Byron and the Beauty

by Muharem Bazdulj

  It transpired that Isak had spent five years in Sarajevo, returning to Amsterdam when his father passed away. Wanderlust had sprouted in his soul, too. At this point Isak’s tale grew spare again; he said only that he learned the basics of medicine in Germany, and that his travels took him to Istanbul. The candles were guttering by then, and Isak was in more and more of a hurry to finish his tale. He was speaking softly, almost whispering, and it was hard to understand him. He said he had converted to Islam, but Byron couldn’t tell if he had done it pro forma and for pragmatic reasons, or if the cause lay deeper, in something more nuanced. For years it seemed, he was one of the most eminent doctors in Istanbul, until one day, out of a clear blue sky, he was overcome by nostalgic longing for Sarajevo. He packed up and made for Bosnia, but shortly before reaching his goal, he changed his mind and turned back. Yet he didn’t return to Istanbul.

  ‘To make a long story short, my lord,’ Isak said finally, ‘as I was on riding back to Istanbul, returning to my home, my route happened to go through this region, and I stayed. Ali Pasha made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’

  With that Isak rose from the table, dipped his thumb and forefinger in water, and pinched out the flame of the candle.

  ‘Neither, my lord, did you have Yannina on your itinerary. But here you are. And for several days now,’ Isak said into the black of the night that had just swallowed the entire room.

  Chapter Five: October 10, 1809

  Beads of sweat, as large as peas, dotted Byron’s sleeping countenance. He was rolled up in the blanket like a mummy, but his head was jerking – sometimes to the left, and sometimes to the right. He was dreaming. Ali Pasha was in his dream. Byron knew that it was Ali Pasha, although he had never seen this man in his life: an enormous, robust old man with a long, white beard, clad in a splendid robe of the type you see Orientals wearing in ancient frescoes. A turban graced his head. His face was identical to that of Byron’s grandfather William, the wicked lord. The correspondence between Ali Pasha and his grandfather in the dream failed to astonish Byron. Nor was he astonished by the hulking size of the old man in comparison to his own smallness. He was not a child in the dream, he was already the adult Byron of today, but next to Ali Pasha he looked as tiny as a Lilliputian.

  In the dream, Byron was trapped in a labyrinthine city: in a ghastly warren of intersecting grey streets, which were every bit as ugly as Sintra was gorgeous. The maze had several exits, so the problem actually lay not in locating a way out; the problem was the presence of Ali Pasha, who stood before every one of them. In the dream Byron approached him several times, and each time it seemed as if the old man was growing favourably disposed towards him. But as Byron drew close, the kindly face grew hard, peevish and stern, and his penetrating, censorious glance bored into Byron’s eyes like a hançer or a blade of Damascus steel. Worst of all, Byron felt remorse, pangs of conscience, and the need to besprinkle himself with ashes without even knowing what his transgression was. Obviously some sin was gnawing at him from the inside, a sin unknown to Byron, but a goodly portion of Ali Pasha’s power stemmed from this sense of secrecy and mystery. Faced with the old man’s penetrating gaze, Byron searched his mind desperately, like an insecure schoolboy, but no matter how hard he tried he could not recall his crime. He knew that if he could just remember it, then all would be forgiven, his stumbles would give way to a stride, and the curves would be straightened out. Ali Pasha would step to one side, and in front of Byron the gate of the exit would open – but he could not remember anything. He stood on his toes and attempted, over the shoulders of the old man, to catch at least a glance of the light that meant open expanses and salvation. But he couldn’t do it. The old man was too tall. All was lost.

  Finally, he looked up at the face of the old man, in despair and contrition, beseeching him silently with his eyes, as a saint would do to Christ, the Redeemer. Ali Pasha returned his gaze. In his eyes there was no longer sternness or anger, but rather a sort of superior or merciless pity, as if the scope of Byron’s misery was so great that even the evil, unfeeling old man could not take any pleasure in it – and perhaps also his gaze included a hint of barely noticeable indifference. The gaze cut Byron to the quick. He lowered his head and beheld the dirty floor at his feet. Above him a harsh and thunderous laugh could be heard; it shook heaven and earth and everything in between. It’s as if a great wind is coming, thought Byron, in that opaque span between slumber and wakefulness. The wind slammed against his window. In his disquieting dream, he had cast off the blanket. Now he lay there uncovered, groggy and bathed in sweat. Dawn had come and gone, but the horizon was narrow and dark like the streets of the city in his dreams.

  * * *

  Before they started breakfast, Hobhouse had whispered that he needed to speak with him. They ate quickly and restlessly. Rising to his feet, Byron motioned to Hobhouse to follow him. They went out of the front of the building. It was cold outside: pendulous clouds clogged the horizon, and one could feel the moisture in the air, although the rain had not yet started.

  ‘We’re leaving tonight,’ Byron said abruptly but softly.

  ‘Where are we bound?’ his companion asked.

  ‘For the south,’ Byron answered, ‘towards Athens, towards Istanbul. We’ll continue the journey as planned.’

  Hobhouse looked around nervously. He walked over to Byron, leaned towards him, and nearly touching his earlobes with his lips, he whispered

  ‘They won’t let us leave’.

  Byron wanted to say, ‘What right do they have to detain us?’ But he merely added: ‘We shall flee.’

  Hobhouse laughed bitterly: ‘In these ravines and defiles we will soon be found, either by the Albanians or by death, and if they come to regard us as enemies, then I don’t know which fate would be less desirable.’

  To that Byron said nothing.

  ‘I was not in favour of a sojourn in these parts from the start,’ Hobhouse asserted. He looked all around and said: ‘But now that we are here, we have to keep our heads….When in Rome, do as the Romans,’ he said with an acid smile; ‘and in the Balkans, do not stir up the wrath of the locals.’

  Byron, looking pensive, agreed. Yes, for the moment he was enjoying Ali Pasha’s favour. They had put a house at his disposal, along with everything else that he needed. That was pure hospitality, selfless and kind. Nonetheless, Byron knew that this kingly generosity could very easily change into its categorical opposite. He knew Hobhouse was right. But he was nonetheless tormented by his own subservience. He would’ve liked to imagine that he was remaining here of his own volition, but even the thought of Zuleiha did not help him in that. He knew very well what the problem was. He liked Yannina well enough; in fact, he actually found it pleasant but was unnerved by the correspondence between his will and that of Ali Pasha. Both of them wished for Byron to remain a while longer; but it irritated the Englishman to think that Ali Pasha might see in his stay an attempt to humour him, even at the expense of Byron’s own unease. He felt the blood rise to his face.

  He gave Hobhouse an urgent look and said: ‘You are right. We should not flee.’ And after a brief pause he declared: ‘We will announce our departure, and then leave Yannina. Let us be off tonight.’

  Hobhouse started to object, but the thud of approaching steps deterred him. It was Hasan with two attendants. When he caught sight of Byron, his lips formed a smile in the shape of a lateral half-moon. He greeted Byron in Albanian, embraced him, and led him into the building.

  Isak was seated at the table, drinking coffee. He and Hasan had a short conversation, and a moment later Isak turned to Byron: ‘Tomorrow we will depart, my lord. Alert your attendants. Ali Pasha has invited you to Tepelena.’

  Byron caught the gaze of his friend Hobhouse, whose eyes were twinkling with laughter. Byron shrugged his shoulders. ‘Tomorrow we leave,’ he said.

  * * *

  For the third night in a row, Byron and Isak had a long, intimate conversation. Byron had been occupied almost all da
y with the preparations for the continuation of the journey. Before dusk everything stood ready, but he knew that his usual case of travel nerves was still in store for him. He liked to be active the night before a trip; waiting made him nervous. He couldn’t sit sedately when he knew that they would be back on the road the next day; he always just needed to bustle about, or at least throw himself into some task he had been putting off for a long time. Tonight he intended to write to his mother. He had tried several times unsuccessfully, and apparently he was not going to have any luck now, either. He couldn’t even get past the first courteous formalities. Yet he was visibly cheered by Isak’s return to the room. He enjoyed conversing with the man, and the fact that Isak would be accompanying them tomorrow made him happy.

  ‘Good evening, my lord,’ Isak proffered. ‘Are you looking forward to the trip?’

  Byron replied that his experiences of travel were decidedly ambivalent; he loved to travel, but on the eve of a journey he would invariably regret that he had decided to go.

  ‘I understand,’ Isak said. ‘You, my lord, are a Westerner with the soul of an Easterner.’

  Byron regarded him quizzically, and Isak continued: ‘The Westerner has travel in his blood; the Easterner hates leaving his home. The threshold of your house, as they say in Bosnia, is the highest mountain. You will see this, if you haven’t already: in the East, the idea of a journey for the sake of amusement is totally unknown. There are many people here now who are wondering what you’re doing here. Some suspect that you were cast out of your homeland, while others reckon you to be a spy. A Turk only goes on a journey when he has to: because of the authorities – on a mission or into exile – or for the sake of his God, on a pilgrimage: The hajj, to be precise. You travel, my lord, because in the West there is a convention known as travelling. But in you there’s also something Eastern, something indifferent and idle. You attach yourself to a country, one that need not be your home soil. You’re not a nomad, my lord; you are not a John Lackland.’

  With that Isak concluded his short monologue. Byron had to laugh. He sensed that Isak was in an optimistic and garrulous mood, so he ventured to ask him what kind of a man Ali Pasha was. Isak heaved a deep sigh: ‘He is both lenient and callous, my lord, like all despots. The people, on nights when they are gathered whispering around the fire, tell both of his goodness and his cruelty. They are stories, my lord, of the sort you encounter in myths: Ali Pasha is a man with the strength of a lion but the soul of a nightingale; he bestows gifts upon poor children, but makes his enemies pay with tears of blood; a sad song might move him, while the cries for mercy of those who have set themselves against him are music to his ears; he honours women, yet lets his followers despoil enslaved girls and laugh at their sobs.

  This is the perspective of the poor, superstitious, and uneducated peasants hereabouts, my lord; they’ve been living with such stories for hundreds of years, and only the names of the rulers change. Men like Ali Pasha thrive on the weakness of the Sultan; they are parasites on the body of an ailing empire. There are many such pashas, despots, and warlords in the wanton and bloody Orient. They are cruel princes who gouge out the eyes of their own brothers, castrate their own relatives, and live in fear of their own sons – all for the sake of power. For the sake of power, they plot and scheme with the devil himself; they do the dirty work of various higher lords, fraternize now with England and now with France, and then with Austria and sometimes with Russia, and they fancy that they are the equals of emperors and kings, even though they are actually just their servants, their dogs – dogs that assume that because of their long leashes they must be free. Ali Pasha is one of these modern, crossed unfortunates, a bad copy of Sultan Yahya.’

  With that Isak was ready to stop his explication, but Byron shot him a searching look: who?

  ‘Haven’t you heard, my lord, the story of Sultan Yahya?’ Isak was amazed. ‘Then keep listening,’ he added. ‘It’s a damn good story. Yahya is the Muslim version of the name John. The Yahya who is mentioned in the Koran corresponds to John the Baptist in the Gospels. Yahya was the child of a Byzantine princess from the line of the Comneni and the son of Murat III. When the mother feared that her son might lose his life to intrigues at court, she sent him away to Greece; that is, to a monastery in Bulgaria. One of her faithful eunuchs travelled with the boy. The boy was baptized at the monastery according to Orthodox rites, and when he had grown up after a decade there, he left the monastery together with that same eunuch. They travelled the Balkans, disguised as dervishes, and Yahya was obsessed with the idea of becoming the ruler of the entire empire. On this account they nicknamed him “the Sultan.”

  In the following years, he criss-crossed Europe from Prague to Florence, from Venice to Paris, from Heidelberg to Antwerp, always on the look-out for support from the crowned heads of Europe. The Medici received him, and the Savoyards, the Nevers and Wallenstein, as well as both popes and emperors. He joined the Florentines on crusades in Syria and Kosovo. With the Austrians, he attacked Bar and Shkodra, and with Polish mercenaries and Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks he attacked Constantinople itself. He commanded a fleet of one hundred and thirty ships, and little stood between him and the realization of his insane ambitions. The unfortunate man probably did not realize, and also did not want to know, that his false allies in the West could hardly wait for him to fail, so as to take the chance to kill him and dismember his empire. Every local bey in the Orient dreamt of becoming sultan, but only Yahya made a serious go of it. All the others, including Ali Pasha, are just small-time robbers; they are weak and have no idea even of how to take a majestic fall. But decline and defeat are unavoidable for them.

  Listen carefully, my lord, and remember: in the not-so-distant future, a sultan will decorate his palace in Istanbul with the head of old Ali Pasha.’ Isak uttered these words in a barely audible voice.

  Byron, grave and thoughtful, said nothing. ‘Until then it is up to us to obey him,’ he said at last. ‘Let us sleep, Isak, for we both must travel on the morrow.’

  Chapter Six: October 11, 1809

  They were not, however, fated to depart the next morning. They had barely woken- up, when Byron noticed they were in siege-like state. The horses were saddled, and everything was prepared for setting off, but the plan had changed. Hasan and Isak were having a vehement discussion, and the Englishmen were watching them bemusedly. Finally Isak turned to Byron: ‘We will leave after the audience.’

  ‘What audience is that?’ Byron asked in confusion. ‘I thought Ali Pasha was not here.’ ‘Oh, he isn’t,’ Isak muttered. ‘You will be received by Ali Pasha’s grandson.’

  ‘Does Ali Pasha really have an adult grandson?’ Byron asked.

  ‘Well, how adult he is, my lord, is a question that would receive a different answer in the West than it would here. Mahmut Pasha is ten-years old.’

  Byron was annoyed. ‘A child,’ he said softly, to himself. But Isak heard him.

  ‘This is a not a child in the sense you are used to, my lord.’ He sidled up to him and used his chin to indicate Hasan. ‘See how nervous he is? This very morning Mahmut Pasha ordered Hasan to bring you to him, and he is consumed by the fear that you might give him the slip.’

  ‘He fears the rage of a ten-year old child!’ Byron exclaimed.

  ‘He fears power, my lord, as everyone does.’

  Just then, Hasan came over to them and had a word with Isak. When they had finished, Isak turned again to Byron: ‘only you will go see Mahmut Pasha, my lord. I will go along as your interpreter, while the other attendants wait for us here. As soon as we return, we’ll start the journey as planned, because it would not be wise for us to lose a whole day.’ Byron nodded in agreement. ‘When do we set out to pay our respects to the brat?’ he wanted to know.

  Isak gave him a strange look and said: ‘Momentarily.’

  The konak where Mahmud Pasha was going to receive them was only a few hundred metres distant, yet they had to ride there in a slow-moving procession,
complete with escort. It was all that Byron could do not to laugh. There is something perverse in all this, he thought; Hasan, Isak, and he were going to pay homage to a boy, as if this were a parody of the Gospels. Their three horses walked next to each other, and they were accompanied by a troupe of soldiers: we are three abject wise men, thought Byron.

  The guard who stood watch in front of the unprepossessing residence respectfully allowed them to pass. They then passed through a dim corridor, at the end of which a broad, bright room awaited them. At the back of it stood a luxurious settee. It wasn’t exactly a throne, but it was a dignified seat for a ruler. On the settee two boys were seated. Isak and Hasan stopped in their tracks, but Byron seemed to know what to do. When he got near the centre of the room, the younger boy arose and came forward to meet him. He approached to within a metre or so, and then, with his right hand pressed to his chest and his head slightly bowed, he greeted him. Byron returned the greeting in the same fashion. Now the younger boy went back to his seat, and Byron repeated the ritual with the older of the two. When both boys were again seated, Isak appeared next to Byron. Hasan had disappeared somewhere.

  ‘The younger one,’ whispered Isak, ‘is Husein Beg, and he’s also a grandson of Ali Pasha.’

  Byron barely heard these words. Awestruck, he kept his eyes on the two boys. Isak was right, he thought; children of this sort I have most certainly never seen. They were gorgeous: with dark skin, and even darker eyes, and facial features that were perfectly formed. Their lips were bright red. Clad in ceremonial garments, of the type that adult dignitaries wear in the East, they looked almost lovingly at Byron. Mahmut Pasha seemed especially impressed by the English lord: he looked him carefully up and down, from head to toe. Byron turned to Isak: ‘tell them that I offer my respects to them, that I feel honoured by this meeting, and that I am grateful for their hospitality.’