“Why don’t you come and live with us permanently, Esmikhan Sultan?” Umm Khulthum asked every time we arrived, every time we left.
I wondered the same myself, even though my lady gave the ritual response over and over: “A woman belongs in her brother’s harem if she cannot have her husband’s. Or her father’s.”
We’d stay for weeks on end, sometimes the whole month of Ramadhan. But in the end we always returned under Murad’s roof. Under Safiye’s. I’ll confess I sometimes ached to return to the imperial harem for the quiet. But that was water stilled by terror. In truth, I would never trade that quiet for the rowdy joy.
I know for a fact that Abd ar-Rahman could hardly keep away, obliged to run his hands all day over the dull, unyielding rind of the melon. Every day when his work was done, he would run almost like a schoolboy, even as the passing years made him stout. He would run to revivify himself in that happy chaos. Would Gul Ruh have had so many children? Or bloomed so happily with each one if it had been otherwise? No guilt festered in her singing heart. No regret. No neglect. No unfulfilled ambition.
But I think I need say no more of that. It is a private joy. In fact, it is haram, prohibited, sacred. To allow men’s eyes to pry, to reduce to black-and-white chronicles, has been an evil I gave my manhood—and my life—to guard against. To expose it further would allow the blood-soaked ills of the outer world to intrude. And I, who had to straddle both worlds, appreciated as perhaps no harem denizen could, that sanctuary was a hallowed privilege, a great blessing of the One Creator.
So—this brings us to the Sultan. In fact, many may wonder that I have not mentioned Murad before. But was Murad actually Sultan at all? I have certainly suggested otherwise. And the chroniclers suggest it, too, when they call this era euphemistically “The Reign of the Favored Women”.
Murad, in fits of pique whenever he discovered his own weakness, would sometimes insist on flexing what was left of his power by deposing or beheading one Grand Vizier after another. But Safiye was always careful to have another man waiting in the wings, a flatterer to the Sultan long enough to get in, her man entirely the moment the clouds seemed to have lifted and Murad had retreated again to his artists and his poets.
The Sultan went from illuminating to composing poetry to playing the oud. His was a nature weaned on opium and convinced that the arts were the only truth in the world. Yet ever and again he found that truth to be as elusive as a desert mirage. And no matter what joy it gave him, sooner or later art would turn to politics in his—as he sometimes called them in a fury—”leprous Ottoman hands.” Sooner or later a music instructor would begin asking other favors-—for his nephew, his cousin. The poet came to have something else besides ethereal images on his mind and weighted his verse with flattery and untruth.
“But a poet, too, must eat!”
I remember the last time I saw Sultan Murad alive. Unexpected as the sighting was, yet unlike the case of Nur Banu his mother, the sovereign gave no indication of his approaching fate.
LXIV
It was on the Night of Power and I can imagine how upset Safiye was that Murad would not spend it with some hand-picked virgin of hers. But Murad had come to take the dervishes’ view: Union with the Almighty was more auspicious.
I’d been watching the faces in the tekke that night with more than usual interest. I don’t suppose I really expected my friend Hajji to put in an appearance. He had not done so for many years now. I was told he’d gone on a pilgrimage to the land of the Afghans and had not been seen since. But if he would deign to visit—or to send someone in his place—this, of all nights of the year, would be the one.
The circle of faces whirled around, losing their natural solidity and individuality, sending off sparks like fireworks, sparks that did not soar and burn out, but continued to glow as they fused with neighbors and then rose to fuse with Infinity. Still, with its, last shred of individuality I recognized one of the faces. I recognized it with a start, and my first reflex was to think it was my friend. Only Hajji’s face would have seemed more startling there because I had given up all hope of ever seeing it again.
Second glance assured me it was not Hajji. It was the face of none other than Murad, the Sultan of all the Faithful. The Grand Turk was neither getting heirs that night, as was his legal right, to capture fortune for his people, nor eating and drinking in royal style. Rather, here he was in the tekke, allowing, inviting, profane hands to touch his person—gestures that might be met with death if attempted elsewhere—and losing his royal self in the greater Self.
How many of the other brethren also recognized him I do not know. None gave a flicker of profane recognition although they took him in wholly as one of those who seeks, souls who recognize one another the world over.
With the whirl of the dance we were brought side by side. I took his hand, stripped of gold and gems for the night, and forgot eternal love for a moment. Not only did I think. This hand has power of life and death over me and everyone else in this room. But I also remembered a
