here at its source everything was frozen in silence.
Newspaper headlines reported to all corners of the state that Ali Tepelena, governor of Albania, a seven-times-decorated pasha and member of the Council of Ministers, proclaimed by royal decree as Kara Ali, meaning “Black Ali,” was besieged in his last fortress. Hurshid Pasha, the army’s rising star and the emperor’s favorite, was suppressing the rebellion, and had refused all meetings with journalists and consuls.
On the fourth of February, the French consul’s carriage was traveling past the encampment of a unit of the besieging army. From deep inside the camp came the sound of festive drumming. The consul stretched his head out the window to ask what all this pounding was about. “The hayir ferman,” several voices replied from the semidarkness. “What?” the consul asked. “What’s that?” “It’s the decree pardoning Ali Pasha’s life,” someone replied. “The war’s over.”
How was this possible, the consul wondered, and stretched his head out of the carriage to ask more questions, but around him there was only dusk and spoiled snow. How was this possible, he wondered again. The whole world was waiting for Ali Pasha’s severed head. In the capital, there were people who kept vigil all night by the Traitor’s Niche, and curses against the black vizier had been sung from the empire’s hundred thousand minarets. How could it all come to this ordinary end?
It was totally dark outside. The snow now looked black, and the French consul, wrapped in his fur-lined cloak, racked his brain to think of what he would report to his king.
They must come now, thought Hurshid Pasha for perhaps the hundredth time. He paced from one end of the tent to the other with long strides, and as he walked he shifted his rings from one trembling finger to the next. They must come now, he almost cried aloud. He thought he heard footsteps, and listened. But it was not footsteps, only the rustling of his robe, which stopped as soon as he stood still.
No more gunshots or shouts of war were audible. It seemed that everything was over, and still they hadn’t come. For an instant, he imagined them walking towards him with heavy feet, like in a nightmare. Hurry up a little, for God’s sake, he appealed silently. But their feet stuck as if in dough. The script of the sultan’s decree, which Ali Pasha perhaps held in his hands, flashed in front of his eyes. That decree pardoned the empire’s greatest rebel . . . but the sultan’s signature strangely resembled a scorpion with its poisonous sting pointing upward. The decree was false. Ali would be beheaded as soon as he surrendered.
Then why . . . ? He left his thought unfinished. Involuntarily he reached out his arm for support. His knees buckled. They were coming. He could hear their footsteps. They were footsteps of a particular kind, neither hurried nor slow. One could not tell from what direction they came, but it was as if they were descending from some height or climbing from deep down. Their sound gave no indication of what news they brought, joyful or bitter. His arm, still searching for support, flailed in the air like a stork’s wing. At that moment they entered. Hurshid Pasha’s eyes fixed on a point about three feet above the ground, exactly where their hands should be. He did not look at any of their faces. He saw only that white thing that one of them held. The silver basin glittered. There was a head in it. No, it wasn’t a head, but a fairy-tale lantern whose fire illuminated the entire world. Allah, he said to himself and raised his hands to his face, protecting his eyes from this blazing light.
“Pasha,” the man holding the silver dish broke the silence. “Here is the head of Black Ali.”
Hurshid Pasha stretched out his arms towards it, but instantly pulled them back. His hands would not hold that radiant dish. With an effort, he averted his eyes from it, and with the same awkwardness pointed to the little table in the middle of the tent. The man holding the dish bowed his head in a gesture of obedience, went to the table, and placed the dish upon it.
“Leave now,” Hurshid Pasha said in a voice like the slenderest of threads. Two or three more words and it would snap.
The men went out in silence. Hurshid Pasha stood petrified in the middle of the tent, waiting for movement to come back to his body. Life returned first to his legs. Like the legs of a small child, they carried him unsteadily towards the table. For a while he stood numb beside the table, and then bent down over the silver dish and, holding it carefully in trembling hands, kissed the severed head. His shoulders heaved with sobbing. His hands, with cramped fingers frozen, stroked the woolly curls. Feverishly he watched the gems of his rings as they dived and surfaced among the white locks as if through winter clouds, and again his shoulders shook.
“My pasha,” he said. “My guiding star.”
He bent down and kissed the head again, then stepped back to examine it more carefully. Here it is, he thought, on this dish, on this table, in my tent. It was really there, two paces from him. For months it had been as far from his grasp as a clap of thunder.
For entire days and nights during those grim weeks as the war and the siege continued, he had thought of this head. Like all things to do with infinity, its image would not settle in his mind. It was always distant, sometimes brooding or threatening, but mostly inscrutable.
He stroked the head again, but the glint of his rings next to the lifeless eyes was so frightening that he drew back his hands.
“My savior,” he said, his voice breaking. “My destiny.”
Ever since he had been appointed commander-in-chief of the troops to suppress the rebellion, it had seemed to Hurshid Pasha that the head of Black Ali hovered above the horizon of his life like a star in the sky. It was his duty to quench its light or be snuffed out himself. The heavens could not contain them both. One of their suns had to sink.
Throughout those weeks of war, the possibility of losing his own head had tortured him. On overcast mornings, every ache in his neck struck him as an ominous sign. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he could not help thinking of what would happen to his head, or to the other head, that of his double. This head, too, had teeth and a beard, and made speeches and issued orders like every head that commands an army. They had many things in common, but not their fate. One of them would inevitably fall. At moments of exhaustion and weakness, when it seemed that it would be difficult to defeat the legendary pasha of the Albanians, he had been haunted by listless fantasies. How good it would be if customs could change and become gentler, so that the world would accept both of them, the victor and the vanquished. But even in his sluggish dreams this seemed impossible. It was easier to imagine himself with two heads on his shoulders, his own and Ali’s—or worse, their heads at either end of his body, one below and one above. In fact it was easier to imagine any kind of monstrosity than to consider the prospect of them both living on the same earth.
All these fantasies now belonged to the past. This head was in front of him, its light extinguished forever on that February afternoon. So why did he feel no joy at all? The exultation was all around him, and he had only to reach out to share in it, but something stopped him. What’s wrong with you, he said to himself. His star has set, yours is rising. What more do you want?
Nothing, he thought after a moment, but then the reason why he couldn’t rejoice occurred to him. He was afraid. It was no longer the authentic fear for his own head that had been so familiar to him in the past few weeks. It was a more pervasive, mute terror that went down to the foundations of the earth. He had witnessed with his own eyes a mighty fall. He had seen majesty brought low. Yet his own joy squirmed like a squashed worm. His feelings were cold. The worm went still. Why did it have to happen like this?
The chill penetrated his bones. It was the same iciness that he had felt the previous night, when, having withdrawn to his tent, he’d listened to the din of the drums. They were celebrating the arrival of what they took to be the royal hayir ferman, pardoning Ali Pasha. Half-crazed dervishes,
