The Novel prize winning Bosnian writer Ivo Andrić set a number of his works in Travnik, the former capital of Ottoman Bosnia. Notably The Bosnian Chronicles (I have also seen this book published as The Travnik Chronicles) but my favourite of those I have read is The Vizier’s Elephant.
The premise of the story is that a new Vizier is being sent to Travnik to govern the troublesome province of Bosnia, and the news of the unknown Vizier troubles the people of the town.
An ill-tempered vizier was a burden to all of Bosnia, but especially to Travnik, its capital; for elsewhere in Bosnia he ruled with a stranger’s hand, whereas here he ruled personally, with his own hand, his unknown disposition, his retinue, and his servants.
As the townsfolk search for knowledge of their new overlord they receive information about his time as Vizier in Bitola (now in North Macedonia, near beautiful Lake Ohrid) where he is said to have ordered the leading men to each drag an oak stake with their name inscribed to the Vizier’s residence . The Vizier then has these stakes erected like a forest outside and threatens that even the slightest resistance to his rule will mean being impaled upon the stake they dragged there. Something borrowing heavily from Vlad Tepeš over in Transylvania here!
“A sharp sabre in a fast and unmerciful hand is about to descend upon you.”
Once arrived the Vizier slaughters 17 nobles and sends ten more to Istanbul in chains. But otherwise he is a bit of a recluse. He is rarely seen or heard by the townspeople.
Of course, where information is lacking then rumours abound and so all manner of gossip develops. Then the Vizier has an exotic new pet arrive. An African elephant.
Whilst the Vizier himself is still out of sight, the elephant (known to the locals as fil, a Turkish word for elephant) gets exercised walking through the town. As a young elephant he sometimes gets in to a bit of mischief, but he becomes the unwitting focus of the fears and hatred of the locals in lieu of the dreaded and mysterious Vizier.
In the narrow Travnik charshiya, the town’s market street, the fil looked much larger than he really was, and much more awesome and outlandish, for as people watched the animal, they were thinking not of him but of the Vizier.
As the elephant grows and causes a certain amount of commotion in the market, as an elephant would do if it had to walk down a narrow medieval street lined with shops and market stalls, the antagonism of the traders grows, only outmatched by the wild stories that spread around the town.
Soon the elephant is being blamed for everything that happens in the town and a lot that is just plain made up besides. The townspeople start to think of how to rid themselves of the elephant.
Out of tradition as well as conviction, these people protected animals, even the harmful ones, fed dogs, cats and pigeons, and never even killed vermin. But this rule did not apply to the Vizier’s elephant. They had designs on his life and hated him as one hates a human enemy.
On a drunken night influenced by too much rakia, a variety of plans are dreamt up. Although one young man does show a glimmer of insight:
“…I somehow feel sorry for the beast. What harm has he really done? They caught him somewhere, across the seas, tied him up and sold him, and the Vizier brought him here to suffer in a foreign land all alone. And then again I think: the Vizier, too, came by force; he too, was sent here by others who never asked him whether he liked it or not . And whoever sent him had to send someone to calm down Bosnia and put it in order. And so it seems to me everyone is being pushed around according to some kind of need and someone else’s will; nobody is where he would like to be and where he is liked.”
But sadly he is a lone, quiet voice in the crowd.
In the end the people of the charshiya decide to send five men to see the Vizier to present their complaints about the elephant. But all of them back out before they get there, unwilling to face the feared governor.
So instead the local children start throwing nuts with live Bees inside the shell to the elephant. This then progresses to the adults throwing apples filled with ground glass and arsenic.
The elephant sickens and stops visiting the town. Rumours of the death of the elephant are quickly quashed when it is revealed that the animal is in fact recovering.
Then the Vizier takes his own life after hearing that he is going to be removed from his position by the government in Istanbul. The poor elephant is left at the mercy of the townsfolk and is again poisoned and dies.
Horrible animal cruelty aside, it’s a tale that illustrates how fear, lies and hatred can thrive in an environment of ignorance and unfamiliarity.
The story seems to be out of print in the English language and I can’t find it on any of the usual ebook sites or even a reasonably priced second hand hard copy. The only place I could find it was a digitised version on an Indian website here.
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