by Elif Shafak
‘We trespassed,’ said the imams. ‘Sin entered the world,’ said the priests. ‘Repent we must,’ said the rabbis. And the people did, thousands of them. Many turned pious – none more so than the Sultan. Wine was forbidden, wine-makers punished; musical instruments were burned in bonfires, taverns were closed, brothels were sealed, opium dens remained as empty as discarded walnut shells. The preachers spoke only about pestilence and profanity and how they were intertwined, like the plait of an odalisque.
Then, as if in unison, people stopped saying it was because of them. It was others who had brought this upon the city, others with their impiety and debauchery. Fear turned into resentment; resentment into rage. And rage was a ball of flame you could not hold in your hands for too long; it had to be thrown at someone.
In late July a mob entered the Jewish neighbourhood around Galata Tower. Doors were marked with tar, men were beaten, a rabbi who resisted was cudgelled to death. A Jewish cobbler was rumoured to have poisoned all the wells and cisterns and creeks in Istanbul, spreading the disease. Dozens had been arrested and had already confessed to their crime. That the confessions were obtained under torture was a detail to which no one paid attention. Had the Jews not been expelled from towns in Saxony only a few years ago, and many more burned at the stake in the lands of Frangistan? There was a reason why they carried calamity wherever they went – an ill omen following them like a shadow. They kidnapped children to use their blood in dark rituals. The charges grew like a river swollen with rain. Finally, Sultan Suleiman issued a firman. The local kadis would not be able to give verdicts on blood libel and the few judges who now took on such cases wished not to do so. The accusations waned.
It wasn’t the Jews. It was the Christians. They never went to hamam, dirty to the core. They did not wash after they coupled with their wives. They drank wine, and, as if this was not sin enough, they called it the blood of Jesus, whom they dared to name God. Worst of all, they ate pork – the meat of an animal that wallowed in its own filth and devoured decayed flesh with maggots. The plague must have been contracted from pig-eaters. The same folk who had terrorized the Jewish streets were seen attacking the Christian quarters later on.
A saddler in Eyup assumed the leadership of the throng. He preached that the Jews and the Christians were People of the Book and, though in error, they were not evil. It wasn’t they who were the culprits. It was the Sufis, with their chanting and whirling. Who could be more dangerous than someone who called himself a Muslim and yet had nothing to do with Islam? Did they not say they had no fear of hell and no wish for heaven? Did they not address God as if He were their equal and even said there was God under their cloak? Blasphemy had brought on the doom. Mobs patrolled the streets, wielding truncheons, hunting for heretics. They were neither stopped by the Subashi and his guards nor arrested afterwards.
On Friday, after the evening prayer, they set upon the twisting streets of Pera. Men, and boys as young as seven, with torches in their hands, joined by more along the way, delved into the houses of ill-repute, dragged out the whores and pimps, and set the buildings on fire. One woman, who was so fat she could barely move, was tied up to a pole and whipped, crimson paths on rolls of flesh. A hunsa* was stripped naked, spat upon, shaved from head to toe and dunked into shit. But it was a dwarf woman, they said, who bore the brunt of it, though nobody quite knew why. She was rumoured to be quite close to the Chief White Eunuch and capable of many a contrivance. The next morning, shortly after dawn, stray dogs found her caked in blood and faeces, her nose broken, her ribs crushed, yet somehow still alive.
Only when the mob, now ready to punish the gentry, began to boast of marching to the palace did the Subashi intervene, arresting eleven men. They were hanged the same day, their bodies left swinging in the breeze for everyone to see. By the time the plague left, Istanbul was 5,742 souls fewer in number and the cemeteries were full to bursting.
The same week Jahan received another nasty letter, this one clearly signed by Captain Gareth. With the help of a kitchen boy he sent the seaman the few coins he had put aside, hoping this would keep him quiet for a while. Laden with such worries, he was slow to pick up the new gossip in town.
Lutfi Pasha, the man who had recommended the right builder for the bridge over the River Pruth but then disagreed with him, had taken the place of the late Grand Vizier Ayas Pasha. And the Chief Royal Architect, who had passed away of old age, had been succeeded by none other than carpenter Sinan. It was the talk of the town that two men who did not get along had been promoted, by some twist of fate, exactly around the same time, as if God wished to see whether they would clash – and, if so, who would survive.
Proud and august, for over a thousand years the Hippodrome had seen no end of festivities – always packed, always rowdy. The spectators were men of all ages. Should they like a show, they roared and laughed and sat upright, as though they had a hand in the performance. Should they not take delight in what they saw, they stamped their feet, uttered curses, threw whatever was in their hands. Easy to amuse, hard to please, the audience had changed little since the time of Constantine.
Far off, in the middle of the wooden stalls, stood a terrace adorned with golden tassels. Inside was Sultan Suleiman, seated on a high chair from where he could see and be seen. Tall and lithe, he had a long neck and a short beard. He was attended by the Grand Vizier Lutfi Pasha – who had been married to the Sultan’s sister – and other members of the diwan. Separated from the Sultan by brocade hangings was the Sultana, surrounded by her handmaidens. Silk curtains and latticed panels shielded the women from the crowd’s eyes. Other than those few from the imperial harem, there were no females present.
Foreign emissaries had been ushered into a separate booth. The ambassador of Venice sat upright with a distant look in his eyes and a sapphire brooch on his zimarra that had not escaped Jahan’s attention. Next to the Venetian were the envoy of Ragusa, the delegates of the Medici of Florence, the podestà of Genoa, the legate of the King of Poland and eminent travellers from Frangistan. They were easy to recognize – not only because of their garments but also because of their expressions, a mixture of disdain and disbelief.
The festivities had been going on for days. At night, flooded with light, Istanbul shone brighter than the eyes of a young bride. Lamps, torches and fireworks punctured the gloom. Caïques glided along the waters of the Golden Horn like shooting stars. Confectioners paraded with sugar-sculptures of man-eating sea-creatures and birds with feathers of every colour. Up and down the streets, giant frames of flowers were displayed. So many sheep were butchered that the creek behind the slaughterhouses ran crimson. Pageboys scurried about, humping trays of rice dripping with fat from sheep’s tails. Those who’d had their bellies filled and quenched their thirst with sherbet were treated to zerde.* For once, the poor and the rich tucked into the same dishes.
The two princes had been circumcised alongside a hundred poor boys. Sons of candle-makers, lime-burners and cadgers had wailed together with the royal highnesses. Now lying in bed, clad in gowns, 102 of them sobbed whenever they recalled the distress they had gone through, and chuckled at the shadow play being performed to make the memory go away.
Jahan, wide-eyed and terrified, walked in the midst of the frenzy. He had been asked to perform with Chota on the last day. Early in the morning he had brought the elephant to the barns beside the Hippodrome. Much as he hated the fetters around his feet, Chota had settled down, munching apples and leaves. Jahan envied his aplomb and wished some of it would rub off on him. The night before the mahout had slept in fits and starts; his lips had bled from his constant chewing of them.
Other animals made an appearance ahead of them: lions, tigers, monkeys, ostriches, gazelles and a giraffe newly shipped from Egypt. Falconers paraded with hooded birds, jugglers tossed rings, fire-eaters devoured flames and a tightrope-walker crossed a hawser stretched high above. Then came the guilds: stone-cutters carrying hammers and chisels; gardeners pushing carts of roses; a
rchitects with miniature models of the mosques they had built. At the head of this last guild strode Sinan, wearing a kaftan trimmed with ermine. When he noticed Jahan, he gave the boy a warm smile. Jahan would have returned one in kind had he not been so anxious.
At long last it was their turn. Praying, Jahan opened the gates, letting Chota out. Passing by a lonely obelisk, brought here from Alexandria by the Emperor Theodosius long ago, they ambled down the track beaten by hundreds of feet and hooves. Light reflected off the tiny mirrors sewn on Chota’s mantle – green velvet embroidered with purple patterns, courtesy of the Sultana.
Upon seeing them, the audience hollered with joy. Jahan walked in front of Chota, holding his reins, though the truth was that the elephant set his own pace. When they reached the royal terrace, they came to a halt. Jahan laid eyes on the Sultan. He looked solid, imperturbable. To his left was the partition behind which the Sultana and her women had taken seats. Even though Jahan could not get a glimpse of Hurrem, he felt her distrustful eyes piercing him. The thought that beautiful Mihrimah, too, was there, watching his every gesture, doubled his worries. His mouth went dry; his stomach lurched; his legs trembled as he bowed down.
Still shaking, he dug into his pocket and produced a yarn of wool. This he tossed to Chota. The elephant caught it with his trunk, threw it back to him. They repeated the trick a couple of times. Jahan took out the sparkling rings that Mihrimah had given him. He threw them, one at a time, to Chota, who snatched each one out of the air, waving and flinging it aside, as if he didn’t care. He then swayed his huge body to and fro, dancing. The audience hooted with laughter. Raising his cane, Jahan scolded him. Chota stood still, ashamed. It was part of the show, like everything else. As a sign of peace the boy handed Chota an apple. In return Chota plucked the daffodil fastened to the mahout’s robe and gave it to him. More laughter from the spectators.
Next Jahan balanced a cone on his head. He added another cone, then another, stacking seven of them in total. He shouted, ‘Up!’
With his trunk the elephant grabbed him by the waist and placed him above his neck so gingerly the cones remained intact.
‘Down!’ Jahan ordered.
Slowly, laboriously, Chota crouched. Still on his back, Jahan steadied himself, the wind drying the sweat trickling across his face. Having no knees, elephants found it hard to bend down. Jahan was hoping the Sultan of the Land and the Sea would understand and appreciate. No sooner had Chota managed to squat down than Jahan opened his arms wide and bellowed in triumph. Simultaneously, he saw something coming towards them fast. With a thud it fell on the ground. Jahan jumped off, picked it up. It was a pouch filled with coins. A generous gift from Sultan Suleiman. The mahout bowed; the elephant trumpeted; the audience went wild.
Then came the final act. Chota, representing Islam, would confront a wild boar that stood for Christianity. It was a play habitually performed by a bear and a pig, but, since the elephant was more majestic and clearly the darling of the public, at the last minute the role had been assigned to Chota.
The moment Jahan saw the hog, swinging its tusks, scraping its hooves, his insides twisted into a knot. The brute was smaller than Chota, for sure, but there was a madness in it, a rage whose source he couldn’t place. As soon as its chains were removed, the animal made for them like an arrow. It could have gored Jahan’s thigh had he not dodged it in time. The audience chortled, ready to side with the hog, should the mahout and the elephant disappoint them.
Jahan wasn’t the only one paralysed. To his dismay, Chota was rooted to the spot, eyes half closed. Shouting, Jahan nudged him with his cane. He uttered honeyed words, promising sweet treats and mud baths. Nothing helped. The elephant that had fiercely assailed enemy soldiers and killed several on the battleground had gone numb.
The hog, having lost interest in the elephant, circled then charged Jahan, knocking him to the ground.
‘Hey, here!’
Out of nowhere Mirka the bear-tamer appeared, shouting to draw the hog’s attention. He carried a spear in his hand, his beast lumbering behind. The two of them were familiar to this game. The bear growled. Furiously grunting, the hog attacked with its mouth wide open. Jahan watched it all as if through a veil. The sounds, though terrible, were muffled by the din of the crowd. The bear – its curved claws sharpened – slashed and ripped, gutting the hog. The animal’s intestines gushed out, releasing a sickening smell. Its back legs twitched and kicked. A shriek rose as life abandoned its body, so fierce and unearthly that it pierced the spectators to their very marrow. Stepping on the dying hog with his boot, Mirka saluted his audience. Instantly, he was rewarded with a pouch. As he grabbed it, he looked at Jahan with a smirk he didn’t bother to hide. Behind him, small as a mouse, Jahan averted his gaze, wishing with all his heart for an earthquake that would swallow him up.
While the mahout was considering vanishing, the elephant was getting incensed. Some of the spectators had been hurling pebbles at him. Chota flapped his ears and trumpeted. Seeing their success in upsetting so large a creature, the audience began to throw other things: wooden spoons, rotten apples, metal scabbards, chestnuts from a nearby tree … Jahan urged Chota to stay calm, his voice no more than a mosquito buzz in the uproar.
All at once, the elephant charged straight for the stalls. Baffled, Jahan ran behind him, waving his arms, yelling. He watched faces in the audience change from astonishment to terror. People scurried left and right, screaming, trampling on those who had fallen down. Jahan caught up with Chota, yanked his tail. The animal might have crushed him, but the mahout wasn’t thinking. Guards with swords and spears circled them, though none seemed to know what they were doing. In the commotion Chota tore down the banners, squashed ornaments and ploughed into the booth of foreign emissaries. In trying to get out of the beast’s way, the Venetian envoy took a headlong tumble, his precious zimarra tearing as someone stepped on it. Jahan saw the sapphire fall off. In a trice he stepped on it and, certain that no one was looking, he grabbed it and hid it in his sash.
When he turned to the elephant again, to his horror he found Chota by the royal terrace. Sultan Suleiman had not budged. He stood erect, his jaw jutting out, his face unreadable. The Grand Vizier was the opposite. Foaming at the mouth, he barked orders here and there. As if he had sensed the man’s hatred, the animal moved directly towards the Vizier. He snatched the man’s turban off his head and swung it in the air, as if it were another trick he had practised.
‘Guards!’ Lutfi Pasha shouted.
Out of the corner of his eye Jahan saw an archer aiming at Chota’s head. With a cry he dashed towards the man, who, only a second before, had loosed his arrow.
A sharp pain burned his right shoulder and he let out a howl. He wobbled on his feet and collapsed. At his voice the elephant slowed down. So did the people in the first rows. Stunned into silence, they now stared at the mahout bleeding on the ground. It was then that the Sultan, slowly and calmly, stood up and did something no one was expecting. He chuckled.
Had Chota attacked the Lord of the Land and the Sea instead of the Vizier, what might have happened was unimaginable. But, as things stood, the Sultan’s mirth saved his life. Someone fetched Lutfi Pasha’s turban, soiled and flattened, and handed it reverentially to him. The Vizier grabbed it from the man’s hands but refused to put it on his head. One by one the audience returned to their seats. Oblivious to the wreckage, he had caused, Chota stomped towards the exit.
‘What’ve you done, imbecile!’ Jahan hollered from the stretcher he was being carried on. ‘They’ll chop off your balls … send you to the slaughterhouse, cook you with cabbage and onions. And they will cast me into the dungeon!’
He would have loved to have kicked a bucket, punched a barrel, smashed a vase. Yet his body felt heavy while his mind spun round in circles. The only thing that outweighed this excruciating pain was his anger – aimed mostly at himself.
A cart brought him to the menagerie, where Olev took one look at him and another at the a
rrow sticking out of his flesh and nodded at the Chinese twins. Both men disappeared, only to shortly return with a bag of opium.
‘What’s in there? What are the blades for?’ asked Jahan. His neck was damp, his skin pallid, his lips cold.
‘Curious lad,’ said Olev, as he placed metals of various sizes on a tray. ‘I’m going to take that thing out.’
‘But how?’
No one answered. Instead they forced him to drink a foul-smelling greenish tea, maslak, which was made from dried cannabis leaves. Even the first sip made his head whirl faster. By the time he had finished the cup, the world had acquired a strange luminosity, with colours melting into one another. The opium was mashed into a pulp and spread over the wound. They carried him into the garden so that he could benefit from the remaining daylight.
‘Bite this!’ Olev instructed.
Dazed, Jahan closed his teeth around the rag they shoved into his mouth. Not that it made much of a difference. When the arrow was pulled out his scream was so loud it sent the birds in the aviary flapping from their roosts.
That evening, as he lay in bed aching all over, Sinan appeared by the door, his gaunt cheeks dim in the shadows. He sank down beside him, the way he had done on that battle’s starless night.
‘You all right?’
The boy winced in lieu of an answer, his eyes brimming with tears.
‘You’re not good at performing tricks, are you? Entertaining people is not quite your thing,’ Sinan said. ‘Still, one has to admire your courage and your love for the elephant.’
‘Will I be punished?’
‘I think you’ve been punished enough. Our Sultan knows this.’
‘But … Lutfi Pasha hates me.’
‘Well, he doesn’t approve of me either,’ said Sinan, dropping his voice a notch.
‘Because of the bridge?’
‘Because of defiance. He has not forgotten. He is used to having everyone worshipping his every word. Those who surround themselves with grovellers who praise everything they do will not forgive the honest man who tells the truth.’