Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) Read Free

the war and the postwar regime, and it can function that way as well for those who do not know Yugoslavia at all. The point, made slowly, in a complex, poetic way, and coming only at the very end of the novel, is disarmingly simple: the love of brothers, as between Ahmed and Harun; the love of parents and children, as between Hassan and his father; the love of friends, as between Ahmed and Hassan; and finally erotic love, whose absence in his life sends Ahmed down the road towarddeath—all will indeed remove fear, destroy hate, exorcise the past, generate new life, allow the sun in, bring peace. None of that is actually depicted in Death and the Dervish. It had been Selimović’s fond hope to do so in the two following novels of the trilogy he had planned, and indeed, in The Fortress , the second and only other complete volume of the trilogy, he did move in this direction. But the suggestion may have been more important than the depiction: Death and the Dervish remains Selimović’s masterly and most successful expression of an ancient wisdom that may prove salvific yet.
    Henry R. Cooper, Jr.

TRANSLATORS’ NOTE
    Death and the Dervish has its fair share of stylistic and linguistic idiosyncrasies, complicating the task of remaining faithful to the original while producing a fluid translation. Selimović uses numerous words and expressions of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian origin, which give the original subtle stylistic and sometimes semantic nuances. As many have no simple equivalents in English, we have kept them if they preserve the flavor of the original and do not affect the translation’s readability. Generally our criterion for inclusion was whether these words occur in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, we have taken into account their meanings specific to the local vernacular in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have provided a Glossary at the end of the volume; terms marked with an asterisk may be found here. Since the word dervish itself is among them, we were faced with a problem at the very outset, as we obviously could not footnote the title. We assume, though, that the term, which refers to a member of any of various Muslim religious orders, is familiar to the English-speaking reading public—at least through the notion of “whirling” dervishes, to whose very order the novel’s hero in fact belongs.
    The novel’s Koranic language and references to Islam deserve special comment. The motto at the beginning of each chapter is based on a text of the Koran. Other quotations and quasi-quotations occur in various places. Many of Selimović’s quotations are less than exact, others are taken out of context, and some consist of lines from different chapters( suras ), grafted together. Therefore we have in general followed his versions instead of relying on any English translations of the Koran itself. We have footnoted all the quotations we could identify.
    We would like to express our gratitude to Henry R. Cooper Jr. and Vasa D. Mihailovich, who reviewed the manuscript and provided many helpful comments, and to Yusuf Nur, whose assistance with quotations from the Koran proved invaluable.
    The preparation of this work was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. We acknowledge their support with gratitude.
    Finally, we dedicate this translation to Mirna Dickey, with whom it all began, and to the memory of Nikola Rakić.

PART 1

2
           If God were to punish every evil deed, not a single living creature would remain on earth. 1
    EVERYTHING BEGAN TO GET COMPLICATED TWO MONTHS AND three days ago. It seems I should count time from the night before Saint George’s Day, 2 because this has been my time, the only time that matters to me. My brother had already sat imprisoned in the fortress for ten days.
    Toward dusk on Saint George’s Eve I walked the streets, embittered and upset beyond words. Yet I appeared calm (one gets used to doing