Through the Embers of Chaos by Dervla Murphy

Author:Dervla Murphy [Dervla Murphy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780601168
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2017-01-21T05:00:00+00:00

The convergence in my life of the Chetniks and Ostrog Monastery was both unsurprising and confusing. Unsurprising because Chetniks tend to be devout Orthodox Christians, odd as that may seem to outside observers, and confusing for reasons soon to be explained.

(Come to think of it, Chetnik religious fervour is no odder than the fervour of some Northern Irish paramilitaries, Orange and Green, who find nothing incongruous about their faith reinforcing their political ideology and vice versa.)

Viewing the monastery from the Zeta valley, one can see why Rebecca West dismissed Ostrog (she didn’t visit it) as ‘a bleak pigeon-hole in a Montenegrin cliff’. As we sped along the main road, Petar reminded me that in April 1941, when the Germans began their bombing of Belgrade, the Yugoslav government packed the very young King Peter off to Ostrog, partly because of its inaccessibility but mainly because of its closeness to Nikšić’s airfield. Soon defeat loomed and the royal party was advised to wait at the airfield for a British plane to fly them to Janina in British-held Greece. The plane failed to appear and no other Yugoslav airfield could be contacted by radio – so one of the Italian Marchettis based at Nikšić was appropriated, and by chance this bold gamble came off. From Janina King Peter travelled to London, via Jerusalem and Lisbon. ‘And Serbia will never have peace,’ concluded Petar, ‘until we get back our king!’

When Josif turned off the autoput and our extraordinary ascent began everyone fell silent. I wished I were walking – preferably not pushing a laden bicycle – as Josif negotiated innumerable tight hairpin bends more suited to pack-animals than to motor cars. The very narrow road was in urgent need of repairs, especially along the verges, and though Josif was driving carefully, and knew the road well, I only enjoy sheer drops of a thousand feet when afoot or awheel (two wheels). Much of this mountainside is handsomely wooded – old mixed woods – with occasional sloping grassy patches offering grazing to a few sheep or goats. What, I asked myself, happens when two vehicles meet on one of the really dodgy stretches? Mercifully experience did not provide an answer; no one else visited Ostrog that day.

Some argue that this monastery affects people so strangely because of its altitude – more than 6,000 feet above the valley – and its melodramatic site on a narrow ledge with bare rock precipices rising above it for hundreds of feet to the mountain top. Much of the monastery was not built but carved out of the rock-face. Ostensibly it is a revered place of pilgrimage because here lies the body of St Basil, a seventeenth-century Montenegrin whose career is obscure but who is reputed to work miracles on a regular basis. Personally I believe that the magic of such places goes way, way back, having nothing to do with any of the organized religions, linking us to something eternally elusive but precious and important. My reaction to Ostrog

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