“Do you recognize the man debating here?” Murad asked.
Gul Ruh had been struggling so with the emotions the sight of the pavilion brought to her that she hadn’t even bothered to look at the left-hand side where the debaters were. But a quick glance failed to enlighten her. Her uncle had striven not so much to render individual characteristics as to meet the miniaturists’ traditional criteria for showing handsome pious young manhood. One handsome, pious young man looked pretty- much like another. Gul Ruh did not recognize him.
“A remarkable young man.” Murad began to describe with words what the picture failed to make plain. “He cannot be much over twenty. Still he defeated many of his elders and betters most brilliantly in a discourse as lucid and learned as it w as to the point. The son of the late Mufti, I am told, but the youngest son and with still manv, many years of successes ahead of him.”
“He won the debates?” Gul Ruh exclaimed. She almost pronounced the name “Abd ar-Rahman” aloud but caught herself in time to keep her uncle thinking she did not recognize the man from his descriptions either. “Such a young person, I mean?”
“Yes. Won quite handily. Not only that, but he made me so drunk on his words that I hardly knew what I was saying. As a prize, I offered him anything at all it was in my power to give, even to half of the Realm of the Faithful.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Forgive me, O Shadow of Allah,’ the young man said, ‘but the Realm of the Faithful is not yours to give.’ Then he quoted page and verse proving that it was given to me in trust from the Most Merciful and I should not even jest of giving it away, et cetera, et cetera. But finally he came around to saying that there was something it was in my power to give him that he desired more than anything in the world. Can you guess, Gul Ruh, what that might be?”
“Such a modest young man!” Esmikhan exclaimed.
“No, I cannot guess,” Gul Ruh said, feeling her heart pounding in her throat.
“Modest, Sister, maybe. But he is not above demanding for riches when they fall near his hand. He has asked me to give you to him, Gul Ruh, in marriage. What do you think of that?”
Gul Ruh could say nothing, but dropped her head and pretended to examine her hands. I do not doubt that if I, too, had examined them I would have found them wet with tears.
It was Esmikhan who had to reply, “What did you tell the young man. Brother?”
“I asked him to look in his books and see if there isn’t a commandment not to give women in marriage against their will. ‘Even a sultan is bound by this,’ I told him. ‘I must ask the young lady’s will in this matter before I make promises like that.’
“Ah, it was gratifying! To beat the winner on his own ground! Hurry and anxiety, those are two things a debater must avoid at all cost and that young man let them get the better of him in this case. I think I could have been something of a legist if only...
“Still, I gave him my word to ask the young lady and do what I could to sway her opinion if it could be swayed. What am I to tell him? That she looks sullen and says nothing? I fear the young man is to be disappointed and I shall have to give him half the Realm of the Faithful after all, to mollify him.”
“Oh, no. Uncle, please!” Gul Ruh exclaimed, then sank into modest\-and tears again.
Murad laughed and repeated “ ‘Oh, no, Uncle, please’? It sounds as if she has turned him down, does it not?”
Gul Ruh managed to catch her mother’s hand with ferocity and this prompted Esmikhan to say, “Now, Brother. Don’t be a tease. You may tell the young man to make his preparations for—for the earliest day at his convenience.”
“It will be my pleasure,” Murad said. “And though the treasury is already broken by this circumcision, I think we can find enough to get together a wedding at least to match yours. Sister. And there will be an Ottoman heir or two to grace it, besides.”
Gul Ruh quickly kissed her uncle’s hem in gratitude.
“My only worry now is...” Murad folded his hands and looked sharply at Gul Ruh over them. “Just how these two young people came to be of such a common mind. I fear a leak in the security of my harem and that, khadim, is your department.”
The sharp, dark eyes of the Shadow of Allah fell on me. I could feel them, but I couldn’t meet them, and that must declare my guilt. The entire world must be guilty in his presence.
The Sultan laughed. “Still, if you will assure me my honor has nothing to fear by this match—”
I assured him quickly.
“Then be off with you, girl,” the Sultan said, planting a quick kiss on each of his niece’s eyes, “and may you be as happy a wife as you are a bride.”
So Abd ar-Rahman and Gul Ruh were married before the summer reached its peak, and my young lady went off with a whole train of slaves and eunuchs to be her own mistress—under Umm Kulthum, of course. Had she not been so overjoyed by the prospects for her future, she might have spent more time rejoicing at what a relief it was to escape the Serai.
Safiye had the good grace to realize when she had been defeated fairly and honestly. I think her only consternation was that it should have been innocence and virtue
