A FATE MORE TRAGIC THAN DRAMA: Here’s what the real Koštana of Bora Stanković’s work looked like! (PHOTO)

There was no one in Vranje who hadn’t heard of her beauty – “red hair, white face, honey lips, enchanting hips, thighs like sails, and large eyes – like a doe’s.”

This is how Bora Stanković described his Roma beauty, the singer Koštana from Vranje, but the story says that the woman who served as his inspiration was even more than that! She sang for rich merchants, agas and begs, even kings themselves, but it did not bring her happiness.

“Koštana” is a drama by Serbian writer Borisav Stanković. It is one of the most frequently performed and most watched plays in Serbian theaters.

Stanković first wrote this work when he was about 24 years old, but he revised it several times. The drama was first printed in its entirety in 1902 in the Serbian Literary Gazette. The final version was published as a separate book in 1924. The version from this year served for all other printings.

How did Malika become “Koštana”?

However, what most people don’t know is the fact that Stanković’s Koštana really existed! Her name was Malika and she was a famous Roma singer because of whom the Vranje agas and begs “lost their heads and sold off their property.” From an early age, she played and sang with her father and brother in taverns and private celebrations, and because of her beauty and charm, she became famous far and wide.

Bora Stanković wrote in his work that the beauty owed her nickname to “large eyes like a doe’s.” The elders in Vranje still say that they nicknamed her that because that name has a special meaning in their region. Namely, “Koštan” there means “chestnut,” and a firm, plump one, and Malika’s whole appearance resembled a slender, spindle-shaped chestnut tree, popular in that region.

And there are different versions about whether Bora and Malika ever met. According to one, it happened only once – the future writer was then a high school student and came to the tavern where Malika sang only once, just to see her beauty and charms. He saw her, but they didn’t exchange a single word.

According to another story, the one that Bora Stanković later supported, growing up in Vranje, he only heard about the beautiful Roma singer because her troupe was the best and most often invited to perform in the homes of wealthy Vranje residents, but he actually never saw her before writing “Koštana.” Their first meeting took place in a tavern in Vranjska Banja long after Bora’s “Koštana” was already playing in theaters throughout Serbia.

Koštana sued Bora

The enchanting Malika had everything but an easy life, and her beauty, like many before and after her, brought her only misfortune. She was forcibly married (just like in Bora’s drama) to a certain Maksut Rašitović and after that she was expelled from Vranje.

Once the beauty and fame had passed, nothing remained of Koštana’s “tambourines full of gold coins.” She spent her life in misery and poverty in a shack on the outskirts of Vranjska Banja, raising her two sons and two daughters from her husband’s first marriage.

Koštana’s life was reduced to begging, misery, poverty and hardship. For a cigarette and a glass of brandy in the town, she told everyone who wanted to listen about her old fame, bygone times, how she sang “Nightingale chick, don’t sing early” in King Milan’s ear and how she was “THE” Koštana by Bora Stanković.

Probably the hard life and misery forced Malika to sue Bora Stanković in 1927, demanding that she receive a portion of the money from the fame of his work. She was illiterate, but the story says that a lawyer convinced her that they could extract part of the copyright.

The then press talked about the case extensively, but most were openly on Bora Stanković’s side. Koštana came out of the dispute as a loser, humiliated and publicly ridiculed.

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Bora Stanković’s response to Koštana’s lawsuit

“Well, let me just respond to my ‘partner’ Koštana.

Koštana, after my childhood memories of her playing and singing at weddings, I saw for the first time in my life in Vranjska Banja, when ‘Koštana’ was already playing in the National Theater.

All her stories about her experiences consisted of me buying her brandy, and from my wife, then Mrs. Spasić and the female audience, to get a pair of socks or a shawl. If she knew, from the stories of her contemporaries, why they called her Koštana (chestnut), she would have given up that nickname, and even less would she have sought false assurance that she was that chestnut.

Analogously, it would mean that every man in Vranje, who is called Mitke, would have the right to demand royalties.

Mr. Vlajko Kocić, a member of parliament who wants to smooth over this dispute, would do better to give Koštana a room in his new palace and display her at the window, and both he and she would earn more than her user and his rent amount to.

Respectfully, Belgrade, March 11, 1927.
Bora Stanković”

Sad end and eternal life on stage

And so Malika continued to live begging and asking for help as old age inevitably caught up with her. The most famous photograph of the old woman who once drove men crazy with her song and dance, and women to anger, was taken by Helena King and Vida Metenson, educators at the “American Home for War Orphans” in Vranje.

The last thing that was heard about her was printed in Politika on April 6, 1941. It was a copy of the newspaper that never found its way to readers due to the Nazi bombing that began on the same day.

– And when you win her over, she tells you everything, a lot, a lot… A cigarette and a few dinars help a lot. Maybe she would like to repeat everything to you, to sing once more and shake the tambourine with her fingers, but she can’t. Everything is gone. Her being is ruled by old age and misery. Only brandy, when she has it, warms her old soul, and Maksut scolds her for drinking. At his reproaches, she looks at him pleadingly with a dull glow in her eyes as if she wanted to tell him: “Don’t touch me, that’s all I have left…” – an old Politika journalist recorded his meeting with Koštana.

It is believed that Koštana – Malika died in 1945 at the age of 73 in Vranjska Banja.