The Islam Quintet

by Tariq Ali

  Father, looking slightly nervous, summoned Petrossian and pointed in the direction of Orhan. The gesture was understood. My sleeping Orhan was lifted gently and taken away. I now wished I had brought my little daughter Emineh here as well. I wanted her to be part of our family. Uncle Memed assumed a look of fake humility and began to speak.

  ‘I will now tell you the story of our great Albanian ancestor Enver, as it was transcribed on the dictation of his son. The document itself used to be read once every five years on the occasion of our Prophet’s birthday, when the whole family assembled to celebrate the feast. The ritual was considered necessary so that we never forgot our humble origins. Unfortunately, it was lost about fifty or sixty years ago. Some say that our grandfather Mahmut Pasha destroyed the slim bound volume because he was in the process of reinventing the history of our family and the truth, even though it was four centuries old, disconcerted him. Mahmut Pasha did manage to produce an alternative book which still sits in the library unread and unloved, though the calligraphy is exquisite.

  Those of us who have attempted to read it have given up after the second set of lies, according to which the founder of our family was of pure Arab blood and descended from the tribe of the Prophet rather than an Albanian whose first job was to clear the mounds of horse-dung that had accumulated on the edges of an Ottoman military encampment in that region. He cleared the dung with such efficiency that his prowess was noted and appreciated. He was brought back to Istanbul by the Aga in command of the encampment and later became responsible for cleanliness and hygiene inside the palace.

  Mahmut Pasha manufactured untruths because he intended to marry a niece of the Sultan and thought it prudent to improve his pedigree. I think the falsehood was unnecessary. The Sultan probably knew the truth in any case and was unconcerned. Though I wish he had objected to the suit on other grounds and spared our family an unnecessary tragedy.

  The Ertogruls have always preferred their ministers and courtiers to acknowledge their modest backgrounds. The Sultan creates and destroys Viziers. It is easier to maintain this style in the absence of a nobility. The knowledge that they are the only true hereditary ruling family gives our Sultans a feeling of stability and self-confidence, based on a belief that the Ertogruls are the only genuine hereditary ruling family in the history of our great Empire. Alas, this is true. And, incidentally, it is one reason why this Empire is rotting before our eyes. The colourful description of the Baron is close to the truth. Sultan Abdul Hamid II knows this. When I accompanied him to Berlin last year, he asked me: “Do you think I will be the last Caliph of Islam?” I smiled, without replying.

  My grandfather Mahmut was a vain and conceited peacock, but he was not a complete imbecile. He must have been aware of Ertogrul sensitivities. The Sultan traces his descent from Osman, who founded the dynasty. Why did our idiot grandfather claim descent from the Prophet? Why did he feel the need to embellish the truth? Why create an imaginary world from which our family supposedly emerged? Grandfather made a complete fool of himself. His book was foolish and vainglorious, divided evenly between fantasy and fact.

  Our family, of course, knew the truth, but though they laughed at Mahmut and found his conduct to be an embarrassment, none of them had the courage to confront him. If a delegation of stern-visaged family elders had called on him and insisted he stop lying, it might have had a temporary effect. Who knows? Perhaps it didn’t really matter. After all, despite Mahmut Pasha’s well-known habit of embroidering the truth, he was permitted to marry a niece of the Sultan and she, in due course, gave birth to our father and his three sisters. Not that this stopped the Sultan and his courtiers from laughing at Mahmut.

  My aunt once told me that whenever Mahmut Pasha visited the court to pay his respects, the Sultan would question him about his book, forcing him to repeat some of his more absurd inventions before the assembled courtiers. The Sultan, of course, maintained his poise during the reading, while encouraging the sycophants to release their mirth at regular intervals, and so it came about that Mahmut Pasha’s recitations were always punctuated by the noise of suppressed laughter.

  What did he think while all this was going on? How could his greatly vaunted pride survive this ritual humiliation? When he came home from the palace, he would tell his wife how her uncle had honoured him once again and how the Vizier had congratulated him on the composition of a very important and top secret aide-mémoire which he, Mahmut, had drafted on the Russian Question and which had been despatched, without a single alteration, to the Chancellery in Berlin.

  Did our beautiful grandmother, Sabiha, whose portrait welcomes visitors as they enter the house in Istanbul, believe any of this nonsense? I think not. She had married him not because he was good-looking or wealthy or a habitual liar, but simply because her father had decided that Mahmut Pasha would make a kind and good husband. I note that the mother of Orhan is smiling. She is asking herself, could our great-grandmother have been that stupid? And the answer, my lovely Nilofer, is a simple yes.

  Your great-grandmother Sabiha was undoubtedly very pretty. The drawing is accurate enough in this regard but Bragadini, who painted her, was not, alas, a very gifted artist. He painted only what he saw. He lacked both intelligence and a real interest which might have pushed him to peer underneath and locate her real character. He failed abysmally to uncover her interior. She had a fair skin, luscious lips, a broad forehead, dark flowing tresses, blue eyes and it was claimed by him who knew that underneath her robes she possessed a body that was an “embarrassment of riches”. For myself I hate this phrase, but Grandfather Mahmut used it often when in his cups, as a boast and an explanation to old friends who wondered aloud how he could possibly tolerate her mindless obsession with all things trivial.

  Mahmut himself was not a very profound person. He had chosen not to burden himself with too much knowledge but, Allah be praised, how he enjoyed the three pastimes common to believers since the days of the Prophet. My grandfather loved wine, hunting and fornication and in that order. He could not hunt without a drink and he could not mount my grandmother without having killed some unfortunate beast. Even a rabbit helped him perform well in this respect.

  Unfortunately for him, Sabiha regarded all three practices with the utmost repugnance. She had grown up in the palace. Even as an eight-year-old she had observed men in their cups and spoke often of how the sight had filled her with nausea, without ever being more specific. Who knows what she saw or experienced as a child in the palace where the Caliphs of our faith held sway, or how deeply it affected her? It was said that her father’s decision to marry a Japanese courtesan had upset her greatly. In the conflicts that followed her father always backed his new wife against his children. Sabiha felt abandoned and it coloured her attitude to men and the power they possessed, but this is not what she told her friends.

  They were informed casually that Mahmut Pasha was not a real man, that she derived no pleasure through coupling with him. That he was less effective than a dog and that after his children were born he had, Allah be praised, become impotent. However hard she tried, his little radish refused to stir. In fact she did not try at all. She never permitted him in her bed again.

  Mahmut Pasha, self-loving and pleasure-seeking as ever, was enraged by these slurs on his manhood. He responded characteristically by lifting a Circassian serving wench from the kitchen and transporting her to a chamber near his bedroom. She became his mistress. Petrossian’s grandfather was the Sultan of our kitchen at the time. He, too, had a soft spot for the woman, but bowed before the superior will of his master.

  The Circassian—to this day I have never heard her real name mentioned—was illiterate. As a young girl, she had been bought for the household from a passing trader in Istanbul and trained as a kitchen maid. They say she possessed a natural intelligence. They say she made Mahmut Pasha laugh a great deal and, most important of all, she rejuvenated him between his legs. It was not long before news of her existence began to spread out
side the family.

  She began to accompany Mahmut Pasha on his hunting trips. Her presence compelled him to reverse the order of his pleasures. Now he could not hunt until he had been pleasured by the Circassian and only after the sport was over did they both share a cup of wine. He should have married her, but Mahmut Pasha was a coward. He was cowed by three fears. He feared the Sultan’s displeasure. He feared a decline in his own social status. He feared the wrath of his father.

  None the less he frustrated all Sabiha’s attempts to have her Circassian rival removed from the scene. Why did Sabiha care so much about this particular concubine? The practice was as common then as it is now. I think it was the public humiliation that upset her. If my grandfather had remained discreet she would not have felt insulted, but Mahmut Shah was angry with Sabiha for impugning his virility. And so he refused to hide his wench from the public gaze. He liked her to dress in the fashion of a lady so that he could show her to his friends. Halil’s mother once found a carefully preserved, beautiful, though faded, Parisian gown in a small box in this house. It had belonged to the Circassian.

  One day, she disappeared from our house in Istanbul. At first Sabiha was delighted, but a month passed and she noticed that her rival’s absence, far from affecting Mahmut Pasha adversely, appeared to have improved his humour. Sabiha realised that something was being hidden from her. She sent for Petrossian’s grandfather, but he denied all knowledge of anything related to his master’s passion.

  I think it must have been one of the maids who, jealous of the social ascent achieved by her Circassian peer, told her mistress the truth. The Circassian was carrying Mahmut Pasha’s child and had been sent here for the period of her confinement. Who knows but that the child was intended to be born in this very room and in this very bed where Iskander Pasha now lies, unable to speak, but frowning at me because he disapproves of this story? Forgive me, dear brother. But every beginning needs an end. You disagree?’

  My father was writing a note on his pad that I took to my uncle, who smiled.

  “Iskander says there was no ending. That everything else is supposition. That evil tongues in the servants’ quarters manufactured tales that were untrue. He is tired and wants to sleep and suggests we continue tomorrow. We must respect his wishes, but the end will not take long.

  “There was an ending, and it was of a tragic nature. Mahmut Pasha’s Circassian disappeared with the unborn child. She was never seen again. When I was little the servants used to frighten me with stories of a baby ghost whose screams were often heard outside this balcony. Ask Petrossian and he will tell you that Sabiha had her murdered. He claims he heard the story from his father. So there was an ending, even though Mahmut Pasha, like his descendant Iskander, preferred to believe that she had run away. He offered a big reward to anyone who brought him news of her, but it was never claimed.”

  With these words the Baron and Uncle Memed rose, bowed graciously in the direction of my father, who had shut his eyes in disapproval, and left the room. We followed in silence.

  FOUR

  The Circassian tells her truth to the Stone Woman and bemoans her fate; how the rich cancel the love of the poor

  ‘WILL YOU LISTEN TO my tale of woe, Stone Woman, or do your ears welcome only the voice of the Pasha and his family? I’ve been in this house for over three months. I’m well looked after and fed by the caretaker and his wife and I’m happy to be away from Istanbul, but in my solitude, I miss Hikmet more than ever before. I wake up every day long before the birds. It is still not light and the stars have yet to fade. I can’t sleep. Hikmet’s face and his voice fill my dreams and make me miserable. Look at me. I am eight months pregnant with Mahmut Pasha’s child but my heart is still heavier than my stomach.

  In my dreams I see Hikmet in his soldier’s uniform. He is looking at me with bitterness in his grey eyes. They speak to me: “We trusted you, but you would not wait. You betrayed our love for a rich man’s comfort.” I plead forgiveness. I beg for mercy, but inside myself I know that his eyes are speaking the truth. I was pledged to him. I was even preparing to ask the mistress for permission to marry him, when the cursed day arrived and our lord, Mahmut Pasha, catching sight of me, began to twirl his moustache. It was the fatal sign of which I had first been warned when I was a girl of ten, and now, eight years later, it had happened. My heart sank straight to my feet.

  The house maids still warn any new addition to the household that there is a longstanding tradition in this family. When the master looks at any one of them and begins to play with his moustache, it is a sign that the call to his bed will come for that night. And it always did, Stone Woman. It always did. And not just for the maids. There were a few young coachmen who received the summons. One of them ran away and was never seen again. The maids spoke often of Mahmut Pasha’s habits, but their crudeness offended my ears. I preferred to forget their stories.

  I was, after all, only a kitchen maid, not even permitted near the other rooms of the house. My task was to help the cooks and make sure they had all the ingredients they needed for their dishes. When I was much younger, I never thought of myself as a person whom the master even noticed and so I was never worried like some of the other maids, those who carried their breasts like over-ripe melons.

  He saw me from the window one day as I was sitting on a bench near the vegetable garden and washing cucumbers. I averted my glance from his, but he rushed down and passed in front of me. I stood up and covered my head. He smiled and fondled his moustache. O cruel fate, Stone Woman. I knew I was doomed. I wanted to run away before the night came. As luck would have it, my clean-shaven Hikmet with his dark red hair, who stood daily on guard duty outside the house, had gone back to his village to attend his mother’s funeral. I was alone. I swear in Allah’s name that if Hikmet had been there that day I would have run away with him, but it was not to be. The call came in the shape of the oldest maidservant in the house. She, who boasted of how she had warmed the bed of Mahmut Pasha as well as his father and grandfather, was now approaching her fiftieth year. In the past she had used her privileged position to lord it over the other servants. They had despised and feared her, but that was some time ago. Now she had been reduced to the status of the Pasha’s procuress, but this had made her warm-hearted. I think, deep in herself, she understood the humiliation. To try and make it easier for us she would say: “I have known three generations of this family,” she used to tell us, “and this young master is the kindest of them all. He will not be violent with you. He will not hurt you in any way as his grandfather did when his lust was aroused.”

  Her reassuring words had little effect on me. I lay in my narrow little bed and wept without restraint. Later, when the old woman took me to the Pasha’s chamber, I fell on my knees and kissed Mahmut Pasha’s feet. I beseeched him to spare my honour. I whispered that I was promised to another. I confessed my love for Hikmet. I told of my desire to be a mother and to give my children the love that had been denied me. In my foolishness I thought my honesty might impress him, but it had a completely different effect. He took my pleas for resistance and this inflamed him further. He made me undress and then he pushed me back on his bed and took his pleasure. For my part, and this, I swear to you, Stone Woman, is the truth, I felt only anger and sadness and helplessness. No enjoyment did I feel, not even momentarily. The blood I saw on my legs frightened me. All the while his ungainly body, with its mounds of flesh, was heaving over me. I became inwardly angry with my parents for dying when I was only three and I cursed my grandfather for selling me like a piece of cloth to a passing merchant.

  He noticed my indifference. This angered him. “Return tomorrow night,” he said as he dismissed me in the voice a master uses when reprimanding an ungrateful slave.

  I returned the next night and the one after and every night after that one. My indifference only seemed to arouse him and he became ever more determined to break my will. He wanted me to say that I enjoyed him. He would look at me and ask whether I could
ever love him. I never replied to these questions, but I also ceased to resist. He bought me clothes, gave me expensive jewellery and, on one occasion, dressed me in the clothes of a European lady and took me to the reception at the German Embassy, where he introduced me as his European wife, who had lost the power of speech after the tragic death of her father. He moved me to a special room in the house and I was given my own maid. One day he was entertaining some guests in his own rooms. I was seated next to him, watching the men getting more and more drunk. A few of them looked at me with desire in their eyes. Suddenly his wife, the princess Sabiha, walked into the room. She was intoxicated with anger. She stood there for a moment, ignoring his frown. She screamed abuse at him, informing his friends that he was worse than a eunuch. As he stood to escort her out of the room, she undid her trousers and lifted her tunic to reveal her most private parts. As the men averted their eyes, she shouted at her husband: “Wasn’t this good enough for you? Answer me, you sweeper of horse-shit!” The Pasha’s face had frozen in horror. Her performance had a magical effect. I have never seen men in their cups sober themselves so quickly. Then, satisfied with what she had done, Sabiha swept out of the room. Previously I had never liked her and this was long before I was chosen by the Pasha. She was rude to us and her chambermaids loathed her. After this display I began to admire her. I wanted to speak with her and explain my own despair, but I never found the courage to face her anger. I pray that Allah will forgive my cowardice.