Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Muharem Bazdulj
Wilkinson describes the origins of his commendable urge in following
words, I admit that after I came to Cetinje, and after I saw twenty Turkish
heads, a very sincere desire to abolish decapitation overwhelmed me.
That feeling remained strong after I saw the same cruel trophies in Mostar.
After a conversation he had with Ali-Pasha, Wilkinson wrote to Njegos, I
also explained to him that customs like this one make a war even more
desperate— giving it a quality that our wars do not have. But both Njegos
and Ali-Pasha remained deaf when it came to Wilkinson’s cries as if the
possibility of losing their own heads in an equally concrete and metaphoric
register provided them with a kind of much-needed cold dispassionateness—almost
pleasure.
They say that Njegos, while looking at his reflection in a baroque Venetian
mirror, recited the appropriate verses under his breath:
Black moustache where will you suffer
In Mostar or in Travnik?
(It is quite another thing that, according to Wilkinson, decapitation
was something utterly alien to Western European civilization, but that
only few decades separated him from the revolutionary havoc in the streets
of Paris, the guillotines, and the barbarism of crowds tossing severed heads
around).
A Historical Note
Whose are those twenty heads Wilkinson talks about? Whose heads were
on display in that unique Cetinje exhibit? Perhaps the heads belonged to
Ali-Pasha’s emissaries who had been sent to negotiate with Njegos and
were later decapitated by prince-bishop’s men who ambushed, tricked,
and killed the victims in a place called Basina Voda? They murdered all
the beys except for one, taking their heads as trophies. But their leader,
Bey Resulbegovic, was not among them. He had stayed behind in Niksic
faking illness, just like a high school student would do, and saved his head.
According to tradition, Resulbegovic’s salvation should be ascribed to
something else. It is ascribed to a conversation at twilight.
Riders and a Prophet
A line of high-born horsemen moved slowly through the cruel landscape
of Herzegovinian rocks. They had already been traveling for a few days
and still had a few days to go before they arrived. One could sense the sun
at its zenith, hellish heat, crickets buzzing (like the winding of millions of
wrist watches, as the poet with a prophetic name put it), the emote murmur
of a river, stale air, tired horses, sweat on turban-swathed foreheads,
half-closed eyes, dry lips, the rhythmic stamping of hoofs, moist hands
holding the reins, the outlines of the mountains, a delicate foretaste of
twilight. Parallel with the sunset in the West, the strange silhouette of a
tall, slender man who walked leaning on a long cane made of yew appeared
against the Eastern horizon. As he approached, his face became
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