Fatime, Pushtime and the Broom

Zvonko Davidovic

Every Monday I have a cleaning lady coming over to clean my house. I’ve known her for years and I have unlimited trust in her, in fact, how would I leave my entire house with everything in it, if I didn’t have so trust in her. When I return from work, the house shines, radiates and smells clean, as our people would say. But I know that after Fatime, that’s the name of my cleaning lady, I have to put back every little detail and ornament to its original place. All those little ornaments I’ve dragged from places I’ve visited throughout the world have all been moved and misplaced. A Greek ornament just cannot be placed between the German ones, or a Brazilian among the African, but Fatime is not really interested in the internal harmony of domestic or international divisions, or the weight and size of the ornaments, or the country of origin.
She has her own way or seeing and sorting things, her own cleaning system and the use of the broom, and it does not really matter what the owners think of it. The balconies, as the outside part of the house, are cleaned with a broom just enough to look clean at first glance, and why really bother when next Monday she will be back here and clean them again, and the city outside is so dirty that in just an hour or two the balconies will look as dirty as the whole city, full of dust. In the interior of the house, the broom plays the main role. Vacuums are no good here, the broom is the only thing that can help you hide all the dirt under the carpet. And this Fatime of mine has been doing this for years.

Just as I wanted to criticize her for the selective broom and cleaning, as one would say “like a cat with its tail”, she tells me – I’m up to date with the use of the broom, I learn from the best ones that dictate the trend of using the broom. You cannot push so much rubbish with just one broom, it will break, and brooms these days are not what they used to be, they are rarer, soft, they twist easily and break quickly, so I have to sweep carefully and gently.

I opened my mouth to say something back, but then I thought of another broom, with which someone else cleaned an even bigger house than mine, and so I kept quiet. Indeed, the broom has recently become a popular tool for cleaning and clearing out one’s yard and home, but also one’s image, promise and trust. The broom will start sweeping, the elderly used to say when it was time for some things, problems, and especially people to be cleared or cleaned up, but today when the broom starts sweeping, it does not refer to what the elderly actually thought. In fact, it’s the 21st century now, so the proverbs have been modernized, and the tools have become more sophisticated. The broom is no longer used for clearing and cleaning, but it serves to making dust that will move from one end to the other end, or to sweep the dirt under the rug, and when the dust settles everything seems cleaner and ventilated to us, because the dirt is swept under the rug, and so on until the next broom sweeping and dusting. The broom in the courts never started sweeping, there is neither dust, nor a broom, and the Judicial council does not mind the dust and the dirt, they got used to it in time. In the institutions of executive power, the broom has been sweeping from time to time, everyone is getting ready for the complete cleaning, but, in the end, it all ends with just one or two sweeps and raising clouds of dust which, by opening the windows and creating a draft, settle quite quickly. In the Parliament, it is rarely cleaned with a broom, instead of windows, they open doors there to create a draft, as for the raising clouds of dust they call a very serious company that uses HTZ equipment in the form of balaclavas as prevention from inhaling dust.

Only the cleaning in the SPO is different from the other, there it is cleaned with a broom as if *Fatime (*Catch me) works there, and maybe even her sister *Pushtime (*Let me go). So much dust is raised there each week that nothing can be seen from such a cloud, one can only hear how each corner is thoroughly cleaned, unselectively and severely. And when the dust settles one can see that everything is the same again, nothing has been moved, as if it weren’t cleaned. I must admit that in that thorough cleaning in the SPO, all recovered items has been returned, passports to some, to a holiday in Greece to others, some get their cassette with the 2014 greatest hits, or a compilation of texts for learning the Albanian language with a phrase book and audio support.

The people to whom the recovered items have been returned are so grateful that they go around the world and tell about the SPO’s domestic attitude, rejoicing and shouting everything and anything as if they are at a sports event. Of course, Fatime and Pushtime do not clean the SPO at the same time, but take turns depending on the situation on the ground, the amount of dust and the political climate.

Lately I’ve been hearing that there were remarks on the cleaning of the SPO, so it is assumed that there will be changes in the cleaning staff, that is, the broom will start sweeping in the SPO. Fatime and Pushtime oppose this and even publicly rebel that even when it was the filthiest they were the ones cleaning it, and now for someone else to come when it is clean, is just not fair. Probably, as things are going, there will be a proposal to make the broom in the SPO a lifelong one, and then even hereditary.

While telling all of this, I can’t t help but recall a story that one of the Tigers Special Forces members told me one night, while waiting in the court hallway. “We received an order to enter a house in which there was suspicion that a dangerous criminal has been hiding, under an arrest warrant,” one of the members of the Tigers squad told me. “We entered the house sometime in the early morning hours and we found ourselves in a long hallway with two doors on both the left and right side of the hall. I stopped in the middle, controlling the hallway while my colleagues checked the rooms left and right,” he continued. “As they entered the rooms and checked, they shouted out “Clear”, saying that there was no one in there, and all of a sudden, at the end of the hall, an old lady appeared in a nightgown, confused and frightened,” he further explained. “In that couple of times my colleagues yelled “Clear” from the left and right, which the old lady must have heard, I realized that the house had stairs going up, and I shouted out “Upstairs”,” my interlocutor told me. “At that moment,” my interlocutor continued through giggling, “the old lady looked at me and said to me loudly – Son, it’s clean upstairs too, I cleaned today,” the member of the Tigers squad finished the story laughing.

Obviously, we all have our own vision of the broom, the cleaning, the word and the promise, but also our own idea of ​​the people’s mental capacity. I just know that the people always have the last say and always have the last laugh, and know exactly how to use the broom.