Rose of Sarajevo (3 page)

Raziyanım had her reasons for disliking Istanbul.

The end of the sultans’ four-hundred-year reign in the Balkans had led to an exodus of Ottoman administrators and their families. Bosniaks have been migrating ever since. Every time the winds of war began to blow—and they raged through the Balkans all too often—Bosniaks gathered up their worldly possessions and set off for strange lands.

Istanbul had come to mean separation for mothers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, fiancés and loved ones. It meant lost homes and lands. These journeys along a road of no return meant unrelenting homesickness in a foreign land. Each person leaving Bosnia for Istanbul carried with him an abiding sense of loss and pain.

Istanbul was the city of flight. A place of last resort. It was to Istanbul that those who had lost all hope were swept on a flood of tears.

MIGRATION

In 1878, the Ottomans relinquished their rule of Bosnia, and with their departure the Bosniaks suffered their most heartbreaking separations. The administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina was transferred from the Ottomans to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Ottomans had resigned themselves to the inevitable. Their great empire was fragmenting piece by piece, another chunk of territory wrenched from its bosom at every turn. Without the firing of a single bullet, without a single skirmish, without the shedding of a single drop of martyr’s blood, the province of Bosnia was surrendered to the unbelievers through a few signatures at a conference table. The Ottoman Empire was dissolving.

Raziyanım’s great-grandfather shed tears of blood, his heart in the clench of a fist of flame. Desperate and torn, he was faced with an impossible choice: either he could spend the rest of his life bowed and dishonored in “the shadow of the cross,” or he could be uprooted from his land and deprived of his home and livelihood, joining the hundreds already making their way to Stamboul, among a sea of bundles, packages, sacks, and pack trains—to a place with no prospects for work or homes.

Once Husrev Agha had made the decision to leave, he immediately set about creating a turquoise necklace and matching earrings. The client was a man of great esteem. Salih Zeki Bey had glimpsed a necklace painstakingly crafted by Husrev Agha around the neck of his sister and had ordered a similar one for his wife. Husrev Agha knew that he had to fulfill the order before he left. Salih Zeki Bey’s family also had a claim on him. His mother had been reared on a farm in Travnik that belonged to Zeki Bey’s father. They’d given his mother a fine trousseau and assisted her children when they were born. Husrev even owed his shop in Baščaršija market to that family of benefactors. Fehim Bey had not only helped Husrev open the shop but had asked him to craft all the silver objects used later at the family country estate in Travnik and home in Sarajevo. He’d created everything from trays, plates, and jugs right down to the girdle encircling the waist of his benefactor’s daughter, Reside, and the tobacco box in the pocket of his son Salih Zeki.

Having decided to migrate, Husrev Agha had pushed his apprentice to set the stones in the jewelry as quickly as possible. At last, there it was: a turquoise necklace gleaming sky blue, delicately coiled on the workbench.

The pendant earrings and necklace were carefully packaged, and a pair of horses stood at the ready to ensure their speedy arrival in Travnik. As luck would have it, however, word arrived that Salih Zeki Bey was in Sarajevo at the family manor in Vratnik. Husrev would therefore be able to rush over with the delivery and still have time left over to meet some of his other orders, return payments for those he couldn’t, and prepare for the journey that lay ahead.

After a brief wait in the manor’s inner courtyard, he slipped his feet into one of the many pairs of fine, soft goat-leather slippers that lay in rows before the door, and was ushered into the sun-washed
selamlık
, where male guests were received. He was presented with a chilled glass of morello cherry sherbet and an assortment of rose and mastic
lokum
sent from Istanbul. He observed that the silver ewer from which the sherbet was poured and the silver platter on which the lokum was arranged were both his handiwork from seventeen years earlier. His chest swelled with pride. In his youth he hadn’t relied on apprentices, preferring to craft his pieces with his own two hands. Now, however, those once-sure hands trembled, and his eyes too were no longer up to the task of high-precision work.

A few moments later, a tall man with piercing blue eyes dressed in a freshly pressed raw silk shirt and trousers strode through the door. Salih Zeki Bey greeted Husrev Agha with the deference due a man his age and inquired about his health.

Husrev Agha opened the package and laid the necklace and earrings out on the low, backless couch. Salih Zeki Bey gazed appreciatively at the stones, which were a slightly lighter shade of blue than his own eyes.

“My wife greatly admired the jewels you crafted for my sister. I wished to present her with a remembrance from Bosnia before we left. I now understand why your work caught Gül Hanım’s eye. God bless your skilled hands, Husrev Agha.”

“May she wear it on many days of joy, sir,” said Husrev Agha, gazing one last time upon his handiwork.

Salih Bey signaled wordlessly with his eye and brow to the manservant he’d summoned with a clap of his hands. The manservant returned moments later with a dusty rose-velvet purse. Salih Zeki took the purse and handed it to Husrev Agha.

“May God bless you with abundance, sir,” Husrev Agha said, before working up his courage to ask a question. “You mentioned that you were leaving these parts. Are you considering moving to Istanbul?”

“I’m thinking about it, Husrev Agha. This place will go downhill once it’s under the administration of the giaours. Half of my family has already migrated. I wish for my children to be born in Muslim lands. My elders have often told me of the cruelties they suffered under the unbelievers.”

“I myself feel the same way. I’m thinking it’s best to take my family and leave. But how are we to earn our daily bread in a strange land?”

“You’re a skilled artist, Husrev Agha,” Salih Zeki said. “They say Stamboul is a much larger city than this one. I haven’t seen it myself, but that is what I’ve heard. Fear not. You’ll be able to make a living wherever you go. It is we who must fear migration. Unless these lands and properties are registered to us, how are we to subsist in a strange country? Unlike you, we have no craft or trade.”

“Mercy me, sir,” Husrev Agha said respectfully, “how can gentlemen be engaged in trade?”

“We may not be granted lands to administer, but we have made up our minds. Those among our relatives who have already migrated do not regret their decision. My nephew Fehim Bey is the deputy for Bosnia in the first parliament. They’ve sent word that they await us. If you too decide one day to migrate to Stamboul, Husrev Agha, look for either Fehim Bey, who lives in the district of Rami, or senate member Halilbasıc Rıdvan Bey. They’ll know where we are.”

Husrev Agha was in high spirits when he left the manor. He’d stuck the purse in his waistcloth and made his final decision. It augured well that even the esteemed Kulinović Salih Zeki was prepared to leave behind his villages and vast properties and move to Stamboul. He would broach the subject with his wife tonight. They would have to begin to make preparations immediately. They must set out without delay. Without even realizing it, he broke out into a folk song. With the hot sun on his back, he felt the urge to stretch like a cat. For the first time in days, he felt at ease.

He walked along with a sense of inner peace. He didn’t yet know that his son-in-law would be against migrating, and that he would have to leave his beloved grandson Memo behind. He didn’t know that the decision to migrate meant that his daughter would be separated from her child, never to be reunited.

Raziyanım had grown up listening to this tale of the grandmother who had abandoned her son and moved to Istanbul. She had grown to hate this woman, who’d died in Istanbul and deprived her son of a mother’s warmth and love.

Istanbul meant the separation of children from their mothers.

Memo, the boy Faika left behind when she moved to Istanbul with her family, grew up unloved. With only dim memories of his absent mother, he developed an antipathy toward the female sex. He didn’t marry until he was well into his fifties, and only then to ensure a male heir. What a mockery it was when his young wife placed their twin girls in his arms. A cruel twist of fate had decreed that he would dandle two girls on his knees at an age when his contemporaries were playing with their grandchildren. He never grew to love the girls and departed this world a peeved, distant figure for them.

Istanbul meant fathers who didn’t love their daughters.

Fortunately, the twins had a young and jolly maternal uncle who doted on them. Taking them under his wing, he acted as a surrogate father to the girls. This much-loved uncle’s own family had been torn apart by Istanbul, and he found himself alon
e . . .

Years later, Raziye’s twin sister had run off to Istanbul as a bride, pledging that they would meet at least once a year. The sister was terribly homesick and missed her twin. Then she fell ill.

By the time Raziye got to Istanbul, it was too late. Clutching a bouquet of violets and a handful of soil brought from Sarajevo, she’d knelt in front of the marble slab and run her fingers over the inscription of her sister’s name. She’d watered the soil, tears streaming like rain down her cheeks.

Istanbul meant broken families and yearning for one’s sister.

Back home in Bosnia, the troubles were never ending. As the globe was ravaged by World War II, the Bosniaks once again endured some of the worst suffering in the Balkans.

The Bosniaks hadn’t started the war, nor had they taken sides. They reached for their weapons only to defend their homeland and their lives. Though they’d initially thought that the invading forces comprised the only enemy, they soon found their enemies multiplying. Their own neighbors turned on them. There seemed to be no end to the trials and tribulations of the Bosniaks.

In pursuit of the dream of a Greater Serbia, a paramilitary Chetnik organization slaughtered Bosniaks in 1942. A year later, they had killed nine thousand elderly Muslims and children.

Next, the Bosniaks found themselves battling with the fascist Croats known as the Ustaše, resulting in more wounded, more dead, more extinguished hearths, famine, misery and poverty. In a desperate bid to save their lives, they joined Hitler’s 13th SS Division. In order to stay alive, the Bosniaks fought with the Germans against the partisans, with the Croatians against the Serbs, with the Serbs against the Croatians, with the Chetniks against the Ustaše, with the Ustaše against the Chetniks, and with the partisans against all the others. Unable to ingratiate themselves to anyone, they always suffered the highest fatalities. By the time Sarajevo was liberated in April 1945, seventy-five thousand Muslims had died in the Balkans, a figure greater than that of either the Croatian or Serb casualties.

Thanks to a relative who’d fought in the 13th SS Division, Raziye’s maternal uncle was granted special permission by the Germans to flee to Istanbul with his family. He wanted to educate his sons in a country that wasn’t at war. He wanted to live without fear, work hard, and spend his money on pleasure.

On the morning of the day they were to depart for Istanbul, he asked his wife to prepare an early breakfast. Then he tapped on the bedroom doors of their sleeping sons—first the elder, who’d turned eighteen the previous day, then the younger. He went into the kitchen and brewed some tea, calling out to his older son, who was still in bed. When the boy still failed to appear, he went back up to his bedroom and this time banged quite hard on the door. There was still no response. When he opened the door and turned on the light, he found a letter lying on a bed that hadn’t been slept in. With shaking hands, he read:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I can’t go with you. I’m following my ideals by going up to the mountains. Don’t worry about me, wait for me, or try to find me. By the time you read this letter, I’ll be in the mountains. If we succeed in our cause, I’ll find you wherever you are. Forgive me.

Your devoted son,

Fikret

The morning stillness was shattered by the heartrending scream of a mother.

Fikret had joined Tito’s forces. When the revolution was successful, he’d stayed in the army, been promoted, and become a highly respected officer in the Yugoslavian armed forces. Years later, he’d traveled to Turkey in an official capacity. His brother, who’d been a boy of twelve when the family left Yugoslavia, had graduated from the military academy in Harbiye by then and was now a handsome staff officer in the Turkish armed forces. He’d been granted leave to see his big brother and had come to Istanbul for that reason. Reunited for the first time after so many years, the two brothers strolled the length of Beyoğlu arm in arm, one in Yugoslavian uniform, the other a Turkish one. Then they’d paid their mother a visit, changed into civilian clothes, and returned to Beyoğlu, where they’d gone to a tavern in the Balık Pazarı.

Speaking half Bosnian and half Turkish, with the odd bit of German and English when necessary, they’d gradually caught up with each other. Raki was knocked back, and Rumeli folk songs and
sevdalinka
sung. As they went from tipsy to outright drunk, Hikmet began loudly criticizing the Turkish government. Growing increasingly vehement, he uttered a string of denunciations and curses. Terrified, Fikret tried to silence his brother. He quickly paid the bill and propelled his brother out of the tavern. They hailed a cab and continued on to Kumkapı, in whose tavern they watched dancing girls and listened to the
saz
. Just as dawn was breaking, they stopped in Arnavutköy for a bowl of tripe soup and, as the sun cleared the horizon, a glass of tea in the Çınaraltı tea garden in Emirgân. But it was only after Hikmet stripped, plunged into the waters of the Bosphorus in the chill of morning, was caught up in a strong current, and mercifully returned to shore by clutching the line of a small sailing boat that he finally sobered up.