Fatmir Terziu: The Ballakume of Fate

Fatmir Terziu: The Ballakume of Fate

In the early mornings of March, when the light enters the house like a shy guest and touches only the corners of the table, the mother’s hands wake up before everyone. They make no noise. They never have. They simply begin to move, as if they know their way around this world even before words were born. In the middle of the table stands the sieve. The mother pours the flour in and shakes it slowly. The white particles fall like soft snow, a snow that does not cool, but promises bread, sweetness, and life. I have always thought that flour, before it becomes dough, is like hope light, scattered, shapeless, but full of possibilities.

The mother’s hands sift the flour as if separating the visible from the invisible. What remains on top of the sieve is heavy, unnecessary; what falls below is soft, pure, ready to become something else. Maybe life is like that, I have often thought: a great sieve where time shakes us, until only what is worth it remains.

As the sieve shakes, the mother's lips move lightly. It is not a loud prayer. It is more a whisper that belongs to the old days, those times when people believed that good things should be called upon with humility.

- Let luck come with this ballakume, - she would say slowly.

- Let love come.

- And may life remain sweet.

Then the flour becomes dough. Water and butter are mixed with it; the eggs open like little suns on its whiteness. The mother's hands enter the dough and begin to work it with calm concentration, like someone sorting out a great secret of the world. The dough begins to breathe. With each squeeze of the hands, with each bend of the dough, it seems as if time itself bows before a tradition that has never lost its way. Mothers have done this before my mother. And before them, other mothers. Generations have mixed flour with hope, as if it were the most indispensable ingredient of life. A mother does not see the dough as a recipe. She sees it as a prayer that takes shape, because a cake is not just a dessert. It is a way of telling the world that we still believe in goodness. We still believe that luck can knock on a house where hands work and hearts pray.

When the dough is ready, the mother divides it into small pieces. She carefully rounds them and places them on the baking sheet, one next to the other, like little stars waiting to be born. There, in that silent moment, where the oven has not yet been turned on and the aroma has not yet filled the house, something unseen happens. Hope takes shape. And perhaps that is why people have always made bread and cakes, not only to nourish the body, but to give the heart a reason to believe. When the ballakume come out of the oven, golden and warm, the mother places them on the table and smiles that smile that only mothers know. A smile that says that prayers, even when they are not heard, always find their way.

I take a piece. It is soft. It is sweet. And for a moment, it seems to me that all of life could be just like this, a handful of flour sifted through the sieve of time. bëjë botën pak më të ëmbël.