The idea had clearly shocked Murad. “Many of them have lived here—their families, at any rate—since time out of mind. Who’s to say but that their ancestors were here to watch the Greeks sail in to avenge Helen at Troy? Long before we Turks arrived on the Gediz River, in any case.”
“They’re not even Muslims?”
“Many are Greek Christians, yes.”
“What is your compunction, then? At home, in Venice, it happened all the time, particularly on the mainland. Water projects, you understand. Any small holders would have to move if the Council determined it was necessary—for the good of all, of course.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“Sound business sense, my dear prince. A sense of progress.”
“Against not only the spirit but the letter of our most merciful law.” Murad had smoothed dignity into the feathers of his aigrette. “As you’ve just heard the mullah declare—if you were listening, as I’m sure you were, behind the Divan door—’Being an orphan himself, the Prophet—blessings on him—would never sanction the removal of property from the unwilling and underprivileged.’
You are the law in Magnesia, my prince. Can’t you act like it? Safiye had said this, but not aloud.
The convulsions of circumventing this law took up Divan time second only to the most contentious thing: trying to stop the locals from turning their grapes into wine or from selling their raisins, grape syrup, and dried figs to any but the empire’s agents. Of course the farmers wanted the high prices red-nosed Englishmen and other foreigners would pay for these commodities that were luxuries in their distant homelands. But the Turkish laws were unstintingly clear—and annoying—about the evils of “tulip-colored wine.” Since Magnesia was close enough to Constantinople—one of its attractions, Safiye reminded herself—the law could not be circumvented; the capital demanded and consumed all the fresh produce at fresh, local prices. Domestic workshops required local cotton, too, if Ottoman subjects were to have work. So the sandjak bey had to see that selling abroad was severely punished.
Such cases made up, along with the usual petty thefts, tawdry adulteries, and inheritance squabbles, the majority of pleas that Murad—and Safiye curtained behind him—heard day in and day out. That, and the efforts, often maddeningly futile, to get a decent-sized plot on which to build a mosque.
Seeing this hard-won plot of dirt now in heat-seared substantiality was gratifying. There were some holdouts who still clung to the orphan Prophet’s mercy; Safiye saw their physicality now, too, their ramshackle houses making uneven tumors at the edges of her sight. But she was certain they’d soon be brought to bay—or at least Murad would be brought to see his legitimate rights as a ruler—and she could easily erase their existence from her mind’s construction of the projected edifice.
“The man to whom the prince my master speaks is called Mustafa Effendi,” Ghazanfer bent to inform Safiye. “He is the head architect.”
“But I thought Sinan, the Royal Architect himself, was to build my master’s mosque.”
Ghazanfer obediently queried Murad on this point as well and then passed the following dialogue back and forth.
“Sinan did draw the plans with his own hand. But the Royal Architect is old and so has sent his disciple Mustafa instead. Sinan is older, even, than my grandfather the Sultan—Allah grant that his reign may last to the end of time.”
Safiye knew the prayer was formulaic, but still she wished her prince would not ask quite so fervently for something that was so decidedly against his own interest—and hers.
“The only traveling Sinan thinks of doing,” Murad continued through Ghazanfer, “is the pilgrimage. Perhaps if he goes this year—if building projects in the City of Cities do not keep him yet again—perhaps he may stop in Magnesia and see the site. Allah willing, he has promised to try.”
“So what are these two holes the men are digging?”
“For the minarets, their bases. A group of craftsmen skilled in the special art of raising these fingers of stone that point towards heaven is directing the work. These men rove from town to town throughout the empire, wherever they are needed. Mustafa Effendi had news of this gang with a few months free so he thought he’d get them while he could and set them to work. We will have galley slaves to help as well, but only when the shipping lanes close for winter.”
“Two minarets, my love?”
“I know.” Murad blushed more than the sun would have caused. “Only a sultan’s foundation is allowed two. Perhaps I tempt heaven.”
“Your aunt Mihrimah’s foundation in Üsküdar has two.”
“That is because, in theory at least, her father built it for her. Still, it was her money. And certainly her taste.”
“You think perhaps you will be Sultan by the time the building is completed?”
“Allah knows best.”
So, whatever his pious and filial veneer, Murad would not really be content for the Angel Israfil’s horn to blow before he got to be Allah’s Shadow on earth. Safiye was pleased he harkened to her in this much, anyway.
At that moment, Baffo’s daughter stumbled over an unevenness in the ground. Another woman might have thought her pride caused the difficulty. Safiye only knew it was one or the other of her many obstacles preventing good sight. Ghazanfer quickly reached out a hand to stop her and prevented a spectacular tumble.
“This is quite a severe slope you’re forced to conform to,” she had the eunuch comment to the prince.
“All Magnesia is steep,” Murad replied. “Either coming up or going down.”
Safiye already knew this geological fact by the slipping first one way and then the other inside her sedan. Shifting her veil the tiniest bit, she now got a clearer idea of just how truly Murad spoke. Two mountains whose tops she could hardly see pinched the settlement at their feet as though in a vise. Behind each rocky peak, rank upon rank of other precipices followed, much like mosque domes themselves, only steeper. Each one shimmered hazier than the one before it, bluer, until the sky hit the
