Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (46 page)

I had released their own arrow. It was bound to strike someone.

Yellow, shriveled leaves were falling from the trees, the same ones I had touched the previous spring, wishing for their sap to flow into me, wishing to become unfeeling like a plant, to wilt every autumn and to bloom every spring. But you see, it happened differently, I had wilted in the spring and was blooming in the autumn.

It’s begun, brother Harun. The long-awaited hour has come.

14

      
Say: The hour of truth has come!
¹

I COULD HAVE LOOKED AT THE CLOCK AND KNOWN EXACTLY: now Mullah-Yusuf is at the kadi’s; now the guards are in front of Hadji-Sinanuddin’s shop; now it’s all over. I had taken into account their acquired habits, their feeling of security, and their wish for revenge. And so I knew I had not thrown out the bait in vain. Acquired habits lead to repetitions of actions; a feeling of security takes away one’s common sense; the wish for revenge hastens decisions. If they failed to do anything, I could just as well expect the end of the world.

But surprisingly, the bazaar was quite calm; the everyday hum of isolated words, clattering of horses’ hooves, striking of clocks, banging, and shouts rose above it; people worked or talked, numbed by the ordinary.

Even the pigeons walked calmly on the cobblestones.

I had not set anything in motion. What had happened? Where had I gone wrong?

Had I expected too much from these people? Would they keep silent, as they had when I had been imprisoned? Had I made a mistake in trying to bait them like that? Had their common sense been awakened? Had Hadji-Sinanuddin already been taken from his house and did these people still not know about it? Or did they not care?

But that was impossible. I was different; our dervish order leaves us in the lurch when misfortune strikes us, because we are each an insignificant part of a greater whole, helpless when we are abandoned. But Hadji-Sinanuddin’s name was synonymous with the bazaar; if something happened to him, everyone else would feel threatened as well. They were also a whole, in which everyone was important in and of himself. And if danger loomed over one of them, it loomed over all of them, like a cloud.

Or had I been in too much of a hurry, urged onward by the miscalculations of my impatience?

Or did no one dare to strike at him?

Or had Mullah-Yusuf deceived me?

Or had the whole world been turned upside down?

I walked slowly down the street, between the protruding storefronts, listening to the calm hum of life, which had never been harder for me to bear.

Moments before I had been cheerful and confident. I had been steering events, and had thought that I was above them. Things and people looked smaller; I felt as if I were hovering over them. I was experiencing that for the first time, and that sense of superiority felt natural to me—I barely noticed it while it lasted. It emanated from me like a scent, like strength, like a right to something that I was not even proud of, because it was inseparable from me, one of my traits. But now everything appeared strange and distant; people and life were not below me but around me, locked, closed, like a wall, like a dead end. I do not know whether there are victories in life. There are certainly defeats.

I could not determine how long that inner dejection lasted, or whether I noticed the change immediately, as soon as it occurred, or whether my senses warned me when everything began to appear strange.

At first I heard silence. In the space directly around me the voices suddenly died; the scraping, tapping, and hammering stopped. And then that stillness began to spread farther.
It resembled astonishment, or a tightened throat. This lasted only for a moment, and no matter how strange and horrible it was—as if the blood of some giant body had stopped circulating—I knew what had happened. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Harun, I haven’t gone wrong! It’s cost me a lot of effort, but I’ve figured people out.

Then the voices came back, only different from before, different from every other day, muffled and dangerous; at first they resembled a deep sigh, and then a stifled growling. I heard surprise, fear, and anger in them. I heard dull thunder, as before a storm, before the end of the world. I heard everything I wanted to hear.

My sense of ease and confidence returned.

I started after the bazaar shopkeepers, mixing among them, feeling the heat and the sharp odor of their bodies (that was the smell of sudden astonishment and a still undetermined rage; in battle the smell of men is pungently sweet, like blood), I listened to their barely intelligible questions, which were like incantations, mad murmurings, the gurgling of deep water, or underground rumblings. The words were not important, but rather their high-pitched snakelike hissing, their dull, guttural, unnatural voices, which had transformed them into something unfamiliar and dangerous, something they could no longer even remember.

We pressed through the bazaar, in a single direction, with our heads raised toward something in expectation. We pressed forward, shoulder to shoulder, crammed together, but without seeing one another, squeezing out those who were weaker. And there were more and more of us; we were each indistinguishable, transformed into a multitude, melting into its fear and strength. With difficulty I resisted a strange and powerful need to become a senseless, enraged fragment. I heard my own growling and felt dizzy from some danger that had also threatened me. I was reviving my
sense of superiority, to keep from succumbing to the ancient need to rush madly ahead with one’s threatened tribe.

Hadji-Sinanuddin’s shop was wide open, empty.

We ran down a second street, then a third, and in the Kazazi
²
we stopped in front of a mob that had gathered there. I made my way through with difficulty.

In the middle of the street, in the open space between the people who had stopped and those ahead who were parting to make way, some guards were leading away Hadji-Sinanuddin.

I edged my way forward with my shoulders and stepped out ahead of those who were in front, who had stopped out of fear. I could no longer be one of many; my time had come.

I went out into the open space, excited, aware that a hundred fervent eyes were watching me, and started after the guards.

“Stop!” I shouted.

The mob sealed off the street.

The guards stopped and looked at me in surprise. Hadji-Sinanuddin looked at me as well. His face was calm. I thought he gave me a smile, like a friend; or maybe I just wished that he had smiled, in my excitement, to encourage me. And I really was excited, because of the people, because of him surrounded by the guards, because of the importance of what I was doing, because of those whom I hated, because of everything I had spent an eternity waiting for.

In the silence, which I had expected, but which still broke over me like a wave of boiling water, the guards took off their muskets and aimed them at the crowd. The fifth one, unfamiliar, unarmed, asked me angrily: “What do you want?”

We stood facing each other, like two wrestlers.

“Where are you taking him?”

“What do you care?!”

“I’m Sheikh Ahmed Nuruddin, a slave of God and a friend of this good man whom you’re taking away. Where are you taking him? I ask in the name of these people, who know him; I ask in the name of the friendship that binds me to him; I ask in his name, since he can’t defend himself now. If any wrong has been spoken about him, it’s a lie. We’re all his guarantors, we’re all witnesses that he’s the most honorable man in the kasaba. If you imprison him, who should remain free?!”

“You’re a grown man,” he said threateningly. “And I shouldn’t tell you what to do. But it’d be better if you didn’t get involved.”

“Go home, Sheikh-Ahmed,” said Hadji-Sinanuddin, surprisingly serene. “Thank you for your friendly words. And you, good people, go home. This is some mistake, and will certainly get straightened out.”

That is what they all think: a mistake. But there are no mistakes, only things we do not know.

The human cluster broke up, and the guards led Hadji-Sinanuddin away. I watched them go from where I was standing. They had also taken me away like that, and Harun, only no one had come out to say anything nice about us. I had spoken, and I knew I was superior to them. I was not troubled by feelings of guilt about the imprisonment of a good man, since if he had been anything else none of this would have made any sense; none of it would have served anything. Even if he were killed, it would serve a goal greater and higher than the life or death of a single man. I was going to do everything in my power for him, and God’s will could decide. Fortunately, the one thing that would have been most senseless—for them to have released him immediately—did not happen.

The people followed after Hadji-Sinanuddin and the guards, and when the last of them were rounding the corner I saw that Mullah-Yusuf was standing in front of one of the empty shops. I did not call to him, but he came up to me, as
if spellbound, fear showing in his timid eyes. What was he afraid of? It seemed that his eyes and thoughts were not following after Hadji-Sinanuddin, but had stopped where I was. Stiff and horrified, they did not dare to avoid me.

“Have you been here the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you looking at me like that? You’re afraid. What happened?”

“Nothing.”

He made an effort to smile, but it resembled a spasm, a cramp. And his face, which had begun to lose its freshness, was again frozen by that fearful expression he had been trying in vain to hide.

I started down the street, and he followed me, my shadow.

“Why are you afraid?” I asked again, softly, without turning around. “Something unforeseen hasn’t happened, has it?”

He hurried to catch up with me, so as not to miss a single word of what I was saying. Not out of love.

“I did everything as you said. I promised and did it.”

“And now you’re sorry?”

“No, I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry at all. I did what you ordered me to do, you saw that yourself.”

“So what’s the matter?”

I turned to him, maybe too rashly, surprised at his unsure voice and stuttered words, angry at myself because it mattered to me and I was asking him. But I wanted to know if anything had happened that he was afraid to tell, since now any mistake at all would be dangerous. But when I looked at him so suddenly—maybe because of my unexpected movement, or because of the threat in my voice—he flinched, stopped involuntarily, as if he were trying to evade a blow, as if frozen with fear, and his face turned into a mask of horror. Then I knew: he was afraid of me. I was convinced by his open mouth, which his stiff muscles could not give any shape to or move; by his cramped body, which betrayed itself in a moment, caught unawares and terrified. All of it
lasted only briefly, very briefly, and then his contracted veins allowed the impeded flow of blood to resume, his mouth regained its normal shape, and the small blue circles in the middles of his eyes began to move.

“You’re afraid of me?”

“No. Why should I be afraid?”

Rage was coming over me, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“You sent people to their deaths, but now your guts are cramping up because you’ve seen that I can also be dangerous. I can’t stand this fear of yours, it’s the path to betrayal. Be careful. You agreed yourself, you can no longer go back. Until I send you away from here.”

That burst out of me unexpectedly, as if from some need to ease my burden, to vent my anger after long hours of tension. This murky sludge—that earlier my common sense and caution had not allowed to move—flowed out of me, violently. Maybe it was not wise or cautious for me to act that way, even then, but as I flogged the youth with words that had been conceived in me long before, I felt them gushing from my veins irresistibly, filling me with a pleasure that I could hardly have had any inkling of. When the first wave of that discharge weakened and when I saw what a stunning effect that open burst of hatred and scorn had left upon the youth’s face, it occurred to me that his fear could be useful: it could bind him to me more strongly than love.

His astonishment at seeing before himself a man completely different from the earlier Sheikh-Nuruddin gave me pleasure as well. This youth had helped that calm and gentle man to be killed, a man who had believed in a world that does not exist. This present man had been conceived in pain, and only his face was the same.

He thought I was taking revenge. I did not care. I was the only one who knew that this new Sheikh-Nuruddin was very similar to the young dervish who had swum across a river with a bare saber in his teeth, to attack the enemies of
the faith. He was similar to that crazy dervish who had been different from today’s because he had not had cunning or wisdom, which can be given to us only by a difficult life.

I wish you eternal peace, you inexperienced young man of long ago, who burned with pure flames and a need for sacrifice.

And I wish eternal peace to you, honorable and noble Sheikh-Nuruddin, who believed in the power of gentleness and God’s word.

I light a candle to each of you in my memory and in my heart, you who were kind and naive.

Now he who bears your name continues your work, renouncing nothing of yours, except your naïveté.

Until then, time had been a sea that swelled slowly between the great shores of duration. Now it resembled the swift current of a river that carried moments irretrievably away. I could not lose even a single one; a different possibility was tied to each of them. I would have been afraid to think like that before; I would have been driven mad by that violent roar and unstoppable motion. But now I was forced to catch up with it. I had made up my mind to do this, because I had no time to lose. But I did not act rashly. I had measured out every moment that would appear out of the future’s darkness, as well as the deed with which I would impregnate it so that what I wanted would happen, when everything would be linked in a chain of causes and effects.

I knew what Ali-aga would say to me when he heard, and yet I went to him first. But he had already heard everything; the story had preceded me. And I listened to what I had thought I would hear the next day or in the afternoon, only it was more juicy than I had expected. Yellow, ghostlike, thin, he propped himself up a little in his bed; he cursed, threatened, and swore. And I should’ve told them the same thing, he said, and mentioned their mothers, although that was admittedly unsuitable for me, because of my rank and
position. But no matter, I’d acted like a man; that was to my credit, and I’d told them what one honest man should say on behalf of another.