Nasiha
Nasiha b. 1956 Prijedor. Interview by Dzenita, Ana and Adela are also present.
Ana Croegaert: Okay.
Nasiha: Okay. So, I started to roast the beans. Uh… I went to visit my mom and my father and I stayed with them and there was a lady, she used to work there at the store. There was a small store, they sell the coffee and they roast the coffee. And then… And that lady, she was working there, and she said, “Would you like to work there?” I said, “Oh, yeah. I would like, but I don’t have any papers, anything.” She said, “You don’t need it, nothing. Just go to work, but there is not a lot of money.” They didn’t pay you a lot, you know. I said, “Okay, doesn’t matter how much they pay me, but I just wanna work.” And then she said, “The whole day, if you’re working, like eight hours, eight-and-a-half, doesn’t matter, uh, for that money, you can just buy a small chicken.” (Laughter.) Just a chicken, you know. That was…
AC: I hear you, yeah.
Nasiha: Like, if you’re working here, you… If somebody say, okay, I’m gonna give you a job, then it’s gonna be 10 dollars by hour, you know. There was eight hours and they give you the money that you can buy just a small chicken, nothing else. Okay, that was for eight hours. But okay, doesn’t matter, I pick up that job and then they show me how to do that. They put the fresh beans in a basement, you know, and then you have a stairs to go there to the basement and they have a big… Like a… Bags or something, you know, plast…uh. pape… uh no. Fabrics.
AC: Yeah, that’s like a big fab… Like a, like a sack of…
Nasiha: Yes. And then you have to open it, that, and then they give you the plastic, uhm, can’t… Kako se kaže kanta? (trans.: “What’s the word for bucket?”)
Dženita Lukačević: Uh, the basket.
Nasiha: Basket, yeah. They give you the basket like this, and then you have to fill it with fresh beans, you know, put on a top, full, and then you have to take that to go up, uh, from basement, to take the stairs to go up, and there was, uh, there was a machine. You know. And then you have to put in a tub, uh, uh, all coffee to be roasted. You know? And then you have to know when is the time that you just have to turn off the machine. You know. Because, doesn’t have to be dark, doesn’t have to be, uh, you know, light or something. You have to find, uh, the middle, uh, how long you have to roast that. Maybe ten minutes, fifteen minutes, or something, and then you have to turn off, because, doesn’t have to be, uh, too dark or too light, you know? Then, uh…
AC: So, did you have to stay there the whole time?
Nasiha: You had to stay all the time, you have to be there and then watch that, and just, you know, mix it, and then, everything has to be the same, you know. All beans has to be the same color. You cannot just have one side dark color, one side light color. And then. And then I, uh, when I finished with that, then you have to take out that coffee and there was a, on the other side, there was a small machine. They had to, uh… (Inaudible, in Serbo-Croatian.)
DL: Grind.
Nasiha: Grind the coffee, yeah. And then, uh, when you finished with that, uh, you had to pack, you know? They give you the small paper bags and then they put on a.. vaga? (transl.: a scale)
DL: The scale.
Nasiha: Scale, yeah. And then you had to put there and then you had to have twenty… E sad kako kažu oni.… 20 deka, 10 deka? (trans.: What’s their word for… 20 decagrams, 10 decagrams?)
DL: Uh…
AC: Like, ounces?
Nasiha: How many ounces? Yeah…
[indecipherable, a few voices at the same time, a discussion about metric conversions]
AC: And this was for Minas?
Nasiha: Yeah, that was Minas coffee.
AC: Okay.
Nasiha: Minas coffee, because everybody…
AC: So was it like a factory?
Nasiha: It was a, no, it was a private business.
AC: Okay.
Nasiha: It was a private business….
AC: But they were roasting for Minas? They would sell to Minas, or they would…?
Nasiha: No, no, no, they sell the... Uh, they had a, like, a small store there. Yeah.
AC: Okay.
Nasiha: And then the people come in to buy. Because it was when, when you roasted the coffee, oh, you had a beautiful…
AC: Oh, the smell is…
Nasiha: Smell, yeah.
Nasiha: Okay, and then, when I, when I finished roasting the coffee then I start to sell the coffee.
Dženita Lukačević: To sell?
Nasiha: To sell the coffee at, oh, two-three o’clock PM and that was that. And the second day was the same job, the same routine, the same everything. It was very…
DL: Were you selling it… Were you selling it from the store?
Nasiha: Yes.
DL: The factory or…?
Nasiha: No, no, no, no, I was selling there, in the same place, in the same room. Because it was a huge place, and then, that was together. And, uh, that’s it, that’s all. It was very hard, very heavy, and every single day you had to take a shower, wash your hair and everything, it was the smell of coffee.
DL: How come you didn’t end up hating coffee?
Nasiha: No.
DL: You continued to drink it?
Nasiha: Oh, I never did, I didn’t, I never drank a lot of coffee. I just had a coffee in the morning and that’s it. Okay, that’s all about coffee.
