“But there were my mother’s arms. ‘Esther, Esther,’ she crooned. Esther, that was my name. She placed on my head a crown made of woven palm. ‘Esther. Esther. Queen.’ And the darkness of Haman vanished. There was calm. And smiling. And sweet food. And finally, wonderfully, sleep, safe sleep to the sounds of ancient, ancient songs with words I do not know. Only the melodies linger. I always thought...I always thought, since that night...”
Here the singsong stammered to a self-conscious halt.
“Lady, what did you think?” the Hungarian had recovered enough to ask.
Nur Banu’s tone was more prosaic now and matter-of-fact. “In my saddest days, when I was sold and hungry, cold and alone, I would always remember that night, that crown. ‘Esther the Queen,’ I remembered, and I knew I was born for higher things. And you see, here I am. I can pin this diadem into your lovely black hair and it is not simple palm but real, emeralds and pearls. No, keep it on, my child. It’s for you. A gift. To remember this evening by as I remember that one so long ago. A queen. My sweet little cloud from a foreign land, rise and be a queen.”
And they did and went back into the festivities.
I have often wondered if the fact that that crown was real made the feeling it could convey to the heart less real in the more important realm of the mystical.
* * *
It was another night not too much later in the same month that I happened to be out in the streets breaking my fast on some sherbet bought of a street vendor. Since sundown he had been turning such a thriving business that he hadn’t had to clink his glasses together once for advertisement. Who should happen to be just behind me in line but Ghazanfer?
We exchanged polite salaams and then I asked, formally rather than from real interest, whether there was anything serious that caused him to be out instead of feasting at home.
“I was at the Fatih Mosque,” he explained.
“Come, come, my friend! This is Ramadhan,” I said. “We sit famished in the mosque all day, drowsing to the recitations, trying to find the strength to be interested in the relics which are on display these days and no others. But once the sun sets...”
“I had a vow to fulfill.”
I saw at once that the holiday had made me more jovial than I had meant it to, or than Ghazanfer was able to imbibe at the moment. He bade me good holy days and then went on his way. It was only afterwards that I realized what events lay behind the brief lines he had given me. I remembered then that he had made a vow to donate enough money to feed all the children of the orphanage associated with the Fatih Mosque for a year should his mistress be safely delivered.
Safiye had had her baby, then. And since I hadn’t heard the cannon boom from the fortress except to greet sunset, I knew it was a girl, and the fusiliers would put off announcement of the humiliating fact with three blasts until the morrow.
Safiye had paid the doctor a lesser price—but Ghazanfer had paid Allah all. The child’s name was set in the harem book as Fatima. Another simple, pious name. I guessed who’d had a hand in that naming.
Safiye’s face was not as black with shame as one might have expected. I noticed this at once the next time I saw her. It was the final feast of the holy month, and we’d been invited to spend it at the palace.
But why should she be downcast? Her Mitra was also carrying the Sultan’s child, and with the Venetian doctor to oversee the pregnancy from the beginning, it was sure to be male. Mitra was in such favor that, despite her condition, Murad insisted that she spend every night of the holy month with him. She had so enlivened his interest in the arts that when she was not in the presence, it was his old poets and musicians he called for, no other girl.
Even on the twenty-seventh night, the Night of Power, Mitra had been at his side, reciting in her sweet Persian singsong. Most men refrain from visiting their harems on this most holy night of the year. This is the night when Allah took all creation in His Hand, gave them their fates, and then demanded, “Who is your Lord?” To which we are all said to have replied, “Thou art, O Lord.” A visit to the harem might, I suppose, make some men give divinity a different answer.
To the Sultan, however, this sober prohibition does not extend. Should he sire a child on this night, it is seen as one destined to be very powerful indeed.
“So even though we knew already that Allah had filled her womb, we were very thrilled and flattered by Murad’s choice,” Safiye explained. Mitra had been returned to the harem now and Safiye sat holding the girl’s hand and speaking as if for both.
Safiye, dressed in lush ruby reds set with golds, riveted the eye with her beauty. She had already regained her former willowy figure: No one would ever guess she was the mother of three—and the little dead prince besides.
Mitra herself did not look so well, although in the glare of her mistress few would
