Through the Land of the Serb

by M. E. Durham

We rode with a long string of pack-beasts on a good track down the valley of the Lim. Before we had been going an hour, grey clouds swept down upon us and rain began; but everyone vowed it would be fine, and I foolishly pushed on. A guard of dirty Nizams cowered at the entrance of a loopholed shanty, and a Turkish "kula" (blockhouse) was perched on the hill on either side of the valley. The telegraph wire, which had hitherto run trim and straight between upright and regular poles, now drooped in limp festoons from one crooked "clothes-prop" to another. We were in Turkey. No place looks really jolly in the rain, but in many lands rain means new life, hope, and plenty. In Turkey it is grey desolation; the untilled land, the wretched Christian peasantry, the squalid huts, sodden and soaked, seem all rotting together in a land whereon the sun will never shine again. We splashed on. No one took any notice of us, for we were going to market. The Turkish blockhouses, "half an hour apart" along the frontier, were left behind us. We slopped past a yellow guard-house and more gaunt Nizams and rode into Berani, a small town of, for the most part, crooked houses of timber and mud, a wide main street, a large market-place, two wooden mosques, and a fortress.

The inn, kept by a Serb, was far better than the look of the place led one to expect. The man was from Ipek and his wife from Novibazar, and they welcomed me warmly, A visit from a foreign Christian was an unusual event, and the question was what course it would be most diplomatic to pursue with regard to the authorities. I was begged not to seek them, but to leave them to hunt me, if they thought fit. A Czech who had come about a fortnight ago had gone straight to the Kaimmakam, had been promptly ordered back across the frontier, and a guard had been set to watch the inn and see that he did not leave it except to return whence he came. Mine host hoped I would not bring the police upon him. "But I have a letter and a passport," I said; for, with the blood of the dominant race in me, the idea of sneaking in corners from the Ottoman eye was most unpleasing. To the Christian subjects of the Ottoman it seemed the only natural and sensible way of acting. "What is a letter or a passport?" they cried; "here you are with the Turks." There was a marked unwillingness on the part of everyone to take me to the Kaimmakam, and the Czechs plan had failed, so I decided, by way of experiment, to see Berani before I was hunted out of it. Meanwhile they pointed out the great man to me through the wooden grating that covered the window. He went into his official residence, and it was suggested that we should now go out. It was interesting to see how entirely suitable this furtive way of setting about things was considered.

The rain had ceased, and the market was crowded with Montenegrins and the Serb peasants of the neighbourhood. In this part of the country the peasantry is all Serb and Christian. The Mohammedans are the army of occupation that holds the land, the Nizams, Zaptiehs (police), and officials, and a certain amount of tradesfolk in the town. These latter are in many cases the descendants of Mohammedanised Serbs, as is also the Kaimmakam himself. The most remarkable fact about Berani is that the Montenegrin national cap is on sale in the main street. That this is permitted is astonishing, for it does not take one long to see that the Christian population is heart and soul with the Prince. In the course of the last war Berani was taken several times and was held by the Montenegrins. The people's hopes ran high. "But," they say, "it lies in good land, so the Council of Berlin gave it back to the Turks. See the fine meadows and the fields that should be ours! And but little grows in them, for they gave it back to those devils."

Down came the rain like a fusillade, and I spent a cold, damp afternoon in the public room of the inn. A man who said he was German was waiting to interview me. He was a watchmaker by trade. He started at once on the death of King Alexander. Which of the Powers did I think had brought this about? Did I think it would affect the future of Old Servia? He was so anxious to know my opinion on the subject that I had none. "Servia" was the only word that the Serbs at the next table could understand, and it made them nervous. They ordered drinks and got me into their circle as soon as possible, asking, "What have you told him? He is a dirty German. He will denounce you to the authorities." They were a frank, hospitable, kindly set, of whom I afterwards saw much. I did my best to convince them that the manner of Alexander's death was worse than a crime—for it was a blunder; but though we remained very good friends, I never succeeded.

I went to Berani on purpose to see Giurgovi "Stupovi, the monastery church of St. George; for in Turkey you should always have a harmless and suitable reason for travelling, and I watched the rain dismally. It looked like the Deluge, and forty days of it would have settled the Eastern Question as far as the Turk is concerned. Monastery hunting was out of the question. I went upstairs, sat cross-legged on a divan to warm myself, and nursed the cat for the same purpose. My hostess did her best to entertain me and called in any number of her friends, and I began to make the acquaintance of the women of Old Servia, of whom I was to learn more later. These women came to see me whenever they had the chance; I was a stranger and quite a new sight, and no matter what I was doing or how tired I might be, they questioned me with pitiless persistency. Such interviews on the top of a long day's ride are wearisome to the last degree, but in travelling in these lands there is only one road to success, and that is, never to lose patience with the people under any circumstances. They were extremely ignorant; England conveyed no idea to them. Beyond their own immediate surroundings they knew nothing at all, and their mental horizon was bounded by Turks. I asked no questions, and let the information dribble out unaided. Omitting a mass of childish and personal questions, the conversation was always more or less on this pattern:—

"Hast thou a father?"

"No."

"Did the Turks kill him?"

"No." This caused surprise.

"Hast thou brothers?"