Ismail Kadare - Elegy for Kosovo

Footnote

1A bowed, single-string northern Albanian instrument with an egg-shaped body and long neck.

The imperial Turkish army did not surface in Nish, as had been expected, but headed for the Plains of Kosovo. The Balkan princes rushed there like wild torrents that change their course after a storm. When they arrived, the Turks were already waiting. The Balkan army positioned itself across from them on the side of the plain that the Turks had deliberately left open for them. Tvrtko of the Bosnians was the only king among them, but Prince Lazar of the Serbs was elected commander in chief, as he had the greatest number of troops. To his left were the battalions of Mirçea of Rumania, and to his right the Albanian counts Gjergj Balsha and Demetër Jonima with their soldiers. There were also other battalions, which had arrived over the past few days. Some thought they might be Croat, others Hungarian, but like so much else in this war, no one was certain what they were.

Facing the Balkan army, alongside the Turks and their Asian vassals, were the troops of Prince Constantine and the traitor Marko Kraljevic. Absent — though no one knew why — was John V of Byzantium.

It was late June. The day seemed to last forever, the afternoon even more so. When it seemed that the waiting would never stop, the Turks lit wet straw in front of their tents, creating a wall of smoke. The Balkan troops did the same, each side to shield their opponents from view, showing that they could no longer bear the sight of each other. Or, they wanted to hide something.

When night finally came, it seemed darker because of the long wait. Now that the two sides could no longer see each other, they grew increasingly anxious instead of calming down. Everything their eyes had seen that long afternoon became larger and more frightening: the expanse of the Turkish encampment, the myriad banners of the Balkan troops, the conjectures in the ubiquitous darkness as to where the sultan’s tent might be.

As if to precipitate an answer to this last question, Mirçea of Rumania lit a fire next to his tent. The other princes followed suit, but the sultan’s tent remained steeped in darkness. Nor did the shouts of the Balkan troops provoke a response on the other side. Except for the wailing voices of the muezzins, which the Balkans now heard for the first time and which seemed to them like a deadly lullaby, no sound came from the Turkish camp.

Provoked by this, the Balkan soldiers, who had sworn before their council that they would not drink wine, especially on the eve of the battle, broke their resolve. First the princes, then the other commanders, sent each other gifts of wine, and then, after the exchange of wine, they took their guards and their minstrels, which each had brought from his own land to sing his glory on the morrow, and went to visit their allies in their tents.

They did not hide that they were certain of victory, that they could not wait for the sun to rise; some even wanted to attack before the break of day. A few of the commanders were already busy calculating how many slaves they would each get and at which market they could be sold for the greatest profit — in Venice or Dubrovnik — and all the while the minstrels sang their ancient songs without changing anything, as was their custom. The Serb prince, Lazar, and the Albanian count, Gjergj Balsha, laughed out loud when they heard the Serbian gusla 2player — “Rise, O Serbs! The Albanians are taking Kosovo from us!” — and the Albanian lahuta player — “Albanians, to arms! The pernicious Serb is seizing Kosovo!”

“This is how things come to pass in this world,” one of the princes is supposed to have said. “Blood flows one way in life and another way in song, and one never knows which flow is the right one.”

Footnote

2 A Montenegrin bowed string instrument.

Prince Bayezid could not fall asleep. Finally he got up and went outside his tent. From far away the wind brought waves of boisterous din from the Balkan side. “What a horror!” he said to himself and tried to make out in which direction his father’s tent lay.

“You are not tired?” It was the gentle voice of Anastasios, his Greek tutor. Wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, he sat to the left of the sentries like a tree stump. “Besides the soldiers who are really asleep, there are those tonight who are merely feigning sleep.”

“You think so?” the prince said. “I did manage to catch a few winks; I even had a mad half dream. This cursed clamor seems to have awakened me.”

“Hmm,” his tutor said. “It has come to my attention that the young officers, even some of the viziers, have been somewhat unsettled at the sight of the Balkan troops.”

“That is to be expected.” Bayezid said. “Many of them have never come face to face with a Christian army.”

“Perhaps the order to raise the curtain of smoke was given too late,” the tutor replied.

“Much too late!” the prince said. “To tell you the truth, even though I was fully aware it was only a Christian army, I myself felt somewhat disconcerted.”

“I know what you mean,” Anastasios said. He coughed several times, as if he wanted to give his voice the unwavering resonance of the bygone days when he had recounted ancient tales and legends to the young prince. It was a distinctive way of speaking that flowed with conviction, not allowing for the slightest interruption. “You are unsettled by the wild jumble of their troops, my prince. All those banners and icons and crosses and multicolored emblems, and the trumpets, and the long and resonant names and titles of their dukes and counts, and then the musicians and poets poised to sing the glory of each and every one of them for generations to come. I fully understand you, my prince, especially when you compare that wild jumble to the dusty monotony of our army. I understand you, but let us wait till tomorrow, my prince. Tomorrow you shall see that the real instrument of war is not theirs, but ours — dusty and drab like mud, with a single banner, a single commander, and no emblems or flamboyant poets, no commanders thirsting for glory or sporting long titles, names, and surnames. Obedient, sober, mute, and nameless like mud — that is the army of the future, my prince. The day before we marched off I happened to look through the rosters of our soldiers. The majority were listed only by their forenames — no distinguishing features, not even a surname. More than thirteen hundred Abdullahs, nine hundred Hassans, a thousand or so Ibrahims, and so on. It is these shadows, as they might appear to an onlooker, who will face those strutting Balkans and slash their names, their long peacock-tail titles, and ultimately slash their lives. Mark my words, Prince!”

He went on speaking for quite a long time, and Bayezid, just as when he was a boy, did not interrupt him. The Greek said that the Ottoman army was uniform, that it had an unfathomable face, he said, like that of Allah. The Christians had lost their future ever since they had given a human likeness — Christ — to their God. There were times when the Christians tried to mend their error by melting away his face and transforming it into a cross, but it was too late.

Anastasios sighed. After so many years he had earned the right to show his regret at the defeat of Christianity, his own faith. He wanted to tell the prince that if there was a power in the world that they should be afraid of, it wasn’t foolish Europe but the Mongolian hordes. They were even more nameless, and therefore even more apocalyptic. It would be like being attacked by the wild weeds and thorns of the steppes. But Anastasios said nothing, because he did not want to demoralize the prince on the eve of the battle.