Hamam Balkania. Vladislav Bajac

They were the indispensable and the most important. All the others were in the support lines. But altogether, they actually maintained the army. In addition, work was also done by the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, but also by the Ottoman soldiers when it was necessary. Most of the work included the building and repair of fortifications, bridges and roads, but also logging, clearing swamps, digging trenches and the transportation of military supplies. The Cherahors were paid and given tax breaks, although they were brought in by command, almost by force. Bajica found it strange that he occasionally heard Serbian being spoken without any kind of reserve or attempt to hide it.

      He was further comforted when he got to meet a few of the military commanders. Among them were those who had kept their Serbian names and religion, and all that went with those characteristics, and there were also others who had been converted.

      One of the leaders of the Armatoles, Christian units that were mainly left behind to man conquered strategic places, was the river fleet commander Petar Ovčarević. With his attitude, courage and lack of hesitation, he left a powerful impression on Bajica. Bajica knew about his position in the defence of Belgrade from the Turks in 1521, his retreat when all hope had been lost, and that he had later received an invitation from his former enemy, the Sultan himself, to personally gather up the disbanded river fleet and to be their commander in service to Suleiman. Long before including him in this conquest five years later, the Sultan had honoured him by sending him the invitation and permission to move to Belgrade with his river fleet, and he had even named the part of town where they settled after him – the Ovčar-oglu mahala (district). Ovčarević explained to Bajica and Sinan without hesitation that he felt completely justified by the whole undertaking: he was hired for money and privileges, he was still a Serb by background, religion and name, and he was participating in, as he said, ‘safeguarding Belgrade, momentarily besieged, but always Serbian’. Bajica interpreted his courage in saying this to be bravery on the sailor’s part: the Sultan and the Grand Vizier might have laughed at his impudence, but they did not argue with his right to think that way. Above all, they admired his proven daily heroism, which was more important to them than his bravado. After all, thousands of Serbs who had placed themselves in the service of the Ottoman Empire listened to him. It made no difference if that was temporary, forced shrewdness or some other calculation. He was a man who maintained his oath to the Empire on his word alone. That is why they respected his other words as well.

      It was also here that Bajica met the sons of the famous Jahja-pasha from the Jahjapašić family: Bali-bey, Ahmed-bey and Gazi Mehmed-pasha. All three of them were known as cruel warriors, like their forebears, who also like Ovčarević no longer questioned their background, yet wanted to suppress their old religion completely since they had converted to a new one. That is why Bajica had nothing to discuss with them. They were unruly conquerors who blindly followed their masters’ orders, terrifying their opponents and taking over new territories with their insane bravery and brutality. They triumphed, unashamedly loving battle. And they were dangerous.

      On the other hand, Bajica reflected, however different they were by background or not, in the approach to their own or others’ lives, with their views of justice, their own conscience or whatever else, each and every one of them was involved in the same thing: in the service of spreading the Ottoman Empire! Here, all differences disappeared, and if they did reappear here and there, they were insignificant. There you have it, his thoughts from the school in Edirne were coming back. Everyone subordinated to the One!

      That One, the Empire, with its true strength showed an exceptional power that, by itself alone, paralysed the enemy. Enemies who had still not been defeated were afraid, and the conquered peoples saw their repression to be eternal and unchanging. It seemed like it had always been that way, and that it would always be that way. It was impossible to imagine a force that could overcome such a power. Individuals saw only two possible paths before them: either make peace and blend into such a perfect world or to resist it in their minds, with their will and whatever inner strength they could muster. However, this latter did not bring liberation; on the contrary, it dulled everything because it did not offer even the possibility of change, but rather only dejection and apathy. From such hopelessness, it was hard for an entire nation, much less the defeated individual, to find an exit.

      However, listening to the various participants in this conquest, Bajica also caught a glimpse of the first, well hidden, crack in the walls of the invincible empire. The official reason for the Sultan’s sending such a large army were the renewed and more frequent incidents with Hungary. But the secret reason was that there had been a janissary rebellion in Istanbul the year before. The Sultan and the Grand Vizier were, rightly so, afraid of their most loyal and elite troops. Understandably, the security of the empire depended on those soldiers being satisfied. Their courage and dedication made up the core of all things Ottoman. Together, in battle for the empire or in rebellion against it, they were exceptionally dangerous. If they were to rise up against their ruler, they had to be pacified as quickly as possible. Afterwards, as individuals, the leaders could be executed, but during the rebellion, no one dared to oppose them. In battle for the Sultan they were invincible, and thus for their great courage, in addition to the ruler’s generosity to them, they were often rewarded with the permission to plunder. The Sultan’s embarking on a new conquest was promise enough for them; it pacified the dissatisfied janissaries and their anger, and turned their fury and belligerence toward the enemy.

      Bajica witnessed both his own and the overall confusion. He was relieved when he understood the terrible truth that the problem of duality was shared by the entire Serbian nation. On one hand, he saw the Serbian sailors on the Turkish side, and on the other hand he saw their compatriots fighting in the defence of Belgrade among the Hungarian army units. Not having their own defined state, and having a homeland which was constantly traversed, plundered and occupied, the Serbs survived by making their own individual or group decisions. That is how the senseless situation arose that they were split in loyalty and forced into a position of constant personal and collective instability. The Turkish and Hungarian rulers saw this as an obvious and serious problem, but they did not solve it because they were better suited by the divisions among the Serbs: it was easier to rule them that way. The only time they were careful was in wholeheartedly avoiding battles where ‘their’ Serbs might meet and, God forbid, come into conflict with the ‘other’ Serbs. Yet, they did even that if it was in their own interests.

      It is strange how imagination can conjure up life!

      Less than a full month before writing this sentence and only a dozen pages above this one, I compared the behaviour of Orhan Pamuk and myself with ‘kids trading football cards’ as we boasted about who possessed more detailed information about certain events from our mutual Turkish-Serbian past. At the time, that comparison seemed to be a good illustration because I instantly remembered how, at the end of the sixties, on the cobblestones of Belgrade, as children, one part of my one-half impoverished childhood (when Yugoslavia began to arise from the poverty of classical socialism and entered the phase of the unmatched leader of the Non-Aligned Movement and the blasphemous acceptance of the capitalistic standard) was spent in trading cards of famous football players that we collected for our albums of World Football Championships. In addition to the classic trades, we also played ‘knockout’ by which we, in a sporting, victorious way captured individual cards from our opponents in the game. This somehow got us even more involved in the whole story. We had the feeling that we had an influence on getting the prize with our abilities and that it was not just a question of luck. I also remember that no one sold cards to others and that money as a category in this case (regardless of the Leader who was taking us all toward the material world) was not even mentioned, and certainly not used. It was enough to send your completed album to the organisers of the lottery and try your luck at getting picked from the drum for winning the prize.

      Why do I bring all of this up? Because coincidences arouse in me an odd sort of superstition that I otherwise do not remember or believe in. In this case, in the meantime, between writing the quoted words and these I am writing now, I was strolling with Pamuk around one of Belgrade’s central squares called ‘Terazije’ (another Turkish word in Serbian). His boyish and never-ending curiosity, and admittedly mine drew