Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (26 page)

Maybe it was from an overpowering desire for tranquillity, maybe from the healing quiet that followed the children’s screams, or because of the unchanging flow of the river, which gurgled barely audibly, but the tension inside me began to slacken. I even felt hunger; I did not know when I had last eaten. I needed to eat something; it would strengthen me, it would distract my attention, but I thought cheerfully that the time was not right. Mustafa was angry. I had driven out the children, and maybe that was something that I should not have done. Although I had calmed down—the silence was good for me—I was still sorry. Not very much, and that was good. But it was also good that I was sorry: I was returning to ordinary thoughts, to ordinary life, in which a man is part good, part evil, all with a moderation that is acceptable even if we think it is fairly boring. Perhaps it is bad when one does not feel that time is passing too slowly. War is not boring; neither is misfortune and trouble. Life is not boring when it is difficult.

So I reached that pleasant state of superficial thought that does not cramp up or clash with itself, but glides over the surface of things, finding easy solutions that solve nothing. And that is not reflection, it is daydreaming, wallowing in thought, a pleasant laziness of the brain. But nothing could
have been better for me then. No, I had not forgotten anything of the greatest distress of my life: it weighed down my insides like a stone; my blood carried it on its long paths, like poison; it crouched in the folds of my brain like a polyp. But it abated at that moment, like a serious disease; a period of relief began, and it seemed as if the disease were gone. That brief absence of oppression, that momentary deliverance from suffering, precisely because it was so short-lived (and everything in me knew that), enabled me to see everything around me as something intimate and beautiful. I felt that my presence in this universal harmony was almost happiness.

Hafiz-Muhammed returned from somewhere, greeted me and went off to his room. A good man, I thought, still absorbed with the happiness of my shallow harmony and simplified thinking, it seems that life is unjust to him, but that’s just a prejudice; life is life, one is just like another, everyone seeks happiness, but troubles come on their own. His happiness was books, just as for others it is love. His trouble was sickness, just as for others it is poverty, or banishment. We all walk from one bank to another, on the thin ropes of our lives, and each of our ends is known; they are all the same.

I remembered the verses of Hussein-effendi of Mostar
²
and recited them slowly, with a pleasure that I had not felt before. I heard them as a soft whisper, harmless, without dark overtones:

      
Bareheaded and barefoot, Shahin the acrobat

      
stepped onto the tightrope, over which

      
the breeze alone passes without fear.

      
Shahin, the falcon, feared no danger,

      
asked for God’s help and crossed over to the other bank.

      
And the little falcons, his apprentices,

      
passed over the chasm.

      
Above the water, on which the sun glistened,

      
they looked like pearls

      
strung on a thin thread.

      
The deep gorge beneath them,

      
the distant heavens above them.

      
And they on the unsteady tightrope,

      
on the dangerous path of life.

That image of a lonely, yet courageous man on the difficult path of life corresponded well to the sense of fate that I had then. If I had been in a different mood, I might have been upset by my hopelessness and condemnation to a dreary march, but at that moment it seemed like a sensible reconciliation, even like defiance. I did not know what the good Husein-effendi had really meant, but it seemed to me that he was laughing a little both at himself and others.

Hafiz-Muhammed came out of the tekke and stopped by the fence above the river. His face was pale, upset. He did not even look at me. Was he sick?

“How are you feeling today?”

“Me? I don’t know. Bad.”

I could sense that he did not like me, but I did not hold it against him. He was also walking the tightrope between two banks, the best he knew how. Sometimes he even tried to be kind.

I asked him, smiling, still in my good mood, ready to understand everything, ready to be thankful: “Tell me the truth: did you know what the kadi’s wife wanted, and is that why you sent me to her?”

“Which kadi’s wife?”

“There’s only one kadi in town. And only one kadi’s wife, Hassan’s sister.”

He got angry, almost disgusted. I was not used to seeing him like that.

“Don’t mention their names together, please!”

“Then you knew. But you didn’t want to get involved, right?”

“Forget that scum, for God’s sake! I wanted to help you, that’s why I didn’t go. But don’t mention them now.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you found out?”

“About what?”

“Then I have to tell you.”

From his troubled voice, from the painstaking effort that it took for him to look into my face, from his restless hands, which he continually thrust into his deep pockets and pulled out again, from everything about him that I had never seen before, that made him look like someone else, and from the fear that seized me, I knew that he had something very painful to say to me.

I asked him, rushing to immerse myself in the black waters:

“About my brother?”

“Yes.”

“Is he alive?”

“Dead. They killed him three days ago.”

He was not able to say anything else; nor did I ask.

I looked at him: he was crying, his mouth was contorted, he was terribly ugly. I know that I noticed this, and I know that I was surprised that he was crying. I did not cry. I did not even feel any pain. What he had said flared like a blinding light, and there was a calm.

The water gurgled peacefully.

I heard a bird in the trees.

Well, it’s all over, I thought.

I felt relief: it’s all over.

“So,” I said, “I guess that’s it. Above this water sparkling with the golden sun.”

“Calm down,” said Hafiz-Muhammed horrified, thinking that I had gone mad. “Calm down. We’ll pray to God for his soul.”

“Yes. That’s all we can do.”

I did not even feel pain. It was as if some part of me had been torn away, and it was no longer there: that was all. It was quite strange for it to be gone, quite unbelievable, quite
impossible, but it had hurt more while it was there.

Mustafa also came, Hafiz-Muhammed had surely told him about my distress. He brought me something in a copper bowl, greatly moved, even clumsier than usual.

“You need to eat,” he told me, trying not to shout. “You haven’t had anything since yesterday.”

He put the bowl in front of me, like medicine, like a sign of his concern; I ate, I did not know what. Both of them looked at me, one beside me, the other in front of me, like feeble guards against sorrow.

And then, between two mouthfuls, that absent part of me began to hurt.

I stopped eating, dumbfounded, and got up slowly, very slowly.

“Where are you going?” asked Hafiz-Muhammed.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where I’ll go.”

“Don’t go anywhere. Not now. Stay here with me.”

“I can’t stay.”

“Go into your room. Cry, if you can.”

“I can’t cry.”

I gradually realized what had happened, and pain began to engulf me, like a river that rises quietly, and while it was still at my ankles, I thought with apprehension about my fear of the despair that was to come.

And then I felt a sudden burst of rage, as if my brother were standing guilty before me. It serves you right, my tearful anger hissed inside me, what were you trying to do, what did you want? You’ve brought misery on us, you foolish man! Why?

And that passed as well. It lasted only for a moment, but it set me back in motion.

From the hills, from the Gypsy mahal, came the deafening beats of a drum, at short intervals, and a zurna wailed, incessantly, without interruption; it had gone on all day, the entire previous night, and forever, the horrible madness of
Saint George’s Day rushed down on the kasaba like defiance, or a threat. I listened to it and trembled, a big kettledrum was beating somewhere, sounding an alarm, summoning those who were no more, all our dead brothers above and below the earth. Someone had survived and was calling.

He was calling in vain.

There were still no thoughts or tears inside me, no direction. I should not have gone anywhere, but I was going somewhere; there must have been some trace of my dead brother Harun.

My river flowed beneath the small stone bridge, and on the other side there was dead land. I had never crossed that bridge, except with my eyes. That was where the bazaar, the kasaba, and all life ended, where the short road to the fortress began.

My brother had passed this way and never returned.

Since then I had often gone in my thoughts from the stone bridge to the heavy oak gates that split the gray walls. In those imaginary visits I had walked as in a dream; the road was always empty, cleared for my arrival (which was tortuous even in my thoughts), so that I would be able to pass more easily. The gates were the goal of everything: the road led from everywhere only to them; they were the meaning of fate, the triumphal arch of death. I saw them in my thoughts, in my dreams, in my fears. I sensed their dark calls and insatiable hunger. I always turned around and fled; they watched my back, luring me, waiting. Like darkness, like an abyss, like an answer. Behind them was a secret, or nothing. There all questions began and ended, began for the living, and ended for the dead.

For the first time I was actually walking through the street of my endless nightmares; for a long time I had been uncertain as to how I would meet it. And it was indeed deserted, as I had imagined and hoped then, but now it no longer mattered. I would even have preferred for it not to be so empty: it resembled a graveyard. It watched me, gloomily, darkly,
viciously, as if it were saying: you have still come! This passage into nothing unnerved me, and killed even that small amount of pitiful courage called
indifference.
I did not want to look, in order to lessen my unease and shivers of everything inside me, but I saw everything, the hostility of the deserted street, the terrible doors into the unknown, and the eyes of the hidden guard in the small opening in the gate. I had not seen those eyes in my thoughts then, when I should have gone; I had seen only the gates and the street that led to them, the tightrope to the other bank.

“What do you want?” asked the guard.

“Has anyone ever come here alone?”

“You have. Do you have someone in the fortress?”

“My brother. They imprisoned him.”

“What do you want?”

“Can I see him?”

“You can see him if they imprison you, too.”

“Can I bring him some food?”

“Sure. I’ll give it to him.”

I tried to turn back time, like a lunatic, I tried to revive my dead brother. He had not yet been killed; I had just learned that he was in prison and come at once to inquire about him; it is human, brotherly. There is no reason for fear or shame, there is still hope, they will release him soon, and he will get the food that I sent him. He will know that he is not alone or abandoned; his own blood is at the gate. Neither turrets, nor guards, nor apprehensions have kept his brother from coming, he has come—I have come; he is fifteen years younger than I; I have always looked after him; I brought him to the kasaba. Hey, people! How could I abandon him in the hour of his greatest need? His miserable heart will cheer up when he learns that I’ve inquired about him. He has no one of his own except me, how can I, too, deceive him? Why? In the name of what? All of you may look at me askance, get angry, and shake your heads; I don’t care, here I am, I won’t deny these bonds. I have none that
are closer; crucify me for this love if you will, I can’t help it. I’ve come, brother, you’re not alone.

It was too late. After everything that had happened, and everything that had not, I could only say the prayer of the dead for him, in the hope that it would reach him and be of some use to him.

That prayer was bitter, different from the one which I used to say over the corpses in coffins. It concerned only him and me.

Brother, forgive me, a sinner, for this belated love, I thought that it existed when there was a need for it, but it’s waking only now, when it can’t help anyone, not even me. And I no longer know whether it’s love or a futile attempt to turn back time. Except for those family graves in our village you had only me. Now you and I no longer have anyone; you lost me before I lost you, or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you thought that I stood in front of these ironbound gates just as you’d stand here for me; maybe up to the last moment you hoped that I’d help you, but if you had only not trusted in me so much, you’d have been spared the fear of final solitude, when everyone has abandoned us. And if you knew everything, then God help me!

“What are you whispering?” asked the man behind the gates.

“I’m saying the prayer for the dead.”

“You’d better say the prayer for the living; they have it harder.”

“You’ve seen a lot, you must know what you’re talking about.”

“What do I care whether you think I know what I’m talking about?”

“How many people have come through this gate?”

“More than have gone back out. And they’re all accounted for.”

“Where?”

“Up there, in the graveyard.”

“It’s bad to joke like that, my friend.”

“They’re joking. And you’re joking. And now get out of here.”

“Does one really have to be rude in your position?”

“Does one really have to be stupid in yours? Come inside, step over the threshold—it’s only a few inches—and you’ll start talking differently right away.”