or he could attempt to step out of it while yet knowing that there was no salvation in it; giving up would not send him home. He would only be forced into the worst possible life conditions as a common slave, all opportunities for change removed, much less for advancement or success. By obeying others’ decisions about his life, he ensured for himself some kind of possibility that, somewhere in the future he would take over responsibility for decisions about that same life. His life.
The time of wars made in the territory of my former homeland has passed, hopefully, never to return. But not enough time has passed to wash away the consequences. One of them, naive only at first glance, consists of a new and persistent phenomenon of the vulgar exchange of quality for quantity, for example – turning literature into mathematics. Let me explain. Since the transition period of society among the uneducated is also taken as the attempt to express everything in numbers, then as a by-product of ‘the establishment of primary capital’ as it is called by those who rob the people and the government, it shows up as the need to give everything a rank. Of course, ranking is done – with numbers. For the money addicts, the only measures of value are (and always were) numbers. So, top-lists of everything existing have been made. Whatever subject you chose, you could express it in terms of the comparison of its ranking to whatever else you might have chosen.
Even in publishing and literature, numbers of all kinds began to show up: even numbers that expressed the numbers of copies of a printed book and the number of editions for a particular title. Such totals have always been around but, while they are quite important for publishing, they were never decisive, unchallengeable or divine. They were simply there, as a normal part of a whole make-up of various elements, including numbers as well, that constitutes a book and its life.
However, these other numbers that appeared after the fact in the transition, were excessive: for example, the number that marks the place a book took on the top-list of the most popular, most sold, most read, most modern and so forth... On the surface, winning a place through the democratic method. But, this was an illusion. The feeling is irresistible: the transition is being constructed through the use of numbers, by the theft of places.
And the measurements went on and on: how many weeks a book was on the top-list, how many editions as a hardcover, as a paperback, as re-bound, in gold-leaf covers, absurd covers, ending in covering the eyes of the reader. And then, which place it held the week before, for how many weeks, how many votes it received, and if the voting was done electronically – how many ‘hits’ there had been on the voting website. Then the comparisons: all of the data about a book translated from a foreign language compared with the numbers in other countries. Then, the whole thing one more time.
There are also hidden numbers that never reach the public: agreements, binding contracts, the deadline for a writer to hand in her or his manuscript, how many pages she or he can or must write (not more, not less), percentages of possible profits in all possible situations for every party in the contract, and that means more than just the writer and publisher. Even what will happen in unforeseen circumstances is foreseen.
Non-fulfilment of the binding elements of such contracts can also be expressed in numbers: from punitive points to percentage losses. This kind of mathematics is even stronger than death. Seventy years after the author’s death, the calculation remains the same: everything continues to be calculated, added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. It is fortunate that books outlive their authors, but the calculations never give up: they follow the author into the other world and do not allow him to rescind his rights. That post-mortem portion of time is called happy mathematics.
The arguments have still not come to a head – for and against this marriage and all like it, between literature and mathematics. The reason is simple, though it is not visible. Namely, in the transition, intellectuals lost their social and also cultural significance, which caught them off guard, then confused them, degraded them and pretty well marginalised them. To all of that change of status of their former significance was also added a new and cruel poverty. In such a pre-depressive state, some of the people in the world of literature and publishing became morally and materially corruptible. Popularly, they were called ‘mathematicians’.
Yet, perhaps all of that would not have been so tragic had it not also caused a change in certain features and parts of their character. In combi -nation with the question of nation, ethnic belonging, language issues, newfound independence and so on, the intellectual ultimately arrived at the problem of identity. And when it arrived at that point, the destruction and construction, construction and destruction started. Of identity. And of everything else.
Martial arts could also be a mask for many of the other things they were subjected to: in what appeared to be a simple and quite cruel school of physical confrontation, they learned many spiritual skills. For example, in order to accept courage as part of his character, he first had to interpret cowardice; it was only after he had mastered that consciously that he could begin learning how to liberate himself of it. Then he could dare to call that new state of mind part of his personality.
Generally speaking, the crucial moment of the entire training was this very understanding between body and soul. Once he realised the connection, he was able to establish values much more easily and quickly. It was a natural consequence. The interrelationship of cowardice and courage, for example, resulted in the understanding of subordination and super-ordination. Fear retreated in the face of challenge, yet their teachers then raised them to a higher phase of penetrating the psychological barrier: they claimed that fear could also produce courage. And that it might be even more fierce than usual! They went so far as to enter those processes and prove the veracity of such teaching by their own examples.
These were the ways to understand the goal more correctly: they were not trying to make a superhuman of him (as he first thought) by implanting something foreign in him, but rather to bring to the surface the maximum that he had inside himself and to use it as efficiently and exhaustively as possible. It was as if they wanted to re-shape him into a whole person.
In truth, the latter was only true for Bajica and a few other young men from the group. No one else had to tell them that they were predestined for special assignments; they attended many of the lessons without the other boys. However, as a consequence of this separation and of so much time spent together, and probably also because of the stronger feeling of security in community, several of them began to develop a strange, perhaps also redemptive, newly found friendship; indeed, clandestinely so because they did not dare to show it openly. Up until one particular moment.
Even after several years of residence in the caravansary at Edirne, Bajica had never once managed to see his master. The Sultan was occupied with other business in other places. Even when he came to Edirne, however, the ruler would never see them at all, because as he drew near to the caravansary all the boys would be closed up in the training rooms and kept under strict control so that no one outside would ever see them as long as the ruler was staying there. The Sultan, they were told, was regularly informed about the advancement of the future keepers of the empire, because he was quite seriously and constantly interested in their destiny. Proof of this was the sudden appearance in the court of his emissary, Deli Husrev-pasha, one day. His was a face they were allowed to see.
For that guest and host in one, the public display of some of the skills and knowledge of the young students of the empire was immediately organised, according to official protocol and with the wearing of formal clothing, as part of an entire ceremony. They amazed him with their knowledge of Persian and Arabic, of history, and by the number of learned and recited sutras from God’s revelation to Mohammed.
The pasha gave them a speech at the end, as they were assembled in front of him. And then, dismissing the others, he invited the ten of them who were special in every way to come into the inner court of the caravansary, telling them that they deserved to see some of the sultan’s rooms. When they stopped in one of them, seemingly important because of its lack of furniture and decoration, the pasha told them,
“When our