Status Updates From Omer-paša Latas

Can we go to Sarajevo? It seems a little miserable, but that's exactly what I want.

“It was at that sulfur-bright curtain of his first dawn on the Turkish frontier that a landscape of burned bridges, suppressed memories and empty years began to form for Omer Pasha. Here he too, like so many real and legendary fugitives and Turkish converts before him drank of those ‘waters of oblivion,’ which keep a man alive, freeing him for a while from unbearable memories.”

“Drink made them capable of anything, of theft and violence, deceit and vileness, as well as valor in war or generous acts in everyday life; it buoyed and supported them, but it also poisoned and corroded them, and from day to day it changed them, in the way that drink always changes people: never for the better.”