The Good Daughter Read online

  the good daughter

  Amra Pajalic was born in 1977. The Good Daughter is her first novel. Her short stories ‘Siege’ and ‘F**k Me Eyes’ have appeared in the 2004 and 2005 Best Australian Short Stories. The Good Daughter was shortlisted in the 2007 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Writer. She lives in St Albans, Melbourne, with her husband, daughter and three cats.

  Visit amrapajalic.com

  the

  good

  daughter

  a novel

  amra pajalic

  Text Publishing Melbourne Australia

  The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  www.textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Amra Pajalic 2009

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company 2009

  Cover design by WH Chong

  Page design by Susan Miller

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press

  ‘Pediculus Pubis’ by Bijelo Dugme

  Music/lyrics: (Bora /Goran Bregovi)

  Album: Bijelo dugme: Bijelo dugme

  Publisher: (Kamarad - Diskoton, 1984)

  Every effort has been made to trace the original source material contained in this book. Where the attempt has been unsuccessful the publisher would be pleased to rectify any ommision.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Pajalic, Amra.

  The good daughter / Amra Pajalic.

  ISBN: 9781921520334 (pbk.)

  For secondary school age.

  A823.4

  To my husband and daughter

  Contents

  the exiles return

  the family reunion

  a friend in need

  wog makeover

  boys will be boys, will be girls, will be boys

  the bosnian way

  st albans fight club

  dicksgusting

  going cold turkey

  nightmare on wooley street

  westies besties

  the interloper

  bad hair

  bosnian high-noon

  the jealousy game

  the alien invasion

  the secret life of wonder woman

  the kissing game

  what comes around, goes around

  to err is human, to forgive divine

  glossary

  acknowledgments

  the exiles return

  ‘You can’t go like that!’ Mum gasped. She pushed me back into my bedroom. We were going to a zabava, Bosnian for a party. Zabavas were organised twice a year, once as a community meet-and-greet, and also to celebrate Ramadan, the Muslim religious month of fasting. This would be my first zabava.

  ‘Why not?’ I demanded, my hands on my hips as I twirled. I was wearing the little black dress Mum bought for my fourteenth birthday. I’d grown in the last year and the dress moulded to my body. I’d worn it a few months before, when we attended a work barbecue for Dave, Mum’s ex-boyfriend. Mum had complimented me then.

  ‘It’s not suitable, Sabiha,’ Mum protested now, as she rifled through my wardrobe.

  Although both my parents were from Bosnia, I didn’t have anything to do with the community. When I was six years old, Mum and I moved to inner-city Thornbury. Now that I was fifteen we were back where we’d started—in St Albans, ‘Sh’nawb’ns’, we say.

  Even though St Albans was established in 1887, at least that’s what the plaque at the train station says, you can’t tell by walking through the bustling centre. The buildings are two-storey plain block structures with tin roofs. The shopfronts reveal a mix of Europeans, who settled after the post-World War II boom, and Vietnamese who came in the 1970s.

  The suburb has few distinguishing features: streets that form perfect rectangles, an absence of trees on nature strips, and the fact that every second shop is a pharmacy catering to the ageing population.

  There were always Yugos in St Albans. After the Balkan War in the early 1990s, the population exploded with refugees settling there from all over Yugoslavia. It wasn’t a coincidence that Mum and I moved away just when the refugee onslaught moved into St Albans.

  I never thought of myself as Bosnian. I was born in Australia, my friends were Australian and, if I thought about it at all, I would have called myself a true-blue Aussie. All that changed three months ago.

  ‘What’s wrong with my dress?’ I admired myself in my wardrobe mirror.

  ‘You’re too, too...’

  ‘Beautiful, hot, gorgeous, sexy.’ I cocked my hip. The black dress brought out the highlights in my dark-blonde hair. The V-neck showed off my cleavage, while the mini-skirt made my legs look longer.

  My bedroom door was pushed open. ‘Hajmo!’ My grandfather was hassling us to hurry up. He caught a glimpse of me. ‘Bože sačuvaj,’ he hissed, ‘God save us,’ and turned away.

  ‘Bahra, nadji joj nežto drugo da obue!’ His abuse came in rapid-fire bursts. All I understood was that he wanted Bahra, my Mum, to find me something else to wear; that people would think the worst if they saw how I was dressed; that I was a whore…then I lost the rest of his tirade.

  ‘Did Dido call me a whore?’

  ‘He said you look like a whore with that make-up.’

  My grandparents were supposed to have come to Australia in 1995, after the Balkan War, but my grandmother’s diabetes made her too ill to travel. When she died last year, my grandfather came to Australia and lived with Mum’s sister, my Aunt Zehra, Uncle Hakija and their children, Adnan and Merisa.

  Unfortunately for me it was only a few months before Uncle Hakija and Dido couldn’t stay under the same roof. Auntie Zehra manipulated Dido into leaving—apparently by telling him that Bahra needed to be with him after all these years. And then she served up a good dose of guilt to her sister about being the black sheep, and about all the embarrassment Mum caused by shacking up with an Aussie. So Mum caved in and she and I made the move back to the western suburbs. And Dido moved in with us. 2008 was the year my life became hell, thanks to him.

  I checked my make-up in the mirror. My foundation was flawless, my pale skin blemish-free. The liquid eyeliner and eye shadow brought out my green eyes. I was wearing the basic make-up any teenage girl would wear out at night.

  ‘He’s whacked, Mum.’

  She glanced at my face. ‘You’ll have to tone it down.’

  ‘But I’m wearing regular make-up!’

  ‘We need to make a good impression.’ Mum sighed.

  ‘You’re saying we’re not good enough?’

  ‘No.’ Mum put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Tonight is a very important night. It’s the first time we’re attending a Bosnian function as a family and we’re all anxious about looking our best.’

  I had to admit that tonight was Mum’s night. After Auntie Zehra’s family had arrived from Bosnia twelve years ago, we’d managed to play happy families for a total of two years, before Mum and her sister had a falling out. We hadn’t had anything to do with each other during the ten years Mum and I lived in Thornbury. But tonight was The Reunion.

  She hugged me but I held myself stiff in her
embrace.

  ‘I look great.’ I pulled away from her, forcing her to look at me. ‘Don’t I?’

  Mum hesitated. ‘Yes, you do—’

  ‘So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.’ I headed for the door.

  ‘But this isn’t an Australian party. This is a zabava. Everyone will be watching us, judging us, judging me.’ Mum winced.

  Mum and I weren’t what you would call traditional Bosnians. More like exiles returning to the fold. Mum had made some bad decisions. At the age of eighteen, she married my father, who brought her to Australia in 1989. After my birth she had a nervous breakdown and went to hospital. My Dad left us a few months after I was born because he didn’t want a mental for a wife; so Mum embarked on what I called her ‘Finding a Daddy’ phase, when she dated every Bosnian man in sight, supposedly to find a father for me. Some lasted a night, some a week, some a few months, but inevitably they all left us. She ended up getting a bad reputation and this was one of the reasons why we moved out of St Albans.

  ‘Please Sam-Sabiha, be good for me. We need to find you a proper dress…’

  For years I’d called myself Sammie Omerovic and so had Mum. It was the easier option because most Australians had to be taught to pronounce the ‘h’ in my name. And then there was the deciding incident.

  I’d been looking forward to Grade Six camp the whole year. We went to a farm in Victoria’s countryside and I had fantasies of milking cows and riding horses, but what I hadn’t envisioned was my camp leader and his wife. On the first day Mr Howard did a roll-call. When it was my turn the conversation went something like this:

  Mr Howard: ‘That’s an interesting name. Where are you from?’

  Me: ‘Thornbury.’

  Mr Howard: ‘No.’ He laughs. ‘Which country?’

  Me: ‘Australia.’

  Mr Howard: ‘Your name isn’t Australian.’

  Me: ‘It’s Bosnian.’

  Mr Howard: ‘Ah, so you’re Bosnian.’

  That should have been the end of the story, but then I met his wife.

  Mrs Howard: ‘Where is your name from?’

  Me: ‘I’m Bosnian.’

  Mrs Howard: ‘When did you come to Australia?’

  Me: ‘I was born here.’

  Mrs Howard: ‘So you’re Australian.’

  Me: ‘Yes.’

  While I had many conversations that went along these lines, what made this so different was that Kristy Newman, my Grade Six nemesis, witnessed both. She made the three-day camp a nightmare. Her favourite torment was to ask me snidely: ‘What are you? Retarded, stupid or both?’ She kept calling me Sabiha-No-Country.

  When I came home from camp I told Mum I wanted to change my name to something more Australian. By the time I began high school everyone knew me as Sammie Omerovic. But now that we were embracing our ethnic roots I was Sabiha again…

  ‘Bahra!’ My grandfather was getting angrier with Mum.

  ‘There’s nothing suitable here.’ Mum closed my wardrobe doors. ‘Find something in my room.’

  ‘Mum…’ I whined.

  ‘Please Sabiha.’ Mum gave me a harried look and went to answer Dido.

  I sighed as I rummaged through Mum’s wardrobe. It used to be fun playing dress-ups in here, but now it would be a disaster. Mum was a few inches taller than I was and her figure was fuller. Anything I put on would hang like a sack.

  As I pushed her clothes along a parcel fell at my feet. I knelt and picked up a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. I pulled one out, but it was written in Bosnian and I couldn’t understand much. I glanced at the last page and saw it was signed ‘Darko’. Another old boyfriend? But this name didn’t ring any bells…I returned the letter to its envelope and tossed the bundle back to the bottom of the wardrobe. I’d make sure to come back and try to decipher them later.

  ‘How did you go?’ Mum asked as she rushed in.

  ‘There’s nothing here that will fit me.’ I shut the wardrobe doors.

  ‘Nice try.’ Mum opened the doors.

  ‘No way!’ I cringed as Mum held out the dress to me. And that’s how I ended up at the zabava without a speck of make-up and wearing the dorkiest outfit in the history of female fashion.

  ‘Nice dress,’ snickered my cousin Adnan when I sat in the chair next to him. I stiffened. His sister Merisa glanced over and gave me a dismissive once-over. She was wearing a silver silk suit-jacket and skirt that was fitted around her tall willowy body. At twenty years old, she’d managed to toe the line between modesty and good taste without looking frumpy. Unfortunately I wasn’t so lucky.

  Adnan pinched a fold of fabric between his fingers. ‘For your birthday I’ll get you a subscription to Vogue.’

  I went red. It was one of Mum’s ‘conservative’ dresses. On her it was knee-length, with a scooped neckline, and almost skin-tight; but on my thinner frame the hem reached my calves and the neckline was too low, so Mum had insisted I wear a top underneath. I looked like an op-shop reject.

  ‘Read between the lines, buddy.’ I lifted my hand, joining my thumb and little finger and keeping my other three fingers in a straight line. I caught my aunt’s eye across the table. Guiltily, I put my hand down by my side.

  ‘You look nice!’ she called out.

  I forced a smile. ‘Thanks.’ Adnan smothered a laugh. I elbowed him. Having a family was way overrated.

  I looked around the room to see what other people were wearing. If you say you’re Muslim most people assume the stereotype of the turban-wearing, bearded Arab man or the hijab-wearing, subjugated Arab woman. They don’t get that there are 1.5 billion people practising Islam in fifty-seven languages and that each ethnic group has a different way of expressing their religion. Since the Balkan War, people know about Bosnia, but not about Bosnians. They don’t understand why the women aren’t covered up and the men aren’t turbaned.

  I hadn’t known either, but since Dido had moved in, his pet project was to educate me about my ‘roots’. He told me that Bosnians were ruled by the Turkish Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century, that most Bosnians converted from the Bosnian Church to Islam, and that as a result we have a lot of Turkish words in our vocabulary and dress like Turks in Western fashion. So now I felt a whole lot clearer and a whole lot more confused about my identity.

  Most of the people at the zabava were wearing regular clothes. The men were in suits and the women wore loose outfits with no skin showing. There were a few older women who were covered up, but instead of the hijab they wore a headscarf. Single young men wore jeans and a shirt. Adnan said he’d tried to do the same, but Auntie Zehra ordered him to change into a suit.

  I turned and groaned. Safet and his sister Safeta were making their way over to our table. It was the Bosnian tradition to use one name in the family and add variations to it, the most common being an ‘a’ to make names female.

  ‘Selam Aleykum,’ Mum uttered the Arabic greeting ‘Peace be unto you’.

  ‘Aleykumu Selam,’ Safet returned the greeting. Bosnians speak a Southern Slavic language, like most people in the Balkans, but they use a few Arabic words and greetings that they learn because all Muslims pray in Arabic.

  Mum introduced Safet as her special friend. In private she called him her boyfriend, even though they’d only been going out for a month. I was reserving judgment.

  The men shook hands with Safet, my Uncle Hakija making a point of greeting him with Zdravo, ‘Hello’, to needle my grandfather. Uncle Hakija was still a fervent communist and a thorn in Dido’s side. Dido explained that it was an insult to use non-Muslim greetings among Muslims. These were reserved for mixed company only.

  I turned to find Safeta standing behind me, holding out her arms. I leaned in for the kiss on the cheeks, another custom. We were pretty relaxed about it. I used to have a Turkish friend and I’ve never seen so much cheek-kissing. They have the whole three-kiss thing down pat. We used to do the three-kiss thing too, but we dropped it because the Serbs have the same pra
ctice with their three-fingered crossing of the chest.

  Usually I managed to avoid kissing, but Safeta was trying to impress and was over-compensating. She thought she had to win me over. She didn’t know that Mum’s boyfriends never lasted and that I’d stopped caring one way or another.

  Safet and Safeta sat on the seats we’d been saving for them. Dido watched Safet with approval. Safet used to be a university professor before the war and was considered a catch, even though he worked as a taxi driver in Australia—that is, when he chose to work.

  Soon after the preliminaries they moved onto their favourite game. Safet and Safeta were originally from Prijedor, while Mum’s family came from Banja Luka, an hour away.

  ‘Do you know Ishmael Sahovic and his wife Husna?’ Safet asked, ash hanging off his cigarette. My Auntie and Uncle looked blank.

  ‘He has a daughter Esma and a son Faruk,’ Safeta added. Auntie and Uncle shook their heads.

  They could do this forever, trying to find a tenuous link, a friend of a friend of a second cousin whose mother was related by marriage to their grandfather five generations back.

  When I called this the ‘Connect the Bosnian Game’, Mum told me off. She said that in Bosnia everyone knew his or her neighbours within a twenty-kilometre radius. Bosnia and Herzegovina was half the size of Tasmania with a population of 4.1 million, so even if you were dropped on the other side of the country by direction-challenged aliens, chances were you’d come across people who knew someone you did.

  Now that everyone was scattered to the four corners of the world this was the only way they had of learning about their former neighbours and creating a sense of community. They also trawled the telephone directories looking for possible relatives. When they found someone with the same surname they’d call to sniff out if there was a family connection.

  Mum told me that Bosnians who arrived in Australia during the 1970s were so desperate for kinship that anyone with the same surname would become a cousin, whether they were a blood relative or not. Now there was a larger population and no need to make claims like that.