A sultan built it for his daughter, the legend had it, to protect her from the fate he had dreamed befalling her: the deathly bite of a snake. By forcing her to live in the tower, protected from harm by the water and the guardianship of her ladies, he believed he could keep her from this terrible destiny. But she was foolish, in the way young women are apt to be, and she had longings, to which young women are also susceptible. The tower kept her safe, but it also provided a perfect vantage point from which to see all she was missing out on. The lights of the great city, in which thousands loved and lived, following out their destinies in happy ignorance, without fear. The boats coming and going, laden with exotic cargo and lucky passengers bound for places she would never see. And above, the great blue reach of the sky, where birds wheeled free.
One day, a little craft passed laden with fruits. The girl could have asked for anything she wanted and it would have been delivered to her: the sultan was determined that his daughter would want for nothing. All he asked was that anything entering the tower was thoroughly checked first. But that, naturally, removed much of the pleasure from things. The sultan’s daughter would watch as loaves of bread were pulled into pieces small enough that there could be no chance of anything remaining concealed within, as oranges were peeled and pitted and split into segments presented on a white plate and then given first to one of the ladies to test, as dates were de-stoned and quartered and mashed to a pulp. Everything reduced to less than the sum of its parts. Nothing completely hers, because of the fingers that would have touched it and searched it and taken all the magic from it.
When this fruit-laden boat passed almost silently beneath the window, the girl watched it with longing. She saw the jewel-red pomegranates, the piles of ripe yellow pears, flushed with the sun’s kiss, the dusky spillage of purple grapes. And then she saw the boatman, and he was yet more beautiful than any of his wares. So when, seeing her half-hanging out of her window, he called to her, and asked her – did she want anything? – how could she not answer him? (Speech with strangers was also forbidden by her father, as though the words themselves might drip poison into her ears.)
‘The grapes,’ she said, because suddenly she could almost taste them: the bitter skin splitting to yield untold sweetness. Each would be a substitute, she thought, for a boatman’s kiss.
‘How will I get them to you, effendi?’ the boatman called.
She thought. She had to be quick, or one of her women would come and she would be found out. She found a long silk scarf, and lowered this to him.
‘Tie them in there,’ she said. ‘And you may keep the scarf afterward, as payment.’
Of course – because this is how things work in fairy tales – the sultan’s daughter didn’t have the chance to enjoy her grapes, or to fall in love with the boatman. As she lifted the fragrant bunch to her mouth a snake uncoiled itself and delivered the deathly bite. It was her fate, waiting for her. There was nothing that she could have done.
It is impossible, Nur knows this. She would be cast out. In another place, time, perhaps. If it had been before the war, or a century after its passing. If there had been no war. But then such thoughts have no meaning; and no succour.
Her cousin Hüseyin has transcended a boundary – but it is a very different thing for him. He is a man, living abroad. She is a woman who has lived in an occupied city, who lost her husband and her own unborn child at the hands of the enemy. She has lived here while they have insulted Ottoman men and women, arrested and even killed them; whilst they have made the city their playground. She would not merely be cast out from her home, from her people, she would be cast out from herself.
Not for the first time she wishes she had never set eyes upon the man.
Acts of Destabilisation
The darkest hour of the night. There is still faint noise from the city. But here there is almost absolute quiet broken only by tiny musical disturbances in the water, the secret movements of fish.
A figure detaches itself from the shadows, like something cut from the fabric of the night itself, moving with incredible speed across the grass. Then a small catch of sound, a tiny plume of light.
The fire begins with surprising hesitance, for something of such latent power. The wood is old, loose-grained, friable, which should help with the burning. But it is also damp from the sea air: the accumulated moisture of two centuries. If anything were to save it now, this might be it.
More alcohol.
With something almost like a concentrated effort of will, the fire gathers itself. Pale flames begin to lick at the wood, with some discernment, like a chef tasting a new dish for the carte. They move languorously at first – in no particular hurry now that the decision has been made, the balance tipped.
Then something changes. A gust of wind from exactly the right direction, perhaps. Now the flames become voracious, insatiable, and faster, faster, snickering up the old beams, gathering strength from nothing – from the very air. Now it is growing loud. There are great exhalations of heat, smaller gasps and cackles, a low, snickering sound that is, perhaps, most terrible of all.
The night is lit up with it.
The still black waters reflect the spectacle, so that they, too, seem to have caught light like oil. And he sees himself in the reflection too, a faceless figure surrounded by flame, the agent of all the destruction.
It is terrible, magnificent. A shame,
