After my heart attack (November 2010), the doctor said I had “survived this time,” but if I had to come to him again, I wouldn’t leave the hospital. He explained that there were five things I must give up, counting them all out on the fingers of his left hand: 1. cigarettes, 2. cigarettes, 3. cigarettes, 4. cigarettes, 5. cigarettes. Sanja took his explanation literally, and I had no choice, I had to stop smoking. Four years later, at Ivica Puljić’s apartment, I lit a cigarette on the balcony and puffed a bit, it was a delightful, cheerful gathering, with a lot of dear and interesting people, but then Sanja caught sight of me in a cloud of smoke and went berserk, shouting at me and bursting into tears. At midnight she rushed outside and I followed her, and our friends were left in shock. In the morning they called to apologize, as though they were to blame for my lighting up.

Last month, Obama was in Cuba, and my colleagues from work went to Cuba to report on the historic visit of the American president. When they were preparing for the journey, H. asked what they should bring me, and I said a cohiba. I said it without thinking, more from a need to give her an impossible task, because Cuban cigars could still not be brought across the American border. But, at some risk, traveling in the group of journalists accompanying Obama, H. brought over a wooden box of twenty-five cohibas. I don’t know whose pleasure was greater, mine when I was given the gift or hers because she had been able to smuggle the cigars for me. When I came home with the box, Sanja dug in her heels, what’s this, was I going to start smoking again? Of course not, these are cigars, you just puff on them, you don’t inhale and they aren’t dangerous. Out of the question! And I said: Okay, the box is just for a decoration on the table, I’ll give the cigars to friends, until they’re all gone. Nevertheless, she kept a close eye on the box, secretly opening it and counting the cigars in it, while I would take one in the morning in a little ziplock bag, justifying myself by saying it was a gift for Ivica or Asim or Santiago; at the end of the day, she would sniff me to check whether I smelled of tobacco.

Every time I use the word puff, I think of Mirko Kovač. He never smoked, he told me, he simply didn’t like the smell of tobacco smoke. But once, in a Moscow hotel, his friend, a film director, opened a box of cigars in front of him that were specially made in Cuba for the Yugoslav president. There was a gold ring round each cigar, with TITO inscribed on it. “I had to try one, to see what a cigar called TITO tasted like! But I didn’t know that cigars should be puffed, that their smoke should not be inhaled. I took three drags and passed out.”