Stolac // He Can’t Stop Laughing
© SCraitza // Shutterstock.com
Once the centre of life in town, the Čaršija in Stolac remains in control of social activity here. Why wouldn’t it? Renovated at the beginning of the 21st century, its ring of cafes provides the perfect nucleus for middle-aged men to have aimless conversations based more on joviality than practicalities. Life is short, too short to do much more than shout back and forth in an eternal game of oneupmanship. It always surprises me that that is an actual word.
That is absolutely what is going on here, although closer inspection suggests that my use of the term 'middle-aged' was presumptive. Yes, there is the sad-looking man on the bench by a cafe entrance who looks like he has received bad news, news that he simultaneously wants to ignore, but he is desperate for someone to ask him what’s wrong. There is also the table of old chaps, swearing as often as they are smoking, laughing all the while. But there are also a few younger blokes dotted around, interacting with the elderly chaps as if the concept of different generations was a lie. Maybe it is, I don’t know, or maybe the young people of Stolac are every bit as engaged in jovial conversation as the elderly.
It has never been different, at least in this small square of land in Herzegovina. The Čaršija has four entrances, further accentuating the sense of centrality that it demands. All roads to Rome, All Roads to Fault, all roads to the Čaršija. At the centre today are tables and chairs, but the spiritual centre is the mosque, the Čaršija Mosque, another to add to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s seemingly endless conveyor belt of beautiful mosques. Yes, the minaret is the highlight, the ubiquitous finger-pointing to what really matters, to a life beyond this one that we all must prepare for. The mosque was first constructed in 1519 and last destroyed in 1993. It stands tall once more.
© John Bills
There is a clock tower, second only to minarets on the list of my favourite common Balkan architectural structures, although the recognition of that fact brings up questions of Freudian complexes and Napoleon syndromes. It doesn’t matter. If you’ve got a big tower with a clock at the top, chances are I am going to stop and take a few photos of the thing. If this happens to take place when the sky is cerulean blue, even better. Common understanding suggests that the tower was built sometime after 1664, although that is only because it doesn’t get a celebratory mention in Evliya Çelebi’s famous book of travels. He was more interested in mills on the Bregava, so make of that what you will. Tradition suggests that a clock tower would be built 40 years after the completion of the mosque, which would make it a 1559 baby, so maybe Çelebi just failed to mention it. Either way, it looks good against a cerulean blue sky.
It houses a restaurant called Han today (along with a cafe and a couple of shops), but the social heart of the Čaršija was not the mosque, not the tower, but the musafirhana, the proto-hostel for people travelling through the area. Built under the watchful eye of Silahdar Husein-Pasha, a high court official from the Ottoman capital, the so-called han acted as a refuelling station for tired travellers and traders. Today, it fuels me with pljeskavica and another opportunity to sharpen my Bosnian language skills, or at least the skills needed to order grilled meat and water.
© John Bills
The Ćaršija today is a different world from the Čaršija of the 18th century. Of course, it is, saying otherwise would be ridiculous. The 21st century isn’t the 18th, modern Bosnia and Herzegovina isn’t the middle years of the Ottoman Empire. In those days, court rulings were read out here, men were called to battle, news was called. Today, a man in his 70s makes fun of one in his 30s for being unable to control his dog. Nobody approaches the sad man to see what is causing his frown.
Centuries ago, the Čaršija was home to more than 100 shops, housing tailors, barbers, saddlers, tanners, and traders with links to Gabela, Dubrovnik, Cairo and the rest. Now, it houses a handful of cafes, souvenir shops and other forms of trade. It is different, to say the least, but commenting on whether something is better or worse when a gap of centuries sits between the two is a fool’s endeavour. The entire concept is flawed. Throw an 18th-century trader into the modern Čaršija, and they would be confused, terrified, overwhelmed. Plonk a 21st-century Welshman into the 18th century Čaršija, and he would be all of that, but on a much more cowardly level. The modern Čaršija is different to the original Čaršija, but that shouldn’t be taken as a positive, a negative or either. It is what it is, an inevitability of history, an impossible to ignore and impossible to deny fact of life. The aesthetics are remarkably true, a commendable doffing of the cap in the direction of the historical renovators tasked with fixing it up. The tower stands tall against a cerulean blue sky. The dog is out of control. Everybody laughs.
