warm, and the column of pupils, led by their teacher, felt a sense of relief when they arrived at Kalemegdan and when they could hide and rest in the shade of the park around the Military Museum. Their teacher sat on a bench and wiped inside his heavy black hat with his handkerchief. The young boys and girls spread themselves out among the uneven shadows of the bushes and trees in a happy throng. Their new surroundings, the glare and greenery of a summer’s day, the wide rivers flowing under a tall sky—everything was exciting and goaded them into laughter and movement.
Then the focus falls on two girls, Ana and Olga, who are looking at the
turbe
:
They, too, together with the rest, stared long at the puzzling letters of the Turkish inscription, then half-aloud they read the translation, written in black letters on a gilded board. (Damid Ali Pasha... conqueror of Morea... Great Vizier, most esteemed follower of the Prophet... Struck down 13 August 1716 at Petrovaradin...). And now, suppressing their giggles, as a piece of fun which they were helpless to stop, its source powerful and overflowing, they shuffled around the locked doors. Then, Olga slowly took the iron ring of the door, knocked twice, and in a changed voice with a theatrical bow solemnly declared, “Lord Great Vizier, arise, your loyal servant is calling you...”
Here, without finishing her sentence, she let the ring go like a naughty, frightened child. (Who can know where that little and unexpected boldness of otherwise calm and restrained creatures comes from and where it will lead?) And both girls ran off, hand-in–hand and laughing, along the soft path to the very edge of the terrace from which opened up the broad, illuminated view over the meeting place of the Sava and Danube.
The two girls spend the night at the house of Ana’s aunt in Belgrade. When they fall asleep Olga has a nightmare in which she is visited by the spirit of Damid Ali Pasha. Scared out of her wits, she is woken by Ana who has heard her whimpering cries. Andrić finishes his story on an altogether different note—that of the resilience of children in the face of their worst fears:
The girls held one another tightly and both of them at the same time burst into peals of laughter. They laughed so much, so loudly and long, sitting in their white illuminated bed. Their heads were bent towards one another as if they were singing a happy duet. The whole room filled with their clear, carefree laughter.
The girls in their own childish way have caught the spectral echoes that resound softly through the old fortress. Ivo Andrić, like Sveta Lukić and the poets, evokes an image of Kalemegdan both haunting and haunted, captured in the innocent laughter of children.
Chapter Two
F ROM R EPUBLIC S QUARE TO THE R IVER SAVA: T HE S ERBIAN U PRISINGS AND L ATER
I STANBUL G ATE
Republic Square marks the outer limit of Ottoman Belgrade. Here, at a point in front of the equestrian statue to Knez Mihailo and across the road from the National Theatre (Narodno pozorište), stood the massive main gate into the city known as the Istanbul Gate (Stambol-kapija). In Turkish times the road out of town from here took the traveller down through Serbia and to the sultan’s court at Istanbul, while inside the city it led to the Inner Istanbul Gate and the Upper Town of the fortress. Always heavily guarded to control traffic entering and leaving Belgrade, it was, according to eye-witness accounts, a most impressive structure. It formed part of a defensive system that ran up the hill from the Danube roughly along the line of what is now France Street, by the National Theatre and into the square. On the other side of the gate, the perimeter defences pushed over the brow of the hill and curved their way down to the bank of the Sava. The city was cradled between the two rivers behind a broad and deep trench further supported by earthworks and on top of them a wooden palisade.
The
Then the focus falls on two girls, Ana and Olga, who are looking at the
turbe
:
They, too, together with the rest, stared long at the puzzling letters of the Turkish inscription, then half-aloud they read the translation, written in black letters on a gilded board. (Damid Ali Pasha... conqueror of Morea... Great Vizier, most esteemed follower of the Prophet... Struck down 13 August 1716 at Petrovaradin...). And now, suppressing their giggles, as a piece of fun which they were helpless to stop, its source powerful and overflowing, they shuffled around the locked doors. Then, Olga slowly took the iron ring of the door, knocked twice, and in a changed voice with a theatrical bow solemnly declared, “Lord Great Vizier, arise, your loyal servant is calling you...”
Here, without finishing her sentence, she let the ring go like a naughty, frightened child. (Who can know where that little and unexpected boldness of otherwise calm and restrained creatures comes from and where it will lead?) And both girls ran off, hand-in–hand and laughing, along the soft path to the very edge of the terrace from which opened up the broad, illuminated view over the meeting place of the Sava and Danube.
The two girls spend the night at the house of Ana’s aunt in Belgrade. When they fall asleep Olga has a nightmare in which she is visited by the spirit of Damid Ali Pasha. Scared out of her wits, she is woken by Ana who has heard her whimpering cries. Andrić finishes his story on an altogether different note—that of the resilience of children in the face of their worst fears:
The girls held one another tightly and both of them at the same time burst into peals of laughter. They laughed so much, so loudly and long, sitting in their white illuminated bed. Their heads were bent towards one another as if they were singing a happy duet. The whole room filled with their clear, carefree laughter.
The girls in their own childish way have caught the spectral echoes that resound softly through the old fortress. Ivo Andrić, like Sveta Lukić and the poets, evokes an image of Kalemegdan both haunting and haunted, captured in the innocent laughter of children.
Chapter Two
F ROM R EPUBLIC S QUARE TO THE R IVER SAVA: T HE S ERBIAN U PRISINGS AND L ATER
I STANBUL G ATE
Republic Square marks the outer limit of Ottoman Belgrade. Here, at a point in front of the equestrian statue to Knez Mihailo and across the road from the National Theatre (Narodno pozorište), stood the massive main gate into the city known as the Istanbul Gate (Stambol-kapija). In Turkish times the road out of town from here took the traveller down through Serbia and to the sultan’s court at Istanbul, while inside the city it led to the Inner Istanbul Gate and the Upper Town of the fortress. Always heavily guarded to control traffic entering and leaving Belgrade, it was, according to eye-witness accounts, a most impressive structure. It formed part of a defensive system that ran up the hill from the Danube roughly along the line of what is now France Street, by the National Theatre and into the square. On the other side of the gate, the perimeter defences pushed over the brow of the hill and curved their way down to the bank of the Sava. The city was cradled between the two rivers behind a broad and deep trench further supported by earthworks and on top of them a wooden palisade.
The
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