Hamam Balkania. Vladislav Bajac

– Vienna, all of Bulgaria in its breadth, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire – Edirne, and then to the heart – both ancient and modern – Byzantium/Constantinople/Stambol/Istanbul, and all the seas in the area (the Adriatic, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea). I finished my search in south-western Turkey and, at the very end, in the Princes’ Islands. I covered it all several times. Persia was the only part to remain outside of my reach, as I was hindered by the wars in the Turkish surroundings – today non-existent Persia. Before that, the wars around Serbia, in today’s non-existent Yugoslavia, hindered me from seeing things in my own backyard. (Belgrade, which was so vital to me, was presupposed also as a toponym. In any case, the whole thing started there and, in principle, soon everything will end there as well.)

      In parallel, I also visited the architectural wonders of Mimar Koca Sinan, a contemporary of Mehmed Pasha and the second character in the forthcoming book. I also visited a man named Orhan Pamuk, and a certain V.B. These two latter became the second couple of the parallel action of the planned novel.

      These four people became characters in the same book (placed, in fact, on opposing pages), which recruited all of them in a conspiracy against history as I knew it.

      Before his death, of course, there was a life. A long and rich one. Powerful, but also insecure. As much his own as someone else’s. From time to time, the ownership of his own life slipped away from him. If it had only been a matter of God himself – the Lord of lords or God’s emissary, the choice would have been simple: Mohammed or Christ. Or both of them at the same time. However, someone, or more likely something, took over his life occasionally and left him without the essential possibility of choosing for himself to what or to whom he belonged.

      Perhaps this in itself would not have been such an enigma if it had not kept imposing itself so often and so persistently, and with increasing intensity as he grew older. Even to the point of exasperation. Since he was unable to find logical reasons for it, he was also unable to solve the problem. And when the Secret was heaped onto the burden of so many years, life became a nightmare. It is possible that his approaching death (or, more likely, his wish for it) had an effect; the smell of its proximity could change his view of the world – accepted and proven a thousand times over – to turn it inside out into its own opposite and transform it into a completely repulsive truth. And yet, he could not reach even such a truth! So he thought that it would be easier to accept even the worst of truths, driven by his inability to capture any of them.

      In no way could he take two possible explanations into consideration.

      The first was understood: It was Allah’s will! One dared not and could not contradict him publicly. In any case, since this was a conversation he kept within himself, the public had nothing to do with it, nor did Allah.

      The second explanation did not lead far away from the Almighty. It could be said that it was moulded for him: it was his Destiny. This he could not accept because it was an invention of the powerless to justify their weakness.

      He experienced the truth – oh the irony of it! – as the blade of the knife buried itself in his chest: he was the lord of his life only halfway. The other half was ruled by the other half of his personality: the first part of his personality, the one that belonged to Serbia and Bosnia.

      He was both a Turk and a Serb. Both a Serb and a Turk.

      What a relief.

      To die.

      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