Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) by Mesa Selimovic Page A

I paid no attention. I barely even noticed them, and did so only because of something about them that might have seemed strange. But that impression remained entirely superficial, unchecked, and my absent-mindedness did not allow me to connect the occurrence with its possible cause. I did not care who at that late hour might be passing by the tekke, the last building on the edge of the kasaba. Nothing stirred within me, no presentiment, no foreboding; those footsteps meant as much to me as the flight of a moth, and nothing warned me that they could be decisive in my life. What a pity and what a wonder it is that man cannot sense even the most immediate threat to him. Had I known, I would have shut the heavy bolt on the gate and gone into the tekke, so the fates of others would be decided without my involvement. But I did not know, and I continued to watch the river, trying to see it in the way I had seen it a moment before, it alone, apart from myself. I did not succeed, it would soon be midnight, and a little superstitiously I went to meet that hour when all kinds of dark spirits awaken. I expected something to emerge, good or evil, even from this silence of mine.
    The footsteps returned, silently, more silently than before.I had no idea what they were, but I was sure they were the same ones. A part of me knew this; my ears detected something unusual, something that I thought nothing about, and recorded it: one foot was cautious, the other made no sound. Maybe I heard it only because it was impossible to imagine someone walking on one leg, creating the impression of that other, nonexistent foot myself. I could not hear the night-watchman—had some one-legged spirit arrived early?
    The footsteps stopped in front of the gate, one of them real, quiet, and wary; the other, imagined, unheard.
    I turned around and waited. They had begun to concern me, and this intrusion made me shudder. I could still have gone up to the gate and pushed the bolt, but I did not do it. I could have leaned against the worm-eaten wood of the door, to hear whether that someone was breathing, whether he had flown away or turned to darkness. I waited, aiding chance with my inaction.
    In the street there were more footsteps, at a run, in a hurry, out of breath. Would the one-legged one join them, or had he disappeared?
    The gate opened and someone entered.
    He stepped onto the stone tiles of the doorway and leaned with his back against the wide door, as if he had collapsed or were trying to hold it shut. This was an instinctive and futile act—his small, fragile body could not have kept anyone out.
    Two trees cast shadows on the gate, and he stood in a crevice of light, as if condemned, isolated, exposed. He would surely have liked to hide in the thickest darkness, but he did not dare to move. The footsteps ran past the gate, clattering on the cobblestones, and faded away at the bend in the gorge, where there was a post of Albanian guards. The pursuers were certainly asking about this man who stood as if crucified on the door. Both he and I knew that they would return.
    We looked at one other, each motionless where he stood, and said nothing. From the other side of the garden I saw his bare foot on the stone tiles of the doorway, and his face, whiter than the tekke wall. In that white face, in those feebly outstretched arms, in that silence there was the terror of waiting.
    I did not move, I did not speak, so as not to disturb this exciting game of pursuit and flight. As our situation became more difficult, the wait became even tenser. I sensed that I had been drawn into something unusual, grave, and brutal. I did not know which one of them was cruel—the fugitive or his pursuers—it was not important to me then. The chase smelled of blood and death, and everything was happening before my eyes. It dawned on me that life itself had been tied into a bloody knot, maybe a little too snugly and tightly, maybe too closely, too crudely expressed, but always