Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History

by Amila Buturovic

much so that, when the bride does acquire a voice, it is not the domesticated voice

  of a dutiful daughter-in-law but one that brings together her identity as widow-

  bride and what she had been only a few hours earlier, an unmarried girl like Fata.

  Her empathy with the loss of true love reveals a woman whose transition from

  unmarried to married life has not had time to be fully encoded. Like Fata, she

  too may have been deprived of her true love by this arranged marriage. She thus

  stands up to the mother-in-law and to the norms that disrupt life—and love—in the

  name of social stability and noble lineage, enunciating her empathy as contempt:

  “May God strike you, Mehmed’s mother,

  why did you marry him to me,

  why not to Fata, whom he truly loved,

  now Meho lies dead, killed by his sorrow,

  as he died he only spoke of his fair Fata.

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  Mothers, Lovers, Brides, and Widows

  Unfulfilled love, marriage against one’s will, the mother’s authority, martyrdom,

  clashes of desire and interest—none of these subjects seems to be treated

  as anomalous. The ballad unfolds them as episodes possessing an almost

  documentary function, as records of the society in which tensions arise through

  the conflation of different value systems, and the seeming opposition of the purity

  of love versus the realities of social order. In light of this, what hypotheses can we

  draw regarding gender roles, specifically the role of women, in such ballads?

  Offering more complex insight into the workings of society, the ballad challenges

  us not to assume that social power is concentrated only in the hands of men, and

  that there is no tension in the management of that power. In fact, such tension is

  played out across a number of social categories—gender, class, age, etc.—and it

  is often women who are assigned the responsibility of dealing with and resolving

  it in daily life, especially in the context of the family. The centrality of women as

  agents of action is accentuated through the exclusion of male characters. After all,

  of the four characters in this ballad, three are women: the mother, Meho’s beloved

  Fata, and the bride Umihana. While there is reference to the men preparing and

  carrying out the funerary procession, the only male who is given a voice is Meho.

  Here, then, as in many other Bosnian ballads, there exists a conspicuous absence

  of men. Other than the tragic lover/hero who almost invariably sets off a crisis,

  men exist as invisible presences. Their invisibility, however, does not signify their

  negation and elimination from the real world; rather, their textual absence bears

  silent witness to the organization of the family microcosm, in which the mother

  functions, by proxy, as the pillar of family stability.

  Given that the space of the family tends to be the narrative frame of most ballads,

  the mother acquires narrative centrality in safeguarding the order. She manages

  the life of the family and is the carrier of its values. As anthropologists studying

  life in the Mediterranean—and specifically the central Balkans—have observed,

  gender roles are intertwined in a non-divisive and largely complementary way, so

  that women implement the values in the space of daily life, while men oversee

  them within the larger patriarchal system.28 Women, enshrined in the house

  and assigned the role of caretakers, are the backbone of the family in Bosnia.29

  Men may be the ultimate rulers of the social order, but women are its everyday

  managers. Their power is thus codified within a particular dynamic of mutual

  reliance, and rarely portrayed as subversive or rebellious. As we have seen earlier,

  the three women in the ballad function within dominant norms, hardly subverting

  their logic. Even the bride who, at the moment of crisis, experiences conjugal

  rejection by Meho’s self-sacrifice and voices a challenge to the blind application

  of social norms, is not exempted from society’s grip. She remains the daughter-

  in-law, with all the demands that such a role carries.

  In contrast, the male tragic hero, while seemingly the principal victim,

  is also the nexus around which the order is not only upset but also reaffirmed

  and preserved. Meho stages the clash between the ideal and the real, a collision

  between the dominant norms and individual desire. This clash is carried out, to use

  Buturović, Love and/or death?

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  René Girard’s term, as “generative violence,” in the sense that “it simultaneously

  initiates another and constructive cycle—that of sacrificial rite—which protects

  the community from that same violence and allows culture to flourish.”30 In

  our ballad, however, this is not a solitary act, the individualized catharsis of a

  love-stricken man. It is gendered through the double sacrifice of the hero and

  the heroine, which thus implicates both men and women in the responsibility

  of safeguarding the social order. Their sacrifices are complementary. Their

  tragedy in this world is recast as happiness in the afterlife, which again echoes

  the assumption that preserving the normative order in this world will grant them

  eternal bliss and reward.

  Importantly, then, the ballad is not constructed as a “men versus women”

  world. There are no binaries that imply mutual antagonism and exclusion. Rather,

  all relations are emblematic of different social responses to a crisis brought about

  by a pathetic, yet still commanding, male hero. The women are both in harmony

  and opposition with each other, and therefore they are not given one and the

  same voice. Thus, the mother and the bride share social status, but are separated

  by age; Fata, the tragic lover, and the bride share age, but are divided across

  social status; the mother and young Fata share a sense of social propriety. Here,

  the two women who ostensibly stand in an antagonistic relationship join forces

  to preserve and protect the norms. The three women thus reveal different moral

  and behavioral possibilities and divulge different responses to the crisis, yet

  neither one radically challenges her role within the system. There is no polarity

  among them, but constant intertwining of ideas and experiences in a way that

  infuses complexity into what seems to be a black-and-white order. Folk wisdom

  thus allows women to act in multilayered ways, validating their actions as a

  choice—judicial, capricious, sentimental, etc.—rather than as passive adherence

  to dominant norms. Even though these are never explicated or laid out, they stand

  in the background and frame the ballad by virtue of the fact that the song is a

  communal composition. Common narrative markers of such norms are present

  as well: ritual practices, religious symbols, emotional expressions, and physical

  gestures. But even given this backdrop of patriarchal and hierarchical society,

  women appear more as subjects and agents of action than passive recipients of

  values.

  In contrast to the women who open up different possibilities for the resolution

  of the crisis, and who are driven to their choices by family or communal needs

  rather than sentimentality or idealism, on the single occasion when the man in the

  ballad
is actually permitted to act, he generates the crisis. So it is not the women

  who are incapable of reconciling the ideals and realities of life—it is the man,

  Meho. Cognitive and emotional paralysis leads him to act solely on his desire,

  which ultimately and inevitably leads him to disrupting the order in self-centered

  fashion. He orchestrates all subsequent events, and brings about the crisis in a

  domino effect: his pathos and suicide, his bride’s witnessing of it, the upheaval

  in her identity, his mother’s loss of her son, and his beloved Fata’s suffering

  and death, are all end-results of Meho’s private, self-absorbed decision. He is

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  therefore only seemingly eschewed from the narrative and rendered irrelevant

  and ineffectual. In reality, he is the main protagonist who determines the course

  of events. He orders his bride to say certain things, controls her sexuality and

  womanhood, instructs his mother as to his burial ritual, and pulls Fata to her

  death. Yet he is not depicted as a villain, but as the victim of his own pathos.

  Although he appears emasculated, in fact he choreographs the order of events,

  which, by virtue of being relational and social, demand a response, as well as

  another victim—his beloved Fata. This latter’s death is the necessary conclusion

  of Meho self-sacrifice. Resistance to it would have signaled a denial of her loyalty

  to the man she loved, and the subversion of prevailing norms. Instead, she gives

  herself to him in death, order is reaffirmed, and salvation is achieved through

  eternal bliss shared by the two lovers. In that sense, Meho’s suicide and self-

  sacrifice, thanks to the response of the women who surround him, leads not to a

  disruption of the social order, but, on the contrary, to its re-affirmation.

  Rather than challenging or sabotaging them, therefore, the ballad seems to

  regulate the values and practices that are embedded in local customs and imparted

  by the Ottoman ethos. When passion and desire appear threatening to the cultural

  order, women are mobilized to question where the priorities lie and how the crisis

  can be averted. There is no unique solution to the crisis. In contrast to canonical

  literature, which by and large reduces gender relations to predictable patterns

  of behavior, in the ballad, folk wisdom allows for the intertwining of gender

  with other social categories—including class, age, and family lineage—to help

  us understand better the subtleties of individual and collective response to any

  transgression of the norms. Unlike men, who are either removed from narrative

  action or assigned the function of provoking a social crisis by effecting such

  transgressions, it is the women of the ballads who are ascribed the choice, and the

  responsibility, to act for the preservation of the norms. Thanks to these women,

  crises in the ballads may represent a critique, but hardly a disruption, of the

  dominant order.

  But if women are given the responsibility of upholding the social order

  even when that runs against their best interests, does that mean that love must

  be altogether banished from a functioning society? As suggested above, it is

  commonly noted that the ballad treats romantic love as a destabilizing, even

  anarchic, force. It emasculates men and empowers women, confusing the basic

  patterns of interaction that reflect accepted gender norms. Love is thus depicted as

  counterproductive to the very order that occasions it, and that is why it has to be

  sacrificed. But the resurrection of love and its continuity in a social “elsewhere”

  is what crowns the ballad. In that sense, by allowing love to be reaffirmed in the

  afterlife, the ballad mourns this-worldly losses in the form of a utopian lament

  that suggests the possibility of reconciliation between this world and the next,

  between the ethos and the pathos that seemingly cancel each other out in the

  existing order.

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  Appendix: The Ballad In This World They Could Not Unite

  U svj’etu se naći ne mogaše,

  In this world they could not unite,

  što Mehmed Fatu milovaše.

  Mehmed and Fata whom he loved the most.

  Misli Fata uzeće je Meho,

  Fata thought that Meho would marry her,

  hoće Meho, al’ mu ne da majka.

  Meho would have, but his mother wished it not.

  Fata svoje ruho prodavala.

  Fata was a girl of modest means.

  Mehmedu govorila majka: Mehmed’s mother kept telling her son:

  “O moj sine, d’jete Mehmede,

  “O my son, my darling boy Mehmed,

  ti se prođi Smiljanića Fate, forget about this Fata Smiljanic girl,

  Fata nije roda gospodskoga,

  Fata is a woman of no consequence,

  jer u Fate b’jela ruha nema;

  Fata has no wealth nor riches to boast of;

  ti si, sine, roda gospodskoga,

  you, son, are a man of noble birth,

  neće t’ moći roda darovati.

  she could never give you a worthy heir.

  Ja sam tebi zlato isprosila

  I have found a golden match for you,

  sa Zagorja Umihanu mladu, from Zagorje, the Umihana maiden,

  milu kćerku beg-Filipovića, beloved daughter of Filipović Bey,

  otišli su po l’jepu djevojku

  the matchmakers are now on their way

  sad se tvojim svatima nadam.”

  and wedding rites will start in no time.”

  Meho šuti, ništa ne besjedi.

  Calm and quiet, Meho did not reply.

  Onda reče svojoj miloj majci:

  Then he spoke to her in a placid voice:

  “Daj mi, majko, ačik mintan mavi,

  “Get me, Mother, my blue cloak to wear;

  brzo mi ga na telala dala,

  the one she sent for in the market place,

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  brzo mi ga na drugom gledala,

  the one she saw on another man,

  uzdisala, Mehu spominjala!”

  saw it on him, but sighed after me!”

  Dade majka ačik mintan mavi,

  His mother brought him his blue cloak to wear,

  ode Meho tijesnim sokakom

  Meho set off through the narrow streets

  ispred dovora plemenite Fate.

  to the house of Fata, his fair beloved.

  Pred njeg’ mlada išetala Fate,

  Young Fata walked down to greet him,

  “Kamo Meho, šećer i jabuke,

  “Where to, Meho, my apple and my sweet,

  što si mene na to naučio?”

  is that how you got me hooked on you?”

  Meho šuti, ništa ne besjedi.

  Meho kept quiet, he did not say a word.

  Njeg mlada zaklinjaše Fata: Fata begged him, on her life and his:

  “Života ti i tvoga i moga,

  “On your life and on mine as well,

  kaži meni, što si neveseo?”

  why this sadness, my beloved man?”

  Meho kaza, što je i kako je.

  Meho spoke, this is the way the story went.

  U to dođe iz dvora robinja: But then the slave girl came to take him home:

  “Hajde, Meho, tebe zove majka,

  “Come on, Meho, your mother needs you there,

  došli su ti kićeni svatovi,

  for the wedding rites are underway,


  da ti skineš sa konja djevojku!”

  you must take your bride off her horse.”

  Ne htje Meho da otiđe dvoru

  Meho did not want to return home

  al’ ga mlada preklinjaše Fata:

  but fair Fata began to urge him on:

  “Idi, Meho, oba ti svijeta, “Go, Meho, by this world and the other,

  onog svj’eta i ovog cvijeta!”

  by the other world, and by your rose in this one!”

  Tad je Meho Fatu poslušao,

  Meho backed down and agreed to go home,

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  pa on ode b’jelu dvoru svome,

  off he went to that white castle, his abode,

  kad mu zlato na konju stajaše.

  to greet his new jewel on the horse.

  Mladu Mehi govorila majka:

  His mother came and pleaded with her son:

  “Skini, Meho, sa konja djevojku!”

  “Go on, Meho, take your young bride down!”

  Neće Meho da skine djevojke,

  Meho did not wish to take his bride down,

  al’ da vidiš Mehmeda majke,

  if you could see his mother then,

  gdje povadi dojke iz njedara,

  she bared her breasts from her blouse,

  poče sina proklinjati svoga.

  and began to curse and plead with her son.

  Al’ se Meho pobojao kletve,

  Fearing his mother’s curse so,

  pa on skinu sa konja djevojku.

  down he brought the bride from her horse.

  Kad je bilo večer po akšamu;

  Evening then followed sunset,

  večeraše i akšam klanjaše.

  and after dinner they said their prayers.

  Kad je bio vakat of ložnice, As the hour came to put out the fire,

  dvoje mlade u đerdek svedoše.

  the newlyweds were taken to the nuptial chamber.

  Da vidite gondže Mehmeda!

  If only you could see the young Mehmed!

  On ne skida duvak sa djevojke,

  He did not want to lift the veil off his bride,

  da djevojci b’jelo lice ljubi,

  nor wish to behold her face and kiss it;

  već on sjede na šikli sanduke,

  instead, he sat on a richly upholstered trunk,

  pa on uze sadefli tamburu.

  with his mother-of-pearl inlaid lute.

  Sitno kuca, tanko popijeva: Playing softly, he began to sing:

  “Misliš, Fato, misliš, dušo moja,

  “Do you think, my Fata, do you think, my sweet,

  da djevojci puli duvak skidam?

  that I am lifting the veil off my bride?