My heart leapt to panic pace again as I heard those words and recalled what my hopeless, before-prayer task had been. It was only with the greatest effort that I beat my heart to a calm and made myself stand and hear the end of his tale.
“After I fled the building and was already lending a hand with the water,” the fellow said, “I remembered them. The storeroom was thick with smoke when I got there. The smells—I cannot tell you. It was as if a Bedouin were cooking—no art, they cannot keep from burning everything. Scorched rice, blackened joints. The jugs of very fine oil in the corner leapt to a blaze that water would only spread.
“But I found the casket and brought it out. The closest exit, towards the kitchens, was now totally engulfed in flames. Like a straw sucking up a lemon-orange colored sherbet, they came so fast I could hardly turn before the smoke was affecting me terribly. Just at the door, I tumbled to the ground. A janissary-—may Allah forever favor him—saw me and pulled me feet first from the flames. But not until the casket I clutched in my hands like life itself became so hot that it took my baked-on skin with it.”
I winced and murmured some blessing upon him.
He braved another grimace-smile, and continued, “But, praises to Him, it has pleased Allah to send a favorable outcome to this little history. The physicians have great hope for my hands, and the dates, though somewhat melted as if they’d been baked inside a pastry, are sound—or at least they were when I left them. Still, knowing with whom I left them—-”
I interrupted here, as calmly as possible, to tell him why his story did not have a happy ending. “The young Prince will never enjoy those dates at the hand of his mother,” I said, “and your brave sacrifice was in vain.
To my surprise, the man laughed. “Well, from his mother, yes...” Then he stopped himself because here in the open with the harem just a rose hedge away, one couldn’t gossip as freely as in the closed storeroom of the kitchen. “Let me tell you what I did then.”
I saw he had not understood the import of my message. The heir to the Ottoman throne was dead, and with him my pretty little mistress, the joy of all our lives. But before I could say so in so many words, he continued.
“As soon as I regained some sense after my ordeal, I sat with the casket between my knees and I grew angry. All I went through—and for what? That woman—whichever one it would be in the end, the mother or the grandmother—she would give me a ghrush or two for my pains and take the prize to the boy to win the glory for herself. As if she had dived into the flames to get them!
“‘Fool! Fool!’ I cursed myself. ‘You may be a cripple for life, set out on the street with no pension to beg, and no one will ever hear of you again.’
“Then I thought. By Allah, there is so much confusion here. Surely everyone will consider it a miracle that these dates were saved and got to the Prince’s hand at all. They will never stop to care by whose offices. But if I give them to the Prince myself, he will remember me as the others would not. He will remember me when, Allah willing, he is Sultan. He would never let me go begging then.
“And just then, as luck would have it, whom should I spy but the young Prince Muhammed and his lady cousin.”
“You’ve seen them since the fire!” I cried. “Alive?”
“Oh, very much alive, Allah bless them. They’d heard the fuss and come running to see. They were really a nuisance to the firefighters as well as a danger to themselves. Here is something I can do, I thought, to help the struggle, even though my hands are now useless.
“So I went at once and salaamed before the young Prince and offered him my gift. Then, as I led them out of harm’s way, I told the two of them something of how I’d saved the casket.” (Knowing him, he probably drew it out with great detail.) “The little lady—oh, such a tender soul! She wept so delicately at the tale, and, though the Prince, being so superior, was at first loath to say anything to me, she insisted that I honor them with my company.”
“You have been with them?”
“The honor was mine, I assure you. If nursemaiding is always this pleasant, I wonder that it is not the most sought-after job in the Empire.”
“Where were you?”
“Down at the bottom of the garden.”
“At the end of the garden!” Why hadn’t we thought to look there? Perhaps because it was the safest place.
“In such a pretty little bower...”
“How long?”
“Oh, hours and hours. I only left them when the sun began to sink and I knew I must pray soon.”
“Are they at the end of the garden now?”
“Well, I don’t know.” The man seemed surprised at my eagerness. “I told them they should try and find their mothers. They might be worrying now that it was coming dark.”
“Oh, if you only knew!”
“You know, his highness, the young Prince, let me have a bite of one of those dates. The young lady held it for me, and fed me like a little bird so I wouldn’t injure my hands. I tell you, I shall not taste anything so divine ‘til I, with Allah’s favor, enter Paradise. And when I got up to leave, the young Prince rose on his feet, to his full height—oh, and he looked the very embodiment of his great-grandfather, Suleiman, may Allah have mercy on him.
‘By Allah,’ he said, ‘and you, Gul Ruh, are my witness. I swear this day that when I, by divine favor, wear the sword of my father Othman, I shall not forget this man
