Читать книгу Hamam Balkania - Vladislav Bajac - Страница 11

Planning the structure of a novel presupposes the existence of two beginnings and two endings, or two sorts of beginning and ending. One of the beginnings and endings has to do with action: how and when it will begin and how and when it will end. This is perhaps the most important secret of the book to the reader. To the author, another secret may be of more importance, the secret of the beginning and end of the ideas that stimulate him; that question or problem that actually inspired the author to come up with the book to begin to write, and that desirable, ultimate idea that could bring the book to its end.

While the structure of this book was still rather abstract and quite foggy, I knew that its protagonists offered the possibility of a profound story which explored the ideas of identity and change. That was the so-called starting point, while the ultimate goal could already be guessed: what is it that occurs to human beings, and around them as well, who happen to have a double identity?

The driving force of this novel, Mehmed pasha Sokollu (in Serbian he is known as Mehmed-paša Sokolović) made the decision for me about the cause and reason for me to write. (I recall how they prepared us in elementary school for the subject of logic, and the preparations for war, by teaching us to differentiate cause from reason. Most of us did not get it, and if we did, it was with great difficulty. Still, I managed, after great effort, to fathom it once and for all: the cause was long and carefully prepared, and the reason was a distraction and could also be given ad hoc, because it was simply a cog in a long-existing plan. The example they liked to use the most was the First World War – the lineage of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Serbia, Bosnia, Sarajevo, the group known as ‘the Black Hand’, and the assassin/patriot Gavrilo Princip).

In this case, the cause for me to work on Bajica Sokolović was the discovery that he was already eighteen years old when taken to Turkey as part of the infamous devshirme (‘blood tribute’), and not as a small child who would hardly be able to remember where he came from. I wondered why he was chosen to become a janissary when he was already so old? While training them for the army, the Turks did not forbid the chosen boys to be conscious of their roots, but they rightly calculated that the fewer memories one has of one’s homeland means that one will be less emotionally connected to it.

And ultimately, this was my real reason and the ultimate motive to start writing about Sokollu Mehmed Pasha: when I had studied everything I could find about the life and times of this interesting man, and all of that was still not enough to convince me to start writing (those other two possible books were still in play), one thing made the essential difference. I had found undeniable evidence (manuscripts and drawings, comments and descriptions from several sources) that around 1575 Mehmed-pasha had built in Belgrade, among other things, a famous caravansary and market place right under the foundations of the building where I was living then, in 2005, and where I live to this very day! Of all places, right in that very spot. A coincidence? When I say ‘built’ I mean that it was built according to his wishes and orders, and that he was the one who financed the project: the patron. The construction work was carried out by an architect-builder, in this case probably a man named Sinan.

After this discovery, whether I wanted to or not, whether it was pretentious or not, I felt the call to write something about these two people in one body. The question of double identity attracted me at the beginning exclusively as a problem of the dual national identity and religion of an individual. And with the entrance of Sinan the builder into Mehmed Pasha’s life, there was the possibility of a double identity in two men. Thus, the double identity of two people in one body at once could have multiple meanings: it was even possible to divide the separate individuals into two personalities, but it was also possible that the complete (or even partial) similarity between two people led them to melt into one!

Now, back to my address. The foundations of this building in the Dorćol district of Belgrade, were laid beginning in 1914 (again, the First World War!) according to the design of Petar Bajalović, and the building was completed in 1924 in the so-called Serbian-Byzantine style with elements of the Wiener Secession, which is a rarely used combination in the architecture of Belgrade. It could be called the place from which I speak, both in the literal and in the symbolic sense. If I would add to that the sense of writing, liberated, and here and there my own impudent attitude, then I could add something else as well. The historical heritage of Ottoman-Islamic architecture left behind by Sinan is not the only connection between the past and present. There are others: for example, the wordplay of the Serbian names Bajo/Bajica – a future vizier of Turkey, the most powerful empire at the peak of its might while he was alive – with the surnames of the Serbian architect of my building, Bajalović, and the author of this book – V. B. (whose surname, after its Germanisation by Maria Theresa in Vojvodina long ago, was closer to Bajalović’s surname than to Bajica’s name). Then, the fact that my home rests on the remains of that ‘enemy’ culture of the time, with its modern address being the ‘Street of Emperor Dušan’, named after a Serbian ruler from the 14th century, called ‘the Great’, who made Serbia the greatest it had been in its history, not only territorially speaking, just as Suleiman the Magnificent did for Turkey with the zealous aid of Bajica/Sokollu Mehmed Pasha two centuries later. Thus, that is the building from which I speak, whose square tower at the very top carries an inscription, in large letters, saying that it belongs/belonged to the Society of St. Sava (the greatest of Serbian Saints, and also the most important secular figure).

History especially favours the greatest, the strongest, the most powerful and all the other ‘mosts’. This book, however, has a different purpose: to ask, for instance, whether any of these ‘mosts’ from the preceding paragraph ever came into conflict here, did they meet? And why? If the answer to any of those is ‘yes’, then the book asks how, and what happened before that, and after that, then again how, and perhaps even why... In this case, even the name of the place where these thoughts occur to me, the Dorćol district of Belgrade, is of Turkish origins (Dort-jol), suggesting even linguistically and literally that this is (was) a place of meeting, of gathering and remaining, because in Turkish it marks four roads or, if you will, the crossroads.

In summary: this book deals with gathering the probable and certainly the ephemeral.

Meanwhile, history still stands steady as a monument.