why, that the future and destiny of this city could be like his own: the Serbs would never renounce it, and the Turks would consider it their own!
Seen in a broader context, this kind of thought was backed by several facts from their common past. The first Turkish attack and first successful defence had occurred in 1440. An entire fifteen-odd years later, and just three years after the conquest of Constantinople and its transformation into Istanbul, Sultan Mehmed II began an enormous new campaign against Belgrade in 1456. The short span in between indicated just how important Belgrade was in the political priorities of the Ottoman Empire. In the battles on Belgrade’s rivers and their banks, the defenders showed incredible courage, especially the Serbian sailors among them. They managed to save the city. From that moment, Belgrade became the symbol of the overall defence of Europe and was given the title of the ‘Ramparts of Christianity’.13 But, it could not defend itself against Suleiman I the Legislator. This ruler gave the ‘White City’14 an Islamic name – Dar ul-Jihad,15 and he was thereafter given the name ‘the Magnificent’ by his enemies.
The truth was as follows: to the Turkish Empire, this city was the perfect springboard for each new conquest toward the ultimate goal – Vienna, but to the European powers united against the Ottomans – it was a much-needed borderline peopled with victims who were not their citizens. The Serbs were in an ideal position for the interests of the two sides – both Moslem and Christian: a malleable mass compacted and stuck between a rock and a hard place.
That was the past. But what if the future said something in contradiction to what he had just been thinking: the Serbs will reject him, and the Ottomans will never accept him as one of their own? He did not dare to think more about that when the similarity or even sameness of the destiny of the city and his own appeared before him.
Bajica was finding out what the Emperor’s highway was, the one the Serbs called the Constantinople highway, by which he had arrived in Belgrade. There was no way for him to know just how many times, usually following the river valley, he would travel back and forth on it. That road would become more than a symbol of his entire life.
The military commanders spared the boys from Edirne in only one way: they never sent them under any conditions among the fighters on the front line, nor did they send them into direct battle. They could not take the risk of losing their lives because they still had to prove to the sultan and the empire how capable they were, primarily in the defence of their own lives. Above all they had to stay alive. For the beginning, it was quite enough that they saw a lot of bloodshed close at hand; it was not necessary for them to bloody their own hands as well. This first encounter with massive death shocked Bajica and his comrades just enough that they managed to keep their wits about them and go on with the quite simple tasks the agas gave them. Their superiors, it could be seen, had a lot of experience with such situations and they never made a single excessive move. The large number of responsibilities that an attack demanded, especially of the commanders, proved welcome in justifying their ‘lack of care’ for the young men. In actual fact, this was all planned: the boys were allowed, on the surface, to harden themselves and realise what their future held. Of course, the agas were, carefully hidden, more careful than usual in looking after them and watching out for their safety. At first this semblance of being alone caused terrible fear in the boys, but after the job was done, they were rewarded with self-confidence.
By the very nature of the place where they were bivouacked, Bajica and his friends were among troops made up of fighters – assault troops, janissaries and units made up of local soldiers. Behind each assault soldier stood several regular soldiers and reservists, craftsmen, merchants, supply officers and others whose burden it was to ensure that each of them was able to do their jobs as well as possible. Whether a soldier at the head of the attack would die, when and to what end – it all depended on them. Or perhaps they would not die. It was then that Bajica understood the importance of strategy, of the organisation of a whole chain of jobs and tasks that made up the integral whole. If one link in this chain gets fractured somewhere, regardless of how insignificant that link may seem, the whole enterprise falls into danger. Seen from the outside, things looked quite different: those (individuals or events) at the forefront were visible, but the whole armada that made that visibility possible remained deep in the shadows. Using this example, he could apply the mechanisms of action to the entire empire as well. The fighters on the front lines (like the sultan and those close to him in the state) risked their lives more than anyone else (meaning that they carried the greatest responsibility in the state), sometimes even losing them, but they also, therefore, took on the greatest ‘burden’ of fame and fortune when there was a victory (meaning power and comfort in the state).
Killing, as the most visible tool of this campaign, did not interest him in the least, much less bring him delight. They had also taught him that skill at the caravansary. Now he saw the exercise of it in practice. He was certain that it could be reduced to a bare minimum. Force could not be, and did not have to be, practically the only measure of success to such an extent. Avoiding death interested him. He grew accustomed to death more easily than to killing.
He was more allured by the craftsmen and inventors. He was also drawn closer to them by the variety of languages they spoke. He was amazed by their faith in their own, still unmastered, future knowledge: they were obviously not satisfied by what they already knew. This was especially evident when the sultan or a grand vizier would give them a sudden, new and seemingly impossible task. Their faith in the possible completely enchanted Bajica. They approached the solving of every problem, even the smallest one, with such dedication that it seemed the destiny of the world depended on it.
Among the builders and craftsmen, he noticed a man who must have been more than ten years older than himself, but who had so much energy that he differed from the others and seemed to be as young as Bajica. And Ibrahim-pasha actually sought him out on several occasions!
One time they were close enough for Bajica to hear them talking to each other in Greek. He knew that the Grand Vizier was Greek by background, and now he knew that this young man, like Bajica himself, was brought here in the devshirma to serve the Ottoman Empire. Ibrahim-pasha was telling him to draw attention to himself with his ideas so that he could advance in the service more quickly.
Bajica was overjoyed with his eavesdropping and with his knowledge of Greek, learned with such enthusiasm at the monastery – now he would have one more partner with whom he could come to an understanding in several ways.
Just as these thoughts crossed his mind, the Grand Vizier noticed his unhidden interest in their conversation. The pasha obviously knew very well who Bajica was, because he addressed him in Greek and offered to introduce the two young men.
“You will not just get to know each other,” the vizier made the introduction, “but you will also get to know what the other one knows.
“This is Sinan. He’s studying to be a high-ranking officer, but he’s also interested in engineering. When I start looking for him, I usually find him among the engineers and not among the soldiers. Since he is a member of the sultan’s bodyguard, the ruler remembers him and occasionally asks about him. Lutfi-pasha, the guard commander, and I often have to make excuses for his absence. Though, to be frank, he has proven to be more useful to the sultan with the ideas in his head than with a sabre in his hand.”
Bajica was surprised by the intimate tone of the Grand Vizier toward a former victim of the blood tribute.16 But Ibrahim-pasha was already giving an explanation,
“From the first days of 1511, when he was brought from the Anatolian province of Kayseri to the heart of the empire, he was just about to turn nineteen, and Sinan Jusuf was appointed to my court. In that way you are alike: you were also brought at that age from Bosnia, although at a later date. You are both Orthodox Christians by background, and you, Mehmed, almost became a monk. Sinan proved to be a brave and excellent warrior five years
