The Islam Quintet

by Tariq Ali

  When the Sultan observed that his friend remained silent, he became genuinely concerned. He inquired after his health. He offered to summon his own physician. Yusuf Pasha thanked him, but declined the offer. He looked around him and saw nothing but slave-girls and eunuchs. This was not new, but on that particular day it annoyed our ancestor. Nobody knows why. After a long silence, he asked the Sultan for permission to speak and it was granted.

  “O great ruler and fount of all wisdom, Sultan of the civilised world and Caliph of our faith, this servant craves your forgiveness. The fickle muse has deserted me and no verse enters this empty head today. With your permission I will become a story-teller tonight, but I urge your sublime majesty to listen carefully, for that of which I am about to speak is true.”

  The Sultan was by now genuinely curious and the entire Court swayed as it leant forward to hear Yusuf Pasha’s words.

  “Five hundred and thirty-eight years before the birth of the Christian saint, Jesus, there was a powerful Empire in Persia. On its throne there sat a great king by the name of Cyrus. In that auspicious year Cyrus was proclaimed King of Kings in Babylon, a region now ruled by our own great and wise Sultan. That year the Great Persian Empire appeared invincible. It dominated the world. It was admired for its toleration. The Persians accepted all worshippers, respected all customs and, in their new territories, they adapted themselves to the different schemes of governing. All appeared to be well. The Empire flourished, dealing with its enemies like an individual swatting a flea.

  “Two hundred years later the heirs of Cyrus had become the pawns of eunuchs and women. The satraps of the Empire had become disloyal. Its officials, corrupt, callous and inefficient. The enormous riches of Mesopotamia saved the Empire from collapse, but the longer it was delayed, the more overwhelming it was when it finally happened. And thus it was that the Greeks gained influence. Their language spread. And thus it was that long before the birth of Alexander the route of his conquest had already been built.

  “Then one year, without any warning, ten thousand Greek soldiers slew their Persian patron, made their officers prisoners and marched from the city we now call Baghdad to Anatolia. Nothing stood in their way. And soon people began to realise that if only ten thousand soldiers could do this, then rulers and leaders were unnecessary...”

  Yusuf Pasha had not yet finished his story, but the sight of the Sultan’s face interrupted his flow. He fell silent and dared not look his ruler in the eye. The Sultan developed a rage, rose to his feet and stormed out of the room. Yusuf Pasha feared the worst. All he had intended was to warn the friend of his youth against sloth and sensuality and the suffocating influence of eunuchs. He had wished to apprise his ruler of the eternal law, which teaches that nothing is eternal. Instead the Sultan had taken the story as an ill-omened reference to the Ottoman dynasty. To himself. Anyone else would have been executed, but it was probably shared childhood memories that favoured the quality of mercy. Yusuf Pasha was punished very lightly. He was exiled from Istanbul. For ever. The Sultan did not wish to be in the same city as him. And that is how he came here with his family to this isolated wilderness surrounded by ancient rocks and decided that it was here that he would build his palace in exile. He yearned for the old city, but he never saw the Bosporus again.

  They say that the Sultan, too, missed his company and often yearned for his presence, but the courtiers, who had always been jealous of Yusuf Pasha’s influence, made sure that the two friends never saw each other again. That’s all. Does that satisfy you, my little pigeon? And you, Orhan, will you remember what I have said and repeat it to your children one day, when I am dead and gone?’

  Orhan smiled and nodded. I maintained an expressionless face. I knew my father had spoken half-truths. I had heard other stories about Yusuf Pasha from aunts and uncles belonging to another branch of our family, children of a great-uncle whom my father loathed and whose children were never encouraged to visit us here or in Istanbul.

  They had told tales that were far more exciting, much more real and infinitely more convincing. They spoke of how Yusuf Pasha had fallen in love with the Sultan’s favourite white slave, and of how they had been caught while copulating. The slave had been executed on the spot and his genitals fed to the dogs outside the royal kitchen. Yusuf Pasha, according to this version, had been whipped in public and sent away to live out the rest of his life in disgrace. Perhaps my father’s version was also true. Perhaps no single narrative could explain our ancestor’s fall from grace. Or perhaps nobody knew the real reason and all the existing versions were false.

  Perhaps.

  I had no desire to offend my father after such a long estrangement and so I refrained from questioning him further. I had upset him a great deal all those years ago by falling in love with a visiting school inspector, running away with him, becoming his wife, carrying his children and appreciating his poetry, which I now realise was very bad, but which at the time had sounded beautiful. Poetry, alas, had always been Dmitri’s true profession, but he had to earn a living. That is why he had started teaching. In this way he could earn some money and look after his mother. His father had died in Bosnia, fighting for our Empire. It was the soft voice in which he recited his poems that had first touched my heart.

  All this had happened in Konya, where I had been staying with the family of my best friend. She had shown me the delights of Konya. We had seen the tombs of the old Seljuk kings and peeped inside the Sufi houses. It was here that I had first met Dmitri. I was seventeen years old at the time and he was almost thirty.

  I wanted to escape from the stifling atmosphere of my house. Dmitri and his poetry appeared as the road to happiness. For a while I was happy, but it had never been enough to obscure the pain I felt at being banished from my family home. I missed my mother and soon I began to ache for the comfort of our home. More than everything else, I missed the summers here, in this house overlooking the sea.

  I had wanted to leave home, but on my own terms. My father’s edict declaring me an outlaw had come as a real blow. I hated him then. I hated his narrow-mindedness. I hated the way he treated my brothers and especially Halil, who, like the spirited stallion he was, refused to be disciplined. My father would whip him sometimes in front of the whole family. That was when I hated my father the most. But Halil’s spirit remained unbroken. My father regarded Halil as a lazy, disrespectful anarchist and was, as a result, astounded when Halil enlisted in the army and because of his family history was rapidly promoted and assigned to duties in the palace.

  Iskander Pasha doubted his younger son’s motives and in this he was not so far wrong. Father could be ever so refined and elegant in the Parisian salons where he served as ambassador from the Sublime Porte to the French Republic for many years. That is what we were told by my older brother, Salman, who had been permitted to accompany him and had received his higher education at the Academy in Paris, which made him a lover of all things French, except its men.

  Whenever Father returned to Istanbul with new pieces of furniture and fabrics and paintings of naked women for the western portion of the house, and perfumes for his wives, our spirits would lift. Halil would whisper, “Perhaps, this time, he has become a modern.” We would all giggle in great anticipation. Perhaps there would be a New Year’s Eve Ball in our house. We would wear dresses and dance and drink champagne, just like our father and Salman did in Paris and Berlin. Idle dreams. Life never changed. In the familiar environment of his city and his country, Father reverted to the behaviour and mannerisms of a Turkish aristocrat.

  This was the first time since my runaway marriage that I had been invited to return to our old summer house, but only with Orhan. Dmitri and my adorable little Emineh stayed at home. Perhaps next year, my mother promised. Perhaps never, I had shouted angrily. My mother visited me three times, but always in secret, bringing clothes for the children and money for me. She acted as an intermediary and, slowly, relations with my father had been restored. We began to communic
ate with each other. After two years of exchanging polite and unbearably formal letters, he asked me to bring Orhan to the summer house. I’m glad I did as he had asked. I had been close to refusing his request. I wanted to insist that I would not see him unless I could bring my daughter as well, but Dmitri, my husband, convinced me that I was being foolish and headstrong. Now, I’m glad I did not let pride stand in the way. If I had apologised for my defiance and pleaded my case at his feet, I would have been forgiven a long time ago. Contrary to the impression I may have created, Iskander Pasha was neither a cruel nor a vindictive man. He was a creature of his time, strict and orthodox in his approach to us.

  That first night, when Orhan was asleep, I left the house and walked through the orchards, the familiar smell of thyme and the pepper tree reviving many old memories. The Stone Woman was still there and I found myself whispering to her.

  “I’ve come back, Stone Woman. I’ve come back with a little boy. I missed you, Stone Woman. There were many things I could not tell my husband. Nine years is a long time to go without speaking of one’s longings.”

  Three days after my father told Orhan the story of Yusuf Pasha, he suffered a stroke. The door of his bedroom was half open. The windows leading to the balcony were wide open and a gentle breeze had brought with it the sweet smell of lemons. My mother always went into his room early in the morning to open the windows so that he could smell the sea. That morning she had entered the room and found him breathing strangely, lying on his side. She turned his body round. His face was mute and pale. His eyes were staring into the distance and she knew, instinctively, that they were searching for something outside this life. He had felt death’s chill and he did not wish to prolong his life.

  He was paralysed, unable to move his legs, incapable of speech and, if his eyes were an indication, praying to Allah every conscious minute to bring his presence in this world to an end. Allah ignored his pleas and slowly, very slowly, Iskander Pasha began to recover. Life returned to his legs. With the help of Petrossian he began to walk again, but his powers of speech were gone for ever. We would never hear his voice again. His demands and commands were henceforth written on small pieces of paper and brought to us on a little silver tray.

  And so it came about that every day, after the evening meal, a group of us would gather in the old room with the balcony overlooking the sea. Once everyone was comfortably seated, Father would sip some tea from the corner of his mouth—his face had been cruelly affected by the stroke—and while Petrossian’s grandson, Akim, gently massaged his feet, he would lie back and insist that we tell him stories.

  It had never been easy to relax in my father’s presence. He had always been a demanding man. Ever intolerant of even the mildest form of criticism directed against his own conduct, past or present, he was always finding fault in others.

  My brothers and sister, who had been summoned to his bedside from different parts of the Empire, were convinced that his affliction would make him more tolerant. I was sure they were wrong.

  TWO

  The family begins to assemble; the Baron makes an impressive entrance; Salman’s melancholy

  I WAS LYING IN bed in a darkened room, a cold compress covering my face and forehead. I was resting to soothe a dull headache that refused to go away. That was the day Salman and Halil arrived to see our speechless father. I was not on the terrace with the rest of the family and all the servants to see them disembark from our old coach, which, flanked on each side by six cavalrymen, had transported them from Istanbul. I was later told by my mother how the sight of my father sitting motionless on a large chair had shaken both men. They had fallen to their knees on either side of him and kissed his hands. It was Halil, in his general’s uniform, who was the first to realise that silences can easily become oppressive.

  “I’m pleased you’re still alive, Ata. Heaven alone could have helped me if Allah had decided to make us orphans. This brute of a brother of mine would have ordered Petrossian to strangle me with a silken cord.”

  The thought was so ridiculous that a smile appeared on the face of the old man, a signal for the loud laughter from the entire assembly that woke me so rudely. But the headache had disappeared and I jumped out of bed, wet my face with water and ran downstairs to greet them. I arrived in time to see Halil take Orhan in his arms. He tickled the boy’s neck with his moustache and then threw him up into the air, hugging him warmly as he came down again. Then he introduced Orhan to the uncle he had never seen. Orhan looked at the new uncle with a shy smile and Salman awkwardly patted the boy on the head.

  I had not seen Salman for nearly fifteen years. He had left home when I was thirteen. I remembered him as tall and slim with thick black hair and a deep, melodious voice. I was startled when I first glimpsed his silhouette on the terrace. For a moment I thought it was Father. Salman had aged. He was not yet fifty, but his hair was grey and thin. He seemed shorter than when I last saw him. His body had grown larger, his face was over-fleshed, he walked with a slight stoop and his eyes were sad. Cruel Egypt. Why had it aged him thus? We embraced and kissed. His voice was distant.

  “And now you’re a mother, Nilofer.”

  Those were the only words he spoke to me that day. His tone had expressed surprise, as if bringing children into the world had somehow become a novelty. For some reason Salman’s tone and his remark irritated me. I’m not sure why this was so, but I remember feeling slightly angry. Perhaps because it suggested a refusal to see or treat me as a grown woman. I was still a child in his eyes. Before I could think of a suitably cutting reply, Petrossian had taken him away for a private audience with our father.

  Then it was Halil’s turn. He had never lost contact with us and made a point of communicating regularly with Orhan’s father. He had been of great help to us during bad times, making sure we were properly fed and clothed after Dmitri and most of the Greeks in Konya had been deprived of their livelihood as a punishment. I had last seen Halil when he arrived without warning on a beautiful spring afternoon in Konya. Orhan was three years old at the time, but he never forgot his uncle, or rather the moustache, which always irritated him. I looked at Halil. He was as handsome as ever and the uniform suited him. I often wondered how it had happened that the most mischievous member of my family had accepted the disciplines and routines of the army. As he embraced me, he whispered.

  “I’m glad you came. Did he tell Orhan a story?”

  I nodded.

  “Yusuf Pasha?”

  “Who else?”

  “Which version?”

  We laughed.

  As we were about to follow the rest of the family into the house, Halil noticed the rising dust on the distant track that led to our house. It had to be another carriage, but whom did it contain? Iskander Pasha was known throughout his family for his antisocial habits and his bad temper. As a consequence, very few people arrived at our Istanbul house uninvited and I can’t remember anyone ever coming here. Traditional hospitality was alien to my father as far as his own extended family was concerned. He was particularly hostile to his first cousins and their progeny, but could also be distant from his brothers. Because of all this, unexpected visitors had always been a pleasant surprise for us when we were children, especially Uncle Kemal, who never arrived without a coach full of presents.

  “Is someone else expected today?”

  “No.”

  Halil and I stayed on the terrace waiting for the coach to arrive. We looked at each other and giggled. Who dared arrive at our father’s house in such a fashion? When we were very small, the house had belonged to Grandfather and at that time it was always full of guests. Three bedrooms were always kept in a state of readiness for Grandfather’s closest friends, who walked in and out at their own pleasure. The entire staff was aware that they could arrive any day and at any hour, accompanied by their own manservants. That was a long time ago. Soon after my father had been given this house, he had made it clear that Grandfather’s old friends were not welcome. This created
a scandal in the family. Grandmother had objected and in unusually strong language for her, but my father remained adamant. His style was different and he had never liked the lechers who hung around the house during his father’s time, making life miserable for the more attractive maidservants.

  The carriage drew up, and we recognised the coachman and the manservant perched next to him. Halil chuckled as we walked down the stairs to greet our father’s older brother, Memed Pasha, and his friend, Baron Jakob von Hassberg. Both men, now in their early seventies, appeared in good health. Their complexions, usually very pale, had been touched by the sun. They were dressed in cream-coloured summer suits and straw hats, but the cut was not identical. Each believed firmly in the superiority of his own tailor. My father could never conceal his irritation when these two men discussed their clothes. Halil saluted the Prussian fondly and respectfully kissed his uncle’s hand.

  “Welcome to your house, Uncle and you, too, Baron. An unexpected pleasure. We had no idea you were in the country.”

  “Nor did we till we arrived,” replied Memed Pasha. “The train from Berlin was late as usual.”

  “Only after it had crossed the Ottoman frontier, Memed,” interjected the Baron. “You must be fair. It arrived in perfect time at the border. We are very proud of our trains.”