A Skopje Saturday Afternoon

Saturday, February 11, was the first day since my arrival in Skopje 5 weeks ago that featured the weather combination of clear, sunny and relative warmth – the temperature actual rose above freezing and stayed there for the better part of the day. Usually, looking out of my kitchen window in the morning is like peering through a fogged-up car windshield. However, the misty smog that typically hangs over this valley city had disappeared overnight, thanks to a front that had pushed through from the northwest. I could tell that the air had improved as soon as I awoke, as I wasn’t congested for the first morning in weeks. I had nothing planned, so I decided to stroll, with my camera, through parts of the City that I hadn’t thoroughly explored, particular the Old City, known as the Albanian side of the River Vardar.

I discovered a path through the City Park and Skopje Zoo – a mere 100 yards from my apartment – that led to the riverside walk. In the spring, I imagine this path must be lovely, as it is lined with towering cedars and trees sporting only dried pods this time of year but, I suspect, looking rather showy in the spring with flowers and large leaves. The part of the zoo that I could see from the path featured ponies, the small, stocky kind used as workhorses and seen in Skopje pulling the Roma, or gypsy, wagons through the streets; elk, several with full racks on their heads, and three dogs that looked like German Shepards – they could have been wolves, I suppose, or perhaps they make up a zoo exhibit of American house dogs!

The walkway stretched along the River Vardar to the City Center and it was, as promised by colleagues of mine, a more pleasant walk than along the sidewalks, without the killer traffic and with cleaner air. Once at the Center, the path continued along the river and branched up onto the Old Stone Bridge which connects the New City to the Old City. I crossed the bridge, to be greeted by a little Roma boy, sitting in a cardboard box on the bridge, begging. He looked as if he might be 6 or 7 years old, but with the rampant malnutrition in the Roma population, he could have easily been quite a bit older. This wasn’t the first time I had seen this phenomenon and often, the children begging on the bridge will fall asleep on their scraps of cardboard while sitting in the sun. A native Skopje-ite told me that the children often sleep this way because no one bothers them and they are safer sleeping in broad day light than they are at night. Once their begging is finished later in the evening, they gather with other homeless children or with their families under bridges, behind public buildings or squatting in shacks for the night, where they are subject to being beaten, raped or killed. Therefore the children learn to stay awake at night and sleep during the day. I made a deal with myself to take his picture if he was still there on the way back, not knowing what reaction to expect from him once I displayed my camera.

I continued toward the Turkish Bazaar and walked through the lumpy cobblestone streets, passing 500 year-old mosques, and watched a local artist, Nico, complete an ink and water color sketch, which I purchased from him for 500 denar or $10. I should have bargained with him, but I really didn’t feel like it, so I handed him the 500 denar note without argument and he pumped my hand in thanks, grinning ear to ear and repeating “fala, fala” – thank you, thank you – over and over. I am sure I had just provided him with a week’s salary. Could I have purchased the sketch for less…for half of what I paid, no doubt! But who can really put a price on a piece of original art, even if it is earmarked for gullible tourists?

I was in the Old City at noon, when the call for prayers came. Hearing the chanting from the mosques has to be my favorite experience in Skopje. I love it because it makes me realize, without doubt, that I am in a different world. When the prayer call began at the stroke of 12, men either left their shops and walked toward the local mosque, or pulled out prayer rugs and began praying on their floors. I used that moment to walk back toward the bridge so I could watch the progression of prayer time. I learned that some Muslim men download “prayer alarms” to their cell phones so they are reminded of prayer times if they are in meetings, driving or out of ear-shot from a mosque. You have to love technology.

The young boy was still on the bridge, so I decided to offer him a little bit of money if he would let me take his picture. I took out my camera and he started complaining to me, I think, until I held out the 10 denar note – worth 20 cents in the US but equivalent in Skopje buying power to about a dollar. A Macedonian man walking across the bridge saw me offering him the money and began emphatically telling me something, which I ignored while trying to get the boy to stop waving at the camera – which, as you can tell from the picture, I was unable to do. The boy snatched the bill, like a wild animal might grab a piece of meet offered by human hand. All I could think of was that the boy was worried that if he didn’t get the money quickly, with the man telling me not to give it to him, he wouldn’t get it at all.

The man called out to another fellow selling perfume on the bridge that I had given the boy money…at least that’s what I think he said The perfume seller began walking with me and said ”Why give him money? He has no home, no place to live, no bills to pay, no business to run.” “He needs it”, I responded. “Are you American lady? Spend your money on some wonderful perfume I have for you!” he urged. I smiled and responded that I was American, knowing how much Americans are appreciated in Macedonia. “Here for business?” he asked and I knew how to respond to get him to leave me alone, as educators are revered here. “I am a professor”. “Oh, a professor”, he repeated, wide eyed, and called in Macedonian to his friend who first spotted me with the little boy “She is a professor!” I kept walking, and he waved goodbye, shouting “visit me again for wonderful perfume, American professor lady!”

You bet cha – as soon as I run out.