In an Ottoman-era Bosnian town, a respected sheikh's settled life unravels when his brother is arrested on unspecified charges. Narrated as the sheikh's own unburdening confession, this novel follows his anguished, Kafkaesque struggle against an indifferent religious and political order.
Harshness carried out in the name of nobility is worse than harshness that rests openly on force. Open force can at least be hated. Cruelty wrapped in righteousness ties our hands and smothers us with hypocrisy.
A people caught on the boundary between larger powers is despised by both sides and used by each when needed, then dropped. Their defence becomes pride and hatred, and that very effort to preserve themselves is how they lose the knowledge of who they are. They end up unable to keep their own identity or take on anyone else's.
The deepest misery is not being stuck but coming to love the dead end and refusing to leave it. Constant pressure turns necessity into a virtue, and cleverness born of spite feels like strength. That attachment has its own price.
We enter life carrying the example of great people and the wish to follow them. Nobody prepares us for the petty people, who are the only ones we actually meet. Ideals learned in the abstract leave us defenceless in ordinary dealings, and we fail to sense even the most immediate danger.
A person may want to stay apart in prayer and quiet contemplation, but to live at all is to take sides, and taking sides is dangerous. Someone with higher standards than those around them becomes a loner. Unless rank and the fear it inspires protect them, they are exposed.