The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  “You know well, Baba. Little changes in the harem. I’m afraid I don’t have some exciting news to share.”

  “Ah, come! You must have some stories for your Baba. How is Nur-Banu? I hear she has lost the favor of the Sultan to a younger, prettier thing from the East.”

  “José!” Reyna flashed her husband a disapproving glare.

  “Angling for a bit of gossip, Baba?” Tamar chimed in.

  “Gossip? Certainly not!” José threw his hands up and offered his most innocent smile. “You know how I hate the word. Let us call them stories about life…”

  “How eloquent you are, Baba.”

  “What? In my own home I shouldn’t be permitted to speak? Isn’t that what you ladies spend your days doing anyhow? Chatting amongst yourselves?”

  “Now you know all our secrets,” Tamar answered playfully.

  “Nur-Banu hasn’t much to worry about anyhow,” José continued between bites of mutton. “She’s positioned herself well, hasn’t she? That son of hers is the smartest of the bunch.” He held his fork in the air to punctuate the point. “The boy was already reciting poetry when the rest of the lot were still in diapers. He’s got a head on his shoulders, that Murat. Mark my words, he’ll make a fine sultan.”

  Tamar’s cheeks flushed conspicuously.

  “Enough about that.” José turned toward his daughter. “Are you happy to be home to keep your old Papa company?”

  “Baba,” she said warmly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  José nodded approvingly then took a hearty bite of meat. “Now, for some news of myself!” He threw down his fork and took a swig of wine before bringing the glass down hard. He reached out with both arms and took both his daughter’s and his wife’s hands in his own. “It seems I’ve been honored by the Sultan.” He glanced about for a moment and waited for the enormity of the news to sink in before continuing. “I’ve been granted my own province to govern. A piece of land straddling the Sea of Galilee in the Holy Land. They call it Tiberius,” he explained proudly.

  “Mashallah!” Tamar exclaimed.

  Reyna smiled modestly though her eyes beamed with pride.

  “Of course it’s practically a wasteland right now but it won’t be for long. I’m sending over whole villages to populate the area. They’ll be charged with cultivating the land and growing trade relations.”

  “Will we have to relocate?” Reyna seemed concerned.

  “G-d no!” José laughed. “You ladies wouldn’t survive a fortnight there…you see it’s a lawless place.” His tone turned serious. “The city walls have been destroyed. It’s quite vulnerable to attack and yet it is our homeland. The land of Israel. A Jewish land governed by Jews. What else could we ask for? Could there be anything more important than our traditions? A place where we can govern ourselves and ensure the survival of our faith?”

  The table grew silent.

  As Tamar reached for her spoon, José noticed the shimmering ruby on her finger. His eyes moved from the stone to his daughter’s downcast eyes. “I’ve shared my news.” He leaned in closer. “It seems you have some of your own?” His voice took on an oddly inquisitive tone.

  Their eyes met as she slid her hand away from view.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Go wait for me in the courtyard.”

  Tamar froze, her spoon in midair. “Have I offended you, Baba?”

  He sighed wearily. “You can no more offend me than the light of the moon.”

  She nodded, then stood up and headed out towards the garden.

  José turned to Reyna. “Is there something I should know about?”

  Reyna sipped of her sharbet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He tossed down his napkin and headed to the garden atrium. Tamar was there, waiting in that cloistered sanctuary, sitting on a stone bench beside a flowing fountain depicting a sculpted rendition of Jonah being spat from an enormous whale. In the courtyard, two squawking geese Tamar had named Leila and Majnun poked about the shrubbery looking for tall slinking worms to feed their hatchlings.

  “Tamar,” he began. “What is this?” He reached for her hand and examined the ruby on her finger.

  “It’s a ring.”

  “Yes, but where did you get such an exquisite gem?”

  “It’s just a gift.”

  José’s silver brows cast deep furrows along the length of his long countenance. “A gift from whom?” He took her arm firmly. “Who gave you this?”

  “Murat.” She pulled her arm free, held up her hand and examined the ruby. “We’ll be married in a year. Baba, tell me you are pleased.”

  He tilted his head and examined his daughter as though seeing her for the first time.

  “You’ve always spoken highly of him.” She tried to sound confident. “You yourself said what a fine sultan he’ll make,” she pressed on, while her father simply stared.

  He lifted his daughter’s face until her gaze met his.

  “Baba?”

  He looked on strangely.

  “Don’t just stand there looking at me like that. Say something.”

  José glanced around, examining his surroundings as though lost in a place that was only vaguely familiar. “What can I say?” He shrugged lamely. “You don’t know who you are.”

  The somber hoot of nesting owls echoed off cool stone tiles and marble statues.

  “Baba, please. Why do you speak in such riddles?”

  He shook his head and was still for a long moment.

  “Baba, please,” Tamar pleaded.

  But José had no words. He reached to the ground and grabbed a fistful of earth with each hand. He closed his palms and felt the smooth grains seep between his clenched fingers. Tattered memories fluttered through his mind. A hunchback man with a trim grey beard. Books hidden beneath a loose floorboard. A starry night on the beaches of Lisbon with Reyna by his side. He’d tried to explain it to Reyna, that bright night so very long ago. He knew she hadn’t understood.

  “Baba!” Tamar’s voice echoed against the silent backdrop.

  With his eyes closed he hardened himself to the memory of love. A chill spread throughout his body. It rippled through him, limb by limb, until finally, he was frozen.

  He held his fists before her. “This earth here,” His voice was barely a whisper. “You have to reach it, to ever know it.” He loosened his grip and let the cool earth slip away from his grasp.

  Tamar cast her eyes to the ground. Her satin slippers, once white and pure, were covered in a thin layer of dust.

  José turned abruptly and left his daughter alone in the garden with nothing but the shrill squeals of Majnun and Layla’s hatchlings as her only consolation.

  The soles of his wooden clogs slapped against the stone steps as he marched towards the second story landing and into his suite. He closed the door gently and looked around the room. With the force of a wild boar, he charged the console, toppling the vase of wildflowers he had received just hours earlier.

  A pool of water spread across the floor filling the room with the sweet scent of honeysuckle and lavender. José scowled as the aroma grew stronger. Never before had he taken such offense by something so sweet or so beautiful.

  He made his way to the window and peered out towards the garden. Tamar was still there in the spot where he had left her.

  She held her hands up to the light of the moon, light, that just moments earlier, had seemed to José, innocent and pure and free of all offense. How cunning is beauty he thought.

  He watched as she spread her fingers wide and examined them in the moonlight. Then, she bent down low and pressed her hands against the soft earth. She dug her hands in deep, trying to feel for something she did not know.

  *

  A week had passed when Tamar awoke to find her father standing over her bedside. “Baba? What’s wrong?” She glanced beyond the lattices into the thick night. Cricket
s chimed against a silent backdrop. By the thick curtain of night, she calculated that it was several hours before sunrise.

  “Is everything all right?” She sat up in her bed. “Tell me what’s happening?”

  “Pack a small bag.”

  “Why?”

  “Be quiet. Dress quickly.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. Trust me now. Get your things.” He kissed her forehead. “Meet me at the gates.”

  Just a few moments later, Tamar stood by her father in a hooded cape with a satchel in tow. He took her things and led her towards a long winding road. They walked the path silently for what seemed to Tamar to be an hour or so. Finally, a dim shadow emerged before her eyes. A large man with a red beard appeared atop an enormous black horse.

  “This man will take you the rest of the way,” Don José said to Tamar.

  “What are you talking about?” The panic in her voice was mounting.

  “Go with Mustafa,” he said flatly. “He’ll escort you.”

  “Please don’t send me away. I’ll be better. I promise.” She threw her arms around his waist. “Don’t send me away.”

  “I love you,” José whispered as Mustafa dismounted the black stallion and made his way towards Tamar.

  “No!” She cried in his embrace. “Tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

  He turned away so she wouldn’t see the tears streaming down his face. “Be good.” He held her for the last time. “Go now.” He could feel her body trembling against his.

  “Where is he taking me?”

  Don José spoke in a low whisper. “You’re to live in Tiberius.”

  “No, Baba! I won’t go.”

  The man with the red beard stepped forward and pried Tamar from José as she sobbed loudly. He tossed her slender body over his muscular shoulder and lifted her onto the black horse that would take her away from Istanbul forever. Don José watched as the horse carried his daughter into the darkness, until he could no longer hear her sobs.

  The scent of charred flesh filled his senses. The screams and sweat and misery of that hot August day nearly two decades earlier would forever be branded in his memory. He imagined the faces of his mother and father, faces he had never seen or touched or known, dying for a belief that his own flesh and blood could so easily relinquish. He saw them there, their anguish pulsating throughout his body, out through his fingertips and back through his head.

  He saw them burning.

  There was fire in his eyes.

  *

  When José revealed to Reyna what he had done, they stared at one another for a quiet moment. Her chest began to heave and her eyes seemed to swell red. She crossed her arms against her stomach and folded over as though bowing to some dreadful command. Her lips parted as though she were about to speak, but she could not gather enough air in her lungs to utter a word. She struggled for breath as she leaned against the wall. Several moments passed before she approached José. With her face turned away, she slipped the emerald and gold cuff off her wrist. It fell to the ground and broke apart. She uttered something before losing her breath once more.

  He had been unable to make out her words. Imagining was more haunting than knowing ever could be.

  Don José the Jew did not arrive at court the next day, or the next. On the third day of his absence, he was summoned to the palace. He entered the quarters of the Sultan’s office with tattered clothing and his head slung low. He’d rehearsed this speech many times. It was a perfect plan. Consumption was sweeping across the region at a rapid pace and the whole city was in mourning. There was barely a family who could claim they had not lost a loved one to the mysterious fever. Certainly, the Sultan would not question it. José didn’t even need to display a body. To prevent the spread of disease, the Sultan had issued a fatwa deeming it permissible to cremate the bodies of the dead.

  “A thousand apologies…” Don José explained. “Our daughter…” he whispered in a tone of hushed grief. “The fever…yes it was awful…two days ago…there was nothing we could do…If it is G-d’s will, let it be.” José could feel his heart throbbing in his chest as he lied to the Sultan. His teeth and mouth and jaw stiffened. He did not expect the sense of shame that quickly overpowered him. Don José the Jew fell to the ground and wept at the feet of the Sultan. He would never see his daughter again. He had killed her with his deeds. He had banished her with his lies.

  José took leave of his duties at the palace for a month of mourning. He mourned the loss of all that he held dear. He had lost his daughter, he had lost his wife, and when it came to his faith—he had lost his way.

  13

  “She is gone,” the Sultan said to his son.

  Murat looked out of his window. In the very place where the sun should have been, he found a large, black hole in the blue sky. Below, people were walking and moving about their business as usual. The gardeners tended the bushes, as though they still believed it were possible for life to grow. Jaffar, along with the other African eunuchs, continued to guard the gates under the mistaken impression that there was anything left on this earth still worth protecting. A bird chirped a contemptuous song of oblivion. White doves brazenly spread their wings and dove recklessly through the wanton sky—a sky so bright and blue and without shame that Murat grit his teeth and fists in frustrated rage.

  He wanted to scream down to all those oblivious, passing by, “You scurrying fools! Your appointments, your plans, your dreams! Go ahead and drop them all, only take up your shovels, for we must bury it all. How disappointing life is!” But he didn’t shout these words. He did not speak, only let out a low growl, a deep rumbling from within.

  Murat was silent for six days. Day after day, Sultan Selim sat at the edge of Murat’s bed, talking to him and trying to coax him to eat something. And still, Murat did not answer, but looked up blindly for trap doors in the ceiling where he wished he could slip away from his life, from his cruel fate. On the seventh day, he finally spoke. “I only loved her a little.”

  *

  He had not left his chamber in a week. The room was kept dim, the shutters drawn tight. In the darkness, Sultan Selim could barely see the boy’s face. Curled up in a snail’s silhouette, Murat sat with his knees tucked up to his chin.

  “I only loved her a little.” Murat said the words quietly, as though trying to convince himself.

  The Sultan pondered those words. “Can fire rage only a bit? Can floodwaters drown only a little?”

  Murat fought back his tears. “Baba.” He caved into his father’s embrace. He had always seen her as a force in nature, an enchanting, mysterious force, with the power to entice, to pull, to shape. Like gravity, a luring charm so potent, it had the ability to affect, but never be affected. Like light and wind. The idea that a force as unholy as death could take her away, that he, the son of the Holy Ottoman emperor, the Conqueror, ruler of Dar Al-Islam, the idea that he could do nothing to bring her back, thoroughly stunned him. That she was only human was inconceivable. In fact, it was more than he could bear.

  “I do not accept,” he breathed in a tone so eerily low and dismal, it sent a chill through the Sultan.

  “I do not accept,” he told the servants when they attempted to serve him his dinner.

  “I do not accept,” he would hiss, his eyes cold and distant. He waved away the delicacies that were brought before him, from the furthest corners of the empire.

  “I do not accept! I do not accept! I do not accept!” He dismissed them all with a dangerous, thrashing gesture, a motion so sweepingly violent, it could have knocked over even the chief black eunuch.

  “I do not accept,” he repeated again and again, as dozens of beautiful slave girls were brought before him.

  “Dismissed.” He sent them all away, one by one, with the same contemptuous scorn he used to dismiss his meals at dinnertime.

  “I do not accept,” he pleaded with G-d, as he knelt on his carpet during the sunrise prayers.

&n
bsp; “I do not accept!” he threatened menacingly, in his prayer at sundown.

  “I do not accept,” his spirit howled through every pore in his flesh.

  “I do not accept,” he cried out beneath the mist of a weeping pomegranate tree, planted in the secret garden of their desire.

  “Come back…” he pleaded in his sleep. In his heart, he could not believe that Tamar was dead. He believed she could come back, if only she willed it.

  In Murat’s distress, visions of Tamar weighed heavy on his lids. Her mischievous smile, her emerald eyes, her bronzed skin, they all found their rest in the hollow space of almost sleep. They were leaching images, eerily sedentary, and haunting. They snuck upon him the way a dead body washes ashore under the cloak of night.

  It was just a few hours before sunrise when Murat was startled awake. His sheets were drenched in a cold sweat. Crickets chimed in the still of night and a silver mist hung low over the river. He summoned the interpreter of dreams, the Halveti Sheik Suca, to his bedside.

  “Murat, what is it?” The Sheik’s long robe trailed as he hurried to the bedside.

  “A strange dream.” Murat kicked his legs over the side of the bed as he sat up. “You must tell me what it means.”

  “You will dream many dreams. Best not to ponder the meaning of each and every one.”

  “This one’s different.” Murat leaned forward anxiously. “I know it.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment before the Sheik nodded. “Go ahead then. Tell it to me.”

  Murat closed his eyes. “I was resting in the garden. The sun was warm on my face and the grass was cool under my skin.”

  “You weren’t alone, were you?” the Sheik interrupted.

  Murat shook his head. “She was on the grass beside me. We were lying there, not speaking, not moving, just being there, together.”

  “What happened next? Take your time, Murat. It’s important you remember the events just as they unfolded.”

  Murat nodded, his lids still sealed tight. “It was all very strange.”