A tobacco tale

Bisera, my Macedonian host, says a must when in Prilep is afternoon Turkish coffee in the Old Bazaar. Svelte waiters pirouette their way through the maze of red plastic tables serving short men with pipes, women palavering and resonant children, all curling their lips at the noon sun. The strong, dark smell of roasted coffee blends in with the distinct odor of the local pipe tobacco, a softer smell than cigarette smoke. With no place to sit, we follow one of the narrow concrete curves out of the epicenter: late summer is when tobacco leaves are hung to dry everywhere you look. People line the jade leaves on wooden fence-like boards to soak up the sun. Sea green tobacco curtains decorate the streets and fill the air with a crisp, fall smell. The tobacco is grown on endless fields encircling Prilep, and has a long-established cash crop due to the favorable Macedonian climate.

Bisera’s uncle, Aleksandar, helped establish the Prilep Tobacco Museum, which he proudly gives us a private tour of. “There is a sacred dimension to smoking with others” he confesses, his black eyes smiling. Growing his own tobacco for the past six years, he invites all guests to smoke shisha or pipe at his house. Aleksandar’s visitors are mostly tourists from America and the Balkans. He has never been to most of his visitors’ home countries but his insights into human nature and cultural peculiarities are inexhaustible, a treasure trove of anecdotes. “My guests share their realities with me and I feel I travelled a lot more than I actually did. That’s how I see the world”, he says with a grin.

Sadly we have to leave and I take a rain check on smoking the much acclaimed home grown tobacco. Nevertheless, Aleksadar’s enthusiasm for tobacco and sharing is contagious, inspiring even. Driving up the curvy road leaving Prilep, a molehill of dark tile roofs in the near distance slowly blends into the vast green sea of tobacco curtains. The rain check comes to mind.