“Are you out of your minds?” the people said. “We barely got out alive, and you are trying to return? Down there death is everywhere!” The fleeing people were covered with so much dust that their faces looked more anguished and lifeless than the faces of the saints on the icons they were carrying with them. The news they brought was no less somber: Serbia, it seemed, was in utter disarray. Nobody knew what had become of Walachia or Bosnia. Only half of Albania was still holding out, the western region with its Albano-Venetian castles. And the lands of the Croats and the Slovenes had not yet fallen. But all the Balkan princes, both those in power and those overthrown, had bowed their heads before the Turkish sultan. “What about Kosovo and its plains?” some of the men asked eagerly. “Don’t ask! Even the grass is gone. Even the blackbirds have fled. Even the name is said to have been changed — it is to be called Muradie from now on, in honor of Sultan Murad, who died there.”
