For Octogenarian, the Glass Is Always Full

A retired lumberjack with nine children, 17 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren must know a thing or two about virility.

So who can argue with Ibrahim Selimbasic when he says his gift is in a glass of water?

Selimbasic is 88, toothless and a little unsteady on his feet, but he still has a mischievous twinkle in his eye, for which he thanks a mineral spring trickling down nearby Konjuh Mountain.

A villager cutting meadow grass with his scythe discovered the source sometime before World War I. It wasn’t long until men in this predominantly Muslim region of Bosnia-Herzegovina were traveling from miles away to enjoy the spring’s special qualities. They called it muska voda, or “men’s water.”

“And then the women realized the water was good and would say: ‘Bring the water!’ ” Selimbasic said.

As a young man, Selimbasic cut trees on Konjuh Mountain and drank from the source as he worked. After knocking off each day, he filled a small wooden barrel called a brema, loaded it onto his horse and trudged five miles back home.

The reason for going to all the trouble was simple, Selimbasic explained at his picnic table over a glass of men’s water and a cigarette, which he smoked from a small wooden holder.

“You know what? A man wants a woman, and a woman wants a man,” he said. “A man drinks that water and instantly wants a woman lying next to him.”

The very thought brought a triumphant smile to his grizzled face. The visitor ruined the moment with a question: Is a drink of men’s water all it takes, or do you need atmosphere?

“You bring meat with you, and you take your wife with you,” the old man replied, a little impatiently. “And then you have the water. And then you have the woman. It can’t get any better than that.”

Another raffish smile lit up his eyes.

Selimbasic has been single since his wife, Semsa, died 24 years ago, but he never lost his charm, or his love of men’s water--once bottled and exported but now available only to those willing to make the trek.

The dirt path to the source of men’s water is well-worn but narrow as it comes out of the cool pine forest and winds through a meadow with a large haystack shaped like a beehive standing in the middle.

A few minutes further, back into the forest, the water issues weakly out of an old pipe and down a channel laid with flat stones. There are bits of trash lying about, mostly labels from empty mineral water bottles that pilgrims refilled with men’s water.

Someone also had dropped a small foil packet that once contained a blood glucose sensor electrode, manufactured by MediSense Inc. of Bedford, Mass.

True believers say men’s water is good for more than just impotence and can help low blood pressure, weak appetite, feeble metabolism and general lack of vigor. They say science proved the claims years ago when samples were shipped to Italy and Switzerland.

Anyone in a hurry to test the water today need only go about three miles down the mountainside from the source, where there is easy accommodation at the Men’s Water Hotel.

The musty-smelling inn, about seven miles from the town of Kladanj, has 150 beds. Most were empty recently, and at midday, there was no one behind the reception desk to welcome those who might need a quick bed.

When it opened in 1971, the hotel was named the Konjuh, after the mountain, but men’s water was one of the main selling points in the color brochures. The parking lot usually had 50 to 100 tour buses lined up, said Ramo Sehic, the hotel manager.

In the ‘70s, a Japanese company proposed building an airport nearby to bring in more customers and even some geishas, but the Communist government of the time turned down the offer, Sehic said. His faith in men’s water has not been shaken by his establishment’s decline.

“It’s definitely not an abstract thing, like the Virgin Mary of Medjugorje,” Sehic said, referring to a revered site for Catholics in Bosnia. “There is something to it. Everyone believes in it.”

Men’s water was once exported in bottles that carried the label Kladanjska Voda. The label listed 18 minerals, such as lithium, barium and manganese, which combine to give the water its unique taste, with a hint of tin--if not more.

“I never drank brandy--only men’s water--and the doctor told me I’ll have a long life,” Selimbasic said.

The water-bottling operation is long dead, and as Bosnia tries to rebuild from a vicious 3 1/2-year war that ended in 1995, marketing men’s water is not a high priority.

But it is still a boon of a different sort to local villages, where it’s common for men to have two wives, said Selimbasic’s grandson Hajrudin, 34.

“Yes, they do, but be quiet about that,” the elder Selimbasic scolded his grandson, who has been known to have a few sips of the water himself.

“They ought to have women--it’s easy to get hold of the water,” Selimbasic added. But he suddenly remembered how much trouble he has getting his supply these days, and thought aloud: “One of them has a car, I guess.”

Selimbasic tires easily these days and can’t make it all the way to the source on his own. The young men of the family don’t bring men’s water down the mountainside anymore, so he savors it whenever some comes his way.

“I can’t get enough of this water,” he said, after taking another sip.

During Bosnia’s war, Selimbasic ran a water-powered mill and braved shelling and mortar fire to keep the village supplied with flour.

“I had very little food. I didn’t have tobacco, just leaves to smoke,” the old man said. “But I had this water--I always had water.”

With all its powers, men’s water, it seems, cannot cure a broken heart. It’s been 67 years since Selimbasic was jilted, and he says the woman’s name as if it were yesterday. She was Zejna Muhic, a girlfriend from the village of Pauc.

When Selimbasic left for military service, she left him for another man.

“Screw her,” Selimbasic said, still bitter after all these years. “She married a man from her village.”

But she was widowed in World War II when Serbian soldiers attacked the village and killed 30 people, Selimbasic said. She remarried, and that husband died too, of natural causes.

So she is alone now, Selimbasic said. And it was clear as men’s water that he missed her.