“Two hundred ghrush?”
“Maybe more. Maybe quite a bit more.”
“Quickly?”
“Perhaps, if it’s Allah’s will, before evening.”
“Then we must do it at once. By God, we have no time to lose.”
Husayn dropped his hand from his moustache and nodded with sudden decision. He collared one of the smaller boys dancing excitedly but ineffectively on the outskirts of the little gypsy’s beating. He gave him a few quick directions and one of the smaller coins—one of those crude angularities of ill-stamped metal, as flexible as ribbon, that are the bread and butter of Turkish exchange—from his rescued purse. The boy was off like a shot and, while I nearly gasped at the disappearance ol one ol our precious coppers, I suppressed it, believing with desperation that Husayn could realize his plot.
“Come.” He took my elbow. “Let’s be off.”
I was only too glad to leave that nasty little square, but still I had to ask: “Where are we going?”
“The baths.”
“The baths? You have a private bath at home.”
“We do, and I have already washed the sea from me in it. But the bath at home is not a public bath.”
“So much the better, I should think. We have two hundred ghrush to gain and you plan to sink yourself in the indolence of a Turkish bath?”
“You may be surprised,” Husayn said, smoothing my rudeness. “Many business deals are made in the baths. You Venetians are forever complaining that the Turks are a closed society and have unfair advantage because we will not let you in on our trade secrets. Perhaps if you’d clean yourselves up once in a while, they would not be such secrets.”
He lead me up the great, broad thoroughfare that served in Constantinople much as the Grand Canal does in Venice, providing a viewing ground for the height of local culture. Awnings of the most exclusive coffee shops, catering to the latest fashion, and numerous elegant mosques in tree-planted squares lined our path.
The paying stones were kept meticulously clean by a full-time army of sweepers. When I compared this to the rat-filled heaps of rubbish in every corner of Venice, I saw briefly the image of a garden that hasn’t been dunged in years. How could anything grow here? But fertilizer was clearly no problem as every step brought some new face of the throng to my view. Now it was a face from one corner of the world or the other, now the face of some local Turk or Greek animated with purpose so that even if happiness could not be read there, of life there was no doubt.
Façades of palaces provided a calming respite to the bustle of our path. These façades were, however, mostly left from before the Muslim Conquest, and whether they actually announced the homes of the wealthy or served as an anthill for the hovels of the poor was difficult for the stranger to tell. A wealthy Turk was more likely to situate at the end of some narrow back alley. In this paradoxical world, seclusion, when you managed to see it, was a sign of ostentation.
Never was a town more harnessed for commerce than Constantinople. Under every spare arch huddled some entrepreneur at the city’s expense and halfway up the boulevard, we passed the covered Grand Bazaar. Here, behind its eight iron gates and under its acres of miniature domes, a man could buy anything from chickpeas to gold nuggets by the sackful as well as raise the capital to do so in the Turk’s roundabout manner. For the mercantile arrangements were also remnants of the previous occupants.
I had experience of such matters through Uncle Jacopo and knew that Islam’s Prophet forbad the taking of interest. But even that couldn’t stop commerce in this metropolis. In order to raise the means to cover the risk of any venture, it was customary to make two transactions. The first was the straight loan of interest-free funds. The second, on the side, was the exchange of some item of value, a house, a horse— even a shoe would sometimes serve. The item was sold first to the man interested in the loan and then immediately sold back to his creditor at the agreed percentage of interest higher.
The Grand Bazaar in whose nooks and crannies such metaphysics took place in a score of different currencies seemed the best place for us to go for our purpose. But no. In the Turk’s roundabout way, we went on up the avenue.
We arrived in a square, untidy with tombs and trees and bounded on the north by walls. The walls were impossible to see beyond but, by the red-robed janissaries passing in review before them, I knew they must enclose part of the imperial household. The Grand Signor was promiscuous enough in his habits to fill any number of palaces, scattered about the empire, with his cast-off concubines and bastards.
Such images of venery held no fascination for Husayn. He was more taken by the mosque on our right. We were just in time for the midday call to prayers from the pair of wide-spaced minarets that cluttered the skyline along with numerous domes.
“Built by the architect, Yakup Shah” Husayn told me, for our great Sultan Bayazid, two—three generations ago.”
I hadn’t the slightest interest in the history of the place, and was quite annoyed when Husayn felt he had to join everybody else in answering the rather mournful yet insistent demand for compliant and immediate devotion.
“We haven’t a moment to lose!” I insisted.
“Moments with Allah are not lost,” he replied gently. “Besides, who is there to do business with when the whole world has turned toward Mecca?”
“I guess I hear the bells of Venice instead.”
So I stayed out in the square, the chaos of the place doing little to ease the chaos of my soul.
Over against the palace wall, the janissaries now on guard, I noted, were excused from prayer to maintain their vigilance. The sun had
