My Father’s Books

The Key of Destiny

148 The Key of Des­ tiny What was to be my ­ father’s final leg­ acy from the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire be­ fore his de­ par­ ture from Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple? The col­ lapse of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire was tak­ ing place not only in Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple dur­ ing that time he saw un­ fold­ ing be­ fore his eyes. He was cer­ tain that the Ot­ to­ man era would re­ main un­ set­ tled in the Bal­ kans for many, many years. There re­ mained many un­ re­ solved ques­ tions that ­ Atatürk was solv­ ing under his sword. My ­ father, for ex­ am­ ple, was ob­ sessed with the ques­ tion of faith. What had hap­ pened to faith, to the ­ sharia law that he had stud­ ied in Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple? Now, just as he fin­ ished stud­ y­ ing it, ­ Atatürk had re­ nounced it! It is true that, had my ­ father ­ wanted to, he could eas­ ily have­ adapted to the re­ formed law code, es­ tab­ lished ac­ cord­ ing to Eu­ ro­ pean, es­ pe­ cially Swiss, mod­ els. But it was dif­ fi­ cult, dif­ fi­ cult to re­ solve the ques­ tion of faith and the rapid re­ forms that ­ Atatürk con­ ceived and im­ ple­ mented, his pol­ icy of sec­ u­ lar­ iza­ tion in par­ tic­ u­ lar. My ­ father knew that, in the Bal­ kans, among the Is­ lamic pop­ u­ la­ tion in un­ de­ vel­ oped rural areas, this would be much more dif­ fi­ cult, if not im­ pos­ sible, no mat­ ter how much time ­ passed and how hard the winds of Eu­ ro­ pean de­ moc­ racy blew. There were peo­ ples in the Bal­ kans who had since pagan times and ­ through the ­ course of the ­ five-hundred-year Ot­ to­ man reign main­ tained the con­ ti­ nu­ ity of one sin­ gle faith. But his na­ tionwasper­ hapstheonlyonethathadheldontothree­ faiths—Mus­ lim, Or­ tho­ dox, and Cath­ o­ lic. R Once again, the fate of the Ja­ nis­ sary was of­ fered to him, now at the time of the ul­ ti­ mate col­ lapse of the em­ pire that owed both its splen­ dor and 149 its col­ lapse to the splen­ dor and col­ lapse of the Ja­ nis­ sar­ ies. Why ­ should he con­ sciously ­ choose to be a loser again? My ­ father knew a great deal about the in­ de­ pen­ dent, ­ anti-Janissary fate of the Al­ ba­ nian hero Skan­ der­ beg, and he ­ wanted to act in ac­ cor­ dance with that part of his des­ tiny. ­ Skanderbeg’s re­ sis­ tance ­ echoed down ­ through the cen­ tu­ ries to­ ward an in­ dif­ fer­ ent Eu­ rope. My ­ father was con­ scious of the fact that, ul­ ti­ mately, ­ chance is the de­ ter­ min­ ing fac­ tor in his­ tory; it sets ­ events in mo­ tion, and then, later, peo­ ple find them­ selves sub­ ju­ gated for cen­ tu­ ries. It has al­ ways been this way: ­ chance con­ demns the life of the fam­ ily, the na­ tion, civ­ il­ iza­ tions, and em­ pires. As much as he be­ lieved in the ab­ so­ lute and de­ ci­ sive role of ­ chance, my ­ father did not per­ mit him­ self to fall into the phi­ lo­ so­ phy of fa­ tal­ ism, which ­ flowed so ­ strongly ­ through his con­ scious­ ness dur­ ing his years in Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple. In fact, through­ out his life he de­ vel­ oped a strat­ egy for con­ front­ ing fa­ tal­ ism. Per­ haps here too lay the se­ cret of his de­ ci­ sion to leave Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple at the peak of his youth, when his pros­ pects in the new Tur­ key were ­ bright and his pros­ pects in the Bal­ kans ­ cloudy. My ­ father was aware that, through­ out his­ tory, since the time of Skan­ der­ beg, his na­ tion had al­ ways been part of a Ja­ nis­ sary net­ work, in­ clud­ ing the in­ tel­ lec­ tual Ja­ nis­ sar­ ies such as Sami Bey ­ Frashëri, who had been de­ vel­ op­ ing into the ­ father of the new Turk­ ish cul­ ture, with his en­ cy­ clo­ pe­ dias, dic­ tion...