A Carnation from the Charity Ball
Miloš danced with Natalija Kosorić all night and was sure he would marry her. Then at dawn, walking along the Vrbas, he stopped at a fence.
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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.
Miloš danced with Natalija Kosorić all night and was sure he would marry her. Then at dawn, walking along the Vrbas, he stopped at a fence.
The tram depot dispatcher writes every driver and inspector the same sentence. One snowy night, four women lock him in and tell him to choose.
Erol comes home to a letter on the dresser: his wife has left him for another man. Before he can work out what to tell people, a key turns in the lock.
Merchant Momo forbade the goldsmith's apprentice even to look at his house. So the apprentice made sure all of Trebinje saw him on that house's wall.
Jozo Grgić built a concrete plant out of a single truck and married the daughter of Brčko's oldest family. Only then did he learn what it really cost.
Thirty years after he saw her onto a bus in April 1992, Igor waits by the Eternal Flame for Amela, back from Melbourne. Both of them have families now.
That evening in her flat in Bistrik, Belma feels a happiness she cannot name, and her new friend Biserka seems to be the only person who understands it.
After New Year's Eve at his aunts' flat in Bjelave, Rešad takes his wife to a hotel through the snow, unaware that an old sevdalinka has taken her back to Foča.
One Friday a bakery van driver from Sanski Most gives lifts to three women he flirts with, hides them from one another, and offers each of them marriage.
For three years Aida and a carpenter in Bihać have lived on one video call at nine each night, until a Stuttgart clinic offers her a job that forces a choice.
A hotel maid in Mostar cannot write well, so her married boss writes her messages to a young Sarajevo lawyer for her, a little longer every night.
Six years after his divorce, the lawyer who won his apartment away from him in court walks into Bojan's woodshop in Banja Luka and does not even recognize him.
An invitation to a weekend on Jahorina goes by mistake to all sixty-two employees, and the replies reveal more than anyone ever wanted to know.
For nine years Zaim has sat by the fence of the Baščaršija mosque and nobody asks what he has, until Fikreta from the souvenir shop says she saw his hundreds.
For eight years Nura has subtitled Turkish series at night to repay a secret loan, until her husband takes over the bank where she signed someone else's name.
Two widows from Sarajevo wait for their daughters on a terrace in Dubrovnik, and one decides to confess what she wrote on a note thirty years ago.
For six years Mladen has thought about marriage from his couch in Borik. Then his best friend finds him a bride, drives off her suitors and books a wedding.
For a year the tablet in Sabiha's mother-in-law's kitchen in Visoko has shown photos of grandchildren, until a Sunday lunch brings a woman no one knows.
For twelve years Mirela has made sarma from her mother-in-law's recipe and it is never the same. Then both secretly sign up for the same TV show.
For twenty years two pharmacies in Gradačac lived like one family, until a young single engineer rented the room above the bakery between them.
An engineer declared dead after a fall on Treskavica returns to Sarajevo to find his wife married to his best friend, and his invention under the friend's name.
Two neighbors above the Drina ruin each other suing over an abandoned field, and their children, forbidden even to say hello, give themselves one day at a fair.
A stonemason from Jablanica cuts alone through the rock to the village of a woman who vowed to marry whoever brought a road, but thirty paces still remain.
The whole family is waiting for a fiancé from Linz no one has met in person, and the young man who turns up at the gate cannot even say his own name all night.
A young doctor in Zenica falls for the daughter of the town's most gifted family, but she dreams of concert halls, not a doctor in a town under mill smoke.
Engaged to the daughter of a Mostar pastry maker, Almir goes to Neum to sell his apartment to a friend's rich wife. He planned to stay just one day.
When a Tuzla construction tycoon docks a storekeeper's pay over a pestle that doesn't exist, the man's daughter answers each impossible order with her own.
For four years Tijana waits for Nikola to leave his wife. When he arrives with two suitcases, she thinks she has won, until she goes for his winter coat.
On his deathbed a father gives his son an address in Tuzla and an envelope of cash for a woman unknown to the village. The son takes it the next Thursday.
The daughter of a rafting camp owner on the Una borrows a seasonal guide's jacket to meet the rival's son, and then their fathers decide the two should marry.