Sofia (31 page)

But some very few, like Sokolli Muhammed Pasha, whose superior abilities had come to Suleiman’s notice before he was twenty, were set on the path toward becoming governors and pashas. They made up the very backbone of the Turkish government, tor the Sultan trusted them explicitly in a way he could trust no free-born Turk. They were his creations, after all. They were his slaves, even as pashas and viziers. All they managed to amass of worldly goods reverted to the imperial cotters upon their deaths, and the Sultan always maintained the right to send them to that death at a moment’s notice. No trial, apology, or explanation was possible. And their own muster mates pulled the bowstring it the lord but waved his hand.

I told Esmikhan all I had managed to learn of Sokolli Pasha’s career from the day at nineteen or twenty, when, fresh from the hinterland of Europe, this young recruit had caught the Sultan’s eye and been set apart for better things. It was a simple tale, as all tales of unremitted success must be. He rose from post to post until now he sat among the pashas and viziers in the Great Divan itself and was followed in the Friday morning procession by a standard bearing three long horsetails.

“Sokolli Pasha’s elevation demands some outward display of extravagance lest diplomats and politicians refuse to believe he holds such power as his title declares,” I said. “He therefore purchased a large park in the City just across from the Aya Sophia Mosque.”

“I am not familiar with much of Constantinople outside the palace harem,” Esmikhan said. “But I have heard of that park. It is not far from the new palace, is it?”

“Not far at all. And I think that was the master’s first consideration in the purchase. He can answer the Sultan’s summons within half an hour from deep sleep at home to full command in the Great Divan. Of only minor consideration to him are the land’s lovely waters and plantings and the gentle rise that was the perfect spot to build a palace of his own. The palace has been built, too, by the loving hand of Sinan.”

“My grandfather’s own royal architect?”

“Yes. And it is a building very worthy of his famous skill. But always Sokolli Pasha remembers that on his death, it will all revert to the throne. What is the use of building a small private kingdom, of marrying, of begetting sons, when all his efforts will only leave them paupers at his death? So he never has peopled this palace with wives and children. Besides, the Enclosed School taught its prize pupil well. None of the things that give other men pleasure are a temptation to Sokolli’s discipline. More than fine clothes, music, or women, he loves duty. In fact, compared to a day spent enforcing the Sultan’s will upon distant provinces, foreign ambassadors, and whining tax collectors, any other pastime drives him to impatience with its frivolity.

“There is one way a high-ranking slave of the Sultan might leave a permanent name for himself on the earth, and Sokolli Pasha has taken full opportunity of this,” I explained to Esmikhan.

“He can build
medresses
and endow
awqaf
,” she suggested.

“Yes, there is hardly a province that does not boast a brand-new religious school, mosque, or dervish
tekke
bearing the master’s patronym. But where other men hoard behind them, in their harems, Sokolli Pasha has remained a Spartan indeed.

“Now, at last, in his fifty-fourth year, private pleasure is offered to him. Not only offered, but presented to him in a way he cannot possibly refuse—in the person of the Sultan’s own granddaughter as a solemn duty to guard with life and honor. Because of your royal Ottoman blood, he need not worry on his own death for the care of either you or the children we pray Allah may grant to you. The state will see to that. I suspect Sokolli Pasha has yet to get over the shock of this honor, and he will certainly never overcome the burden of it.

“I’ll wager,” I said finally, daring to meet her eye and wink, “he will be shy in your presence, and you are the one who will have to do some coaxing.”

Esmikhan blushed prettily at my words, then said, “But tell me, is he handsome? Is the pasha handsome? That is the most important. It shall all be easier if he is handsome.”

I smiled gently and chose my words carefully. “I’m afraid, lady, that I cannot answer that.”

“Oh, but you must,” Esmikhan said, tears rising quickly in her eyes again, though this time they were tears of frustration rather than grief.

“Please, lady, you must understand that a man, even if he is a eunuch, does not look at another man the way a woman would. Understand, too, that I am but new to this calling and have but little practice in being—shall I say?—a woman’s eyes.

“Poor, poor Abdullah!” Esmikhan interjected briefly, simply to give me encouragement.

“Please understand, lady, that the first—and only—time I ever laid eyes on Sokolli Pasha, it was to view him as my new master, and not as your new husband.”

“But tell me what your impression was. Surely a wife is often no better than her husband’s slave.” Esmikhan reached out a hand to my shoulder and fixed me with her clear brown eyes.

This look and those words struck me deeply and forged within me a bond with this young woman I sensed at once would never be broken. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that Esmikhan and I were married with those words, sworn into a marriage much closer than she would ever enjoy with the pasha and one more real, for it was made between our spirits. Bodies did not enter into the question at all.

I spoke quietly now, and from the heart, wishing there were not so many ears to overhear us. “Lady, you bade me speak the truth, and so I shall. Sokolli Pasha is not what you would call handsome. But do not fret. Hear me. What women call ‘handsome’ I have often found to be closer to my definition of ‘delicate’—a quality one would rather find in one’s infant sons than in one’s husband. For example, I have often been told that I am handsome—and the reaction when I walked into the harem at Kutahiya convinces me that my recent pain has not so greatly altered it. But I wouldn’t do you much good as a husband, would I?” I said this, and she nodded, but our eyes avoided contact, as if my words were a formal lie covering a truth we knew was deeper.

“There is nothing of the cuddly little boy in Sokolli Pasha.

He is of a single and firm mind, and his features reflect this. He is tall, perhaps a hand taller than I am. He has a thin, sharp nose and rigid, cleanly formed brows and jaw. They tell me his surname ‘Sokolli’ means ‘falcon’ in his native Serbian language, and if he has his ancestor’s looks, they were aptly named indeed. He has the regality of that bird, but also the impatience with frivolity and with fancy looks of a wild predator.

“Nonetheless, I felt great relief come into my slave’s heart when I saw him. ‘Thanks be to Allah,’ I said, ‘here is a master I can trust.’ He may not be handsome. He may not love to sit and listen for hours on end to poetry or music as I do. But he is a man who knows and loves his duty and would rather die than not fulfill it. I know that if I am ever beaten or mistreated at his hands, it will only be because I strongly deserve it. If I do my duty to him, he will do his to me and never be intentionally unkind. He will feed me and clothe me and see that my needs are met and that I am not unhappy, as far as it is in his power and Allah’s will. As a slave, I rejoiced greatly in that.”

“And as a bride,” Esmikhan said, lying back against her pillows with a great sigh of relief, “I rejoice, too.”

Unfortunately, there was little time for her relief to be exploited in true relaxation there under the oak tree. The call went up that it was time to be moving if we were to reach our night’s lodgings. Esmikhan allowed me to take her hand and help her to her feet. I packed her into her sedan, then closed the lattice behind her with tenderness, like closing the lid on a jewelry case. I gave signal to the bearers that they might at last approach and heave the burden to their shoulders. I walked along side for a few hundred paces with my hand still on the grille as if for further security. But my thoughts were far away.

My first and, to date, my only meeting with Sokolli Pasha still played through my mind, and it was not in the hopes that I might glean further details from it to lighten Esmikhan’s fears. The strength of our union made me remember some part of that meeting I had ignored until then.

There I had sat, among bolts of fabric and packets of spices purchased against the wedding. I was one gift among many, and that fact did little to make me feel proud of my role. It chafed my humanity to be treated like just so many dry goods and I had, so far, been unable to form the words “my master” on my lips in the dreadful fear of how bitter they would taste.

Then Sokolli Pasha had entered the room. Black Ali, who had made the purchases—more with the gaudy eye of an old spoiled slave than with any sense of a delicate young lady’s taste—had to call the master’s attention to the pile, reminding him that they needed his perusal to make the purchases final.

Sokolli Pasha obviously had other things on his mind and wanted to return to them instantly. “Fine, fine, Ali,” he said quickly, cutting explanations, apologies, and little marketplace triumphs short.

Then his falcon’s eye fell on me. I bowed, as I had been taught, but I did it stiffly, hoping to express in that one movement how I thought a government, his government, that would allow such things happen to honest men, stank to high heaven.

“The khadim you ordered, master,” Ali said, grinning.

“So I see.”

“A fine khadim. And I got a good deal on him besides.”

“Good, Ali. Very good.”

Sokolli Pasha spoke the words, but had to clear his throat on them, and he blanched noticeably until I dropped my eyes before his obvious discomfort. He did not ask my name or whether I knew my business—which I truly did not. He simply stared at me for a moment or two as if struggling with a memory he thought he had long ago dispelled. When he gained control of that memory and was his usual man of severe restraint again, he laid his hand ever so briefly on my shoulder, then quickly turned and left the room. At the moment, I had been too relieved that he did not decide to reject me and send me back to that slave market again.

But now I found, with my hand similarly on Esmikhan’s grille, that the moment still haunted me. I said nothing to my lady, of course, for what was I to make of it, even to myself?

“His mother? Oh, Abdullah, Sokolli Pasha has a mother? Why didn’t you let me know before this?”

The grief and fear in her voice could not have been greater had Esmikhan just learned that the Empire of Islam had collapsed. And I knew I was to blame.

At our halt in Inönü, I had learned that this town on the edge of the high plateau was the recipient of one of Sokolli Pasha’s minor pious endowments. It was only the corner of a shopfront that dispensed bread and a goats’ milk gruel to the poor twice a day. But Esmikhan had insisted that I visit it, take a silver necklace of her own as a donation so that vegetables and perhaps some meat might be added to the fare, and then report back on all I had seen and heard in every detail.

At first this task had seemed simpleminded, but by the time I returned to give my report, I’d been brought up short several times by the massiveness of the task, if I were to do it honestly and thoroughly. How to describe the apricot light of late afternoon filling a small town’s bazaar in undiluted strength to someone who has never seen light without its being strained through the confines of a harem garden? How to describe the faces of poverty to one whose lowliest slave eats far too much and wears cast-off brocades?

It was in fumbling desperately for words she might understand to describe one of the endowment’s patrons that I accidentally said, “Well, she had the same sun-worn face as the master’s mother.”

I meant nothing malicious by neglecting to mention earlier that greatest bane of a new bride—her mother-in-law. The simple fact of the matter was that Sokolli’s harem’s sole occupant was such a shadowy figure that she slipped my mind when we were on related subjects. My good intentions to bring it up as soon as possible were always renewed when either I or the conversation seemed too far away to do so gracefully. All thought of the endowment was now forgotten in my lady’s mind and I must say I had to fight her feelings of betrayal boldly. I tried my best to explain that it was the old woman’s very lack of threat that had made me put off mention of her existence.

“She is a small, mousy woman, my master’s mother, and her feet will no longer carry her weight. So she never moves, day or night, from the divan in the largest room of the haremlik. Her eyes and her fingers are as keen as ever, though, and she spends her days at needlework from sunrise until the colors blur into one another at dusk. Her work is delightful, intricate, colorful patterns of flowers and birds such as I have never seen before.”

“It sounds rather idolatrous,” Esmikhan attempted.

“Anathema to pious Muslims, perhaps, but I suspect such designs are native to Bosnia where the master was born. Clearly her religious education has been lacking, but I could not speak to her of that. I couldn’t speak to her of her work— I could speak to her of nothing, for in the twenty years since her son brought her to share his fortune, she has learned not a single word of Turkish. Visits from her son—which he performs not because he especially likes his mother, but because they, too, are a duty—they are the only dialogues she ever has. I suspect the babble with which she greeted me was incomprehensible as much from senility as it was from foreignness. Though I smiled and nodded in reply, I was convinced life in Sokolli’s harem would be as lonely as its great halls were empty and full of echoes.

“‘Don’t fret,’ old Ali’s wife, who cleans and cooks for the woman, said when she read my thoughts. ‘The bride will soon fill this place with life.’ I see it is Allah’s will that her words become reality.”

Esmikhan tried to take comfort from what I said, first because she knew I wanted her to desperately and secondly because I was still her only friend in this strange new harem that was now peopled by a mother-in-law. I have only just begun to realize what a truly remarkable, powerful thing it is to wink in the face of what anyone else would call an unforgivable betrayal, to wink and come back with more unfeigned grace and desire for friendship than before.