The Sultan's Daughter (35 page)

One day I tried to present my concerns to the governor in less vague terms than I had used for the matter of his daughter.

“Our Ferhad?” he asked, incredulous. “Women are the farthest thing from his mind. Horseflesh and training, that is all that concerns him. Why, I offered him a glass of my good red wine, obtained at great trouble and great expense from Cyprus. He didn’t condemn, he didn’t threaten to tell the vizier or any such thing; just refused politely but firmly to even indulge in that minor infraction. By Allah, I can’t drink myself with his virtue around! No doubt it’s just as well for my immortal soul, but it’s going to be a long, dry winter. I’ve no consolation but that wine improves with age.”

It seemed useless to confront the lovers themselves. They knew perhaps more than I the seriousness of their actions. Ferhad was nothing if not a man of honor and Esmikhan was a woman who often sat hours with me, fingering my hand in a silence that seemed to plead with me to save her from herself. They both held high positions for which many others would envy them: the one, Grand Master of the Imperial Horse; the other, the wife of the Grand Vizier and a daughter of the Sultan. Both of them filled those posts with more devotion than many a mortal could muster, but for that devotion, their mortality made them suffer more than another.

But suffering was food to the sort of idyllic, never-consummated, never-seen-face-to-face-in-the-light-of-day sort of love they possessed. A spahi prides himself on being able to endure more than another man; a woman gets no more pleasure than from the pains of childbirth. Such was the painful, helplessness of their love. After selling the traitor among my assistants, I could trust the rest to help me to the best of their abilities. Unfortunately, it was the khadim of greatest ability I had been forced to sell. I couldn’t replace him until our return to Constantinople, so all I had left with me were four persons who, for all their intentions, typified the worst infamy of eunuchs: the dull, fat, lazy stereotype from which we suffer. No, this trial was a test of my strength alone.

And it was a test. That impression came strongly one day when I caught Ferhad in the hall containing the grille to the harem, where he had no right to be. Without a word he bowed and left the room. The smile he gave me as he left was full of such sportsmanlike reserve that it might have gone equally well to the man who had just defeated him fair and square in a round of wrestling.

I do not mean by allusion to the ring from which both men generally walk away unharmed to belittle the seriousness of the test I was undergoing. If I did fail, blood would be shed. That a noblewoman’s virtue is sometimes set but low on men’s scale of values does not erase the fact that it was my whole reason for being.

The fact that my lady and her lover, too, faced death if I failed helped me define the antagonists better. Ferhad was not the real enemy. The impossible requirements of form were the culprits, and I was like a skilled swordsman defending two babes from these invaders, defending those who could not defend themselves.

That year the month of Ramadhan began in the depths of winter. It seemed no hardship to fast then; one was lethargic and given to long spells of sitting cozily anyway. But by the end of the month the snows had begun to carve out rocky creeks for themselves in the back streets of Konya, and wild grape hyacinths splattered protected crannies like highly glazed tile work.

By the time the holy month neared its end, all spirits were stirring and it seemed harder and harder to fast those last few days. It would be equally difficult, I felt, for my lady and her lover to endure this time of new life without closer contact than the harem walls had so far allowed them.

Fortunately for us all, I thought, the snow was turning to mud, and the mud to dirt once more. It would only be a matter of weeks until the roads were passable and our year’s pilgrimage would come to an end. I can easily keep them apart—those two lodestones—for so long.

I had proven myself. I had proven myself in a trial more difficult than facing the physical threat of brigands, the kidnappers of Chios. I exalted and thought, only a man who has slain his first enemy can appreciate how I felt.

So great was my relief and triumph that I celebrated in the best way I knew how. I escaped the harem and attended the Thursday evening services of Husayn’s brotherhood again, which my winter-long tension had rarely given me commitment of spirit to do. The two or three times I did attend that season, I could never allow myself to be drawn into the dance again, but sat watching and brooding in the gallery.

But now, so great was my relief that I might have even abandoned myself to the total Sufi Union with the Divine had not a sudden image of the sword that awaited me if I should neglect my duties cut the vision at the last moment. Again I was obliged to break away from the circle, again I escaped into myself in the quiet chill of the courtyard.

And again, near dawn, Husayn came out to me alone. The moon was but a wisp, nearing the end of the holy month. We took the cloud of the Milky Way as other men may take tobacco or opium, and smoked it together silently in a pipe invisible between us.

I do not know if he read my mind. They say some dervishes cultivate that capability, and at the time it certainly seemed as if he did. But perhaps he only sensed the atmosphere with insight our shared joys and sorrows had honed keen. He spoke to it in parables.

“Elias,” Husayn began, like the very voice of that sharp night, “is the wisest of all the creatures of Allah. It is said he inspired the saint of Konya, Sufi Rumi, and that he also instructed the Prophet Moses. At first Elias was skeptical that he should teach Moses anything, but Moses insisted and Elias in his wisdom also knew what a great prophet this man might become if properly instructed.

“‘Very well,’ Elias said to him, ‘you may come with me on my travels through the world of men. But you must not question anything I do, for the undertaking of Allah is far beyond that of men.’
”

“Moses replied that he would certainly comply with this request, for gaining knowledge in the Way of Allah was his only desire. So the two men went about the world and soon they came to the sea. They had no coin to pay to be ferried across, but eventually they met two poor but pious sailors who were content to have them on board for nothing.

“When they reached the other shore, Elias promptly put a great hole in the hull of this boat so it began to sink, and then he went on his way. Moses, following after, was shocked. ‘These poor sailors were kind to us, and this boat is their only means of livelihood,’ he thought angrily. But he didn’t say anything for he had sworn not to question the deeds of this, the wisest of creatures.

“Soon the two men of Allah came to a tree and beneath the tree was a young child asleep. The child was so beautiful and peaceful and so well favored that Moses could not help but wonder. But just as he was about to form a word of praise to the Creator, Elias came and struck off the child’s head in one blow.

“Now Moses was so appalled that he could not speak, even if he had wished to, and by the time he had gained his tongue again, they were far from the city, in an abandoned field. In the field was an old stone wall which was crumbling through neglect, but for this Elias stopped and had Moses spend the heat of the afternoon repairing the breach.

“At last Moses could hold his tongue no longer. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I do not understand. This is useless work. The wall and the field are clearly abandoned and why should we stop to do something that will benefit no one? Why, indeed, when our day has already been filled with senseless destruction and violence. To destroy those poor sailors’ boat and to kill that fair-faced child surely go against all the laws of Allah. I wonder if you are Elias at all and not some satanic impostor.’

“‘How much you have to learn of the ways of Allah!’ Elias sighed wearily at this breach of faith on the part of his disciple who was meant to become a prophet. ‘I had you mend the wall because beneath it is buried the inheritance of two poor orphaned children. Had we not mended it, others would have come and found the treasure and taken it away before the children have grown to their majority and are able to dig it up for themselves.

“‘You do not understand the boat, either. There are wicked men in that city who would have stolen that only means of livelihood from those two good sailors. They will not bother to steal a boat with a hole in it, and by the time our friends have made their repairs, the wicked men will be converted to Allah and will molest them no more.’

“‘And the child?’ Moses asked. ‘Surely there can be no excuse to kill a child in the Mind of Allah.’

‘But there is,’ Elias replied. ‘Had that child become an adult, he would have been a very wicked man. His fair features would have remained and he would have deceived many with them. Not only would innocent people have had to suffer the loss of their goods, but hundreds would have died most miserably had that small hand grown large.’

“Sometimes,” Husayn concluded, “the man of Allah can best fulfill the will of the Merciful One not by obeying His laws, but by breaking them.”

My friend and I let the story sit in silence, and then we went without another word to eat some breakfast, for it would soon be dawn and the fast would be upon us again.

The story stayed with me throughout the coming weeks as the fast ended and we began to prepare to return to Constantinople. It seemed especially clear when I accompanied my lady to the tomb of the saint on the last Wednesday of our stay. It was as if Rumi himself, who, the dervishes say, had Elias for his instructor, were reciting the story to me in hollow echoes from the grave:”... Not by obeying His laws, but by breaking them.”

When we had completed our devotions, Esmikhan indicated that she wanted to sit in Rumi’s seat one final time. I knew that repetition was believed to erase the efficacy of a wish. At first I thought she was so desperate that she didn’t care, but when I helped her step down, I knew that over our stay her wish had changed. At first she had prayed for a child and the answer, so it seemed, had come in the vision of our young spahi. Her new wish I could guess at, and the way her eyes met mine made me feel that whatever power she had derived from that chair convinced her that its fulfillment lay in my good will alone.

“Not I!” I declared when she indicated again that I, too, should make a wish. My tone spoke in answer to the hope in those eyes, not to the suggestion of her tongue.

“Perhaps you have no desires, Abdallah. But can’t you even pray for the happiness of your poor Esmikhan? It cannot be pleasant to serve a woman whose heart is breaking,” she murmured.

Again I refused, but her words struck me with disquiet as if they had indeed come from an otherworldly source. So much so that, once I had packed her and her maids into their sedans, and sent them off with the porters and the other eunuchs, I took the first opportunity to escape even when that excuse was the appearance of none other than Ferhad himself.

I knew he would be there. He had been there in the public place outside the mosque compound every women’s day since the end of Ramadhan and many before. “He mingles among the men we must govern, and discovers their feelings and their desires,” our host excused him. “He is more useful to me there than he would be here while I hold court.”

I was not so easily beguiled. I knew his only true desire was to catch another glimpse of my lady as she entered and exited the mosque.

My lady, too, sensed this and always sat straight and arranged her hair with care and blushed so prettily even though I made certain there always remained four or five opaque barriers between his eyes and her. If I had had any doubts before, I had none that day, for a dark afternoon drizzle had driven all the more sensible townsmen to their homes, leaving only the Master of the Imperial Horse sitting there as if he were some village halfwit. There was no one for him to spy on but the ladies. That he kept his back discreetly to us did not fool me for a moment. It only allowed me to creep up on him without his knowledge.

The face that turned to me had tears distorting its handsome angles. I pretended I thought they were only raindrops, but I could not hide my surprise to see the other out-of-character thing about him: in his right hand was an unsheathed dagger.

Now the spahis are men of war and they undergo a little ceremony when they are issued their first dagger during which they vow “to use this blade against none but the enemies of Allah and of His Shadow, the Sultan of Islam.”

The enemy of Turkish society against which he now turned his knife was himself.

He had been holding it with such real intent that when my greeting startled him, he actually cut the flesh of his left wrist. It was not such a deep cut as to be dangerous but both he and I watched with startled fascination as beads of blood began to make a dainty woman’s bracelet on his arm. Only the reflex of ritual greetings and pleasantries kept a morbid silence from stifling us. The pleasantries allowed him, too, to gain some degree of composure with which to chuckle as if the scratch were nothing.

“Abdullah, my friend,” he said, “I have faced wild Austrians and Kurds as well as trained Persians on the frontier without a flinch. I am only wondering if I will have the courage to face what must come on Sunday next—your departure. I fear death from that, my friend, more than from any Persian lancer.”

“You are mad,” I wanted to tell him. “Love has made you mad.”

But he knew that. He knew better than I the tragedy it was for helplessness to overcome one of Turkey’s brightest hopes. So great was his intimacy with that tragedy that he could not but long for death. What use was there for appeals to reason? I spoke only more pleasantries as he bound his wrist with a scrap of his sash—”Got in the service of the Grand Vizier,” he attempted a little joke—and I accompanied him back to the palace.

Surely if Allah loves His people He will not let them lose such a wonderful defender of the Faith by his own hand for the sake of a woman, I thought as we walked. Surely He could not let one of the most devoted among His women pine away the rest of her life never knowing either the love of a man, nor the pleasure of a child, even when she had crossed all of Anatolia to pray for these things.