Dear Benjamin,
I hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits. It has been a long time since I have written, and I apologize for that. As you probably know, I have never been very good at keeping in contact. Please do not be offended by this gap in manners. I think of you often in fact, and have been wondering how you are. The last time we saw each other was a little over a year ago, if you recall. I was preparing to leave on my travels from Paris to China, and you were thinking about opening your own bookstore. I’m sure you’ve fulfilled your goal by now: I have always thought of you as the type of person who did what he wanted, and was persistent until completion. In this age of mirages it is difficult to set a goal and see it to the end, so I wish the best for your endeavor. Hopefully at some point in the future I can stop by your store and we can catch up on old times, although I’m no longer sure how possible that is.
I’m writing to you on an early November morning in Istanbul, where I have been living for over a year now, and unfortunately, the purpose of this letter is not merely for catching up. Recent events have forced me to reevaluate the past year, in particular some events that I had almost forgotten about, or at least pushed out of my working memory. In fact, I am writing to you about a difficult problem I have been carrying with me. Something has happened to me that I don’t fully understand, something with no clear answer or resolution. I don’t really expect that you will have the answer either, but I more need to tell someone, as I have kept this secret, even from my closest companions here. Furthermore, you are really the only person I can think of who may understand.
I must say that I have had a wonderful time in Istanbul thus far. Hopefully at some point I can write a more cheerful account, if I can find the time or strength. However, for now I must stick to the task at hand, explaining my predicament. Ever since I left Croatia a year ago I have felt strange, and even though I have been able to enjoy my surroundings, it is like I am not completely myself: as if, in a way, I’m a shell of my former self. It wasn’t until recently, when memories were thrust back upon me, that I have been able to better understand this feeling.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning, in order to fully explain and also help myself put the pieces together better. You recall that I had planned to fly to Paris, which I did in early September, and then my plan was to travel by land to China, before flying to Taiwan to start a teaching job. I was supposed to start that job in late December, so I was in somewhat of a rush to get across Europe, Central Asia, and China before working. From the beginning I knew it was a plan that really needed at least a year to do comfortably. Some people told me it was a grand but crazy idea, with both jealousy and doubt in their voices. Others said that it was a great career choice, and a great way to open paths for the future. In actuality, the journey was more about escaping the present than it was about planning for any future goals.
Anyway, I had traveled through France, Italy, and Slovenia and I was having a wonderful journey. In late September of 2007 I caught an early train from Divaça to Pivka, Slovenia, and then transferred to another train that took me across the border to Rijeka, Croatia. In Rijeka I paid for a bus to Split, where I planned to spend the night before catching a ferry to Hvar Island the next day, where I would spend a week relaxing. The bus ride was long and exhausting, and almost unbearably hot. I remember the sun beat down through the windows unrelentingly. The air inside the bus was stagnant, the air-conditioning being either broken or non-existent.
The Croatian coast is a twisted and circuitous collection of inlets, cliffs, coves, and peninsulas, dotted with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of islands. It was a beautiful landscape, but the bus ride was nauseating as it faithfully followed the path of the coast. At one point in the journey the bus boarded a ferry and was deposited on the island of Pag. The bus climbed up the steep seaside slope to a stark and arid plateau of crushed limestone. Everything was white, either naturally or completely bleached by the sun I couldn’t tell exactly. There were herders and their goats, and even they looked beaten down and weathered. At one point the bus rounded a corner and I saw ahead of us a tall wooden tower that looked as if it should have been a windmill. At the top, however, instead of blades was a large donkey head, like a mask. The sun shone through its absent eyes, and made the mask almost translucent. As we passed by I noticed the tower was advertising a donkey farm of some sort, but it struck me as incredibly eerie; the image stayed in my head for some time after that.
The bus was almost full of passengers, but only one stuck out. At the front of the bus was an old man, rather normal-looking but with unkempt hair and eyes as blue as the Adriatic Sea that passed to our right. Every time new people got on the bus, without fail, he would slowly turn around and peek over the back of his seat, fingers grasping the top. His eyes would move around, surveying the scene, and then his head would rise and reveal a maniacally curious smile. His eyes widened as he looked at everyone, and every now and then he counted with his fingers, before turning back around. I found it quite strange, although I must admit my mind was still preoccupied with the Pag landscape and the donkey mask. The old man also requested several emergency restroom stops of the bus driver, whose patience wore very thin by the end, but the man would tip when he did it, so the driver didn’t complain, loudly at least. What struck me the most about the old man with Adriatic eyes was how he looked at the landscape. When he wasn't creepily looking back at the other passengers, his eyes would be fixed out the windows, and he would jolt his head from left to right, trying to see everything passing by. The sparsely vegetated hills, the small villages with their tile-roofed houses, the clear blue of the Adriatic…everything stirred an emotion in the old man. His face would shift from sheer infantile joy, to abject shock and horror. At one point on the ride we passed an area severely damaged by a recent forest fire, and this broke the man's heart. I wondered what his story was. Was he a Croatian returning home or just simply a visitor? He could have been either: the joy suggested newcomer, but the pain was of one who has returned home, only to see more change and damage than he could stomach. He was strange to be sure Benjamin, but I found him interesting at the same time.
Before getting on the bus I had asked how long the trip was, and I was told about five hours. At about that distance from Rijeka the bus entered a town that fit the general description of Split: a coastal town with an ancient walled town center, which I hadn’t realized was the general description of most Croatian towns in that area. The bus stopped and people started getting off, so I asked in terrible Croatian if it was Split. The bus driver answered “yes,” so I got off the bus and collected by bags from the storage area. I didn’t have any suspicions, but having been traveling for some time I’d learned to always ask more than once, when it came to destinations or prices at least, so I asked the ticket man if it was indeed Split. The ticket man answered affirmatively also, and I was satisfied. I watched the bus and looked for the man with Adriatic eyes as it drove slowly off, but I couldn’t see him, nor did I see him get off the bus.
Exhausted and still nauseous from the bus journey, I picked up my bags and walked to the old, fortress-like town. Using the small map in my guidebook I couldn’t get my bearings. The streets and shops didn’t match up, not even the names. I grumbled, and the more I looked around the more I felt overwhelmingly confused. At the time I was thinking that the map was faulty, that the mismatching didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t in Split; I had encountered similar mistakes in guidebook maps while in other countries. However, exasperated after a little more futile orienteering I stopped into a tourist office and asked the lady there if the town I was in was Split. “No, this is Trogir,” she replied. Though the map on the wall said that I wasn’t too far from Split, I decided to spend the night in this unknown town, and continue to Split and the Hvar ferry the next day. I arranged a place to stay, and after ten minutes the hotel owner came to collect me and bring me to where I would stay.
After dropping off my things I laid down on the bed for a couple minutes listening to music, and then left the hotel to explore the old town. I was weary from the bus ride, but the narrow alleys, cold stonewalls, and cafés relaxed me. As I walked around, I imagined Trogir’s history, which at the time I was totally unfamiliar with. While doing this I soon realized that although small, Trogir’s old town was surprisingly confusing and disorienting. I got lost several times while walking around, ending up where I had been minutes before, but gradually I began to grasp the town’s layout. After an hour or so I felt comfortable enough, left the interior of the walled town, and I began to wander the perimeter. This took less time, and I was able to form what I considered a good mental image of the old town in its entirety.
After walking around the town twice, I walked further away and closer to the water. I find it difficult to explain this to you now Benjamin, but the Adriatic Sea was the most incredible blue I had ever seen. I can’t recall another time that I had seen water as clear and deep, and piercing. Gazing at the sea, I started losing track of everything. I felt hypnotized, to be honest, lullabied into a false sense of security. As I stared at the water I suddenly got a strange feeling that the water was luring me in. ‘If I keep looking, it will suck me in’…I know this is hard to understand exactly, but I remember thinking that the water could have engulfed me in blue, crushed me with the weight of its beauty, taken me down into the depths… or possibly I would have resurfaced changed, blue-eyed and blue-skinned perhaps, like some sort of son of Krishna. As I was thinking these thoughts I felt slightly out of control, teetering on the edge of two worlds, the one in which we inhabit and its darker abyssal twin.
A sudden increase in noise from a nearby soccer field broke the spell, and I looked over at the game. How close had I been to oblivion? I looked at the children playing, but everything was still bathed in a slowly paling blue. I wondered quickly if my eyes had possibly changed to blue, but then the world’s colors started changing back to normal. I must have been staring at the sea longer than I thought, and I cannot honestly say how long I had been standing there. I approached the soccer game, watched for a few minutes, and then ducked back into the town’s walled interior from a different entrance. It was darker and gloomier inside than before. It must have been only late afternoon, but the town’s landscape seemed completely different, a photo negative of before. The cafés were more populated too, so the alleys echoed with the din of conversation, laughter, and the clinking of glasses and plates. The noises bounced off the stones of the walls and buildings, and became almost nauseating, to the point where I lowered my head slightly, hoping that this small shift would alter the trajectory of the noises and quiet things down a bit.
Just then I happened to pay attention to the cobblestones under my feet. Worn from centuries of pedestrians, they were glossy, resembling mica, and the lights from the shops and cafés glinted off of them. Suddenly I noticed one particularly worn stone with writing on it, and I stopped to inspect it. In all capitol letters, written in what appeared to be black permanent marker, were the words:
THIS IS WHERE THE SEARCH BEGAN FOR ME. WHAT ABOUT YOU?
I stared for a long time at those eleven words. Maybe the words were written by some teenager, or more likely a tourist, having a bit of existential fun. They could have been written by anyone, for any reason, yet I had a strange feeling welling up inside me. I don’t know Benjamin, I know it seems strange, but I felt like I was meant to see it, that it was a message for me.
I was racked with confusion but also curiosity, and I continued walking to my hotel. As I walked I looked for other messages on the cobblestones, and I probably made quite a spectacle of myself shuffling around, constantly looking at the ground. I got lost and had to backtrack down several alleys but I finally found my hotel, returned to my room, locked the door, and collapsed on my bed. I tried to fall asleep but I couldn’t stop thinking about the message and who may have left it, and why I saw it. Moreover, I was puzzled as to exactly why I was in Trogir in the first place. A simple misunderstanding with the bus driver and the ticket man, a banal event really, turned into something far more serious in my mind.
At some point I fell asleep, and later awoke while it was still night. I got up and left the hotel once again and began walking the alleys, looking for the message, or any message. I couldn’t remember exactly where I had seen it, but I needed to see it again. After about an hour of searching I didn’t find anything, and began to give up hope. At the same time it made me feel somewhat relieved not seeing the message again. I began feeling that it was completely trivial or that I had imagined it. I kept walking and searching for another thirty minutes, and came to the central square of the town, which I recognized from my walk around the town upon my arrival. I noticed on one wall a church there was a relief sculpture of a religious figure, and I went closer to examine it. The sculpture was of one Petar Berislavić, who, according to the informational plaque, was a Croatian ban, viceroy, from 1513 to 1520. The sculpture depicted him from the side, seated on a horse, holding the reins with his left hand and a scepter in his right. On his left side, visible to the viewer, was a long sword. Curiously, the sculpture of Berislavić was missing its head, and the plaque didn’t seem to give any information as to why. Puzzled, and finding a headless sculpture a strange way to monumentalize someone, I walked away and went down another alley to continue searching.
The streets were empty I should add. It was the middle of the night (I should’ve been asleep to be sure) and I hadn’t come across anyone, not even drunken revelers. Yet as I walked away from the square and turned a corner, passing by closed restaurants and flower shops, I had the bizarre feeling I was not alone. In fact, as I walked even further I thought I could hear the sound of distant footsteps. My eyes were focused on the cobblestones, but my ears were alert, and after some time I heard the faint, but unmistakable, sound of footsteps. I turned another corner, quickened my pace, stopping every now and then to listen. The footsteps were certainly coming from behind me, and were now loud enough to determine that the sound was being made by someone walking heavier than myself, although at a slower cadence. I found myself no longer looking at the ground for the message, but walking at a quick pace, with one eye over my shoulder. With another left turn I found myself back in the central square, and I froze as I saw a man in an alley opposite. It wasn’t just any man though, but one wearing antiquated clothes, and clearly without a head. I swear to you Benjamin I saw what was none other than Petar Berislavić, standing quite still, just in front of a lone light illuminating his ghastly figure. I looked at the relief sculpture of him, and it was still there, still missing its stone head, and yet there was this man about
This must sound insane to you Benjamin, but I am in no way lying or exaggerating. Please try to stay open-minded, which I know is difficult: as I write these words down I am well aware of how strange it all seems, how implausible it is. If it were only my paranoid imagination that conjured meaning out of a cobblestone message and made a deceased viceroy appear, then it would make me feel a little more secure. As I will explain, the strange occurrences that befell me perhaps cannot simply be blamed on my wandering mind. Please allow me to continue with what happened next, and I beg you to continue reading and not just consider this the ramblings of an insane man.
The next morning I woke early, and despite not having slept long I felt strangely rested. I went to a restaurant near my hotel for breakfast, and didn’t exchange a glance with anyone there. I barely even spoke to the waiter when he came to my table. I more accurately mumbled and pointed at the menu. He left muttering, probably something about rude tourists, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. My food came after a while and I ate it quickly, realizing that I hadn’t eaten since arriving in Trogir. I then went back to the hotel, gathered my things, and paid with only a ‘goodbye’ to the hostel owner. I tried to give a smile also, but it likely came out more as a grimace. I walked through the old town, back out to the bus station, as quickly as I could with the bustling morning crowd of locals and tourists, passing through the central square in the process. As I did so, I noticed the relief sculpture of Petar Berislavić again, yet this time I noticed that the head was intact. I slowed down to look at it, to make sure my eyes weren’t tricking me; and the head was certainly there.
Taken aback, I wanted to leave Trogir as soon as I could, and luckily I was able to buy a ticket and get on a bus to Split in a short amount of time. Once I arrived in Split I immediately went to the ferry station and booked a ticket on the first boat to Hvar Island. I had originally planned to spend a day in the old section of Split, which was originally the Roman emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace. However, after Trogir I was still considerably shaken, so I continued directly to Hvar.
On Hvar I had a very relaxing time, and I was able to put the disturbing events out of my mind to some extent. The perfect weather, the charming towns and people, the homemade brandy, the gorgeous landscape… it was fantastic and I will never forget it. Perhaps I can return some day. Unfortunately, I cannot linger on those memories. After a week on the island, in which I felt at peace and almost problem free, I carried on traveling, and before long the confusion I felt in Trogir returned.
After a brief stay in Dubrovnik at the southernmost point of Croatia, I continued on into Montenegro, and then into Albania. Immediately upon exiting Croatia I was struck by a strange feeling of unsteadiness. In Tirana, Albania’s capital, while sitting at a café in the district that was once the playground of the communist elite, and forbidden to the public, I came across a familiar face. As I sat eating a pizza which left much to be desired and going over travel notes, I noticed none other than the strange man from the bus ride to Trogir, the man with the Adriatic eyes. He looked a little better put together, his hair neater, his eyes not as wild; but it was unmistakably the same man. He walked by slowly mouthing some words, pondering something far off.
I was strangely happy to see him, and I resolved to follow him. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I decided that following him was necessary at that time. I waited for him to put some distance between us, finished a little more of the pizza, paid my bill and left to pursue him.
Standing out as a foreigner, I was a little nervous that the man with Adriatic eyes would notice me, but I kept far enough away that if he had turned around I wouldn’t be too obvious. After a while of following him he ducked into a book and collectables store. After waiting at a nearby street corner for about ten minutes I decided to go into the store myself. I wasn’t too worried about him seeing me at this point really, as I was sure he wouldn’t have recognized me from the bus ride, and I was almost positive he hadn’t known I was following him. I entered the store and looked around. I didn’t see him. I perused the store, trying to look interested in what was offered, and I soon realized he in fact was no longer in the store. He must have realized I was following him and slipped out a back door. Yet I had been careful not to alert him; what was he concerned with? I walked back out the front door, and looked on the street for him. I didn’t see him, so I decided to go back into the store and look around, and I came across a particularly interesting book in the small English language section. The book was entitled The Forefront of Christianity: Croatia and the Ottoman Empire, written by Nikola Klović in 1983. The book’s name came from a statement made by Pope Leo X, who in 1519 called Croatia the forefront of Christianity for the work of several notable Croatians in the fight to stay the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. One of these notable figures, I learned, was Petar Berislavić. This intrigued me, and although the book didn’t have much information on Berislavić, I did discover he was born in Trogir, became a bishop and then later rose to the title of ban. In addition, he had led two successful victories against the Ottoman forces, one in 1513 and one in 1518, before he was killed in 1520. One excerpt struck me in particular, and I recorded it in my notes: “And Bishop Petar Berislavić, ban and ‘Defender of Croatia,’ and his small force were ambushed by the Ottoman Turks near the town of Bihać, in what is now Bosnia. The ensuing battle was lost by the Croatians, and Bishop Petar’s head was cut off his body…”
I continued to read the book for a while longer then put it back on the shelf and left the store, interested by what I had read. However, I continued to be confused, not only by my losing the old man, but also by the passage about Berislavić.
I felt tired, but I wandered the streets of Tirana for hours, well after it became dark. From the smaller streets of the former Party elite area I walked along the wide boulevard that used to be used for Party marches and celebrations, making my way to Skanderbeg Square. I pictured the Communist ceremonies: the people watching waving red flags and holding banners of the leader Enver Hoxha. I could imagine the grandstands where the party officials, including the ‘Great Guide’ Hoxha himself, watched the proceedings. I also tried to imagine the countless others persecuted, imprisoned, or worse by the party, but I couldn’t conjure up their faces; they remained only blurry versions of people.
Haunted by these thoughts, I made my way back to the run-down hotel in which I was staying. While trying to sleep, I couldn’t get the image of Berislavić out of my mind, and he mingled with the shadowy figures of nameless Albanians. I decided I would leave Tirana in the morning and continue on my journey. I was thinking that hopefully the further I traveled the less intense my feelings of unsteadiness would be, and perhaps I could forget about Berislavić. I felt at that point that I was now trying to escape from something.
I left as early as I could in the morning on a bus to Greece. I was making my way to Thessaloniki, where I planned to spend only a day, only enough to collect myself, before heading on to Istanbul. Along the way, as I looked out the bus windows at the northern Greek landscape, the limestone and green landscape of Croatia flickered across the hills, as if with one eye I was seeing the hills, but the other eye had gone back in time to review something already seen, one image superimposing itself upon the other.
Moreover, the Greek hills were scorched from a recent forest fire. When the bus stopped for a lunch break, everyone got out of the bus, and the smell of fire lingered in the air. I sat down on a short wall near the rest stop bathroom, feeling nauseous from the trip, the smell, and the tricks my eyes were playing. I looked up at the restaurant’s sign, but instead of the sign I only saw the donkey mask from Pag. The vacant, lifeless eyes of the mask shone like twin stars, and I looked away, feeling as if I were about to vomit. When I collected myself, and looked back at the sign, it was no longer the donkey mask, but had transformed back into a sign advertising food and gas.
After about thirty minutes at the rest area, the bus continued on and arrived in Thessaloniki in the evening. Exhausted, I stayed the night in a hotel near the train station. The next day I spent walking around the city, but my mind was still preoccupied with Berislavić and thoughts of why I had seen him, and I must admit to you that I don’t remember much of the city. I took the night train to Istanbul after that, and I have been here since.
As I told you before, while in Istanbul I decided to abandon my journey. My reasons for staying are still not quite clear to me. However, I remember making the decision. It was night, and I was in the historical old part of the city, Sultanahmet, where the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire resided and where the famous Haghia Sophia Church is located. I was living in that area, as most visitors tend to do, and I had taken to walking around at night when most of the tourists had already gone to sleep.
On that particular night the area was especially quiet. It was the middle of October by that point, and the weather was perfect in my opinion: neither too cold nor too hot, yet just cold enough to warrant a warmer layer and make the nostrils burn ever so slightly; just enough to feel that the air had a cleansing quality.
The Haghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque across the square from it were lit up, and the air around them glowed as well from the artificial light. I walked from the square toward the Blue Mosque and I walked around it. I walked around every imaginable back street in the near vicinity of the mosque; to see what my vantage point would be when I came around a blind corner. I was trying to see the mosque from every position I could, every angle available to me. As I did so, I also watched the seagulls flying around the dome and the minarets of the mosque. They seemed to be flying in slow motion, and their bodies where illuminated by the mosque’s lights, giving them a sort of heavenly quality. I remember thinking Benjamin that I had never liked seagulls while growing up, and thought they were quite annoying. You might remember me making comments to that effect during our days together. However, looking up at them circling the minarets ever so slowly, they resembled angels, and it was the closest I think I have ever come to feeling what one might call a religious experience. It was then that I had to stay in Istanbul.
I had eventually forgotten about Berislavić, my nauseating feelings of uneasiness, and trying to make any connection between this and my accidental stay in Trogir, where the strange feelings began. Yet recently, a week ago in fact, I was sitting in a café in Beşiktaş, the area of the city in which I live, reading and watching the ferries make their way back and forth across the Bosphorus. On the whole I was in a good mood, perhaps because I had the day off from work and the weather was good. I had been rereading Rilke’s Duino Elegies, which I know you are familiar with, and was pondering one particular stanza I wrote in my notebook:
Then we, who think of rising happiness,
Would feel the emotion
That almost confounds us
When a happy Thing falls.
While reading this, and watching one ferry navigate its way around an enormous Norwegian tanker named Christiania, plodding down the Bosphorus from the Black Sea, I suddenly realized a man had entered the café and was standing near the doorway. He was looking for an available seat, it seemed. Benjamin, it was the old man with Adriatic eyes, and, maybe because my table had the closest available seats, he slowly walked over, and in clearly non-native Turkish asked me if he could sit down. I could scarcely believe my eyes, yet I managed to stutter out in Turkish “of course.” He smiled, took off his coat, the same one I had seen twice the year before, and sat down. He stared at me and smiled…he stared at me like I were his long lost grandson, with a touch of the innocence that had captivated me when I first saw him looking out the bus window at the Croatian countryside. I smiled back and he asked if I were by chance Croatian. He used the word Hrvatski instead of the Turkish word, I noticed. I said I wasn’t, and he added “but you’re not Turkish, are you? You look like you could be from the Black Sea region of Turkey, especially with your nose, but you’re not Turkish. You don’t dress like a Turk.” I replied that I had actually heard that I look like I’m from the Black Sea before, but no, he was correct, I’m not Turkish, and that I’m from America.
With that he switched from Turkish to English and said, “Ah, very interesting, yes, yes. But you look Hrvatski. Is your family from Hrvatska?” His accent, and his use of the name Hrvatska instead of Croatia told me he was indeed Croatian. I told him that my family heritage wasn’t Croatian, but instead a mix of German, Danish, English, Scottish, and a little Irish, but he didn’t seem convinced. He looked down at his hands, and placed them on the table purposefully, leaning into me as he did so as if he were about to say something of great importance. “Can I move my my chair closer to yours? Do you mind? I would like to share your view of the Bosphorus,” he said. I told him that wouldn’t bother me, and he repositioned his chair. He sighed with satisfaction, then called a waiter over and asked for a cup of tea. A couple minutes passed and the waiter brought the tea, then several more minutes passed without us saying a word to each other. I was incredibly confused. Buried thoughts hurriedly resurfaced; yet he seemed quite content, smiling and looking out the window. After some time he said, “I am from Hrvatska. I came here for specific purposes. For my map, you see. Have you been to Hrvatska?” I nodded and added that it is a beautiful place. “Yes,” he said, “the most beautiful place. I don’t travel much, but I know this. I don’t care for this country, but I do like this Bosphorus. It is very nice.” I told him that I often like to sit by the Bosphorus and watch the ships, to which he said, “That is very nice. I like ships, too. I used to work on ships.” I smiled and nodded, and he continued. “Before my map of course, in Trogir.” At that I must have shown some surprise, as he followed with “Have you been to Trogir? Probably not… I worked at a shipyard, I was probably your age. I used to have a normal life, yes, before the map.” “The map?” I asked, but he continued like he hadn’t heard me. “Yes, I was about your age, before the map. I worked with ships, thinking about the world a lot then. One day I noticed the Adriatic Sea more than usual…you know the Adriatic Sea I’m sure, I hope….I was struck by the blue color, and I knew there was something special about my home Hrvatska. Before I was like most people: I loved my home Hrvatska…” He trailed off as he looked at the Bosphorus. I asked him if he was born in Trogir. “I was born in Klanjec, near Zagreb, no sea of course, but I always loved the sea when I was a child, and I left my home to work with ships when I was 16. I went to Trogir to work at the shipping factory. I wanted to go around the world on ships; I wanted to see Argentina especially I remember. But I looked at the Adriatic that day and I felt something special. That day my mind changed, and since then I can dream only of Hrvatska. That is when my project started, my search, my map.”
Search. The word echoed. I remember what he said, how he spoke in heavily accented but impressive English, as if it just happened yesterday. His search started in Trogir. I couldn’t be sure of anything at that moment, but I was trying to piece together the clouds in my mind.
“Your English is very good. Where did you learn?”
“I went to university later, after my job in Trogir. Then I was a professor for some time. And I traveled around many places.”
“Can I ask what your project is?” I asked. I was looking at him: my eyes hadn’t left him since he started talking, yet his eyes stayed fixed on the Bosphorus.
“I am making a map. I am making a map of Hrvatska, but it is a special map. It shows all of Hrvatska, all of its history. It is very difficult, of course…but it is very important work. Important things are difficult.”
I started to ask what he meant exactly by a map of all history, but he continued, “When it is finished, my map will show Hrvatska at every point, every moment of history, every event. It will show the original areas and borders… every change in these borders, the times as part of Yugoslavia, or the Ottoman Empire. In making my map, I have to show places, which is easy, but I must also show people, which is difficult. I will show Marko Marulić, the writer; Radovan, the master sculptor from Trogir; Hanibal Lucić from Hvar; of course Petar Berislavić; and everyone else.”
“Berislavić?” I interrupted. He continued, “Yes, bishop of Veszprém, ban, protector of Hrvatska, martyred. The Turks, they cut off his head.” I told him I knew a little about Berislavić’s history. “Good, son. Marko Marulić wrote wonderful things about his dear friend Bishop Petar after he was killed. He also wrote to Pope Leo X for more help in fighting the Ottomans. That is all covered on my map too, of course.” I told him I was having trouble understanding, and I asked, “How do you show all of this?” To that question he answered, “You have a common problem, son. This is a special map. Normal maps, which you are thinking of, only represent a part of the world: maybe political or geographical information, or maybe a battle plan even. Normal maps are not what they represent.” He grabbed his cup of tea and mine, and for the first time his eyes left the water. “These cups of tea…Are they only the cups here? No. there is the cup, the tea, the teamakers, the cupmakers…People just can’t see it because of our ıdeas. There is a problem with this, though, people’s ‘reality.’ We look at the Bosphorus now,” which he did, and did as well. “We look at the Bosphorus, and we think ‘water’, or maybe ‘strait’: we see ships, the Asian shore on the other side. In this café, you see, there are mirrors on the walls. If you look at one mirror, you see your reflection, but you also see the reflection of you looking at your reflection. Most people see these as only reflections, illusions. But there is more, really. When you look at mirrors, you are not looking at reflections of yourself, but yourself. Other yous.”
“So, the reflections I see, they are other versions of me living different lives?” I asked.
“I don’t know what lives they are living, of course. But I know they are there. Life is multiple realities. Our past and perhaps our future are always around us. People don’t understand this, but I know it. My map will show it. All of Hrvatska, its history, present, and people will be on it. All of history can happen now, it’s possible. Of course, I’m only concerned with Hrvatska, my country. This will all take some time of course; it already has. I’ve been making it for some time now. Maybe someone will make maps like this for other countries someday, but mine is the first.”
I must be honest Benjamin; I was having a lot of trouble understanding what I was hearing. It was odd getting involved in such a conversation out of nowhere, but I was intrigued. I couldn’t imagine or comprehend his map, and I couldn’t understand how I had even come to encounter this man again in the first place. Did he recognize me? I was afraid to ask that question. He had asked me if I had been to Trogir, but perhaps he was testing me.
I did ask him why he was in Istanbul though, to which he replied, “Collecting people and things. You know, there were Hrvatski in this city: not many, comparatively, but they must be included. Because of the Ottoman Empire and other similar situations, I must look for Hrvatska outside what people consider it now.”
I assumed that was why he was in Tirana as well, but I didn’t mention I had seen him, and didn’t ask whether he had seen me. I asked, “So this map will include all Croatian communities? Turkey, America, and so forth?” I asked. He answered, “If you mean Hrvatski living in different places, yes, of course, son. And I will put them where they should be…In Hrvatska, having never left.”
But if they never left, would history be the same? The map, then, would not be accurate.
I continued to ask him about the feasibility of the project. “Couldn’t this project potentially…outlast you?” I started. “I mean, in order to find every Croatian, you will need to travel to many places. What if you don’t finish?”
“I’m not too worried about that actually. I will find a way. Besides, as people find out about the map, they will help. Some people already have.”
A few moments of silence passed. The man’s eyes never moved from the window, watching the ships.
I told him that I just didn’t understand how such a map was possible. Size, overlapping of different periods of history on top of each other, the problem of encapsulating all Croatians, ….I trailed off, as the man was clearly not paying attention to my confusion.
“You know, son,” he said with a smile, “You know, you resemble Tomas Rožić. He was in this city. He wanted to be a teacher, but that didn’t happen. This is why my map is good! The past never leaves us. I knew you looked like one of us; maybe you are in a way. I like you, you have a good face…
He turned to me and I saw his full face and smile: the same slightly wild smile I had seen on the bus. Then, he suddenly stood up, a little stiffly, and said “Good day.” Then he turned and walked to the door. I realized I forgot to ask his name, and I tried to say ‘Wait!’, but nothing came out, and he walked out the door and didn’t turn around.
I have been quite shaken since then, Benjamin. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what he said, the absurdity of it all. I just couldn’t understand how he could think his map was possible, and supposedly be working on it now. The day after I met him, I went to a library and did as much research as I could on Croatia. The resources were mostly limited to Ottoman history in their occupation of the area starting in the 1500s, when Petar Berislavić had fought against them. None of the books gave me information I needed or wanted, yet I didn’t even really know what I was looking for.
I left the library and walked up the hill to Taksim Square, making my way to Istiklal Street to scour the English bookstores in the area. Istiklal was crowded with pedestrians as usual, and being Saturday it was even more difficult to navigate without bumping into someone. I was overcome with an intense discomfort bordering on agoraphobia: it was dizzying, and I wanted to keep my head down, but every time I did I bumped into someone and had to awkwardly apologize as they shouted at me. Several times I thought I saw the ghost of Petar Berislavić, either headless or not: one time I even thought I saw him walking with another man, who I can only guess was his writer friend Marko Marulić.
Even stranger though Benjamin was that I thought I saw myself at least four or five times. And each time I would speed up or slow down to double-check faces, upon closer inspection they weren’t me, and a couple times didn’t resemble me in the slightest. Yet I was sure I was seeing myself. I started to feel nauseous, and may have even vomited, but I found the first bookstore and went in. I began to feel a little better out of the crowd.
The store’s selection on Croatia was scant, containing mostly cursory histories or travel information for potential tourists. I leafed through the books impassively for the most part, not finding anything too interesting. I looked at one particular book containing photographs of Croatia’s islands for a while, and when I felt somewhat calm, I left to go to another store. When I got back to Istiklal Street, a demonstration had started, and the it was so crowded I couldn’t barely see the stones under the multitude. By the time I thought about turning around and taking back streets to avoid the chaos it was too late, and I was already being swept into the seething mass.
The demonstration was for Palestine, for what reason I can’t say really, and the crowd waved flags and banners in Turkish saying ‘We’re all brothers,’ “We’re all Palestinian,” and one particularly striking sign, written in English, saying, “Israel must be wiped out.” I craned my neck to look behind me, and noticed the riot police waiting at the start of the street near Taksim Square, and I kept trying to push my way in the opposite direction, toward the next bookstore.
I kept seeing myself in the crowd, Benjamin. Doppelgängers of me shouting slogans, holding Palestinian flags, pictures of the dead, yet the corpse’s faces were replaced with those of Petar Berislavić, the donkey mask from Pag island, the old man, and even strangely the Albanian communist Enver Hoxha. I was losing my grasp, yet I didn’t understand why. I became so absorbed in the phantasms I was seeing that I lost my ability to differentiate between my visions and reality. When I began to see Croatian flags being waved instead of Palestinian ones, I wasn’t even surprised.
I finally squeezed my way through the crowd and around the protest. When I reached the next bookstore I was utterly exhausted, and I didn’t find the selection that much better than the previous store. However, I found one sociology book about Balkan urban spaces interesting. It had one case study about Zagreb’s main square, named after Ban Josip Jelačić, who lived from 1801 to 1859. He is a well-known figure to Croatians, and a statue was erected of him in central Zagreb. Under Tito’s Yugoslavia the statue was torn down, yet another was placed in the square after the fall of Communism. As I read this, I couldn’t help thinking how this would be portrayed on (or in?) the old man’s map: how does one show a statue, its destruction, and then its reappearance? How does one show all of history collapsed together? How can we hope to distinguish between what is an important moment and what isn’t? Maybe that’s just it Benjamin: maybe there is no distinguishing. Perhaps the old man would say that every moment is just as important as the one before it and the one after it.
Benjamin, since that day of specters on Istiklal I have spent almost every waking moment thinking about how everything is connected. Why I stopped in Trogir, why I encountered the old man, the visions of ban Petar, the doppelgängers of myself… Yesterday I was supposed to go to work, but I got on a bus instead, not knowing where it was going. I ignored the phone calls of my boss and co-workers. I sat at the back of the bus and looked out the window as it was driving, intentionally avoiding eye contact with everyone on the bus for fear that I would see myself. Although I recognized the areas the bus was passing through, I didn’t know where it would end up. I got off at the last stop, and asked the bus driver where I was. “Kurtuluş,” he replied. Kurtuluş means ‘liberation,’ ‘independence,’ ‘salvation,’ and also strangely ‘good riddance,’ and I remembered seeing Kurtuluş on a map before, and I knew it’s general location in relation to places I’d frequented, but I had never been there before. Even so, while the area seemed totally foreign, at the same time it seemed wholly familiar, like I had indeed been there, many times before.
I walked along Kurtuluş Street, a busy little road lined with shops and small restaurants, took a left on Ergenekon Street, and then a quick right onto Bozkurt Street. I walked with some unknown purpose, not merely wandering. I passed a small Protestant cemetery and a larger French Catholic cemetery opposite it. I was now no longer in Kurtuluş it seemed, but in another neighborhood called Feriköy, but I wasn’t positive where one ended and the other began. I turned left on Arpa Suyu Street, passing a private French high school and an Armenian Catholic primary school as I walked. It was clear from these landmarks that the area was historically an ethnic mix, perhaps even predominately minorities, and I had a strange feeling that it used to be mainly a Greek neighborhood, but I had no way to tell exactly. I was having a strange sense of déjà vu that grew increasingly stronger as I continued walking. Taking a left on Kazim Orbay Street I noticed a large new housing development, Elysium, and was struck by a thought that, not only did it look out of place, but that it had replaced something else. I couldn’t imagine what may have been replaced, but I was overwhelmed by the sense that I had been there before, in another time, before Elysium was built. Next to Elysium was a pizza shop, and I imagined that it was once a butcher shop. Around the corner were an ice cream shop that I remembered it as a tailor shop, and a small restaurant that should have been a barbershop. Down the street a little more was an old Greek church, and seeing it I stopped dead. At this point Benjamin I remembered the man, Tomas Rožić, who the old man had told me before he left the café. Was this his neighborhood? I know it must seem insane to you Benjamin, but why else would I be there, feeling as if I had walked these streets years before?
I didn’t know anything about Tomas, whether he was alive or dead (the old man had only said he wanted to be a teacher), but I had a feeling he had long since left, in some way. I continued walking along Lala Şahin Street until its end, which led me to a small group of one-story houses. Slightly dilapidated, they were dwarfed by the newer, multi-story apartment buildings surrounding them. I stood there looking at one particularly neglected house that looked uninhabited. Was this where he had lived?
I noticed in the distance Fatih Mosque situated at the top of a hill like a crown, on the other side of the Golden Horn harbor, and I also noticed that dusk was quickly approaching. I continued walking, passing a mosque built recently, an empty children’s park, and a Greek Orthodox cemetery before eventually coming back to Kurtuluş Street. I got on another bus and made my way back to the old city, Sultanahmet.
It was cold by this time, but I spent the rest of the day into the night watching the minarets of the Blue Mosque, and the seagulls. This being winter, there were considerably fewer birds than last time I was there, but they still in my mind resembled angels. I found their absence disconcerting to say the least. When it got too cold to sit still I started walking, and I walked around the old neighborhoods all night. When daylight came I made my way back to Sultanahmet and waited for a café to open, to get warm and drink some coffee. I’ve been sitting here since writing this letter to you.
While I’ve been writing and reflecting on the events, I am starting to understand what may be affecting me. In a way, I think, I have become a part of the old man’s project, the map. It is beyond coincidence in my opinion that he got the idea and started the map in Trogir, and I ‘accidentally’ stayed there, and it was there that my delusions began. Perhaps when I looked into the Adriatic, and felt hypnotized and slightly changed by its intense blue, I was drawn into his incomprehensible form of representing Croatia. That is the only way I can think of to explain what has been happening to me.
I haven’t returned to work and I have no intention of doing so. Life as I thought I was living it has been changed, and I don’t believe I will ever be the same. The old man said that separate realities are always with us, or at least their possibility. In a way, at any moment, life can go any number of ways; any manner of realities is possible Benjamin, I think I realize that now.
Perhaps I will go back to Croatia one day. I can’t really say what I’ll do. At every moment we are extinguished, and start anew. Take care my dear friend. I would like to see your bookstore someday, but I don’t know how anymore.
--T., December 2008
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