Khatak: The Black Swan

The fourth dance to be featured in the series is Khatak from India (the first dance to be featured was Ulek Mayang from Malaysia on 8/16/13). Khatak is one of the eight dance forms, acknowledged as Indian Classical Dance. It is supposed to originate from the nomadic bards of ancient Northern India. According to an article in Wikipedia the word Khatak is derived from the Sanskrit word 'khata,' which means 'story'. Classical Indian Khatak is normally performed by women.

Kathak exponent Manisha Gulyani. Pix taken from Wikipedia

But there is another form of dance also known as Katthak, which is a martial arts dance usually performed by men while carrying a shining sword and a red handkerchief... This dance is said to originate from the Khattak tribe among the Pashtuns; found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, according to an article in Wikipedia, the dance may have been brought to these countries by the army of Alexander the Great, from Bactria, Greece. While the dance may have died out in Greece, it has evolved and survived among the Pashtuns and other tribes. Looking at the picture below, even the costumes show some Greek influence.

Photo by Mazhar Faiz, taken during the Sarhad Cultural Festival in Haripur

I don't know if Khatak is derived from Khattak or if there are any connections between the two dance forms... In any case, the two dance forms were popular during the time of the Moghuls.

I was lucky to attend a performance of Khatak in Zagreb, by a group from India. The invitation came from the Embassy of India to Zagreb. It was however a modernised version of the dance, based on the Hollywood movie, The Black Swan, which starred Natalie Portman.

The dancer playing the White Swan slowly comes under the spell of the Black Swan

The dancer goes into a trance...

The White Swan is now the Black Swan

The movie is set in the high-strung world of the New York City Ballet. A beautiful and talented young dancer lands the role of Princess Odette, the White Swan, in the dance drama, Swan Lake. However, she becomes possessed by the Black Swan, Odile, and undergoes a strange transformation...


Are there similarities with Manohra? Perhaps. But Odette is under a curse while Manohra belongs to the race of Kinnara.

Strange predatory birds also come into the picture

All the dancers are now black swans...

The Khatak performance I witnessed involved quick, rhythmic footwork, dramatic poses and rapid spins. In some ways it reminded me of Spanish Flamenco and Irish line dance... The performance was lively and energetic but I felt the costumes could have done with some embellishment. After all, this is an Indian dance, where one expects nothing short of opulence...

Manohra: The Tale of the Kinnari

The marvelous Bunditpatanasilpa Institute's Dance Troupe from the Ministry of Culture of Thailand also put up a performance of Manohra on that night; only a vignette however as the full dance drama would take hours.

Manohra is a traditional dance drama popular in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, but the folktale is also known in Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar (Burma). In Malaysia, the dance is performed only in the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu but is gradually fading away, unfortunately. The title, Manohra, refers to the name of the main character, the youngest of seven Kinnari princesses.

Manohra, like all her sisters, is a chimera - a bird-human hybrid. A male of the race is known as a Kinnara or Kinnon in Thailand. The Kinnara is the archetypical lover, a celestial musician and dancer. The character of the Kinnara is illuminated in this passage from the Mahabharata (taken from Wikipedia):

       We are everlasting lover and beloved. We never separate.We are eternally husband and wife, never do
       we become mother and father. No offspring is seen in our lap. We are lover and beloved, ever
       embracing. In between us we do not permit any third creature demanding affection. Our life is a life of
       perpetual pleasure...        

Not surprisingly, the Kinnara is a symbol of enduring romantic love in Burmese culture. Although these lines are from the Mahabharata, the story of Manohra is not found there.

The Kinnari is depicted as having the torso of a woman and the lower half of a swan or a long-legged secretarybird in traditional Thai art and sculpture. In Burma, both Kinnara and Kinnari are depicted as humans with wings and fabulous tail feathers. There is no iconography of her in Malaysia, as far as I know. However, in my retelling of the story of Manohra in Eight Jewels of the Phoenix, she is basically a woman until she puts on her magical 'forest clothes' and is able to fly. This depiction of her is consistent with folklore as well as the dance. A Kinnari is not only able to fly, she can cross the boundary from this world to another mythical world called the Himaphan forest; the home of all the Kinnaris and Kinnaras.

In Thai culture, a Kinnari represents feminine beauty, grace and accomplishments, especially in dance, song and poetry.

A brief summary of the story: Every night of the full moon, Manohra and her sisters make it a ritual of visiting a beautiful pool in a secluded forest. One night, a hunter called Buntarik spots the seven Kinari sisters taking a bath and captures one of them. Manohra is taken to the Royal Court and offered as a gift to the crown prince, Phra Suthon. The hunter is of course well rewarded by the prince for such a fabulous gift. While she is in captivity, the palace handmaidens hide her magical forest clothes to prevent her from escaping.

Manohra's beauty and her grace as a dancer wins the love of the prince and he announces that he intends to marry her. This incurs the wrath of the royal priest and minister to the king, Brahmin Purohit. But the minister has to bide his time until a neighbouring kingdom (probably the Khmer Empire) declares war and Phra Suthon has to go to battle.When he is away, the king has a prophetic dream. Brahmin Purohit, the minister, warns him that the dream is a portend of great misfortune and the only way to avert it is to sacrifice Manohra by fire... In order to save Manohra, the handmaidens return to her her forest clothes and the Kinnari flies away to safety.  When Phra Suthon returns from war and finds Manohra gone, he is distraught and sets out to find her...

The story of Manohra is thought to be based on Indian folklore and the Jataka Tales, with plot twists added by ancient Thai-Malay culture. It could be the origin of stories such as Swan Lake. In India, Manohra is Manohara, Phra Suthon is Prince Sudhana and the Himaphan Forest is the Himavanta Forest. But the folklore and dance of Manohra achieved it's fullest expression in Southeast Asia and is relatively unknown in India.

 Different variations of this story of seven bird maidens (usually cranes in Japan, Korea and China) or sometimes seven fairies, taking a bath in a forest pool and the youngest one being captured by a hunter or a fisherman occur in folktales from Japan and Korea all the way to the Philippines and Borneo. However, the version of the story in these countries are simple folktales - the man steals the crane maiden's magical cloak and keeps her captive on Earth.

Kinnari and Kinnara in flight. The depiction, according to
Burmese tradition, is by Aung Min Min

The story of Manohra on the other hand is high drama - it has a captive princess who can fly, a valiant prince, a war, a scheming priest and court intrigues, a perilous quest and an enchanted forest... For more information, refer to my previous post Adapting Asian Folktales for Children's and YA Literature 5/31/13 .

Khon: Hanuman in Pursuit of Supanna Matcha

I had the privilege of attending a Thai Cultural Performance, by the Bunditpatanasilpa Institute's Dance Troupe from Thailand. Invitations came from the Thai Embassy in Budapest. There were several dances, but I was most impressed by the Khon performance. Khon is a form of Classical Thai dance drama, originating from the Ayutthaya period of Thai history, dating from the 14th to 18th Century.  The dance drama is based exclusively on the Ramakien, the Thai version of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Traditionally all the roles were played by men wearing masks to the accompaniment of a piphat ensemble, and Ramakien could only be staged for the Royal Court. But today, female dancers perform the roles of female characters and basically anyone with an interest can attend a Khon performance.

Supanna Matcha peers anxiously to make sure she is not being followed by Hanuman

The episode of Khon staged that night was The Pursuit of Supanna Matcha.

Hanuman is comical

I'm assuming that you are more or less familiar with the Ramayana/Ramakien. The summary: Rama, Prince of Ayodhya, has been exiled for 14 years in the forest, at the instigation of his step-mother who wanted her own sons to inherit the throne of Ayodhya.(N.B. Ayodhya was in India, whereas the Ayutthaya Kingdom was based in Thailand).  Rama was accompanied by his wife, Sita, and his brother Lakshman in exile. While Rama and Lakshman were out hunting, Sita was abducted by the demon king, Tosakanth (Ravana) who carried her all the way to his island kingdom of Lanka. Hanuman, the monkey king, offered to help Rama rescue Sita from Tosakanth. It should be noted that Hanuman is not really a monkey but a vanara, a race of humanoid forest dwellers who could shape shift.

When they come across the sea which separated them from Lanka, Rama ordered the monkey/vanara army to build a bridge all the way to Lanka. A clever vanara called Nala came up with a design for the bridge. The bridge was well underway, when Rama encountered an unexpected adversary - the golden mermaid.

Supanna Matcha, the mermaid offspring of Tosakanth, who was also the Queen of all the Fishes, ordered her subjects to dismantle the land bridge built by Hanuman and his army. When Rama learnt of this, he sent Hanuman into the depths of the ocean in pursuit of Supanna Matcha, in an attempt to subdue her. Eventually, the bridge was completed and Rama named it Nala Setu or Nala's Bridge.

The performance was both engrossing as well as amusing. However, although she is supposed to be an antagonist, I can't help feeling sorry for the elegant and graceful mermaid, being pursued by the boisterous and clownish Hanuman.

The movements were energetic and mesmerising and the costumes drop-dead gorgeous and authentic to the last ring, anklets and bracelets worn by the dancers.

The sneaky Hanuman sneaks up on Supanna Matcha

Supanna Matcha pushes away Hanuman

An epic struggle ensues between Hanuman and Supanna Matcha

All's well that ends well? Notice the details of their fabulous costumes

This episode of the Ramakien is especially interesting because it refers to a real phenomenon, the Nala Setu; now more commonly known as the Rama Setu, a chain of coral reefs and limestone shoals which connects the Indian subcontinent to the island of Sri Lanka. Apparently, until 1480, one can actually walk across the Palk Strait from India to Sri Lanka - a distance of about 40 km! However, a cyclone in that year destroyed some of the shoals and shifted the sand...

The Setu Ram connects India to Sri Lanka

The True Originals

The Originals I'm referring to is a spinoff from the TV series, The Vampire Diaries. It's about three siblings - Elijah, Niklaus and Rebekah Mikaelson - who are supposed to be the original vampires i.e. the first vampires in existance. Although the series is interesting enough, their origin story is ridiculous (i.e. it sucks). They were the children of a wealthy landowner called Mikael, in an Eastern European village which had been devastated by the plague. The TV scene of that episode showed what looked like an Iron Age settlement caught in the grips of an ice age. When his first born child died, Mikael moved to the New World with his family and they settled next to a village of werewolves...Anyway, once his children reached adulthood; Mikael decided to make sure that his children never die. So he asked his wife, Esther, who was a witch, to cast a spell to turn them into immortals... using the essence of the white oak tree and energy from the sun... but the spell had its dark side so they turned into vampires instead... and the sun and the white oak became their nemesis... ahem well never mind.

The Originals official poster...

What I really don't like are their names... Elijah, Rebekah, Niklaus Mikaelson are not names one would expect from Iron Age Eastern Europeans for one thing... Still the series plot lines, set in New Orleans, are interesting enough. However, Niklaus' (Joseph Morgan) spoilt brat character and his tendency to dagger his siblings is infuriating; even more irritating is his constant tirade about being abandoned and betrayed... what can you expect when you're a paranoid serial killer? Rebekah's (Claire Holt) tendency to give in to her former boyfriend Marcel (Charles Michael Davis) is also annoying; she is after all an Original and should be able to stand up to him. If it wasn't for the cool and unruffled Elijah (Daniel Gillies), I don't think I would watch this series. Sophie Deveraux (Daniella Pineda) the witch is quite likeable although the producers seem to prefer Davina (Danielle Campbell). Davina is a bit of a brat too but not quite on the scale of Niklaus...

In this series, the witches and the werewolves are at the mercy of the vampires, particularly Niklaus, who is half werewolf himself. Apparently, Mikael was not his real father (Klaus was fathered by a werewolf) and he was tortured by Mikael. This may have made him slightly unhinged and created a deep resentment against his other siblings, who failed to protect him. His mother, Esther the witch, placed the Hybrid Curse on Niklaus to prevent him from actually turning into a werewolf... although I wouldn't call it a curse, more of a binding spell. This is a good thing, because vampire-werewolf Niklaus could annihilate all the vampires plus werewolves, not to mention humans, in New Orleans.

However, if one considers the fact that a spell by a witch created the Originals, shouldn't the witches be able to control them and even unmake the spell? Why are the witches (with the exception of Davina) so weak and unable to stand up to the vampires? OK so there was a totally whacky plot line where 12 young witches had to be sacrificed and then brought back to life to restore balance but Davina panicked, escaped and went into hiding so the other witches could not be brought back to life and restore order... in fact Davina took all their power. The idea is of course nonsense and it seems the writers conveniently overlooked 11 young women who are in limbo...

When it comes to character names, True Blood does a much better job. Sookie Stackhouse is annoyingly quirky but at least, Eric Northman had a plausible Viking name and his maker, Godric, had an ancient Anglo-Saxon name...

What does Mythology say about the origin of the vampire?

I believe that the origin of the vampire can be traced to the story of Raktabija (Rakta = blood, bija = seed). According to Hindu myths, in the beginning of the world, there was a great battle between the Devas and the Asuras for supremacy. One particular Asura called Raktabija was impossible to destroy because he could regenerate himself (in modern terms, clone himself), whenever his blood spilled on the earth - a single drop of  his blood coming in touch with the ground was enough to regenerate Raktabija. In fury, Durga (one of the Devas) created Kali or Chamunda (the Black One) to help her destroy Raktabija. Kali was born as a skeletal being, probably a child of literally skin and bones. Whenever Durga struck Raktabija, Kali would lick all the spilled blood to prevent them from coming into contact with the earth.  Raktabija was finally vanquished by Durga and Kali,  one supposes when he was drained of every drop of blood. After this battle, Kali emerged as a full-grown woman, an unstoppable and bloodthirsty goddess in her own right. Did Raktabija's blood create a Vampire Queen in the form of Kali?

Who were the first vampires in recorded history?

Raja Bersiong/The Fanged King

One of the ancient chandis unearthed in the Bujang Valley

As far as I know, the oldest story of a vampire ever recorded is from Malaysia. More precisely, the story originates from the state of Kedah. The Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa (Chronicles of Merong Mahawangsa) records the story of a king called Raja Ong Maha Perita Deria, known in Malay folklore as Raja Bersiong or the Fanged King. He is supposed to be the fifth or seventh king in the Kedah Dynasty (which is said to be founded in the 5th Century AD). Raja Perita Deria would have lived between somewhere between 700-900 AD. He is also mentioned in Thai/Siam records as Phra Ong Maha Yatidahara and is/was undoubtedly a real person. He probably lived in the Bujang Valley, now a sprawling historical complex covering 224 sq km near the town of Merbok, Kedah. About 50 ancient temples or candi/chandi , showing Hindu/Buddhists influence have been unearthed at the site dating back to the 5th - 13th Century AD. This timeline coincides with that of Langkasuka, one of the earliest Malay kingdoms to evolve in the region. The timeline also overlaps with Sri Vijaya Empire, a thallosocracy which ruled over the entire Southest Asian archipelago from the 8th Century to the 13th Century AD.



Steps leading up a chandi in the Bujang Valley

What legend says about Raja Ong Maha Perita Deria is as follows: One day Raja Perita Deria returned to his palace from an exhausting hunt and demanded that his cook prepare his favourite dish immediately: gulai bayam (bayam is a vegetable related to spinach and often made into a gulai - spicy broth with coconut milk). Apparently, the cook accidently cut his/her hand in the kitchen and spilled his/her own blood into the gulai bayam. As there was no time to prepare another dish, he/she was forced to serve the tainted dish to the king. However, the king loved the gulai bayam and realised that it was different from the dishes he had been served before. On pain of death, he forced the cook to tell him what was the additional ingredient in the gulai bayam. The cook confessed that he had tainted the food with his own blood. Instead of being outraged, Raja Perita Deria instructed him to add human blood to his food everyday! From then onwards, helpless prisoners were bled so that the king could enjoy his gulai bayam. Eventually, Raja Perita Deria even grew a pair of fangs and came to be known among his people as Raja Bersiong (Raja - king/prince, siong - fang).

Raja Bersiong - a play staged by the Petronas Philharmonic Theatre

The story of Raja Bersiong leads me to speculate that the Fanged King was perhaps suffering from porphyria? Porphyria is a rare genetic disorder of the blood where heme, an important component of hemoglobin is not synthesized properly. Porphyria can take various forms, and produce different symptoms, the most common being extreme light sensitivity - people with porphyria try to avoid sunlight. They also experience severe pain, muscle cramps, seizures, mental disturbances (psychosis) and personality changes. In some cases, porphyrine is deposited in the teeth, which stains the teeth of sufferers red-brown and even makes it glow!

Is it possible that in the case of Raja Bersiong, the blood contaminated food served to him on that fateful day averted an acute attack brought about by the long exposure to sunlight during the hunt?

From the point of view of folklore, the story of Raja Bersiong is surprising mainly because of the fact that he is a man. In Malay folklore, the different forms of vampires such as the pontianak or the langsuir are almost invariably female. Clearly, Raja Bersiong is neither pontianak nor langsuir; in fact he fits the Western profile of the vampire perfectly and yet his story is written in an ancient text before any form of Western influence reached the archipelago. As the Bujang Valley had strong Hindu influence, perhaps he was a vetala - a vampire from Hindu folklore.

But who or what are the vetala/vetal/betal? According to Hindu folklore, a person who dies and is not cremated/buried with the necessary rites will turn into a vetal. A demon/spirit will take possession of the body and re-animate or ressurect it. The vetala however are not mindless zombies; they posses wit, intelligence and acute insight into human nature. Vetalas are also not bound by the laws of nature, which makes them very powerful. In Hindu folklore, the vetala are the rulers of the demon world i.e. all other demons, including the pisacha are subservient to them. In Joss Whedon's TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a somewhat similar explanation was given for vampires - a body taken possesion by a demon; except that it also required blood from another vampire to turn a dying person into a vampire.

 The Vampire of Alnwick Castle



Alnwick Castle is featured in the Harry Potter films as the Hogwarts School of Magic. 

The foreboding Alnwick Castle is supposed to be haunted by a vampire. The earliest parts of the castle were built by Yves de Vescy, when he became Baron of Alnwick in 1096. During this time, there were tales of a former lord of the estate, who is said to live in the passages underneath the castle and who preyed on people at night.

A vampire resurfaces in Alnwick a hundred years later. The 12th Century chronicler, William of Newburgh, collected a number of supernatural accounts in his book, The History of English Affairs. Among them was the story of a man who came to be known as the Alnwick Castle Vampire.  As the word vampire only entered the English language in the 18th Century, the term revenant was used then.  Revenants refered to souls who return from the dead, either as visible ghosts or as reanimated corpses.

The incident concerned a man, originally from York, who served the lord of Alnwick Castle. This man, who was described as sinful and wicked, married a young woman from the village of Alnwick. The man from York, who was himself a philanderer, suspected that his wife was unfaithful to him. So one day, he hid among the rafters in the roof above her bed to spy on her. When a young man from the village came to visit his wife, the man lost his balance and fell to the floor. As his injuries were fatal, a priest was summoned. But the man refused to repent for his sins and cursed his wife and the village before he died the next day. He was nevertheless given a proper burial in the local church cemetary.

After the burial, a strange man was seen wandering around the village at night, followed by howling dogs. At the same time, an unnamed disease broke out in the village and people started dying, one after the other. The plague was blamed on the man from York, who had returned as a revenant. Led by the priest, a number of young men from the village dug up the body and were shocked to see that it was engorged with blood. When struck with a spade, a stream of blood gushed out of the body. The body was dragged out of the village and burnt in a bonfire. The plague which afflicted Alnwick village ended soon after.

Wine Tasting in Slavonia

Golden fields of rapeseed flowers dominate the Slavonian countryside in Spring

Last weekend, we paid a visit to Slavonia - the bread and fruit basket of Croatia. (N.B. Slavonia is a region in Croatia, Slovenia is a country to the north of Croatia). It is a region of fertile flat land and rolling hills, covered in vineyards and apple trees, although rapeseed seems to be the main crop in Spring. We were hosted by the Krauthaker winery, reputed to be the best winery in Croatia. 

The picturesque town of Pozega

 Before, visiting the winery proper, we were treated to a sumptuous lunch by our host (whom I shall refer to as the Mystery Man with the Bandaged Thumb) at the hotel Grgin dol in the town of Pozega. The Mayor of Pozega, Prof Vedran Neferovic; the Mayor of Pleternica, a slim attractive woman called Antonija Jozic, and  Ambassador Levchenko from Ukraine and his wife, Inga, joined us for lunch. Rather surprising, as I was expecting the usual salad, bread and cheese one gets at wine tastings.

Old chapel in the midst of a lush garden in Pozega

Lunch at the hotel Grgin dol with the Mayor of Pozega, on the
near right and the Mayor of Pleternica, seated at the far right hand. 

The visit to the Krauthaker winery followed after lunch. The owner, Vlado Krauthaker, was a tall mustacheod man with a dry sense of humour. He has been voted best winemaker in Croatia in 2002 and 2006. Vlado showed us first his modern winery with its enormous stainless steel 'drums.' Each of us were given a wine glass and allowed two sample wine directly from the stainless steel drum. Only about 1/10 of the glass was filled and we took a few sip. If you can't finish your wine, you can pour it into a small flask the winemaker carried around with him. 

Among the guests was the manufacturer of Orljava Shirts, Luka Balenovic. He said to Yean, "I think you must be size 41... I'm quite good at sizing men but women are more difficult..."
(Laughter)
Vlado interrupted him, "Are we here to talk about wine or shirts?"
(More laughter)

As we were leaving, Yean commented, "to work in a winery, you either have to be a sommelier or a drunk..."

Inga interjected, "Or a drunk sommelier..."

Levshenko and Yean. Note the massive steel 'casks' to the left...

 Levshenko, Inga, Vlado Krauthaker and Yean
at the wine tasting

From the modern winery, we drove a couple of kilometres to the actual Krauthaker winery, which is located in the beautiful valley of Kutjevo, the main wine producing region of Slavonia. The vineyards of Kutjevo is situated on the southern hills of the Krndija Mountains. It is an ancient wine-growing area, cultivated since Roman times.  Here we were shown a traditional winery, located in a cellar made of red bricks with barrels made of fine Slavonian oak. The elegant building of bricks, cement and wood also housed a showroom on the ground floor with an impressive wine tasting round table plus a restaurant-style dining room upstairs. 

Krautheker's main product is Grasevina - a uniquely Croatian white wine. Grasevina belongs to the Riesling family of wines, made from Welschriesling grapes but is less acidic than Riesling and to me, more appealing. 

Luka and Yean at the wine cellar

We tasted about a dozen varieties of wine (I lost count) but the best was, I thought, Muscat, a deep golden deliciously sweet dessert wine. We also tried Traminac, another type of dessert wine made from raisins not grapes and therefore very very sweet and concentrated! According, Inga Levchenko  (a budding sommelier), Grasevina is going to be the next big news in the world of wine - the toast of wine connoisseurs everywhere...

Among the dry white wines we tried were: Grasevina, Sauvignon, Pinot Sivi, Riesling and Chardonnay. I loved the pale golden Sauvignon (awarded a gold medal in Bordeaux in 2005) and the clear and almost colourless Pinot Sivi (Pinot gris); the Riesling was good too but not as good as Grasevina. The Chardonnay, which was cloudy, I didn't like so much. It seemed a have a bitter aftertaste, but than I'm no connoisseur of wine... Their Mitrovac Chardonnay won the gold medal in the Chardonnay du Monde wine competition in 2002.

The winery also produces Syrah, which I did not try. According to Inga, Croatian red wine is nothing to shout about (this is also the consensus of most of the people I know). She loves Shiraj from Australia and thinks its wonderful, with rich bouquets of blueberries etc

Wine is matured in traditional oak barrels in the cellar...

The vineyard outside the winery in the evening light...

We were expecting to leave the Krauthekar winery at about 6.30 pm and were surprised to be told that Vlado had ordered dinner for the whole group! So the wine tasting was followed by a sumptuous dinner, and another surprise, we were joined by Mr Alojz Tomasevic, the Prefect of Pozega-Slovenia County and Josip Budimir, the 26-year-old Mayor of Kutjevo, who had just been elected the week before... Josip is still a student at the Faculty of Economics, Osijek University.

The wine tasting takes place at a round table... the young man
beside Inga is perhaps the youngest mayor in Croatia,
26 year old Josip Budimir.

Inga Levschenko and Vlado Krauthaker, pouring a glass of wine

We left the Krauthaker winery at almost 9 pm at night and had to drive all the way back to Zagreb, but it was well worth the trip. A toast to Slavonia: Salut! Cheers! Zivjeli!

Balkan Chronicles: Bridges and Books

The Balkans - the southeastern part of the European peninsula named after the Balkan Mountains. The word Balkan itself is Turkish in origin and is supposed to mean 'a chain of wooded mountains' according to Wikipedia. I was surprised to find out that some of the Croatians I met objected to Croatia being referred to as 'Balkan '  - they insist that Croatia is a part of Europe and not Balkan. To me, admittedly the word Balkan conjures up images of old world cities with winding cobbled streets and brooding castles haunted by vampires; remote hamlets steeped in superstition and dark wild woods where werewolves lurk. Not forgetting the odd witches and the wandering Gypsies... 

The Sava River flows through Zagreb...

Apparently, the River Danube separates Western Europe from Eastern Europe - so the Balkans are to the east of the Danube. The Sava River, (not to be confused with Sava Savanovich, the notorious 17th Century vampire who haunted the watermill on the Rogacica River in Serbia) a tributary of the Danube flows through Zagreb; therefore according to the natives of Zagreb, the part of Zagreb west of the river is in Europe and the part to the east is in the Balkans... 

The aversion to the word 'Balkan' could be its association to poverty, rusticity and even political instability. A Facebook friend, Abhijit Roy, used the word 'balkanisation' to mean the fragmentation of a country. The present day reality is that most of the cities in the Balkan are modern with all the amenities one expects from Europe. In fact, some of the world's most beautiful cities and towns are here - Belgrade, Budapest, Prague...  The countryside and even the mountains are now accessible by well-maintained highways, tunnels and bridges. But I find the Balkans of old much more fascinating...

This illustration shows the disparate influences which have molded the Balkans - Ottoman Empire on the left with the crescent moon signifying Islam; woman holding a child in a manger signifying Christianity in the middle and the man carrying a flag of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the right. In the background is probably the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo.
Copyright belongs to www.stondigratis.it

The Balkans mostly refer to the countries of the former Yugoslavia - Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo; plus Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. It should be noted that Slovenia does not consider itself as being part of the Balkan. What really sets all these countries apart is the fact that this is the part of Europe where two empires have clashed historically: The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The people, language and culture therefore reflects this complex heritage. And when civilisations clash there is bound to be unrest... 

On 28 June, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The Archduke was shot dead on the Latin Bridge by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, and the assassination came to be known as the Sarajevo Incident. The motive for the assassination was to free the Slavic countries from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and create a greater Serbia or Yugoslavia. This event is believed to have led directly to World War One and used frequently by proponents of the Lynch-pin Theory or should I say, hypothesis? According to this hypothesis (I'm not even sure if it's real or made up by TV scriptwriters!)  a single event could trigger a chain reaction of catastrophic proportions as was surely the case here.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after WWI and led to the formation of Germany and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia but it would take another World War and General Tito to create Yugoslavia. The Ottoman Empire collapsed as well after WWI and morphed into modern-day Turkey. Then of course came the Croatian War and the Bosnian War and the disintegration of Yugoslavia itself in 1991, but that's another story...

This is the stuff of fiction of course. Not surprisingly, spy thrillers, crime fiction and books on political skulduggery have been set in the Balkans. The ones I've read include Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express - an all-time favourite where Hercule Poirot investigates a murder on the Orient Express, which had been stalled by heavy snowfall in a Balkan country. More fascinating is The Secret of Chimneys - which mentioned a fictitious country called Herzoslovakia, a country where the national hobby was 'assassinating kings and having revolutions.' In this book, a king called Nicholas IV was assassinated in 1918 along with his queen in a revolution. The queen was in fact a Parisian actress but the king had concealed this fact. Is King Nicholas based on Archduke Ferdinand of Austria? Archduke Ferdinand's wife, Sophie was a Czech countess who was not blue-blood enough for the ultra-refined Austrian Royal Court. In fact, she was not even allowed to appear in public with him or to sit beside him in state functions except for military functions outside Austria... 

Another book I've read is Eric Ambler's The Mask of Dimitrios. I loved this book but modern readers tend to find the protagonist as fumbling and annoying as he prefers talking to action and has a knack for getting himself into danger. Nevertheless, The Mask of Dimitrios, is considered a forerunner in the spy thriller/espionage fiction and the idea of a ruthless but highly intelligent assassin behind certain events. It may have been the model for works such as The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth.

However, according to some friends from the diplomatic community, the most important book about the region is  The Bridge on the Drina. The novel by Yogoslav writer, Ivo Andric, was published in 1945. It is about the Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic Bridge, a real-life bridge spanning the Drina River near the town of Visegrad in Bosnia. The story spans four centuries from about 1500 - 1900, when the region was under Ottoman rule and later Austro-Hungarian rule. Ivo Andric was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1961 for his body of work.

The story starts with a Serb boy being taken from his village as part of the blood tax - Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire are required to hand over a few of their boys every year to serve the empire. The boys are not doomed to a life of servitude and slavery, on the contrary they are educated, thought martial skills and horsemanship. The strongest and bravest grow up to lead the Sultan's army while the ones with sharp minds and quick wits are groomed to be administrators to run the Ottoman Empire.

The mothers of these boys follow them, wailing in grief, until they reach the river where the children are taken across by boat and the mothers can no longer follow. That child is educated in the Ottoman Court and later takes the name of Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic and eventually becomes the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire for almost 15 years. But the memory of his mother wailing still haunts him and he decides to build the most magnificent bridge over the Drina River in memory of that event. 

The bridge was completed in the year 1570, with much difficulties and sacrifices. Apparently, children may have been entombed into the bridge during the construction to ensure that it remains standing. This fact should not come as a surprise as hundreds of people were said to be entombed in the Great Wall of China during its construction too. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the spirits of the dead children are supposed to be tied to the bridge and to guard it to ensure its continued existence.

The Mehmed Pasa Sokolovich bridge on the River Drina, Visegrad, Bosnia

The most famous bridge in the Balkans is however, the Stari Most or Mostar Bridge, which connects the two banks of the Neretva River in the town of Mostar, Herzegovina. The 427-year old bridge was destroyed on 9 November 1993 by Croat forces during the Croat-Bosniak War, along with a number of historical monuments.

The original bridge was built in the 16th Century and considered one of the outstanding examples of Islamic architecture in the Balkans. It was designed by Mimar Hayruddin, an apprentice of the famous Ottoman architect, Mimar Sidan. Two fortified towers protected it: the Helebija tower on the northeast bank and the Tara tower on the southwest bank. The towers are the bridge keepers or mostaris.

The original Mostar Bridge - the picture was taken before the
bridge was destroyed. Copyright Wikipedia

The bridge was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557 and completed in 19 July 1566. Legend has it that the architect was charged under pain of death to construct a bridge of unprecedented proportions. When the scaffolding was finally removed the bridge became an object of wonder and was the widest man-made arch in the world, during its time.

The new Mostar bridge at night. Copyright Wikipedia.

The new Mostar bridge was rebuilt after the war, using Ottoman techniques and utilising the local stones used in the original bridge. It was completed in July 23, 2004.

The book which takes us to modern day Balkan is The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. Published in 2011, the book garnered the Orange Prize for Obreht, making her the youngest person to win this award to date. The author was born in Belgrade, but is of Bosniak/ Slovene descent. As she left Yugoslavia at the age of seven, Obreht did not witness the war, which is the setting for the book.

The narrator of the story is a young doctor called Natalia Stefonovic, who lives in an unnamed Balkan country. As a child, she is taken to a zoo by her grandfather; a zoo which was formerly a Sultan's fortress. While observing the tiger in the zoo, her grandfather tells her the story of a woman who was known as 'the tiger's wife.'

A friend of mine, Alena Sanusi, asked me if I knew which city the story was set in. I looked up old fortresses in Balkan cities which had zoo in it and came across Kalemegdon Fortress. Kalemegdon is situated on a hilltop, right in the middle of Belgrade at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava River. The fortress dates back to the early Middle Ages but more importantly, it was captured by the Ottomans in the 16th Century and remained in Ottoman hands for three centuries.

Kalemegdon Fortress

To return to the story, Natalia is caught in the Yugoslavia war. At the end of the war, she visited the village of Galina, the birthplace of her grandfather, as part of a humanitarian medical group to help the villages. In the village, she is shocked to find out that the story of the tiger's wife was not a fairy tale after all.

 The story of the Balkans is incomplete without mentioning the Gypsies. The gypsies here refer to themselves as Romas. Apparently, gypsies originally came from India although no one knows exactly which part of India... perhaps from Rajasthan as some claim they are descended from the Rajputs. The Indian origin is inferred from their language which is Indo-Aryan - apparently all the gypsy clans of the world share a certain language. They are thought to have come to Europe between the 6th - 11th Century. Some claim to have migrated to Europe even earlier, with the army of Alexander the Great or perhaps Julius Ceaser? The Romas also claim that only they have the right to call themselves Romas because they are the true Romans...