“O my fair one, I shall have a pipe, too.” That was a cue that things were not progressing as rapidly as hoped; it was necessary to draw the meeting out.
Now Safiye found her performance interminable. She returned for the second pipe and, offering it to her mistress, felt Nur Banu killed the time all too obviously before she took the mouthpiece in her hand and Safiye could set it down on the table. Then she had to return to the harem—slowly, slowly—get the brass brazier from Aziza, return, and, kneeling before each smoker, place a glowing coal in each one’s bowl with a little pair of tongs. She paused there on her knees until assured that each pipe bubbled well. The smokers drew and the sweet aroma filled the room. Then, and only then, could Safiye retreat to the corner where, the brazier nursed beside her feet, she stood with each hand upon its opposite shoulder, head slightly bowed, waiting for a further order.
The nervous energy created by being the center of attention now slowly drained from her. It had made her want to skip in with the pipes and say aloud, “Here you are, you drugged excuse for a man. But wouldn’t you really rather have me instead?” just to get it over with. Glad she had not succumbed to this temptation, Safiye could now afford to be aware of other things besides her every knotted muscle, and she began to follow the conversation taking place there in the room with her. It was no more than pleasantries and it was immediately clear that Nur Banu was in a rising panic—or, at least as close to panic as such a controlled woman would ever allow herself to come.
Esmikhan said nothing. Fatima did sometimes try to help out with a giggle, but the young man did not even chuckle. Though from time to time he did say a word or two, they were as weak and as bored as ever.
Nur Banu had prepared some patter for herself, but she had always stopped not two minutes into the rehearsal to say, “Well, by now he surely will have noticed you and said something. After that—it is Allah’s will.”
Now it was clear she was out of script and, though never one to be at a loss for words and always easily capable of filling any hour with pleasantries, Nur Banu was leaving great gaps of silence, which she kept desperately hoping her son would fill with the question. The question—it mattered not what question it was. All that mattered was that it asked something about the new slave girl—her age, how long she’d been in the harem, where she’d come from, her name perhaps. The question would not be answered, but the girl would be called forth to kiss her master’s hem, then left to answer all questions on her own in the best way nature could teach her.
The bittersweet smell of opium filled the room, but Safiye knew it came from her mistress’ pipe, not the master’s. She had watched with care as they were loaded. Into Nur Banu’s pipe had gone a sliver of the brown, sticky stuff, but into the young man’s had gone only cinnamon bark and gum of mastica mixed with a little bran to make it burn. This was not a concoction that would fool any smoker, but it was hoped that politeness and the aroma from his mother’s pipe would keep him from complaining about it.
Safiye had seen both wads of fuel in place, packed neither too tightly nor too loosely, but as the interview dragged on, she could not resist a glance up to make certain she had given the right pipe to the right person. Yes, the glint of silver was in Murad’s hand while Nur Banu’s mouthpiece was of green jade.
She quickly dropped her eyes again, for they had met head-on with the young man’s. Two or three more glances at minute intervals were enough to assure Safiye, “Well, at least he isn’t ignoring me.” They also gave grist to the millstones of her mind.
They were not dull eyes that met hers from the sunken ash-pits of their sockets. They glinted with life and intellect. One could even go so far as to say interest and humor. But that these features suffered difficulties breaking through clouds of boredom, inactivity, irresponsibility, studied disinterest, and the drug was also easy to see. (Yet to place these principles in clear genealogies of cause and effect would not be such a simple task.)
A few more glances satisfied Safiye that the eyes alone betrayed the young man’s complexity. As to his further features, they were quickly discerned and with but little excitement. He had a thin, sunken face framed by a sparse beard that only appeared such an inflamed and infectious red because the flesh it grew from was so pale. The color of his beard would actually come closer to the natural glow present in the flesh of a much healthier man. Khurrem Sultan, his grandmother, had come from Russia. Safiye had heard her hair described as being the color of paprika, so Murad came by his shade legitimately.
Beyond that, he was of medium height—perhaps shorter than Safiye herself—with thin limbs that ennui and a stronger taste for the drug had kept from ever gaining flesh once their height had been attained. That his clothes were masculine was the only thing that made them interesting to her after five months shut up with women and eunuchs. A pale yellow silk summer caftan revealed the boniness of his
