Travels with Baby: Soldier Boy
Sarajevo, Bosnia, teaches us about war, real and pretend.
by Ayun Halliday
July 10, 2007
Twenty years of global travel has made me pretty choosy about souvenirs, but Milo is too green to resist the siren song of the colorful wares festooning the tourist trails. Not that his acquisition lust is confined to the kitsch cranked out for foreign visitors. It started in a Budapest subway station, when he caught sight of some Yu-Gi-Oh-ish trading cards in a kiosk window. "How would you have played with them?" I reasoned, as I frog-marched him, howling, toward the turnstile. "They're in Hungarian."
"Yeah, and money doesn't grow on trees, you know," Inky chimed in, helpfully repeating a shopworn mantra she must have picked up from me. I worry about her, remembering how reticent I once was about expressing anything resembling material desire. If one day she decides to haul off and really want something, loudly, unequivocally, the way her brother does, I don't think I'd mind.
Meanwhile, her brother's magpie tendencies were dragging us all down. Things came to a head in Sarajevo's Turkish bazaar, a charming warren of tea shops, coppersmiths and souvenir stalls. I'd call it a minefield, but that seems a tad insensitive, given what the citizens of this city went through in the early '90s. Any Sarajevan schoolkid who endured the siege understands the true meaning of deprivation. For the record, deprivation doesn't mean your mom refusing to buy you a giant pencil fifteen minutes after buying you an expensive handicraft octopus carved from a palm nut.
I like to think I'm not the only mother who cares whether her child is perceived as a brat. It's not so much a problem with the girl, but the boy is a trickier prospect, particularly in any setting where money is exchanged for goods. Both children had already been promised a souvenir from the Turkish bazaar, and as far as Milo
"Greg, he's on the verge of total meltdown!"
was concerned, there was nothing to be gained from delayed gratification. I decided that the best way to avoid a scene would be to purchase the first thing he claimed he wanted, with the understanding that there would be no do-overs, no begging for the next inviting item that caught his eye.
There was one other stipulation: I wasn't going to shell out for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or any flimsy plastic doodad easily procured in Chinatown. This ruled out everything in the toy store's window display save a just-for-pretend Glock that looked way too much like the real thing to take on a plane (not that I'd have bought the damn thing anyway).
Although the handicrafts spilling out of the shops weren't exactly hand-crafted in the traditional sense, I still extolled the virtue of choosing something reflective of the local culture, like a brightly painted flute, or some curly-toed slippers, or a poorly-made plaque featuring a shoddy reproduction of the circular brass knockers one sees on the old city's heavy wooden doors. This last seemed to hold some appeal for my frantic son, who set to banging the first one he could reach as if his life depended on it.
Greg was dubious. "Thirty-seven konvertible marks for that? You think it's worth it?"
"To avoid a scene? Yes! Look at him. He's totally stressed out." I put my hand out for the money.
"Ayun—"
"Greg, he's on the verge of total meltdown!" I know how this sounds, but bear in mind that we were in a very small space, presided over by an older woman whose parenting skills were no doubt unimpeachable.
©2007 Ayun Halliday and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Ayun Halliday is author of The Big Rumpus and No Touch Monkey! and the popular zine East Village Inky. She is a columnist for Bust and a frequent contributor to Babble. Visit AyunHalliday.com.
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