I diligently fulfilled this command the first two days, during which Murad received the congratulations of the chief officers, the lords of the tributary states, and the foreign ambassadors. On the third day I described the procession of the guilds of the city to the ladies.
“They certainly vied with one another in both the richness of their gifts and the amusement of their presentation. The sherbet makers’ guild came first and presented rare lotus and tamarind concoctions to all present.” I paused, hoping someone would ask how I liked these things. I wanted to assure them plain rose or citron was much nicer, but nobody asked.
I continued: “The pastry makers then showered us with sweets. I myself caught two Little Turkish Bonnets.” I tried to prod interest from Safiye, but she was not moved. Two other conversations started under me in different corners of the room. I began to speak louder.
“We went from the goldsmiths who presented the master with a filigree bird cage as high as a man, to the jewelers who had encrusted a Koran on every inch of its two-by-two-foot cube, to the animal trainers who presented an ostrich, an elephant, and a giraffe to the palace menagerie. This latter animal, the giraffe, is like a vastly overgrown deer whose neck and legs have been stretched out of all grace.” I’d thought long and hard about this description, but nobody seemed to care. In desperation I turned to the little bit of humor I’d prepared.
“By wise programming it was the street sweepers who followed after the animals. They must have feared a display of their simple craft might not be worthy of the occasion although none of us, standing in the wake of the animals, doubted it. Their buffoons and fire-eaters were the most elaborate of all and artfully distracted fi-om the janitorial service that scurried on between them.” I was the only one who chuckled—self-consciously.
Now I began to speak at a breakneck speed, just trying to make it to the end. There were maybe five other conversations going now, full of animation. “Even the tanners and thieves’ guild was not neglected.
Though out of sight, they have been able to create something that the foreign dignitaries will report back to their governments in wonder. In such a vast congregation of humanity from the highest to the lowest, not a single purse has been cut or pocket picked. One gentleman who, through a faulty clasp and his own carelessness, lost a gold chain in the dust, found it returned to him by a deep blue-black hand. The hand still reeked of tannin and dog dung, but accompanied a gracious salaam and a brief admonition to be more cautious in the future. Even a noble absentmindedness will not be allowed to give the Sultan and his subjects a bad name...”
I let my voice fade and no one noticed at all. I began to suspect my assignment was just one of the many superfluous ceremonial ones created for the occasion. I went to the grille on the bandstand built especially for the palace women and saw that they had an eagle’s eye view that was better than what I had on the ground. I felt like a fool: Of course Safiye would have many agents she trusted better placed than I to report on things she found more important than fire-eaters and jugglers—a wink passing between vizier and pasha, perhaps. I grew angry. Then I grew afraid. Had I been sent out not for the responsibility, but to have me safely out of the way?
As the celebration progressed, I became more and more convinced that this was the case. I couldn’t very well stop attending to stay in the harem and investigate, but I did return as often as I thought possible. There were no results, but I had little interest in the festivities after that.
On the fifth day, for example, for the war games, two great towers had been constructed on the field to be manned by opposing forces, besieged, assaulted, captured, and fired in mock combat. This display so delighted the audience that the engineers worked throughout the night to rebuild them to allow a repeat performance the following day. I was impatient with the show the first time through, however, but could only bite back my anger and mutter: “By Allah, can’t we just get on with the business?” There was still more than a week of procession, pomp, and party to go.
During this time nothing was seen of the Prince, in whose honor it all was. But finally, on the fourteenth day, he was brought out of the harem in red- and gold-worked robes, cap, and slippers, and presented to his father. The charity boys, too, were presented to their fathers, but on the other side of the court and seated not under canopies but only on low, simple carpets. The clothes of the charity boys, though doubtless dazzling to eyes used only to grey wool homespun, were of the same colors but of less lavish materials than those of the Prince.
I had not seen the heir for several years, but more recently than his father had. At thirteen years old, he was a son of which even a Sultan could be proud. He had his mother’s height and could look his father straight in the eye already. He had neither his father’s red nor his mother’s blond hair. It was dark, but not quite black, rather dusty, one might say, as that of a wrestler just come up from the heat. It was thin but had a loose, tousled curl, again as if he had just enjoyed an invigorating bout of physical activity.
His skin was his mother’s, like cowrie shell, with hot spots of color on the cheek bones from the excitement of the moment. But there was color inherited from another source: that finely
