Words of Bile, Words of Sorrow

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Words of Bile, Words of Sorrow

• Živko Čingo award, 2009 •

There, you have finally discovered the little case with this letter I wrote, inside the grave of my only daughter Jola.
Read along now, for this is how it happened:
The old Ohrid priest, Apostol Mizo opened the St. Clement church to let the Ohrid dignitaries Nejko Celebi, Stance Bey, Bujar Ligdo and Malecko Bey enter. Then, at the time of the archbishop Arsenios, they were rich furriers, and they used to spend most of the year in Constantinople. They all wanted Arsenios persecuted from Ohrid, but only the two former two were spies of the vizier.
As they lit candles before the icon of the Three Handed Mother of God they came with a shrewd plot; they found some forged money and buried part of them in the archbishopric yard, while distributing part of them around the city. After several days they informed the authorities that some false money of the patriarch was being spent around. The authorities searched Arsenios’s home and they found the money buried in the yard.
Read along now, for this is how it happened:
Although Arsenios was not immediately removed, his end was near. It was just that Nejko Celebi, Stance Bey, Bujar Ligdo and Malecko Bey did not want it to happen immediately. That is why they invented another trick. Selim Eri-pasha, who was the administrator of the city, ruled with oppression and high taxes. In order to save the people from him, the same dignitaries who invented the money deception sent a plea to the sultan to remove the pasha from Ohrid. Of course, the plea was but a mean coax, for it was not against the pasha but against the patriarch.
Read along now, for this is how it happened:
The plea against Arsenios was written in Turkish, and the people of Ohrid did not know this language, so they were deceived. Immediately after the request to replace the pasha, the command came to remove Arsenios and therefore it was clear what kind of a plea the people of Ohrid had sent to Constantinople. By the way, Nejko Celebi, Stance Bey, Bujar Ligdo and Malecko Bey finished their business as they had planned. Celebi and Stance did it for the money, and Ligdo and Malecko because it pleased them so. However, let us be clear, the fact that they did not know what they were sending to Constantinople does not excuse the people for the treachery to their patriarch Arsenios. The old man was very surprised, he opposed this command, but in the end he had to leave. What I want to say is: be careful with the pleas that are sent on your behalf by those who can sell you with a trick.
Read along now, for this is how it happened:
Before leaving for Constantinople, in the summer of 1767, Arsenios served in the St. Clement church before many people, and neither he nor the people knew that the sermon was for the traitors. The last Ohrid patriarch publicly cursed only Nejko Celebi, Stance Bey and Bujar Ligdo; two weeks later, when the Constantinople emissaries reached Top-kapi with the patriarch and his nephew Georgi Belascev, the guards immediately surrounded them on the bridge before the gate and sent them by a coal merchant ship to Mount Athos.
Ten years later, an old man from Zografos monastery told me a bit different truth, showing me the cell where Arsenios had died. Later, under a fig tree, as quietly as he could, he told me that the patriarch was very sad, disappointed by the closing of the archbishopric, and therefore he went alone with his nephew Georgi to Constantinople to protect his rights and save his people from the disaster they themselves were not aware of. Which people? Those who betrayed him, not knowing that they did? He carried many chrysobulls and a load of other manuscripts with him. Going to Constantinople, he shortly stopped at Mount Athos to pray, and he was kept there for several months, waiting to be called to Constantinople. Once a coal merchant ship came, but he did not leave with it. The ship only came to see if Arsenios was still alive. Several days later, the patriarch died in a Zografos cell; the same cell that the old man showed me, although I had known it well already. Now I knew that he had left for Constantinople to fight, to save the Ohrid Archbishopric if he could, but he never reached the sultan, he was imprisoned to his death at Zografos monastery on Mount Athos..
Read along now, for this is how it happened:
When I returned to Ohrid, they were already singing a song about him. In this song, the patriarch cried before his people in the yard of St. Clement’s church and hot tears ran down his beard. The people cried too, he hugged them all, one by one, they kissed his hand and tears flew from his hand as from a spring. It lasted for several hours, and then Arsenios closed his hands, looked at the skied and cursed Nejko Celebi, Stance Bey and Bujar Ligdo. At that moment the cries of the people tore the skies and Arsenios rode on his horse and left Ohrid forever. As the song said, then, all of a sudden, as if they never existed, the families of the cursed ones disappeared; the spiders waved their webs in their houses and awls sang under their roofs. Let me not go on, for you must have seen that the song only mentions three of the traders who sold Arsenios. Why is the fourth one not mentioned?

2018-08-21T17:22:56+00:00 October 12th, 2009|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 67-68|0 Comments