When the girl was healthy, which was most of the time, Esmikhan needed something to fret about and she found it in her daughter’s hair. True, it was not curly, thick, and luxurious, “strong” hair, as fashion preferred. “You’ll have to eke it out with skeins of black wool when you are older,” Esmikhan told her daughter with a sigh nearly every day. But it grew long instead and the two braids which bounced behind her that afternoon seemed to have life of their own that heavier hair could never possess, and life of a more ethereal sort. No thicker than heddle ends, still when they flew, they could set the sleepiest old cat in the weaver’s shop to playing.
Gul Ruh was playing with Muhammed the Prince who was, I think, at our house more often than his own, at least as often as he could escape his tutors. That afternoon their play was even livelier than usual, for they were joined by Arab Pasha.
Arab Pasha was the son of the old black slave woman who had served Sokolli Pasha before I even came. Although deaf and nearly blind, she seemed to shed twenty years to have him home again. I’m not good at picking out features when they’re set in dusk, but I’ve never doubted that old AH was his father. Still, some gossiped that Sokolli himself had sired the man in a time when a purchased African was all the progeny he hoped to ever deserve.
It is true that Sokolli Pasha had given Arab Pasha all the advantages a father could: a splendid education among the palace pages and then the influence to secure him the best posts. Yet, had the young man not had so much intrinsic ability, I’m sure Sokolli wouldn’t have seen him past a scullery job. Now that he had earned three horsetails to his standard practically on his own, Arab Pasha was the name the Grand Vizier had put forward as the new governor of Cyprus to replace Muzzaffer.
My master admired and loved (in as far as he was capable of such emotion) the young pasha; while neither beauty nor weakness moved him, ability always did. My young mistress in her own, much more open way, adored him, as sister never loved brother before, and it was her name for him, “Brabi,” given before she could talk straight, that composed half her shrieks around the fountain that afternoon.
From the breast of his shirt, Gul Ruh had stolen Arab Pasha’s pouch of Turkish tobacco. They were playing keep-away all around the fountain with it, and the girl, who had Muhammed on her side, managed to keep ahead of the pasha’s great long legs for quite some time on her dancing thin ones.
Prince Muhammed thought by his devotion to win back some of his adored cousin’s attention, which always suffered when the black man came home. The prince served her long and well in the fray and then could not understand why, when the pasha cheated and won—leaping right over the fountain with his long black legs and pouncing on the girl like a panther—why she curled and giggled in his arms as if they had been conspirators from the first.
Initially, Gul Ruh struggled, leaping like a little puppy after a table scrap for the pouch the young Pasha held high over his head. She had force enough to tumble him, with her on top, to a seat upon the fountain’s edge. Here tickling and toying slaps fell exhausted at last to a cozy embrace, with her head on his shoulder and her hand still in the breast of his caftan. I noticed the contrast of skins: hairless white against the thick, curled black.
Muhammed sat to one side of the pair like a discarded cloak by the bedside; I couldn’t escape the image. He scuffed his crimson slipper against the flags and whined from time to time, “Gul Ruh. Gul Ruh. Let’s play...”
Then the master arrived. He entered by the same archway I had. A few steps behind me, he said, “Ah, Arab, I was just—”
A few steps beyond me he stopped stock still for a moment. Then another moment passed. He had taken the scene in and knew what he must do. His only struggle now was with his own awkwardness. He could command armies, but this put a blinding glare in others’ eyes and in his own at how helpless he was in the shadows of the harem. Times like this made him wish that between this awkwardness and the last he’d taken some time out from the Divan and the training field to practice these black arts.
“Daughter, come here,” he said.
The two faces, the white and the black, looked up from themselves, startled not only by the sound but by the recollection that there were other people in the world. Once over her shock, Gul Ruh smiled and luxuriated her head back against the young pasha’s shoulder.
“Hello, Papa,” she cooed.
The uncomfortable softness her voice gave him put an edge on his. “I said, come here.”
Her eyes grew big with wonder, almost—should it be?—fear. She got to her feet and came to stand before him. A single toss of his head said, “To the harem.”
She went, her braids as stiff as rods. The only backwards look she dared was for her father.
The Grand Vizier now motioned me to him. That was easier. I was at least half a man. He took my elbow as if for support,
