The registered letter from the bank arrived on a Thursday, in a smog so thick that from Radakovo you could see neither the steelworks nor the Bosna River. The mailman gave it to Meliha, as he did with everything addressed to Ekrem. She signed without looking, the way she had signed for twenty-six years, and opened it at the kitchen table, because Ekrem was at a trade fair in Vienna and because in that house they had both opened the mail for a long time.
It said that three installments were overdue. A loan of seventy thousand marks, taken out in March, secured by a mortgage on the family house in Radakovo, entered in the land register in the name of Ekrem Avdić. Meliha read it twice, then a third time, slowly, the way she read test results to patients who had not brought their glasses. On paper the house was Ekrem's. His father had left him the ground floor. The upper floor they had built together, in 2009, from her nurse's salary and from the money her father got for his land in Janjići. Their children had grown up on that floor. On that floor she now sat with the letter in her hand.
She called him. Ekrem laughed into the phone, and behind him she could hear music and a woman's voice. He said it was the bank's mistake, that there were ten Ekrem Avdićs in Zenica, that he would sort it all out on Monday when he got back, and that she should not get her blood pressure up. For twenty-six years Meliha had measured other people's blood pressure on the internal medicine ward. She knew how a man sounds when he says everything is fine. She thanked him, wished him a good fair, and hung up.
Ekrem kept the key to the drawer in his office in the garage in the coffee tin, behind the džezva, ever since the children were small and the papers for the trucks were kept out there. The folder was at the bottom. The loan agreement, with his signature. Quotes for walnut shelves, for lighting, for six window mannequins and for a cash register. A lease for a shop on Tito Street, tenant Arijana Mujić, guarantor Ekrem Avdić. And one printed page with a sketch of a sign: ARI, boutique, opening on Saturday.
She remembered March. Ekrem had been tender then as never before: on his own he had bought a new washing machine, and twice he had taken her to dinner in Vranduk. In March he had also taken away her sehara, her mother's walnut dowry chest with brass nails, saying he knew a carpenter in Kakanj who would restore it for next to nothing. After March the trade fairs began, in Vienna, in Sarajevo, in Istanbul. So did the new shirts, which she had not bought.
On Friday evening she walked into town. The shop window on Tito Street was papered over, and the paper said the opening was on Saturday at six. Between two sheets there was a gap as wide as a finger. Through it Meliha saw a young woman, about thirty, arranging silk scarves on a walnut chest with brass nails. Two letters were carved into the front of the chest, her mother's initials. She stood in front of that window until her toes went numb in her boots, then went home and did not sleep.
On Saturday she worked the morning shift, came home, bathed and put on the coat she saved for weddings. By six the boutique was already full. There were balloons, juice in champagne glasses, and women from town whom Meliha knew from the ward. Ekrem stood behind the register, in a new shirt, like a man at home in his own house. When he saw her in the doorway, he went as white as a clinic wall. He did not move.
Meliha walked past him as if he were a clothes rack. She went up to the chest, lifted one scarf from it, a blue silk one, and carried it to the register. Arijana smiled, because she did not know her, and said it was the most beautiful piece in the boutique. "I'd like an invoice in my name, please," said Meliha. "Meliha Avdić." The register could not do that, so Arijana wrote it out by hand on a pad. Meliha paid eighty-nine marks, folded the invoice and put it in her wallet. Then she took the letter from the bank out of her handbag and laid it on the counter. "You've done it up nicely," she said. "Shelves, lights, mannequins. All of it paid for with my house. Three installments are overdue. Ekrem forgot that the mail in Radakovo comes to me."
Arijana looked at the letter, then at Ekrem. Someone in the boutique turned the music down. "You said it was your savings from Germany," she said quietly. "You said you two split up two years ago." Ekrem said this was all a misunderstanding and that Meliha should go home, and they would talk there. "You don't have a home," said Meliha. "You have a mortgage." She pointed at the chest. "And this was never at a carpenter's in Kakanj." She took the scarf and walked out, and no one said a word after her.
On Monday she sat in the office of the lawyer Indira Šehić, whose IV she had changed on the ward three years earlier. Indira read all the papers and said that the ground floor was Ekrem's inheritance, but the upper floor, built during the marriage, was joint property, and a mortgage on the whole house without Meliha's consent could be challenged. She would file a lawsuit and ask for a notice of dispute in the land register. Besides that, if Meliha wanted, a divorce. Meliha asked how long it would take. "A long time," said Indira. "But from today on, nobody can do anything with that house without you knowing about it."
Ekrem went to his brother's in Kakanj. The first week he called every day, then every other day, and then he started sending messages that began with "Mela" and ended with "you know you're the only one for me." Meliha did not delete them. She printed them and put them in the same folder, because the lawyer had told her not to throw anything away.
In January the boutique closed. There was paper on the window again, this time with a sign saying the space was for rent. One afternoon a van stopped in front of the house in Radakovo. Arijana got out with a workman, and together they carried the chest into the hallway. "I didn't know whose it was," said Arijana. "Now you do," said Meliha. Arijana stood in the doorway and did not leave. She said she had returned the stock to the suppliers and had told Ekrem not to call her anymore. She also said that on their first evening he had told her that only with her did he know what he wanted from life. "He told me that in ninety-eight," said Meliha, "in Vranduk. The dinner was better."
When the van had gone, Meliha knelt beside the chest and opened it. At the bottom lay price tags, little white stickers that had come off the scarves. She peeled them off one by one. Then she laid the blue silk scarf on her mother's embroidered towels and closed the lid. That evening she put the folder for the lawyer in order once more: loan agreement, mortgage, lease, shelves, mannequins, register. Her name was not on a single one of those papers. It appeared on only one, written by hand: blue silk scarf, eighty-nine marks, paid in cash.