Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (50 page)

And then I was aware of myself again. I tore myself from our common roots, I was able to feel people’s elbows and sweat, and was angry at their howling and because I could not get out. “Let me through!” I shouted, hating them, captured and incapacitated, completely foreign to them.

Then I heard what they were shouting, what they were complaining about, whom they were threatening. No one mentioned Hadji-Sinanuddin; no one remembered him, not even by chance. They only mentioned what concerned
them
, only what bothered
them.
And there were very many things that bothered them, shortages, high prices, fear, injustices great and small, empty promises, wasted years, betrayed hopes, unrelenting nights, premature old age, small loves, great hatreds, uncertainty, humiliations, all that misery called life.

Much of that rubbish had been accumulating; they had gathered it, and now were shouting out their discontent, like at a market, angrily showing those riches of theirs. They gave them away like gifts—whoever wanted them could take them—or they offered them in exchange, for hatred or blood.

During a pause, between two cries, as if between two shots on a battlefield they would tell in a few words, breathless, how a guard had been killed on the watchtower—not with a gun or knife—and how he had remained standing, dead; how in the Karanfil mahal
³
a child had been born with one eye on his forehead. They wanted something fateful to hover above this anger of theirs.

It became unbearable. Warmer and warmer, denser and denser, crazier and crazier, the mob pulled at me; the mob spun me around, like a current; I was just a splinter, a speck; they whirled me in eddies; I dug my elbows into someone’s ribs; I shouted, and the others shouted; I stepped on someone, the torrent roared; I staggered, I too would be trampled under; I grabbed onto someone’s neck, like a drowning man; now the water rushed in another direction, we would all drown; it roared down another street, the Watergate gave way. I was breathing more easily. I rushed behind the others; I tried to stop them, to calm them down. I was overcome by fear; they no longer knew where they were running or what they wanted. They were rocks in a landslide; they were a wild torrent.

Shots could be heard in front of the musellim’s office.

“What’s that?”

“The guards are shooting.”

No one stopped.

When I got there, breathless, a young man lay dead on the cobblestones, his thin cotton shirt stained with blood. A few men were standing around him in a circle, and someone, whose face I could not see, was kneeling beside him, trying to raise his head.

The mob broke into the building, and one could hear things being overturned and smashed.

The musellim and his guards were not there; they had fled.

I went up to the man who was kneeling over the bloody youth. I was sorry to see that they were both dressed in peasant clothing.

“Is he dead?”

In his left hand he was holding the youth’s head, as he would that of a child, and looking with fear into his face, which was white as a sheet, expecting it to regain its ruddiness, expecting its mouth to quiver, expecting everything to be as it had been a few minutes before.

They were both young.

“Was he your brother?”

“We came to the market,” he said confusedly, beckoning to us with his restless eyes, which still lingered in the past; he did not dare to approach this moment. “To buy salt.”

“Lay him back down on the ground.”

“And nails. Were building a house.”

“Lay him down. He’s dead.”

“And I say to him: we came for nothing, the shops are closed. And he says . . .”

He gently touched the dead face with his thick, plowman’s fingers, and began to call to him softly: “Shevki! Shevki!”

Father will be angry that they’ve taken so long; Father will scold you because you won’t be going home with him. Get up, Shevki, wake up.

Shevki, where are you?

Where are you, Harun?

Where are you, all you lost and murdered brothers?

Why do they separate us when we are separated anyway? Is it so that we will realize it? Or so that we will begin to hate, if we did not know how to love?

“They’ve killed your brother. Do you want us to bury him here?”

Now he was warming his cheek with his whole palm.

“Take him with you. Let him at least have a decent funeral.”

He carried the corpse away. As he would a child, a folded kerchief, a sheaf of wheat, taking long steps on the cobblestones of the bazaar, a habit from plowing fields, still looking into his brother’s face with mad hope.

I walked in front of the youth’s corpse and said prayers aloud.

I heard people shouting; there were many of them; their rage had not waned.

At the corner by the courthouse I stepped aside, so that everyone could see the corpse in the young man’s arms.

They formed a semicircle around him and watched him silently.

I said a prayer and left for the mosque.

Behind me, behind us, there was a howling, a shattering of glass, the banging of loud blows.

I did not turn around.

Near the mosque I met Hafiz-Muhammed and asked him to take care of both brothers, living and dead; I started down the street.

“Where are you going?”

I dismissed his question with a wave of my hand. I truly did not know.

“Hassan was looking for you.”

It was as if that name bathed me in light. The time I had spent without him had worn me out. That day, then, at once—I needed him more than ever. But I would wait a little longer.

I walked, following a street uphill, to feel myself climbing, to exhaust myself with that effort. I wanted to withdraw. I had been tense since the morning, taking part in every passing moment.

I left time to continue without me; it could finish whatever it wanted on its own.

I had to get away from the bazaar, right at that moment, to move away, as if from a fire, so I would not be guilty, so I would not be a witness.

I was trying to detach myself.

It was late autumn; the plum trees were leafless and black, and the rocky peaks of the mountains were covered in fog. The wind howled in the gaps between the mahal’s houses.

Soon there’ll be snow, I said to myself.

And it did not matter to me.

I tried to walk like someone out on a leisurely stroll.

I haven’t been here for a long time, I thought.

And I did not care.

I saw: some children were playing tipcat. Strange, I thought, the children are playing tipcat.

And you see, that mattered to me.

The children were playing. But below, in the bazaar, their fathers were going on a shameful rampage.

I looked: in the valley the kasaba, calm and tranquil. People were passing through the streets, tiny, unhurried, innocent. From that distance, from up there, they resembled the children. But they were not children. Never had I seen their faces so maddened, their eyes so cruel. I could not recognize them for their bloodshot eyes and their bared teeth; they looked like the disfigured masks worn by the infidels on Christmas. This was their terrible holiday.

I did not want to think about them, I did not want to think about anything. Time was flowing; time was taking care of everything without me. I could neither stop nor hasten it.

Time was dripping down like the rainwater, drop by drop.

I took shelter under the eaves of one of the mahal’s dilapidated mosques, next to its wall.

And the children scattered.

An old hodja with a white beard, stooped over the cane in his trembling hand, came slowly toward the mosque, unreal in that silence, alone, without a single believer behind him. They were all below in the kasaba, but he did not care. His old age saw things that are more important. In front of the mosque he gave the call to prayer: it was a futile, barely audible call to someone who was not there.

That meant it was noon.

I had been on my feet since the early morning. I began to
feel weary, as if that realization of time’s passage were weighing down on me.

Leaning with my back against the wall of the mosque, I looked in front of myself into the ever denser showers of rain, which separated me from the world, and listened to the weak murmur of the hodja’s prayer. His was a voice from the beyond, hopelessly sorrowful, utterly lonely, and it was worse that I heard it, because it was speaking about my loneliness as well. I could not help him, I was separated from him by the wall; he could not help me, either.

Alone. Alone. Alone.

Alone, like one under suspicion.

But why would I be guilty? What could I have done to prevent anything? No one could have stopped them that morning. Their time, which was meant for evil, had come, like a phase of the moon, stronger than my will, stronger even than theirs. I could have tried to persuade or to dissuade them—it would not have mattered.

What was happening below? Or had already happened? I did not know, I did not care. The wind had been sown, and therefore a whirlwind was being reaped.

Had anything really needed to happen? By now everything must have already quieted down. They had all gone home, frustrated and ashamed, they would bring home to their wives the little rage and bile they still had left. I was trying to detach myself for no reason, trying in vain to direct my distracted attention to the autumn, to the leafless plum trees, to the rocky mountaintops, to the imminent snow. It was all in vain, because my thoughts were below, in the kasaba. Maybe nothing had happened, and what I had done had not had any consequences.

Yet if I felt anxiety, and maybe even shame because I had shown the murdered youth to the enraged mob, I had not reconciled myself to the possibility that nothing had happened. I had wanted it to happen, and had agreed before God to accept my share of the guilt.

This dilemma was painful, but it also gave me satisfaction: my conscience was alive even when
they
were in question.

A dervish is as cruel as a hawk and as sensitive as a spinster. Hassan had said that once, mockingly, as always. Maybe he was right, because my feeling of nausea would not go away.

As dark and light shadows were thus passing over me, as I denied the guilt which I did not want to give a name, five horsemen approached in the street, at a gallop, wearing long raincoats, with muskets strapped to their saddles.

I recognized the musellim and his men.

He also recognized me and stopped his horse, watching me with surprise and malice.

At first I was frightened because of the unexpectedness of our encounter, and because that place was so isolated. No one could have helped me; no one would have even seen if something happened to me. And that day was a day of evil deeds.

He must have also been more than a little surprised, seeing me in a place where he would never have dreamed of finding me. Did he think I was his fate, or a game animal flushed out in front of him? I was an attractive target, pinned there against the white surface of the mosque’s wall.

Surprisingly, my fear passed quickly. I looked directly at him, upright with hostility. I knew everything, I remembered everything again, as if it had happened only a moment before. I did not even remember it: it had been ready within me, like an instinctive obstacle, like disgust that one does not think about. I also looked at his four escorts; they had attacked me in the narrow street leading to the tekke, back then, when everything began. And I did not know what I could have done had they come at me as they had before, but all of those eyes, aimed at me like guns, did not frighten me this time. My saving hatred gave me strength, like wine.

If the musellim had so chosen, I would have been his
sacrificial lamb in a moment. If only he had known how much he would regret that missed opportunity!

“We’ll see each other again, dervish.”

I thought: with the help of God, but I said nothing. I could not have spoken anything other than harsh words, but then I would never have seen him or anyone else again.

They turned their horses and galloped away past the mosque.

They were fleeing the kasaba!

Had I had time, I would have gone out in the street and watched the musellim disappear, cursing him and savoring the moment that would bring us together again. But I did not have a moment to lose; my wait had come to an end. The musellim had fled. So it had
happened.
I had not sown the seeds in vain.

My awkwardness, regret, and shame disappeared. I had nothing to be ashamed of, or to regret. I could be proud; I could be happy that I was not on the side of evil. God had passed his verdict, and the people had carried it out: my hatred was not just mine. I was not alone. I had no doubts. I was cheerful, like every true believer who knows he is on God’s side.

I hurried down into the kasaba, meeting an occasional passerby who was strangely flustered, left behind as if by accident after the mad rush that had set those streets ablaze.

There was no one in the bazaar. Or in front of the courthouse. The door had been smashed open, all of the windows shattered, papers scattered along the walls.

Ali-hodja was squatting and collecting records, documents, verdicts, and countless notes that had amassed like testimonies of sins and cruelties. Men record everything they do. Maybe they do not consider themselves cruel?

I bent over and began sorting through them. The crime that concerned me most had been recorded there.

“What are you looking for?”

“I want to see what they wrote about my brother.”

“Why? To justify your hatred? I’m going to burn all of it. You’re all like wolves; you’d rummage through this trash to find reasons for new crimes.”

“If you want to insult me, that’s easy. You need only to be inconsiderate.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just saying things that are unpleasant. Because I’m sick.”

“Why?”

“Have mercy on me, go away. I’m sick of people. Leave me alone.”

I left him alone; that was most sensible. Protected by his madness, he was stronger than all of us.

I went into the courthouse. There was no one there, just as when I had gone there on account of my brother. There was also the same silence that begins to buzz in your ears, like a soft, high-pitched hum. There was the same restlessness because of invisible human shadows that hid in the nooks and corners. Only the stuffiness was gone, the wind rushed in freely through the shattered windows and the gaping doorway.