Ismail Kadare - Elegy for Kosovo

“Vladan!” he shouted, when he realized it might well have been him.

And it really had been Vladan, his eyes burning with rage, now even gaunter than two days before when they had lost each other during their trek.

Vladan turned around and lifted his hand.

“You see how they treat us!” he said. “These damned spineless, these vile —”

“Hurl curses at them, brother! Hurl curses!”

a Hungarian stammered. “Curse them; you know how to curse better than anyone!”

“He knows how to curse because he is a minstrel,” said a man in a tattered tunic, “It is his trade both to curse and to exalt.“

“Is that so? In this disaster, we Hungarians, more than anyone else, get the short end of the stick! Insults, that’s all we get are insults. Yesterday I came across a man, an Albanian I think, who was eating a piece of bread, so I wished him, ‘May you get some often!’ and do you know what he did? He punched me in the face! As Heaven is my witness, we might have killed each other over these words that offended him. He must have thought they were shameful words and become furious, thinking I was making some improper suggestion!”

Three or four men burst out laughing.

“I think we should head along a different road,” the man in the torn tunic said. “You can’t expect to see eye to eye with these idiotic peasants.”

“They don’t want us here,” another man said. “But when there is a war to be fought for them, then they want us! When they need to be defended from the Turk or from the devil knows who, then they want us — but ask them for a piece of bread or shelter for the night, and they turn into rabid dogs!”

Vladan continued cursing. He tapped himself, as if fumbling for something.

“You were too quick to throw away your gusla,” Gjorg said to himself.

“Let’s go,” said the man with the torn tunic, not taking his eyes off the dogs.

The fugitives decided to tag along. A little way from the village they sat down to rest beneath some trees.

“You are a minstrel also?” the Hungarian asked Gjorg, eyeing the lahuta slung over his shoulder.

Gjorg nodded.

“Both of us sang in the prince’s tent,” said Vladan, who lay stretched out next to him. “Yes, on the eve of the battle.“

“I have never seen a prince’s tent,’ the Hungarian said. “Tell us what it was like.”

Vladan’s eyes clouded with pain.

“What can I tell you, Hungarian? They were all there — our Prince Lazar, may he rest in peace, and King Tvrtko, and the lord of the Walachians, and the counts of Albania. They reveled and drank, and sometimes laughed as they listened to our songs.”

“But why? Why did they laugh at you?” two or three men asked.

“Not at us,” Vladan said sullenly. “No man has ever dared laugh at a minstrel.. . They were laughing at something else…. It is a tangled matter. A Serb or Albanian can understand, but for you it would be too hard… You tell them, Gjorg.”

“No, you tell them,” Gjorg answered.

Vladan took three or four deep breaths, but then shook his head. It was impossible to explain, he told them, especially now, after the calamity on the Plains of Kosovo. But he continued speaking. “For hundreds of years the evil persisted; what I mean is that Serbian and Albanian songs said exactly the opposite thing. . particularly when it came to Kosovo, as each side claimed Kosovo as theirs. And each side cursed the other. And this lasted right up to the eve of the battle. Which was why the princes in the big tent laughed at the songs, for the princes had come together to fight the Turks while the minstrels were still singing songs against one another, the Serbs cursing the Albanians and the Albanians the Serbs. And all the while, across the plain, the Turks were gathering to destroy them both the following day! Lord have mercy upon us!“

Gjorg wanted to tell him that quarrels were always started by those who came last, that when the Serbs had come down from the north, the Albanians had already been there, in Kosovo. But now all of that had become meaningless.

Vladan looked at him as if he had read his mind.

“We ourselves have brought this disaster upon our heads, my brother! We have been fighting and slaughtering each other for so many years over Kosovo, and now Kosovo has fallen to others.”

They looked at each other for a few moments without saying anything, trying to fight back their tears. Now that they were far away from Kosovo, it was as if they had been set free from its shadow. Now their minds could finally shed their fetters, and after their minds, their spirits.

Vladan stared at Gjorg’s lahuta.

“Can I try it, brother? My spirit is burning to sing again.“

Gjorg stiffened for a moment. He did not know if it was a sin for him to give his lahuta to a Serbian guslar. His memory told him nothing, but the sorrow in the other man’s eyes erased his doubts. As if numb, he slipped the strap of his lahuta from his shoulder. Vladan’s hand trembled as he took hold of the instrument.

He held it in his hands for a few moments, then his fingers timidly stretched to pluck the single string. Gjorg saw him hold his breath. He was certain that one of two things would happen: either Vladan’s hand would not obey the foreign instrument, or the instrument would not obey the foreign hand. The metallic string would snap, or Vladan’s fingers would freeze. A split second could bring calamity, and yet, on the other hand, it could also bring harmony.

“This is madness,” Gjorg said to himself, as if he were glad. He thought he saw beads of cold sweat on Vladan’s brow.

He wanted to tell him not to torture himself this way, or simply to shout, “Don’t!” But Vladan had already plucked the string.

For an instant isolated, sorrowful notes rose up. Then came the words. Gjorg saw Vladan’s face turn spectral white. And the words, heavy as ancient headstones, were filled with sorrow. “Serbs, to arms! The Albanians are taking Kosovo from us!“

He sang these words, and then dropped his head as if he had been struck. “I cannot! I must not!” he muttered, gasping in despair.

The other fugitives looked at each other, wondering what had happened.

“How wretched we are!” Gjorg said to himself, and yet in his painful words there was a spark of uncertainty. “No, how blessed we are!” And he cried deep inside.

The Serb’s eyes were filled with the same tragic lament. Both men were prisoners, tied to each other by ancient chains that they could not and did not want to break.

Every time they set out to return to the Balkans, they came across people fleeing from there. “Are you out of your minds?” the people said. “We barely got out alive, and you are trying to return? Down there death is everywhere!”

The fleeing people were covered with so much dust that their faces looked more anguished and lifeless than the faces of the saints on the icons they were carrying with them. The news they brought was no less somber: Serbia, it seemed, was in utter disarray. Nobody knew what had become of Walachia or Bosnia. Only half of Albania was still holding out, the western region with its Albano-Venetian castles. And the lands of the Croats and the Slovenes had not yet fallen. But all the Balkan princes, both those in power and those overthrown, had bowed their heads before the Turkish sultan.

“What about Kosovo and its plains?” some of the men asked eagerly.

“Don’t ask! Even the grass is gone. Even the blackbirds have fled. Even the name is said to have been changed — it is to be called Muradie from now on, in honor of Sultan Murad, who died there.”

“What about the churches?” somebody asked.

“They have been torn down, and temples have been built in their place — they call them mosques, or. .”