Nobody here could say when the ceremonies were first held in such large numbers. But villagers said they had on occasion been interrupted, by the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 and then by World War I.
There are other Bosnian Muslim villages in the Zupa Valley that once held mass Sunet ceremonies, but now only Gornje Lubinje and Donje Lubinje keep the custom going.
In each house the scene was virtually identical. Shishko entered and was followed by his assistants and a young imam. In the next room, the mother, grandmother, aunts and sisters stood dressed in white dresses and waistcoats embroidered in gold and waited for the operation to finish.
When the job was done, a band struck up outside, and relatives squeezed their way to give money to the boy, who was lying covered on the floor or a bed.
Screams of pain and loud music punctuated the day, but Kasi said, "Our trust in God gives the boys strength to overcome the pain."
It was hard to find anyone who would offer any criticism about the pace or the skill of the practitioner. "He's better than a surgeon," said Ibrahim Bilibane, a construction foreman from Donje Lubinje.
In the Bajrami household, Sehizada Bajrami, 23, was distressed as Shishko approached Selhan, her two-and-a-half-year-old son.
With tears running down her cheeks, she whimpered, "I can't decide what I feel."
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