CHAPTER XI
SARAJEVO—THE SPIRED CITY
From Belgrade to Sarajevo—The Turkish Bazaar—A Bosnian Street Sprinkler—Horse-races at Ylidze—A Dervish Dance.
It is by no means an uninteresting nor an unpleasant train ride of seven hours and a half across the well-kept, fertile farm lands of Austria-Hungary; from Belgrade, in Servia, southward to the little junction town of Brod. This line continues through Agram to Fiume, Hungary’s solitary seaport, but if you would visit the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, nominally Turkish territory, you must change at Brod and take your compartment in one of the miniature cars of the little narrow-gauge train which, later, puffs and snorts its tortuous, labyrinthine way across, between and under the mountains, up grade and down to Sarajevo, Mostar and, finally, Gravosa on the Adriatic Coast.
Before Bosnia (including Croatia and the Herzegovina) was placed under the suzerainty of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878—a treaty time-worn and often honoured in the breach—the traveller, in order to cover the one hundred thirty-eight miles between Brod and Sarajevo, was compelled for comfort’s and safety’s sake to resort to the springless mail cart of the Austrian Consulate in Bosnia and spend forty-eight weary hours _en route_. If, on the other hand, he wished to be lavishly independent and hired a native conveyance for the journey, three nights would have to be spent on the road, sleeping in _khans_ and fearful of his very life.
Although, in point of geographical position, it was the nearest neighbour of civilized Europe, the social condition of Bosnia was at that time the most barbarous of all the provinces of European Turkey. Not one man in a hundred knew how to read, and there was not a single, solitary bookshop throughout the length and breadth of the province. While the soil teemed with various valuable minerals, its hills thickly wooded with virgin forests, its plains and valleys fertile, well-watered and productive, its commerce was contemptible. Under Turkish rule, _plums_ constituted the most valuable article of trade.
To-day all this is changed. The fields are cultivated; mines have been prospected and developed; public schools are everywhere and education is compulsory; the Austrian army has put an end to the maraudings of the Mohammedans and polices the country, having its headquarters in great garrisons in Mostar and Sarajevo. An admirably operated railway line eats its way throughout the entire length of the province, the proposed extension of this railway through the Turkish vilayet of Novi-Bazaar having been one of the bones of contention between the Sublime Porte and the Austrian Government but a short while ago.
As fate will have it, the express train leaves Brod at midnight, and, consequently, some of the most picturesque mountain scenery along the route is lost to the traveller, but as he does not reach Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, until ten o’clock the following morning, an early awakening will be rewarded with wild mountain scenes and interesting types galore.
The mere mention of a narrow-gauge train seems to convey to the average American the unpleasant idea of discomfort, if not hardship, of travel, but this train will prove itself clean and comfortable far in excess of your expectations.
Each section of the railway carriage comprises two single seats, facing each other as in our own sleeping cars, and there are _no_ upper berths. Furthermore, you may draw the curtains of your section and, although it is not possible to retire in the true sense of the word, you will enjoy being screened, during the night at least, from the stares of your over-curious fellow-passengers.
For some unknown reason I had neglected to draw the curtains of my compartment after I had prepared myself for the night. Across the aisle a Bosnian occupied somewhat more than his allotted space, and when he learned, by quizzing me surreptitiously in German as to my nationality, that I was from America, he launched a volume of questions in my direction, the answers to some of which, I confess, rendered me nonplussed for the moment and sleep impossible.
Was it a long journey from America to Bosnia?
How long?
Did I come in a steamboat?
Were there many black men in America?
How many?
These queries, and a host of others of the same stamp, gave me just cause to wonder if the man had not mistaken me for a travelling Baedeker. Had he been as tired as I was he would have enjoyed a night’s rest just as much as I. Finally, I became desperate and jerked the curtains together—a rude procedure, no doubt—and went to sleep with a volley of interrogations raging about me. If my Bosnian friend wished to know during the night aught of the history, topography or population of the United States, I fail to remember, having conveniently lost consciousness, but he was ready with a fresh volume of questions when I awakened in the morning.
At seven we stopped long enough to take coffee on the vine-arboured station-porch of a little village; a short twenty minutes later the station-master rang his bell, the train conductor blew his horn and the engineer tooted his whistle, all of which seem to be absolutely necessary to start a train in the Balkans, and we were off again, whisking over the wonderfully well-kept roadbed, past the water tanks and the switch towers in their immaculate coats of fresh, white paint, through tunnels, across gorges, and in three more hours we arrived at Sarajevo.
One might as well be precipitated from the clouds into Turkey itself as to come suddenly upon Sarajevo from the country in the North. In this little city it isn’t one Turk here and one Turk there, as in Belgrade or Sophia, but more than half the population is Ottoman. Here the Mohammedan element occupies a most interesting bazaar that covers in area several city blocks; on every hand the pencil-like pinnacles of the forty-odd mosques rear themselves skyward; the streets are alive with red-fezzed Mohammedans in spacious knee breeches, Turkish women in bloomers and veiled goddesses of the Harem. At the noon hour the air reverberates with the cries of the Muezzins, in response to which the faithful spread themselves devoutly upon their knees in the courtyards and on the steps of their houses of worship.
Sarajevo lies on both sides of the Miljača River, the banks of which are protected from the ravages of flood by well-built and not inartistic stone walls. Mountains surround the town on all sides. The streets are narrow as becomes a Turkish city, but under the Austrian régime they are kept clean as new pins. The buildings, especially the government ones, are large and well-proportioned, the shops are good and the hotels excellent.
Of course the principal attraction in Sarajevo is the bazaar, a sort of perennial market where the Turk and his art may be studied to advantage. This bazaar is a permanent affair, divided into streets or lanes which tangle and twine themselves around a small square centered by a public fountain. Wednesday is characterized by a “grangers’ meeting” and the streets overflow with Turkish and Bosnian truck-farmers bartering their produce. This is the day to rub elbows with the sullen, lazy Mohammedans. They squat about the fountain, presumably caring little whether they sell their fruits and vegetables or not; immense four-legged loads of hay or wood, which cover the little pack-animals from nose to tail, wobble up and down through the narrow thoroughfares, compelling you to seek the shelter of a convenient doorway to allow them to pass; veiled women, with even their hands shielded by cotton gloves from the admiring gazes of the men-folk, amble silently by, ghost-like, while the _kafanas_, or coffee houses, buzz with the gossip of outstretched Turks who sip their coffee and smoke cigarettes until the place smells like the hybrid of a tobacco factory and a coffee-packing establishment.
Almost any day of the week, however, the pound and tinker of sandalled artisans are to be heard in the workshops which border the streets of the bazaar. The coppersmith hammers out his Turkish coffee sets and his brass trays, many of which he etches with a sharp-edged tool in ornate designs and figures; the shoe and harness-maker sits cross-legged as he plies the needle back and forth, a cigarette between his lips and a cup of thick, black coffee ever at his elbow; the gold and silversmith deftly inlays his gun metal cigarette cases with threads of precious metals, first scoring with a tool the design to be worked upon the object, much as a dentist might prepare a cavity in a tooth for a gold filling. You might readily imagine yourself in Damascus, instead of in the capital of a province of Austria-Hungary.
Objects of considerable interest to me in this Bosnian city were the home-made street sprinklers which tend to serve the purpose of the municipal government, although they never would be regarded by us as labour savers. A huge hogshead is mounted on four wheels, filled with water and hauled through the streets by a horse driven by a native. In that much the contrivance somewhat resembles our own variety, except for the native. But here lies its salient feature: it requires two men to operate it, for how on earth would it be possible for one man to drive the horse and sprinkle the street at one and the same time, in Bosnia?
From the rear of the hogshead protrudes a long hose terminating in a sprinkler, like the nozzle of a watering pot. One end of a rope is fastened to this sprinkler, and the other is attached to a second native, whose duty it is to walk behind the cart and swing the hose from side to side by means of the rope, the while sprinkling himself as well as the roadway. Wet feet invariably result from this crude method, but the “man behind the street sprinkler” should be deemed above his fellows in point of cleanliness, if such a condition meets with any commendation whatever in Bosnia, for the labourers in Sarajevo, as a rule, look as though they had never been on intimate terms with soap and water in all their lives.
In the afternoons horse-races usually take place at the quaint little summer resort of Ylidze, at the foot of the mountains, to be reached either by train or by a rather dusty drive of eight miles. These races furnish about the only excuse the fashion and _élite_ of Sarajevo have to display their dresses and uniforms. The grandstand and paddock are packed with Worth gowns and three-foot hats, (mind you!) and the bookmaker does a land-office business with the be-medalled and gold-braided Austrian army. But the real devotees of the races are the Turks and peasants who drive for miles and miles to attend them, and whose Oriental costumes outline in gayest of colours both sides of the course. In the late afternoon, at the conclusion of the race-meet, Bosnian society repairs _en masse_ to the beautiful and fashionable Villa Bosna, where, in the cool of the evening, in the casino or under the great trees, it sups and dines and chatters, until it is time for the last of the evening trains to leave for Sarajevo.
Like the Turks of any Eastern city those of Sarajevo comprise many different sects, and it was on the day before I took my departure that a Bosnian porter, whose patron I had been repeatedly during my stay in the city, and who took seriously to heart the alleged fabulous wealth of _all_ English-speaking people, came to my hotel to ask if I might care to witness a Dervish dance that evening. These calisthenic devotions, held by this most fanatical sect of Mohammedans in their mosque upon the night of each full moon, constitute a weird religious ceremony, not excelled as a spectacle even by the famous Antelope and Snake Dances of the Hopi Indians, and I promptly accepted the invitation to attend.
Shortly after nine o’clock, my guide, the pronunciation of whose real name sounded so much like “Jim” that I shall hereafter allude to him as such, called for me, and together we started off for the darkened Turkish quarter. With Jim in the lead, carrying in his hand a ponderous Turkish lantern, which resembled more an oil can than anything I can think of, we stumbled over the cobbles, through the narrow streets, past the latticed windows of the low-roofed Turkish houses and, after three-quarters of an hour (during which time I am safe in saying we climbed every hill in the town) we arrived at the door of the Dervish mosque.
In the courtyard the bodies of several of the departed lay in state, as is the Mohammedan custom before burial. After proceeding through several rooms and negotiating as best we could as many flights of dark, precipitous stairs, we finally found ourselves in a balcony overlooking the room in which the “dance” was to take place. On the opposite side of the balcony from us, behind closely-woven lattice-work, was seated a group of female admirers of the dancers. On the floor below, at one end of the room, stood a shrine, on each side of which a Dervish apostle sat cross-legged. The pungent odour of burning incense and candles filled the atmosphere.
Presently the worshippers, all men, arrived, removed their slippers and squatted on the floor facing the altar, forming a semi-circle. When all were seated, probably thirty in number, one of the patriarchs near the shrine commenced a low, dismal chant. After many repetitions this was memorized by the worshippers, who then chanted it together, emphasizing the first beat of a common time rhythm, their bodies swaying in unison from side to side. The tempo of the song and the movement of the bodies accelerated gradually. At the end of ten or fifteen minutes this particular chant was stopped abruptly and another was commenced, which continued for an equal length of time.
But to worship in a sitting posture did not seem to produce the desired effect and the men, at the beginning of the succeeding wail, arose to their knees to continue the services. Swinging and grunting in this position tended to heighten their emotions to a greater extent, and some of the worshippers became so accustomed to and numbed by the swaying movement that they hopped about the floor in a state of semi-consciousness, their faces engraven with an almost unearthly look, like that of sufferers from delirium tremens. At the end of each chant several required being led back by their fellows to their original positions in the semi-circle.
Still they were not satisfied with the result, and, after an hour of howling in sitting and kneeling positions, they stood up to put a more emotional finishing touch to their devout proceedings. By this time the floor was littered with fallen turbans and the rugs used to kneel upon were scattered about the room. After several more exhaustive efforts to work off their superfluous religious ardour had been resorted to without apparent avail, the men snatched drums and cymbals from hooks upon the wall and commenced beating them furiously, in rhythm to the wails of the priests. The din produced on these instruments was almost deafening and the antics and shouts of the chanting fanatics transformed the place, literally, into the interior of a madhouse. During the final scene all were shouting at once, each trying to outdo the other, as if to receive some recognition for his religious ability from the high priests. From time to time a Dervish would fall upon the floor, completely enervated but trying, unconsciously, to continue his part. On the whole it constituted one of the most repulsive sights of infidel worship.
At half-past eleven the “dance” was over and I was quite willing to take up my position behind Jim and be guided through the narrow streets back to civilization.