Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM51146/13/100, 12:13 PMEnes KarićDubravić, my acquaintance from Constantinople madrasas). The beginningwas small; all that was held in Orhan Dubravić’s right fist, in totalabout a hundred kernels, had been given to him as a gift by a Jewish merchantat the main square in Venice. Corn also took to Bosnia immediately,growing thinner and smaller, the poor plant hesitating and stingily raisingitself under the foreign sky, horrified by the mountain heights whichthe heavens narrowly rested on while showing pale blue along their sharpedges. In few, fertile places the unknown plant courageously exhibitedgreen stalks and bared golden-yellow kernels. Other places, in dense tilledfields, it weakly rooted itself, but even there it was poorly gossiped about.3.As 1568 appeared (I had just turned ten), in our garden in Tepa importantpeople sat in a circle discussing corn, serious, under a crusty poplar andlarge streaks of moonlight (so bright, as if I still were illuminated by them).All the Mostar imams and sheiks came, as did mother Mevlija, recognizedby all as a poetess and herbwoman. She filled them up with daisy tea whichhad come of age in the Podveleshki gale and sun.“The unknown corn plant comes from unknown lands,” began HodžaZarkan Alun, “It is from a faithless land, a Pagan and distant never-neverland, which isn’t even Christian! Its foreign home, over much sea, has notbeen warmed in the least by our Islamic faith, and it is unknown if andwhen anyone will bear Islam’s eternal light to this unknown land, to thatfar away backwards place. It is not dangerous that we today don’t knowthat our empire is growing tired and getting weaker every day (and losingland which it has had for hundreds of years), but hardly anyone warnsus that the foreign and unknown is coming to our empire! Were the unknownfacts about corn a wicked premonition, a bad omen for the onsetof a stillborn epidemic, a sign that the end is approaching?Zihni effendi Kuskunović, an investigator of Hamzevi heretics in Humlands peered out from narrowed eyes at Zarkan Alun. He coughed slightlyonce or twice, then he took his cane with both hands, stabbing it downbefore him, quickly looking for some sort of invisible focal point beforeeach spoken word.“Alun! Corn is a plant like any other! Grass is grass, grain is grain! Earlierwe didn’t know about it, neither did it know about this frugal andnaked land! Do you consider plants from infidel lands infidels?! Do youhope that plants from native lands of Islam say azans?! We should steerclear of doubting, brothers! We should avoid unneeded uncertainty, especiallyconcerning things for which we have heard no confirmed information.There are neither handicaps nor hindrances if we plant corn inour fields!”Kuskunović piously finished his speech with a voice that appealed forconsensus in thought.Translated by Florence Graham114