The feeling of being trapped was not so easy for her to conceal. It often made her mind wander so she answered stupidly when addressed or sometimes didn’t answer at all. Then her feet began to follow the wanderings of her mind, and she found herself pacing once more, back and forth like a caged lioness. This was not an image she wanted to portray to Nur Banu, that woman who was the constant epitome of control, but some days she simply couldn’t help herself.
One such day came in the heat at the end of summer. All the other women had sought shelter in the baths or with fans and sherbets in the central marble hall. But Safiye wandered out past the untrimmed roses, the dried hulls of earlier lily bloom—these were too depressing in any case—to the very end of the harem garden. There, clinging to the iron bars, she stared through the narrow window in the wall to the furthest distance her eyes could reach. The white thistle fields and the grain golden stretched far below and seemed to taunt her with their free swaying in the puffs of breeze.
Most frustrating of all were the hawks.
“Ah, to be a hawk—!” Safiye sighed. “Their haunt, the sky, has no walls at all from Turkey clear back to the Piazza San Marco in Venice.”
“I thought I might find you here.” A voice interrupted her dreams.
“Lady!” Safiye exclaimed as she turned quickly around to find Nur Banu just behind her, accompanied in the garden by a little black slave and a sunshade.
Safiye knew Nur Banu did not trust a girl who liked to be alone, just as, in her interior decorating, she could not bear to have blank space for anything, but must have pattern upon pattern to feel comfortable. Safiye covered the window with her back as if the view were an extra pastry she had wickedly stolen and with which Nur Banu must not catch her.
But a window cannot be hidden as easily as a pastry.
“What is it you see outside that is so fascinating?” Nur Banu asked, gently pushing the younger woman aside. “I see only sky and fields, the same today as they were yesterday.”
“You are right, lady,” Safiye confessed with a self-critical giggle. “There is nothing to be seen. I have learned that for myself and intend never to look out that window again.”
“And yet you were here yesterday and the day before. There must be something.”
Safiye hung her head, caught in her little lie.
“It will spoil your lovely white skin,” Nur Banu said, “to be so much in the sun.”
“Of what use to me is lovely white skin if I am never to...” Safiye burst before she could stop herself.
Nur Banu smiled and nodded gently, forgiving the outburst even though she could only guess the end of the sentence. “Come here, Safiye. Come under my sunshade and let us talk.”
Safiye did as she was bidden and, though she was defensive and cold, the older woman slipped an arm about her waist with affection. They walked thus for some few minutes until Safiye felt she would soon be driven to make apologies and flee to the baths to join the other girls. Even that would be preferable to this silence.
“Safiye,” Nur Banu began at last. “Aren’t you happy here?”
“Yes, of course! I’m very happy,” Safiye replied with too much energy rather than too little.
“Yes, you are happy,” Nur Banu repeated. “Except that you are frustrated. I know. I can see it in you.”
“I am sorry, lady,” was all Safiye could think to say.
“So am I,” Nur Banu said. “So am I.”
After they had walked a few more moments in silence, the older woman began again. “Have I ever told you about my son?”
“If you did, lady, it was before I could understand what you were saying. I knew you had one, of course, because you are the master’s first lady and the head of the harem. But more you haven’t said. If he is at all like you, lady, I am sure he must be a very bright little boy, and fair to look upon, may Allah shield him.”
“‘A little boy!’” Nur Banu repeated with a laugh. “Oh, that he were, that I might still have the pleasure of his company day in and day out! No, my son is now a man, full-grown and more like himself than he is like any other. Allah give him many more years: he is eighteen.”
“Eighteen!” Safiye exclaimed. “Lady, I assure you I never guessed!”
“Yes, it was eighteen years ago that Murad gave me all that pain and grief. Ah, but it was worth it. I’ll tell you, my dear, no one is more surprised than I am that time has gone so rapidly.”
“Lady, Allah shield you, but I never would have guessed you had a son so old. You are still young yourself—no evil eye upon you, if Allah please.”
Nur Banu smiled at these flatteries and at the superstitious cautions that accompanied them. Perhaps she remembered when she had first learned to squelch her own religion and call on Islam’s god. Then she began to speak again. “My Murad is as fine a son as any mother could wish. I have concern for him, however, and it is very great. He has for this past year or two—almost since we first came to Kutahiya, in fact—become heavily addicted to his water pipes.
“Opium is not such an awful vice. I myself put a little in the narghile or indulge in a beng confection from time to time. But in one so young and to such excess—! He takes pleasure, I am told, in no other pastimes. He refused to accompany our master to the Persian border, and his place as counselor and friend in time of war was taken by a captive janissary.
“He neither hunts nor attends his father’s government sessions nor practices with arms nor improves his mind with reading and scholarly discourse
