The Mistress and the Poppy Seed Rolls
After every night shift Antea stops at a small bakery in Tuzla and becomes friends with the baker, to whom she talks about the married man in her life.
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150 longer stories
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Stories of six to nine minutes, for an evening with time for a whole plot. Newest first.
After every night shift Antea stops at a small bakery in Tuzla and becomes friends with the baker, to whom she talks about the married man in her life.
To be rid of a persistent admirer, a married woman in Zenica promises herself to him if her garden blooms in January. He hires an old gardener and builds.
A jealous wife in Mostar calls the police to catch her husband with the bookkeeper's wife, and then the bookkeeper comes back and calmly proposes a solution.
Every Friday Miroslav brings his wife cherries from Sarajevo, but this summer their house above the Neretva is home to new people who laugh at everything.
When a quiet clerk in Tuzla becomes a cantonal minister overnight, his wife starts handing out jobs, seats at lunch and new husbands for her daughter.
Kids in Livno taunt eight-year-old Roko for having no dad. A big panel beater finds him crying by the mills and walks him home to a mother who smiles at no one.
Hariz tells his wife he is going to Banja Luka for three days, then rents a room two streets above their flat. Every evening he watches her live without him.
A widow and a widower tend neighboring graves at Bare every Thursday and never meet anywhere else, until she has to spend the whole winter in Hamburg.
For a married woman Asaf lost his restaurant and everything but his father's accordion. When she comes to lunch as a widow, he has nothing to serve her.
In a notions shop off Ferhadija, dressmaker Nadija asks advice about the student she loves, from the one man who has saved her the best lace for two years.
After an accident at the still, Vasilije asks his handsomest friend to sit in front of the camera in his place during video calls with a girl in Munich.
A landslide closes the road along the Vrbas, and a young doctor and an old technician knock on doors above Jajce. Only the last house on the hill opens.
An unemployed tailor from Doboj steps off a bus in Gradačac in someone else's cashmere coat, and in ten minutes the town declares him an investor from Vienna.
On a coworker's phone Samra recognizes a dating profile: the photo shows her strict mother-in-law, cropped from Samra's own wedding.
A year after her husband died, Dženana opens the door to no one, until a mechanic he owed money starts pounding on her gate and refuses to leave.
His uncle left Aleksa exactly two thousand marks and one condition: he must write to the lawyer how he spent them. Aleksa has no idea where to start.
In the attic of their house in Banja Luka, Iskra looks for New Year ornaments and finds a shoebox full of envelopes in her own handwriting. None was opened.
The first lady of Bijeljina hosts a rich old man back from Chicago and decides to marry her daughter off to him. A rejected suitor has another plan.
At Banja Vrućica, idle Andrija sets out to win the girl his acquaintance adores, while in a villa above the park waits a woman he once loved.
Irena brings new striped pajamas to her husband at the hospital on Bijeli Brijeg. In the corridor a younger woman waits with the same bag and pajamas.
All his life Hilmija has waited for public recognition, until he finds a stranger's coat in his hallway with a ministry badge, and his wife explains it.
In Neum they call the doctor's wife a mermaid for her long morning swims, until a yacht anchors in the bay carrying the man she promised herself to at twenty.
Marta and her ski instructor plan a secret vow in a mountain chapel on Vlašić, but in the January blizzard the wrong man walks into the chapel.
Enes comes home from Norway to a village near Konjic and finds his girl married to a truck driver, so out of spite he starts courting another.
Every Friday a taxi driver takes the same quiet woman to dialysis at Koševo, until one morning the dispatcher tells him the ride is canceled.
A family friend in Vienna leaves everything to the younger brother. The elder, a doctor in Bihać, starts counting years, photos and months, and cannot stop.
A widow near Ljubuški believes the traveler at her gate came from the other world and packs him a parcel for her late husband. Her son gives chase.
A Sarajevo lawyer inherits her grandfather's beehives on Vlašić and a neighbor beekeeper she disagrees with about everything. By fall she must learn the bees.
A rich Banja Luka hotelier buys his son a doctorate and throws a party for two hundred guests. The real author is serving wine at the head table that night.
For her birthday Mirna gets a fan from her husband and learns he pays the rent of a woman half of Sarajevo whispers about. He wants her at the party.