Omer Pasha Latas Read online

  The ordinary people, particularly the rayas of all three faiths, were fearful, each in their own way and on their own account, wondering what problems and setbacks could come for them from these conflicts and clashes between armed authority and the Bosnian leaders and landed gentry.

  For all these reasons, the entry of the seraskier and his army was a significant event, of importance not only for Sarajevo but for the whole of Bosnia and every living thing there.

  Like all towns that have to endure a damp autumn and long winter, Sarajevo has a fine, luxuriant summer, of which April brings a foretaste. The delight of that month is not scattered by winds or shriveled by early heat, as in some other places. It settles for a long time, tranquilly, in the Sarajevo basin, as at the bottom of a deep vessel, spreading, lasting, and accessible to all, it makes everyone’s life more agreeable, or at least easier.

  It was an April day promising just such a summer when the town criers in the residential quarters, the mahalas, announced that “on this coming Friday” the imperial seraskier, Marshal Omer Pasha, would reach Sarajevo with his army and that “an hour or two before the evening prayer” he would enter through the Višegrad Gate and make his way down Kovači Street into the town. All people “of position and renown” should come out to await the seraskier, to welcome him and wish him every success in carrying out the state business that brought him here. That is what the town criers called. It was both an invitation and a command.

  There had already been a summons to all the pashas, town officials and leading men of Bosnia and Herzegovina to come in person to Sarajevo, to await the seraskier and listen to the imperial decree about the new organization of the country. And they had been summoned in such an unambiguously sharp and menacing manner that not even the most resolute and the most arrogant among them had dared to ignore it. After brief hesitation, even the Mostar vizier, Ali Pasha Rizvanbegović, arrived, he who for the last ten years or so had not come to meet a single Bosnian vizier.

  Here in Sarajevo, as always happens, the people who responded to the town crier’s summons included both those who were compelled to be present and those who were not. Some were driven by need, some by fear, and others by an overwhelming, absurd, human curiosity. The first to respond were the beys and members of prominent families whose name, position and estate meant that they were obliged to appear on such occasions; then the town’s worthies and civil servants, representatives of the faiths and churches, schools, guilds and institutions. But there were also many ordinary people with neither name nor status. Driven by groundless fear and an exaggeratedly high opinion of themselves, they understood the summons to refer also to them, and believed that they must definitely appear at the parade, if they did not wish to fall foul of the authorities and this seraskier of whom horrifying stories were told. In fact, their presence in person in this packed crowd went unnoticed, just as no one would have noticed their absence either. The greatest number were the poor and idle and, of course, children. The times were lean and hard, and if a person could not shoe and clothe himself properly or eat his fill, he could at least feast his eyes on a rare spectacle such as this, which might bring new and unexpected things.

  All the officials and leaders from the town and surroundings had gathered on a spacious, sloping square. The military band, the like of which had never been heard before or its instruments ever seen, reached the top of the steep street and halted there. The portly redhaired choirmaster raised his long conductor’s baton, and the band, playing all the while, circled to the right and halted directly in front of the row of dignitaries.

  The excitement among the children and townspeople was enormous. They felt a profound unease, manifested now in a warm glow, now in a chill of fear that would not let them stand still. They had the feeling that something really was changing in their monotonous life and that this thunder of drums and metal instruments and the shrill notes of bassoons and flutes would remain in the air as something constant and enduring, accompanying them from now on every day at every step, instead of falling silent and fading away like every other sound. This sent shivers up their spines and made their eyes shine and lips quiver as if they too were about to start singing, although they did not know how or what. Meanwhile, the leaders in their heavy robes were, by contrast, pale and subdued. Motionless, their eyes lowered, they listened to this unwanted music as something provocative and insulting, breaking into their anxious thoughts, which would have been far better suited to calm and silence.

  Then a group of mounted officers appeared and the military band reduced its volume, changing to a light, cheerful cavalry march. The people could not take their eyes off the officers. They were crisply and splendidly dressed, well-fed and turned-out, as if they had just risen from their beds in Istanbul, washed, shaved and spruced up, then suddenly found themselves on the steep cobbled streets of Sarajevo, among this motley crowd of poorly dressed and meagerly nourished people.

  There was a pause, a little interruption in the procession, so the surprise that followed should be all the greater, and then—on a white horse with gilded harness and red tassels, in a dark blue uniform embroidered with gold, slender and as poured from a mold, there was the seraskier Omer Pasha. He was like an apparition, unexpectedly mild and benign. As if not riding a horse but floating on a cloud. In surprise and wonderment, not believing their own eyes, the crowd watched the reflection of the early-evening sun falling onto his breast and illuminating his face, with its slightly graying beard and expression of stern dignity and enigmatic kindliness.

  Behind him, again at a distance, rode a group of officers. And then came the army. All in dark uniforms, with leather straps crossed over their chests and German boots on their feet, the soldiers marched at a ceremonial pace, and it was only the fezzes on their heads that distinguished them from a Christian army. The cavalry, small in number but spruce, passed, then the engineers and medical corps, unusual in appearance and equipment, and finally the artillery. With a great clamor and rumbling, strong, well-fed and groomed horses dragged long-distance and short mountain guns, and heavy, brown ammunition wagons with young soldiers sitting on them, their teeth clenched, jostling like dolls, their fleshy Asiatic cheeks quivering in the rhythm of their progress. And as they made their way down the broad, steep street, it seemed that they were emerging straight out of a russet cloud stretching above them along the edge of the hill.

  And when it had all thundered past, like a vision, many of the idle spectators stayed where they were, entranced, blinking as from too bright a glare. They felt that the might and dignity of the new imperial army was still passing before them, conjuring up unusual images of a world they may have heard something about but had never seen with their own eyes until this moment. (In fact, that was just the advance guard, a kind of exemplar of the army of ten, even eleven or twelve thousand, some say, now marching onto Bosnian soil.) How terrible, mysterious, dangerous and, like it or not, beautiful, everything that had passed before them—weapons, soldiers and, particularly, the officers! How sleek their horses and how clean and bright everything on them! How strong, pale-skinned and proud were they themselves! As though fed on different, more potent and finer food than people here in Bosnia, or as though they breathed a softer, more refined air. They stood out strikingly from the motley mass in their haphazard clothes as they passed. And to most of the people, lined up in two rows, the army did look as if it belonged to a distant world, which knew nothing of need and feared no one. The mere fact that such a world could exist brought tears to many eyes, tears of indeterminate origin and of mixed, quite contradictory emotions. The embodiment of this world was the seraskier on his white horse. As he rode past slowly, majestically, they did not know what to look at first, the expression on his face, his uniform, the weapons, or his easy, almost weightless, stately bearing. And when, with his officers, soldiers, wagons and horses, he was lost to sight among the rickety houses, what remained longest in people’s memories was his appearance, above all the costly emblem on
his fez, a crescent and star of diamonds and various other precious stones that gleamed and sparkled with a gold, blue and greenish glow, such as found only among celestial bodies. A small, fragile thing, which in itself could do nothing but symbolize the imperial authority and state power that raised countries and peoples up and cast them down, and on which, ultimately, everything a man needs in his life depended: food, clothing, weapons, peace, freedom and contentment.

  Confused and afraid, shaken and somehow ashamed, the crowd began gradually to disperse. They moved slowly and in silence, because they did not know what to say and because they found it hard to return to their ordinary limited lives, down there in their native town. With each step, they began to sober up, pull themselves together, liberate themselves from the spell the seraskier’s procession had momentarily cast over them. By the time they reached their homes, they were sober again. Sitting beside their single flickering candle, waiting for an evening meal that was in most cases neither rich nor substantial, they relived everything they had seen an hour or so earlier on the square, looking at it all now through different eyes and assessing it in a new way.

  It is true that up to now no single vizier—and many had passed through Sarajevo—had displayed such brilliance and organization, or such power. Nevertheless, it was clear to everyone, and becoming ever clearer, that in the whole of this splendid parade there had also been something artificial, false, forced. The procession, as they saw it now in their mind’s eye, was truly impressive and intimidating, but somehow overdone. In front of it and behind it, to the right and left of it, stretched the deprivation of a poor harvest and a hungry spring, the bleakness of crooked, puddle-filled alleys, dilapidated eaves and long unpainted houses, the poorly dressed people and their anxious faces. One could feel the breath of exceptionally difficult times, which would bring nobody any good but fill the air above their heads with unspecified threats and real dangers. It seemed as though that dazzling army, which stood out so starkly from the town it was entering, had for some reason needed simply to march past, to be seen and noticed, and that now everything would dissolve like a sugar lump in murky water. The fine horses, the unusual, sumptuous uniforms and the new, unknown and ominous weaponry, all would go back where it had come from. The soldiers and their officers, like acrobats and magicians, would disperse, disappear, now gray and ordinary, in the ordinary grayness of the Sarajevo streets. Now the power and beauty they had seen seemed more like an expensive, mournful foreign masquerade. And the fact that this masquerade was also dangerous, and could easily become deadly, certainly did not make it any more appealing or cheerful.

  •

  Yes, truly, for all its splendor and severity, its real menace and danger, there had been something unnatural and deranged about that whole parade. And a crazy incident with a genuine madman had nearly upset it at the outset.

  Despite all the policemen lined in front of the crowd like a living, temporary wall, at one point crazy Osman, that well-known, harmless local madman, came running out of a side road, thin, ragged, breathless, and found a gap in the living wall. He emerged suddenly in front of the officer riding at the head of the procession and stopped there, stock still. The officer’s white horse took fright and shied, then reared twice. The rider managed to stay on the horse, soothing and calming it, but a ripple from the disturbance ran through the procession, affecting those riding behind and eventually, diminished along the way, it reached the seraskier himself, so that his horse too started to prance sideways. But before the seraskier noticed, everything had calmed down and the procession continued on its way.

  At this point a tall junior officer leaped from his horse and grabbed hold of the tattered man by his thin shoulders. He wanted to cut him down then and there. But the man was so frail, making no attempt to defend himself, that the officer’s fury did not meet with proper resistance. Instead of a rebel and assassin, he held in his hands a confused, pitiful, sick man. One of the policemen took charge of him, while the officer shouted a threat:

  “Whip him! Mercilessly! To the falaka with him!”

  He ran back to take his place in the procession, which was moving down Kovači Street without disturbance or delay. The people quickly dispersed. Only the policeman was left in the open space, bewildered, not knowing what to do with his captive.

  •

  Some ten years earlier, Osman had been a healthy, handsome young man. He lived with his widowed mother and younger sister. They had a tall, well-built house in an alley, with two paved yards and a fine garden. He had inherited a shop from his father and strong links with his father’s business associates. And he was a good friend to his friends who loved him. He differed from them only in his innate reserve. He was particularly embarrassed by their youthful bold conversations, and he did not like going on assignations on Fridays in the mahalas. This made his friends tease him. And when they did manage to drag him along, he behaved awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable, around all the marriageable young women, more or less hidden behind latticed windows or doors left slightly ajar. He responded to his friends’ jokes and whispers mostly with an embarrassed silence and always the same slight, detached smile. He behaved in the same way with his mother when she tried, frequently, to persuade and beg him to marry. He refused with a joke or replied in a roundabout way, trying to put off such a conversation. Otherwise, he was a good son and a thoroughly decent young man.

  And yet, in less than two years, he had become incurably ill, suffering from the most difficult and terrible of afflictions.

  When a household is struck by such great and unexpected misfortune, when a man suffers such abrupt, complete collapse, it is usually hard to find an explanation that does not seem superficial and inadequate. The hodjas and shamans came to the conclusion that the young man had succumbed to some kind of spell. But of what kind and from where? The web of speculation was too fine and its threads broke at every attempt to disentangle them. The little that those treating and nursing him had been able to draw out of him was imprecise. The apparent cause of his illness seemed insubstantial, inadequate because the reason remained uncertain.

  It often happened that Osman traveled with goods he was delivering. That summer he had gone as far as Nova Varoš.

  On the way, just outside Višegrad, he had ridden ahead of the hired carriers he was traveling with, taking a shortcut. It was a sunny day, the morning fresh, and the young man filled with a quiet but potent joy that drove him on. In his delight, he was misled by the unmarked path and lost his way among dark-green dense orchards, and suddenly came beside a fountain among the houses of an unfamiliar hamlet, face-to-face with a girl who, unveiled, was washing her hands and splashing her glowing cheeks. Not expecting any stranger from that direction, the girl turned her head freely, while her body remained bent over the wooden trough into which water was pouring in an abundant stream. Turning toward him, she appeared to be offering that bright face to him. The face, shining with the water, sun and her smile, was small, but her big, wonderfully shaped eyes made it seem even smaller. Her smile was so unusual and delicate that her eyes were not narrowed by it but rather widened. Only her finely shaped lips were parted, showing her white teeth. They trembled with a slight, barely perceptible quiver, as if at the thought of half-ripe fruit. Great, dazzling beauty, unconscious of itself, radiating happiness and trust in everything around it.

  Later the young man wondered how it was possible that he had seen all that, and in an instant. Because at the very moment the girl caught sight of him and realized with horror that he was a stranger and not one of her family, she raised her arm first to cover her face then to lower her white scarf over it, and sped, with the soft bound of the lightest wild creature, into her courtyard. But not before he had managed to be aware of all the beauty in the proportions of her strong white arm and the perfectly sculpted face which she, in fear, shame and horror, was endeavoring to hide.

  Alarmed himself, he too fled, as the girl had, in the opposite direction, disentangling himself with
difficulty from the overgrown tracks and numerous fences and all at once emerged onto the main road on the edge of the town. There he waited for the carriers.

  For the rest of the journey he seemed calm and composed. He reached Nova Varoš safely, concluded his business and returned a week later to Sarajevo. At first that brief, innocent glimpse of the smiling girl at the fountain came to him as a memory of a journey, briefly and intermittently. But, as the days passed, instead of fading, the face he had seen and its smile came to settle firmly in the young man. Had he been dreaming? No, he had not. A dream is forgotten, driven out by reality or by a new dream, while that face was now part of him. He often asked these questions and answered them himself. But with time, the questions and answers went away. It never occurred to him that she was a living, smiling girl, at a real fountain in a real village, whose hand he could perhaps ask for. The smile once seen burned in him, and only in him, parallel to his conscious mind.

  That mild, imperceptible intoxication, self-contained, lasted for months. Always shy and a little withdrawn, he showed no outward changes. He did his work, went out to gatherings with his contemporaries but was never parted from his secret vision of the girl’s radiant face, shielded and extinguished by her strong white arm. He continued to be a good, quiet and always somewhat distracted companion.