knowing I had a good day at work. I even had some Deutche Marks to spend in the local discotheque for a coca-cola. I could buy loads of comics, mostly the Italian Bonelli publications Martin Mystery, Dilan Dog, Alan Ford.

In midst of blood, death, destruction only few hundreds miles away, an island of normalcy maintained our innocence.

So, I find out today that uncle Ramo passed away and I had a waterfall of emotions pouring over my body.

For in that summer of 1993, from Ramo Gorana, the computer programmer from Sarajevo who ended up selling olive oil in the market of Ulqin, I also learned a thing or two about the value of honest day’s work.

As it happens, I didn’t have sinus headache anymore that year. I still don’t.

So, rest in peace dear Ramo.