On the islands, too, there is no natural water. The water caught in cisterns and barrels during the winter rains was stagnant by summer, and that caused disease and death of a different and no more pleasant sort.
No. Once again events proved that the best thing to do against the plague was nothing. Best to stay where one was and wait it out, trusting to Allah. Even if a body—the Merciful One forbid it—did take sick and die, there was this consolation. Those that die of the plague, like those who fall on the battlefield in the cause of the Faith or women who die in childbirth for the life of a new infant Muslim, all are counted martyrs and taken at once to sweet-scented gardens in Paradise.
The Mufti, Sheikh al-Islam, was among this year’s victims. An old man, we all knew it would be only a matter of time before the fever killed him; he had no strength to fight it off as youth sometimes has, if Allah wills. But the news seemed to us a great justice, if not an actual joy. His position and somber learning, though evidence of great piety and favor of the Almighty, had always seemed to lack the full assurance of martyrdom since he’d allowed himself to be swayed by Selim into taking Cyprus. Now that the crown of death seemed inevitable and well deserved, our whole household removed to his home. The contagion of such holiness was something no one wanted to miss.
My master sat up in the room where the man lay dying, amidst the smell of sickness and fumes of garlic and sage burnt to ease the way to Paradise if the not pestilence. Here disciples droned a night-and-day recitation of the Koran. The local imam tried out phrases for the eulogy while the old ears were still alive to hear and praise it. And the Mufti’s sons and a host of friends came and went as time permitted them, taking turns sitting at his side, holding his hand, renewing the wet cloth on his forehead, and exchanging conversation on topics hardly different from the somber, reverent ones the man’s dignity had always required.
My master had great respect for the man. Although their opinions in the Divan had not always coincided, Sokolli Pasha appreciated the fact that it was only on a single occasion—when the page boy lay writhing with death, pinned through the heart to the floor—that the Mufti had been influenced by anything but the most pious and learned considerations. That was more than could be said of any of the others.
The Mufti and my master were the only ones left in the high chambers of government who had served under the magnificent Suleiman and remembered what it was like before the word bribery was even considered. The choice of a new Mufti lay with the religious institution and not with the palace. Nonetheless, my master could not help but think that the face of the medrese had changed since his dying friend Hamid had been elevated. The heavily bearded scholars in attendance at the death told beads not of glass or simple quartz but of lapis lazuli and gold. And Sokolli Pasha recognized among those present some who were little better than the purchased slaves of the Sultan, Uweis, and even Nur Banu.
Sokolli spoke aloud to his dying friend of his most secret concerns. “What shall happen when you are gone, dear friend?” I suppose he realized this was the last time he would be allowed such luxury.
“What will happen will be Allah’s will,” the Mufti said, no less pious in death than he had been in life.
The lesser scholars continued to drop their beads in unison with the rich sound of a woman’s jewelry case. They said nothing, but, as my master told me later, it was clear they would not forget this scene in days to come, when the choosing of the successor took place.
We of the harem were, of course, forbidden direct access to the man in the process of attaining martyrdom. We waited out the time with his wife and daughters. Here things were not quite so somber, and not quite so charged with intrigue.
Umm Kulthum, a woman with the appearance of a fat-tailed sheep, was a faithful wife, but two more different temperaments can hardly be imagined. To his stability, she was flighty, to his reason, emotion. She could not even stumble her way through the simple Arabic of the Fatiha without coaching, whereas he was famous for having had the entire Koran memorized by age ten. It is certain that without the harem curtains to divide their worlds, they never would have lasted so many long years together.
Now in the final analysis the only ill effect of this union of opposites might have been to confirm the Mufti in his opinion—easily gained from much of his reading—that all women were silly and hardly to be trusted with the serious demands of religion. What color, if any, this may have painted on his judgments throughout his life no longer seemed of importance, however. The next Mufti might just as well have a harem full of understanding and true religion—no less easy to endure without the division between them, but every bit as likely to influence his opinions.
It was clear that Umm Kulthum’s mourning would be wild and intemperate. But it was also clear grief would not begin until her eunuchs brought the word of the actual death. Until then, sorrow, like her religion, was based mainly on outward forms—which must be just so, of course, like the proper, most fashionable
