Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

  But the cars were all gone. As were their pursuers.

  Only they weren’t alone.

  Alarmed voices and shrieks testified to that.

  Kamal and Nisreen turned to where the voices were coming from, farther down the lakeshore, to see a gaggle of people—adults and children, two or three families maybe, with a few servants attending to them—picnickers enjoying a day out until it had been disrupted by the sudden appearance of a naked couple.

  “Bok,” Kamal muttered.

  The men in the picnic party were already on their feet, gesturing and yelling angrily at Kamal and Nisreen, while the women were moving to shield the children’s eyes while turning away themselves.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kamal said as he did a quick scan of their surroundings. It was pretty much as he remembered it, except for four cars parked by the edge of the tree line in the shade, closer to his and Nisreen’s position than to the picnickers.

  Old—really old—cars.

  Chrome bumpers, spoked wheels, whitewall tires, fender-mounted spare, flip-out windshield, black soft-top roof old.

  How old, he wasn’t sure. He’d never seen any on the road—only in pictures and movies and at the Imperial Science Museum.

  “There,” he said as he pointed at them.

  He bolted toward them, Nisreen on his tail, the men taking a few seconds before realizing what they were going to do and setting off after them.

  Kamal reached the nearest car and yanked its door open.

  “Get in the other side,” he blurted to Nisreen as he climbed in himself—only to be greeted by an alien sight. The car’s interior looked completely different from anything he was used to. It was literally a museum piece and had a thin, resin steering wheel; a long, spindly gear stick rising from the floor; a thin hand brake stalk rising next to it; two pedals and an unusual, smaller third one where the accelerator normally was; and a small trio of dials in the middle of the bare-bones dashboard, next to a single, basic key—a key that he now turned urgently.

  It clicked into position a quarter turn to the right, but wouldn’t go further. It also didn’t start the engine. In fact, it didn’t generate any reaction under the hood.

  He clicked it back, then turned it again.

  Still nothing.

  “What are you doing?” Nisreen asked.

  “I don’t know how to start this thing,” Kamal shot back, his eyes urgently scanning the plain dash area in front of him, searching for clues.

  He spotted a small round knob sticking out from under the edge of the dashboard. It was connected to a long cable that disappeared into the engine compartment, and he realized it might be some kind of choke. He pulled and turned it. And still got nothing.

  “There’s got to be a starter button somewhere,” he said as he searched for one.

  Nisreen was looking out the back of the car. “Hurry. They’re almost here.”

  He looked back, saw how close the men were, and decided it wasn’t going to work.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he told her as he pushed his door open. She did the same as he sprinted around the car, took her by the hand, and led her into the woods.

  The men chased after them until they reached the edge of the tree line; then they gave up.

  Kamal heard their incensed rants and insults fade away as he and Nisreen advanced farther into the forest.

  When he was finally sure they weren’t being followed, he slowed down his pace, then stopped to catch his breath. It was colder than before, especially now in the shade. The sun was paler. They’d gone back thirty thousand days, which probably didn’t equate to an exact number of years—he’d need to do the math later. It certainly didn’t feel like the height of summer, but it didn’t feel like winter either. Spring or fall, perhaps. But cooler. The air had a biting chill.

  He looked back. There was no sign of their pursuers.

  He turned to Nisreen. She had one arm across her breasts, the other hand down where her thighs met. He noticed her skin was covered in goose bumps, though he didn’t know if that was from the cold or from unease. The sight of her fully naked was a shock to him. He’d never seen her anywhere near that exposed, not given the strict norms of Ottoman society, not given that she was his brother’s wife. Over the years, he’d sometimes imagined her in that light, of course, imagined what she might look like if she were his, if they’d been together, but that’s just what it had been—his imagination. But here, now, despite everything, despite all that had happened and the dire circumstances they were in, seeing her like that was still unexpected enough to make it hard for him to tear his gaze from her.

  A gaze that Nisreen noticed.

  “Could you stop looking at me like that?”

  He snapped back to full consciousness and turned away, feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” His words stumbled over themselves and he went mute.

  Hesitantly, he turned back, wanting to catch her eye.

  She was half turned away from him but was also looking over her shoulder at him. “What?”

  “We made it,” he told her. “We’re here. Wherever—or whenever here is, anyway.”

  She nodded and breathed out with delayed relief, and looked around, taking stock of the quiet forest around them.

  “When is here, anyway?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. I had to think fast. We had to jump back to a time before we were alive or it wouldn’t work. So I thought, a hundred years, and that’s roughly 36,500 days, right? But it would have taken too long to translate. Too complicated. So I picked a round number close to it. Thirty thousand.”

  “About twenty percent less,” Kamal said. “So we’ve traveled back around eighty years?”

  “I guess so.”

  He ran a quick mental calculation. “So … around 1354?* The time of…”

  “Sultan Bayezid VI,” she told him.

  Kamal thought about it. He knew it had been a glorious era for the empire. Oil was pumping out of the Arabian desert and feeding new, hungry technologies. The empire was flush with money and enjoying a prosperous, stable period. Bayezid, Murad V’s father, was a dignified, benevolent ruler—just as Murad had turned out to be. He had promoted cultural exchanges between the empire’s diverse communities and hosted an annual interfaith symposium at his palace in Istanbul.

  “Could be worse,” Kamal said.

  “It’s cold, though. It’s not summer.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it, does it?”

  He looked around. From his vantage point, out in the middle of the Fontainebleau Forest, nothing seemed different. Elsewhere, of course, he knew things would be very, very different. For better or for worse.

  But at least they were alive, and they were free. That was what mattered most.

  That, and they were together.

  He caught himself staring at her again and averted his eyes once more. But he caught a hint of a smile on her face just as he did. “And this,” he said as he gestured up and down his body, “this was inevitable, I guess?”

  “That’s how it works,” she replied. “I told you.” Then, suddenly, a look of panic swept over her and she flicked her gaze onto her forearm. Just as quickly, she breathed out a big sigh of relief.

  “What?”

  She held it up for him to see. “It’s still there.” She stared at it again. “We have to write it down somewhere. Safeguard it. We can’t afford to lose it.”

  “We’re here now,” he said. “But yes, you’re right. We need to memorize it. Or have it tattooed.”

  She looked behind her, her expression darkening with worry. “We might need it again. They might come after us. They know the incantation.”

  “They’d have to know how far back we traveled to follow us.”

  Her face lit up with alarm. “The browser. On your phone. They could find your search history.”

  “I busted it up pretty badly. And threw it in the lake. We should be fine.”

  “It didn’t look
that deep,” she countered.

  “I doubt they saw me do it.”

  “Are you willing to bet our lives on that?”

  He frowned, angry with himself. “I should have saved a bullet for it.” He looked around. It felt too quiet. “We’d better get moving then.”

  “Where shall we go?” She hugged herself more tightly, rubbing her arms with her hands to warm them up. “We don’t have clothes or money or anything.”

  “One step at a time.” He looked up at the tree cover. There were several more hours of daylight to come. Then he gathered his bearings, came to a decision, and said, “Follow me.”

  46

  The great Fontainebleau madrasah wasn’t too far, and getting there would have been an enjoyable afternoon trek had things been different.

  Wandering through the forest with no clothes on—Kamal leading, Nisreen following—wasn’t initially too uncomfortable. Despite the chill that grew more piercing as the sun drifted downward, and even though they were totally naked, it went, to them both, from feeling unsettling and uncomfortable to oddly liberating, given the restrictive panoply of clothing they both had to wear whenever they were pretty much anywhere outside the privacy of their own homes.

  Their feet, however, didn’t quite agree with that rosy outlook.

  The ground cover was harsh. Twigs and shards of broken branches, thorns, prickly leaves and pine needles, sharp-edged rocks and chippings—not constant, but all the more irritating for triggering the occasional, unexpected jolt of pain. It was far from a smooth, moss-covered carpet. They weren’t on a well-traveled path either. They were cutting their own route through virgin ground, subjecting the two hundred thousand nerve endings in their feet to recurring abuse for hours.

  Kamal knew he could lead them in roughly the right direction, but it was the afternoon call to prayer from the mosque at Fontainebleau that proved to be their salutary beacon, a call to prayer that was accompanied by a darkening sky that soon became completely overcast. The temperature dropped, and the ambient chill grew more and more uncomfortable. They stopped briefly at a couple of small streams, drinking and using the cold water to nurse the scrapes and cuts on their feet. They had also both grown less shy and more at ease with their nudity, no longer bothering to cover themselves up.

  Kamal, walking ahead, wasn’t as aware of it as Nisreen was, but he still had to make a conscious effort to avoid staring at her too intently during their breaks.

  Nisreen’s mind, on the other hand, was grinding over far more important issues, including a disturbingly radical idea that had never really left her since she first voiced it.

  An idea she was finding hard to suppress.

  By the time the sunset call to prayer resonated across the forest, they knew they were close. The timing was fortunate. The clouds had grown darker and more dense before erupting into an angry thunderstorm. The ground became soggy with mud, and they were now shivering from the cold that was accentuated by their wet skin and hair. Trudging ahead through sheets of rain, with Nisreen covering her arm to protect the words inscribed on it from getting washed away, their advance slowed. They needed to find shelter, a place to dry off and get clothing without being seen. The rapidly encroaching darkness would be a boon in that sense, but the accompanying drop in temperature was a real concern.

  In the distance, through the trees and under a sky that was exploring the entire palette of purples and pinks, the first lights of the big madrasah came into view.

  A light fog had settled in, hugging the ground leading up to the castle. The rain was now lighter as they crept closer, cautiously, curbing the growing urgency they felt while hoping that the shadows within the dense forest would mask their presence. Coming in from the south, they took cover behind the last line of trees that bordered the grand parterre, the huge formal garden that led to the old palace.

  Kamal saw that Nisreen was now shivering badly. He was feeling it, too. His instinct was to pull her closer to warm her up, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, or even suggest it, not while they were naked. Besides, he wasn’t sure his cold, clammy skin would provide her with much warmth.

  He peered out toward the old castle. He couldn’t see any guards. He hadn’t expected to see any. This was a religious community, not an imperial palace. The sprawling complex looked placid and nonthreatening, same as he remembered it. Lights were on throughout the windows of its various wings, and Kamal could make out the occasional figure passing into view. It seemed like a normal night at the madrasah. Their prayers done, its occupants would be settling down for supper before retiring to their quarters.

  “What do you think?” Nisreen asked, her teeth now chattering from the cold.

  “We need to get to the housing wings without being seen.” He pointed ahead and left. “They used to be over on that side.”

  “Used to be,” Nisreen noted pointedly.

  “Will be, I guess,” Kamal corrected himself with a slight scoff and a little shake of the head. A long, open pathway, ceremonially lined with elm trees, led in the direction he was pointing at. “It’s too dangerous to take the path. We’d be too exposed.”

  “Make it quick. I’m freezing.”

  He scanned the area, then decided on an alternative approach. “Follow me. And stay low.”

  He led Nisreen around the soaked parterre, and, hugging the tree line, they looped farther west to reach a vast pond that led up to the palace.

  The trees around the pond were wild and left to grow right up to the water’s edge, which helped make their approach easier. They moved swiftly, with only the occasional splash of a carp darting up to the surface to feed disturbing the stillness around them.

  With the old palace now shrouded in near darkness, they slipped across the Garden of the Doves, with Nisreen following in Kamal’s footsteps. He stopped and hustled her into cover behind a large boxwood hedge to avoid a couple of strollers from the school, who were out despite the light drizzle. Once clear, they scuttled past a fountain that gurgled gently in its serene surroundings, then through a narrow passage, to reach the oval court that fronted the complex’s mosque.

  The mosque itself had grown around the old ballroom of Henry II, which had been extended along both sides of its central axis by additions that were topped by a parallel series of domes. Primaticcio and Nicolò dell’Abate’s frescoes were long gone, the pagan imagery of Vulcan, Jupiter, and Mercury replaced by tiles of geometric compositions and murals of Koranic calligraphy. Works such as the Nymph of Fontainebleau were also gone, since representations of living beings, human or animal, were banned by Islam. Some figurative imagery had survived, mostly of plants, a few of animals; across the centuries, attitudes had fluctuated depending on who sat on the throne. Some sultans had been unusually tolerant of such art, even going so far as to commission portraits of themselves to hang at the Topkapi in Istanbul. More strictly observant successors were usually quick to erase such trespasses.

  Right now, the mosque seemed vacant.

  Kamal and Nisreen crept around its perimeter to reach the southwesternmost corner of the complex, where Kamal assumed the dormitories would be.

  He was right. Behind a low wall, a few items of clothing hung tantalizingly from long clotheslines, but they were useless to them. They were soaking wet.

  Beyond the courtyard, lights shone dimly inside the windows.

  “Wait here,” he told her. “I’ll go grab what we need.”

  He was about to move off when she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Wait. What if you’re captured?”

  He put his hand on hers. “Don’t worry.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve done this kind of thing before.” Then he shrugged. “Though maybe not exactly like this.”

  “Be careful.”

  He knew, from details across her face that he couldn’t specifically pinpoint, that she was still trapped in the hellhole of what she’d been through. He smiled warmly back at her. He knew it would be a long time bef
ore he’d see a real smile infuse her face—if one ever did.

  He wasn’t exactly feeling chirpy either. The sadness and the fury were still very much there.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He left her by the edge of the woods and made his way to the wall.

  A small cast-iron gate led into the large courtyard where the clothes were hung. Kamal was careful to swing it open slowly in case it let out a squeal. It didn’t.

  Now inside the compound, he skulked up to a window that looked onto a well-lit room, and, carefully, he peered inside. A group of young men—students, no doubt—were seated on low cushions, huddled around a large platter of food set on a carpet. It was mealtime. Which meant the rooms might be unoccupied.

  He slipped down the building’s wall, past a couple more illuminated windows, until he reached one that was dark. He edged up to it and looked in. It was a large dormitory room with two sets of bunk beds, closets, and desks. There was no one inside. He tried the window, but it was closed tight, and he couldn’t pry it open. Ravaged by the cold now, he considered shattering the window, then discarded the idea, fearing the noise might alert someone inside. Instead, he kept moving, creeping farther along the wall, past several other windows until he found one that was cracked open. It gave onto a similar room, which was also dark and unoccupied.

  He climbed in. Once inside, he moved quickly to find what they needed. It wasn’t much different from what he was used to back in his time: a pair of baggy black salvar trousers, a white shirt, a tunic, and a kaftan robe, simple pieces made of plain cotton and unadorned by decorative embroidery or buttons, which he pulled on as he found them, relishing the warmth they gave him. Once dressed, he proceeded to collect clothes for Nisreen. He rummaged through the cupboards to see if any of the room’s occupants was of a smaller size than the one whose clothes he’d taken. They’d be male clothes, of course, but at that time, even more so than in his, Ottoman men’s and women’s clothing wasn’t too dissimilar, especially when it came to the everyday wear of the masses and not the ceremonial outfits of the wealthier classes. He found what he was looking for and grabbed her some trousers, a long-sleeved gomlek shirt that would reach her ankles, an entari coat that buttoned from the neck to the waist, and a dark-gray ferace robe. What he couldn’t get her was a veil; instead, he picked up an extra shirt, which she could wrap around her head.