In spite of her novel view of the game, Esmikhan was a good player. As the game wound down to her victory this time, however, she seemed to lose interest. Several times I left my “shah” open to death, “mot” (“Shahmot” is our checkmate), and she made some silly move instead, either on purpose, to draw the game and our time together, out, or because her mind was elsewhere. She spent a lot of time pretending to study the board, but in fact it was the fire within the brazier’s grate I saw reflected in her great brown eyes. If she wasn’t careful, she would let me win, and capture the little pawn called Esmikhan as well. “Esmikhan,” I warned her, reaching out to touch her hand—ivory like the board it rested on. “Lady?”
She was in the middle of turning to me with a sigh when a sound in the selamlik below brought us both to our feet.
“Whoever can that be?” she asked, and I read in her face a curious struggle between hope and despair as she thought, My husband!
From the room where we sat, a window covered with a wooden lattice looked down into the main sitting room of the selamlik. It had been installed at Safiye’s suggestion. Safiye was convinced her friend would get on better with her husband if she took an interest in his affairs and overheard some of his meetings with diplomats and ambassadors. It certainly made Safiye a more frequent visitor in our home—when she was in town. But Esmikhan had no patience with such spying, and usually the window went unused. Now we both ran to it at once.
Mejnun, the gatekeeper, opened the door and ushered a total stranger into the room below. Mejnun called for Ali, who entered and asked what he could do for the man. The man did not speak, but showed the old slave a very small object.
“It’s my husband’s signet ring!” Esmikhan whispered and I knew she must be right, for both Mejnun and Ali set about removing the guest’s drenched and muddy wraps and making him at home.
He was a tall man, and broad. None of the width was superfluous, however. He must have been nearing thirty. Masses of dark, curly moustache had not a streak of gray. His turban must have once been white cotton, but it was now a little worse for the weather. The decorative peak in his headgear’s center had lost its shape and color, so one would be hard-pressed to call it silk and not some sort of black pudding. There was a jeweled clasp in his turban, too, in which a crest of black feathers could be stuck—a crest that had long ago blown away.
It was only when his mantle was removed that his trousers above the thigh showed their true, dry, clean color—violet—and we knew his turban peak must have originally been purple, too, a color which marked him as a spahi-oghlan, a member of the Sultan’s standing cavalry. Still we had no indication of rank, any more than that he had at some time or other been decorated for valor in action. A jeweled scimitar under a cloth-of-gold vest he refused to give up to the slaves—that completed the costume.
“He looks something like you, Abdullah,” Esmikhan mused.
“Yes,” I replied in a scoffing whisper. “If Allah ever willed me into a spahi uniform.”
“Go entertain him, Abdullah,” Esmikhan said.
“Me, Lady?”
“Yes, please. Those two slaves are such dolts, and you know that’s all the staff my husband left in the selamlik. A man with Sokolli Pasha’s signet ring deserves better than that. Ali will do nothing but bring him supper, and then leave him on his own while Mejnun will simply bow and stare. But you may talk intelligently to him, and make him feel truly welcome. You might also discover”—she finally came to the point—”why it is that he has come.”
Mejnun had bowed his way back to his post, and Ali had set a fire going in the brazier and brought water for the man to make his ablutions when I entered the room. I salaamed, introduced myself, and said that my mistress wished the stranger welcome. The man nodded his thanks to me, but politely did not glance towards the lattice which he could not fail to notice over our heads.
It was only then that I found some ease enough to notice what a truly stunning piece of man’s flesh he was. His eyes, though small and unassuming, were bright, and his jaw square and firm under several days’ growth of beard. He was quite tall, and of perfect and strong proportions, even for a spahi, who takes little thought but for exercise and athletics.
He moved, however, not with a swagger like many such soldiers, but with a cautious grace as if to say, “I like nothing better than to dance, to move, to run, to leap, but I will forbear in your presence because I know it is not polite to be so self-indulgent.”
Most remarkable of all was his smile. Thin, firm lips, they burst onto a perfect set of large, white teeth at the slightest provocation. Like ataïf, wedding pancakes, I thought, overstuffed with honey and
