by Tariq Ali
As the coffee was served, Father was about to enlighten Iskander Pasha on the task of a good physician, when to our delight and surprise, Iskander Pasha stole the moment from him. He had heard the story before. My father was crestfallen till Iskander Pasha confided that it was the Sultan who had first relayed to him this immortal saying. A smile took over my father’s face. It was so ingratiating and so servile and eager to please that I really felt my stomach turn. I had no choice but to leave the table. I rushed to the bathroom and vomited everything. Strong premonitions can have that effect on one’s body.
When I returned, my face pale and drained, Iskander Pasha had made his farewells and left. I was relieved, for during the meal he had kept looking at me in a fashion that made me nervous and fearful. I was not in the least interested in him and I remember that night when I was in bed I kept repeating to myself: “Treat him like a closed door which must never be opened. If you push it even a tiny bit in order to peep through the crack you will sink into oblivion.” This was not difficult to achieve, since he had not succeeded in arousing my curiosity to the slightest degree. Remember that I was not yet twenty and your father, twice my age and more, already appeared to me like an old man...’
At this stage I interrupted her. I was irritated that she was exhibiting such complete apathy towards my father. After all, he was neither stupid nor ugly and I did love him, despite his many imperfections. I was in a hurry to reach the root of the problem.
“Before you continue to explain your indifference to my father, let me ask you something. Were you in love with another man at the time?”
“Yes,” she replied with a fierceness that took me aback, “I was in love with Suleman. He was my own age. We shared each other’s emotions, desires and dreams. There was a harmony between us, which went so deep, so deep, that it felt like the wellspring that is the source of life. Do you want to hear about him, Nilofer, or will you feel disloyal to your poor, crippled father, lying speechless next door? Be honest.”
I was touched by the depth of her emotions and even more so by the fact that she could still feel all this after thirty years in this household. My feelings seemed so transient when compared to what she must have suffered. I was overcome by love for her and I leaned over and kissed her face, wiping away the single, salty tear that was crawling down her left cheek.
“I want to hear everything, Mother. Everything.”
‘Suleman was a distant cousin of my mother. His family, like ours, had moved to Istanbul from Cordoba in the fifteenth century, when we were expelled by the Catholics. My father came from a family of physicians who claimed kinship with Maimonides. My mother’s family were merchants and traders. They were made welcome here. The Ottomans gave us refuge and employment. Suleman’s forebears moved away and settled in Damascus, but without ever losing contact with the family in Istanbul. Since they were traders they travelled a great deal and, as a consequence, contact was never broken. The marriage of my parents, which was a happy one, had been arranged through the exchange of letters.
Suleman wanted to be a physician. He was tired of Damascus. He found it far too provincial and he wanted to be close to Europe. His father wrote to mine and, naturally, Suleman was invited to stay with us indefinitely. My father had agreed to procure his entry into the medical school in Istanbul. I was eighteen years of age at the time. He was a year older. It was as if the sun had entered our house.
All my friends had brothers and sisters and I had always felt odd that I was an only child. Mother could not conceive again after my birth, which had been difficult. She said that if Father had not been present, the midwife would have been incapable of stemming the flow of blood and she would have died. Strange that I, too, have only produced a single flower, which has fruited so beautifully. I was truly relieved when you produced Orhan and Emineh. I felt the old curse had been broken.
Suleman was like the older brother I never had and certainly my parents treated him like a son. There were no restrictions. I took him everywhere, both in the coach and on foot. I showed him the hidden delights of our city. Visitors from the West look at Sinan’s mosques and sigh with admiration. They are bewitched by the palaces and they marvel at the rituals of the Court, but few of them ever penetrate the inner life of our city. The loves we share with a city are always secret, adolescent day-dreams, especially if that city is wide open like Istanbul, but I felt like keeping nothing secret from Suleman even though I had known him for less than two weeks. The affinities between us were deep, but there were also differences. I was wilful and headstrong. He was emotional and tender-hearted, but also insecure in many ways.
We would often dress like Westerners and take tea in a hotel and speak in French to the waiters. It was only when we heard them wondering in Turkish whether we were brother and sister or a newly married couple on their honeymoon that I replied in pure Stambouline, just to observe their amazed expressions. They were the happiest days of my life, Nilofer. The innocence that precedes true love can never be repeated. When it vanishes, it has gone for ever.
Everything seemed magical when Suleman and I were together. We would sit in a café sipping coffee in Europe as we observed the sunset drowning Asia across the Golden Horn. We could speak with each other about everything and anything. There were no taboos. Nothing was sacred. It was not simply that we exchanged reminiscences or discussed the more peculiar episodes in the history of our respective families. From the very beginning there was something much more intimate. It was as if we had never been without each other. And we laughed, Nilofer. I have never laughed so much in my life before or since that time.
Till I met Suleman, nobody had shown any real interest in me. I was the daughter of the house and, no doubt, I would soon be married off and that would be the end of my story. My father, in particular, was so busy looking after the health of his more illustrious patients that he had very little time for me.
Suleman was the first and last person to ask me what I wanted of life. He did not laugh when I confessed my deepest fantasies. He encouraged me when I said that I wanted to be a novelist like Balzac. He gave me his undivided attention. He never attempted to impose his will on mine—not that he would have succeeded if he had ever tried. At moments like this, it is sufficient simply to love life. Everything else will follow, or so I dreamed. It would be just as beautiful as now. This was not to be.
One evening, Suleman and I found ourselves alone at home. My parents, attired in all their finery, had left to attend a wedding feast at the palace. The servants had been permitted a free evening. At first, we amused ourselves by playing duets from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni on the piano. Then we ate. It was only later, when our conversation had reached a natural pause that I felt slightly tense in his company. My heartbeat quickened its pace. He left the room and returned with a sheaf of papers. It was on that evening he first showed me those three sketches he had made. If I shut my eyes now I can see them very clearly.
“I never knew you were an artist,” was all I could say as I attempted to mask my confusion and remain aloof, calm and sophisticated at the same time.
“Nor did I,” he replied.
The first sketch was a tender reproduction of my face, the second was the same face, but this time in sharp profile. I hated this one because he had exaggerated my nose, drawn it too thick, like a shapeless cucumber, but before I could remonstrate, he showed me the third... O, the third, Nilofer, the third. It was how he imagined my unclothed body. His hands trembled as he held it up for me. I was thunderstruck by his audacity but also very alarmed by his accuracy. Many months later he confessed that he had spied on me bathing one afternoon, but by then we had reached a new stage of intimacy and nothing else mattered.’
Sara paused. The memories had stirred old passions and she was upset. She poured herself some water from the jug near her bed. I saw her now in a completely different light. I still could not believe that she had permitted Suleman to make love to her. If that were the case, why had
they not run away together? He could have taken her with him. But why should it have reached that stage in the first place? Had my grandparents forbidden her to marry Suleman? Why?
“I can hear all the questions going through your mind, child. You want to know the exact degree of intimacy we enjoyed. Why we didn’t marry or run away like you and that Greek with ugly eyes. As you know, I have never spoken of these matters to any living person. It is not easy speaking of such things to one’s children. There is always an innate desire to conceal, but I feel like telling you everything. There is too much secrecy in our world, and concealment usually hurts more than the truth.
“If I was dead and buried and one day, by accident, you heard this story from one of Suleman’s brood, you might or might not have believed it, but you would be upset at your ignorance. You might think badly of me. You are the only treasure I have left in this world. I want you to know so that one day you can tell Orhan and Emineh about their grandmother. Who knows but that it might even help them live a better life. Press my feet, child. I’m beginning to feel tense and tired.”
I had never pressed her feet before, but, over the years, I had observed so many maidservants at work on them for hours at a time that the task posed no mysteries for me. I pressed each toe in turn, then moved to the soles, kneading them gently with my knuckles. Slowly, I felt Sara beginning to relax again.
‘Suleman and I fell into each other’s arms so naturally that evening it did not feel as if it was the first time. It had always been intended. The passion that we had hidden from ourselves poured out of us. We did make love then and on many other days. Sometimes our longing for each other became so great that we would rush out of the house in search of safe spots, but these were not easy to uncover. Often we had no other alternative but to hire a covered boat, oblivious to the world as the boatman, pretending to be blind, took us first to one continent and then another. This was always risky because the boats were often used for these purposes by the lower classes and I was always nervous lest one of our maids, who had confided in me regarding her adventures on a boat, should catch sight of us. In fact, that was how I knew that love-boats existed in the first place.
My mother Beatrice was beginning to look at me with suspicion. “There is something different about the way you walk, Sara. Something has happened to give you a new confidence. It is almost as if you have been fulfilled as a woman.”
The day after I reported this remark to Suleman, we informed my mother that we wished to be married. Suleman had already written to his parents informing them of this decision. I thought my mother would be pleased that I loved someone from her side of the family. I thought this would reassure her. My father was always grumbling that he did not have enough money for a dowry. Even though this was not the case, I was relieved that no such expenditure would be necessary.
Your grandmother’s doe-like eyes narrowed and her lips tightened when she heard the news. “I feared this might happen,” she said, “but I hoped your affection for each other was that of a brother and sister, especially since you are an only child. That is why I agreed so happily that he should come and live with us for as long as he wished. How foolish I was, how blind not to see what was happening before my eyes and in my house. This marriage is impossible, Sara. I know this sounds cruel, but both of you must face the weight of reality.”
We were shocked. We looked at her in disbelief. What reality was she speaking of, and what did it have to do with our love for each other? She refused to speak any further till my father returned home after his visits. She left the room saying that they would both speak to us after the evening meal. Suleman and I sat holding hands and looking at each other in bewilderment. He thought that the hostility could be related to his relative poverty; my parents would probably want me to live in style. I did not think this could be true, for Suleman was learning my father’s trade and it would be natural for him to inherit the practice which the family had built up so carefully over two centuries.
In fact, Father had already begun to reveal some of the secret prescriptions for treatments that had travelled with us from Spain long, long ago. They had been written and copied in big books bound in black leather, which long use had faded years ago. I remember Suleman’s excitement when he was first shown one of these books. My father had assumed that Suleman would succeed him and therefore I did not think that lack of money could be the problem.
When he finally returned home that night, I heard Mother whispering anxiously as she dragged him into her room. We ate the evening meal in total silence. I knew they weren’t angry because occasionally both of them would look at us affectionately, but with sorrowful eyes. It was my father who spoke that night and explained the reasons that lay behind their opposition.
It made no sense to me. He spoke of a mysterious disease that had developed in Suleman’s branch of the family after centuries of intermarriages. Since my mother belonged to that family there was a serious danger that our children would be born with severe deformities and afflictions and die young. It had happened too often for the risk to be undertaken lightly.
Suleman’s face had paled as he heard my father speak. He knew that this disease had claimed the life of one of his own cousins several years ago, but surely, he pleaded, the blood relationship between my mother and his was so distant that the chances of our children suffering must be equally remote. My father rose and left the room. When he returned it was with another bound volume. This contained our family tree. He showed us that the great-great-great grandmothers of my mother and Suleman’s mother had been sisters. The link was far too strong to take any risk. He was moved by our love for each other and he embraced Suleman with genuine affection, but shook his head in despair.
“It will only bring you unhappiness, Sara. However much you resent your mother and me for this, I cannot as your father and as a physician permit both of you to destroy your lives.”
I began to weep and left the room. Suleman stayed behind and talked with them for a long time. I had no idea what they said to each other.
Neither of us could sleep. I went into his room later that night and found him sitting cross-legged on his bed. He was weeping silently. We made love to calm ourselves. I told him very firmly that I was prepared to take the risk and that if my parents objected we could run away. But the sight of the family tree had shaken him. He described his cousin’s death at the age of seven. He did not wish our child to die in that fashion.
I pleaded with him, Nilofer. I threatened I would take my own life if he dared to leave me. Nothing would shake him. He left the next day.
I was desolate. I went searching for him everywhere. I visited the cafes we used to frequent. I went to the boatmen to ask if they had seen him, but there was no trace at all. My parents denied all knowledge of where he might have gone, though, later, my father admitted he had given him a purse to help him on his way. I never stopped mourning for Suleman. Nothing else mattered to me any more. Life could go on or it might stop. It was a matter of complete indifference to me.
It was ten days after Suleman had deserted me that my father returned home one evening with an offer of marriage from Iskander Pasha. I was to be his second wife. This, too, did not bother me a great deal. I remember saying to my mother: “Here, at least, there is no danger of any affliction.” I was told I would have to convert to the faith of my husband and acquire a new name. This change of identity was the only thing that amused me at the time. It would not be Sara who would enter Iskander Pasha’s bed, but Hatije. I was named after the first wife of the Prophet Memed, peace be upon him.
I was married in the house in Istanbul. There were no festivities since I was only the third wife. The first, as you know, had died giving birth to Salman. This was also convenient since I was not in the mood for any celebrations. Iskander Pasha was very kind and, mercifully, he soon departed for Paris with Petrossian and Hasan Baba, but not me. This, too, suited me greatly. Naturally, before his departure he had entered my be
d and convinced me that he was a man. I did not particularly enjoy the experience, Nilofer. It did not even comfort me. The wounds created by Suleman’s betrayal were still bleeding. You were born eight and a half months later.’
Something in my mother’s tone had told me that this was not the end of her story. An unusually complacent smile had crossed her face when she mentioned my birth.
“Sara!” I said to her sharply. “You promised the whole truth.”
“Can’t you guess?”
I shook my head.
“You were the proof that my parents were wrong. Suleman’s cowardice was totally unjustified. That made me really angry. My sadness began to disappear. He was a traitor. My love began to drain away and I was filled with contempt for him. You were the healthiest and most beautiful child I had ever seen.”
“What are you saying, Mother? You’re sick! You’re mad! This is just your imagination. You wanted it to be so, but it is not so. Iskander Pasha is my father!”
I began to cry. She hugged me, but I pushed her away. My first reaction was disgust. I felt my whole life had been taken away from me. I sat there and stared at her. When I spoke, it was in a whisper.