The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  “Go on.”

  “I looked over to her and saw something like a seed rising up from her chest. I watched as it rose from her and came to settle in me. All the while, we lay there, not moving, not speaking, beside one another. We lay this way for a lifetime. We watched as seasons changed. A hundred winters came to pass, and then, in the very place where the seed had sunk, a tree sprouted. It grew tall and strong and hovered high above the clouds. Its shade encompassed all the world.”

  The Sheik stroked his long white beard. “A pomegranate tree you say?”

  “I did not say.”

  “But it was a pomegranate tree, was it not?”

  “How could you know that?”

  “I saw it, just as you did.”

  Murat nodded.

  “Was that all?”

  “I awoke shortly after.”

  “Strange, indeed.”

  “Have you any idea what it could mean?”

  “I’ve more than an idea.”

  Murat leaned in. “So I was right to summon you. I was feeling so very foolish.”

  “This is not the dream of a fool, Murat. It is a window into the future.”

  “I cannot bear another moment. Tell me what it means, dear Sheik. Tell me now and tell me quickly.”

  “Through you and the girl, the Osman family will continue to live on forever. She is the one who has planted the seed in you Murat, and through her, your descendants will live and prosper.”

  “But the girl in my dream, she is dead. She cannot be the one.”

  “Murat,” Sheik Suca pressed. “The girl is certainly not dead. Your forefathers have saved her and her people. The Nissim children will carry this debt through time until it is repaid.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “When you save a soul, you do so by making it a part of your own. When you save a life, you save it forever. Allah has granted you a guardian savior for all eternity. Don’t you see? She must pay it back.”

  Murat looked on dumbfounded. “Pay it back? But to whom?”

  “You are your father’s son, are you not? The girl will inherit the debt of her father, and you, my boy, will inherit the deed.”

  “So we will meet again?” he asked, eyes wide and heart thumping.

  “You will meet again, but not before it is time for the debt to be repaid.”

  Murat swallowed hard. He blinked several times before addressing the question that hung limply between them. “When is the debt to be repaid?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  Sheik Suca frowned. “When Allah wills it.”

  Murat stared on blankly.

  “Perhaps you should try and rest now.”

  “I don’t need to rest.” He headed towards the open shutters and peered out over the dark, empty courtyard. He spun around and challenged the Sheik, “If she’s not dead, then where is she?”

  The old Sheik winced. “I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to spend some time out of the city. Perhaps Buyukada? Yes, I think so,” he continued without waiting for Murat’s response. “There, the dust is laced with gold—very good for the eyes and for healing the heart. I will speak to the Sultan and make arrangements for your departure.” The Sheik shuffled toward the door and muttered unintelligently to himself, before turning back to Murat. “Do try and get some rest.”

  But Murat could not rest. He sat up all that night, thinking only of her debt, his deed, and a day they might someday meet again.

  14

  On the sixth day of the month of Elul, the young prince set sail for the small Island of Buyukada, just an hour’s journey South of Istanbul. He boarded the ferry from the shores of Topkapi and sailed through what was known as the Port of Justice. Upon arrival, his ferry glided through the outstretched embrace of two weathered docks. He stepped off the wooden vessel onto the deck situated at the northwestern tip of the island.

  His shoulders sloped sullenly, as though naturally dislodged from his withered frame. His servant was waiting at port to unload his trunks onto the carriage. She had been sent days prior of Murat’s sojourn and was instructed to secure his smooth arrival. She carried his trunks with as much ease as his thick Albanian guard had upon their departure from the palace. After loading the trunks onto an unadorned, horse-drawn carriage, she accompanied him on the journey through the pine-shaded promenade. She looked at Murat and saw that though the seagulls had come to greet him, he had winter in his eyes.

  When Sultana Nur-Banu received word of her son’s excessive mourning, she arranged for a diverse entourage of servants to attend to him in Buyukada. She sent beautiful slaves from the Caucuses, a yellow-headed Armenian who strummed magic with her flute, his tutor and spiritual adviser, Sheik Suca, and a troop of dwarves who were trained in dance and entertainment. She also sent the Halabi, a large man of nomadic origins who was as stern and unflinching as a cement brick. He’d tutored Murat in Arabic and insisted the boy memorize the suras of the Koran. She sent Persian poets, Greek astrologers, and boyhood friends who’d been employed in the palace as janissaries.

  When Sheik Suca finally found the young prince, he discovered Murat wasting away in the saunas and steam-rooms of the imperial hamam.

  “My dear Sheik!” The naked boy stood in a steaming tub of rose petals. “To what do I owe this great honor!” His words were slurred as he stumbled up the bathhouse stairs, drunk on the island’s plum wine. Around his feet, a small pool of water and wilted pink petals gathered around wooden bath clogs. He snapped his fingers. Immediately, the servant girls arrived, swathed him in Kashmirian linens, and patted him dry.

  “You are not well, Murat. I’ve been sent to oversee your recovery.”

  “Not well! I’m perfectly fine, good Sheik! Look around.” He raised his hands towards the gilded domes and Byzantine frescos overhead. A servant girl with red hair let out a startled little cry as he grabbed her waist and yanked her close. “I am surrounded by beautiful women and vast riches!” He pushed her aside, “Shouldn’t I be fine! Let me guess. Has my mother sent you with more beautiful women…How many? Five, ten, twenty? What exponential joy!” He snapped his fingers again. This time, the servants appeared with a jewel-encrusted goblet. Murat threw back his neck and downed the contents, then tossed the empty goblet aside.

  Sheik Suca winced as it skidded across the blue and jade tiles and clattered against the marble wall.

  Murat lifted his arm to his face and wiped away a trail of crimson wine that streaked his chin. With moisture beads glistening on his brow, he cackled loudly, his misery echoing throughout the steam-filled bathhouse. “Perhaps the Sultana thinks me a wild beast. As easy to please as a roaming dog! You can send them back. Send them all back!”

  “To think you are a crown prince of the Empire!” the Sheik scolded. “Look at you, drunk as the bees in the orchard. Come, boy! Get out of this sweaty pit. Let’s get some fresh air.” The Sheik clapped his hands loudly and three girls arrived in white tunics. “Dress him,” he instructed, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. “He’s not to have another drop of wine. I speak on behalf of Sultana Nur-banu, favorite to the Sultan. That’s an order!”

  Sheik Suca and Murat boarded an open-air carriage. They made their way along a cobblestone street flanked on either side by white wooden mansions and the shadows cast by cypress trees that kept the households cool. They took in the scent of honeysuckle and lavender. Crumbling monasteries were perched atop the hills and nestled in the valleys of Buyukada. They were ancient relics that housed the islands monks and nuns and had once been home to Byzantine empresses exiled centuries ago.

  At the base of a low hill, beneath the shade of a bamboo lattice, the sheik attempted to recreate some semblance of normalcy in the prince’s life. He began to tutor Murat in history and philosophy, while the servants kept them cool beneath the steady wand of their outstretched, peacock fans.

  And yet, Murat failed to grasp most of his lessons, losing his concentration to the vast expanse of the Marmara. The gentle stirs and ri
pples of the turquoise sea so captivated him. Was that the color of her eyes? Her emerald eyes, or perhaps hers had a touch of the azure sky? The memory was fading and for this, he began to hate himself.

  Still, there was one lesson that caught his attention. The Sufi Sheik expounded upon the ruins of an ancient city named Pompeii. It had been a vibrant city inhabited by Romans and shaded by the colossal peaks of a mountain called Vesuvius. One fateful day, eighty years after the birth of the prophet Jesus, the mountain overlooking the city rumbled, then swallowed the city in her fiery breath. Within minutes, the bustling city was obliterated, the city’s inhabitants transformed into pillars of ash and molten lava.

  “It is said that beneath the layers of ash, the city is perfectly preserved,” the old Sheik’s eyes glistened. “Beneath the surface, time stands still. The babies still lay in their cribs, the dogs, still chained to their fences—they’re all frozen in time. Tables are set with silver cutlery. Great artworks cover the walls of homes belonging to wealthy merchants and Roman princes. The secret story of a civilization lies frozen in time. Don’t you see Murat, they are waiting, waiting to be discovered. Under the ash and the rubble, beneath the hardened ruins of the lava’s surface, the treasures of a secret civilization glisten.”

  The young prince was paying close attention now, his dark eyes wide with wonder.

  “My dear Prince,” the Sheik continued. “The entire city of Pompeii is waiting— Waiting to be discovered, waiting for the memory of her existence to surface. Hidden treasures are buried beneath the rubble. Jewels and gilded baubles, gold and diamonds too. For the ones who seek only treasure, the city of Pompeii swallows them in her ruins. Many men have set out to loot and plunder, to stake a claim to the priceless booty buried in her midst. They ride towards the horizon. Of the men who have embarked on these greedy expeditions, not one has ever been seen nor heard from again. And still, she waits, the city of slumber, beneath the ruins, she waits for someone pure of heart to come uncover her secrets, someone to discover her true beauty, but only, only in a labor of pure love.”

  *

  Murat slept beneath a netted canopy glistening with a thousand shimmering sea-pearls. He thrashed about, tossing and turning on his satin bed cushions. He was haunted by her image, drifting out somewhere over the sea.

  He cried for the gaping hole that Tamar had left in his heart. He prayed that someone might rescue him from a place he did not know, from an affliction he could not name. Until that day, he would wait under heaps of charred rubble. He would wait for someone to come find him perfectly preserved, completely alone. He would wait for someone pure of heart, who would unearth him, save him, and give themselves to him, all in a labor of pure love.

  Murat waited. He prayed that Sheik Suca was correct—that Tamar was alive and she would come back to him—that she would find him and unearth him, and through a labor of love, he would be rescued.

  Upon his return from Buyukada, he was informed that he would be sent to govern Manisa, a bustling Anatolian province where he would educate himself in matters of state and prepare to take over an empire. Along the journey, he passed ancient Greek ruins, temples belonging to the Greek gods Zeus and Aezani. There was an acropolis in the distance atop the highest peak in view. From the ground rose ancient stone goddesses of the Hittites. To make an image of God was forbidden according to Islam, but Murat let his eyes drape over every inch of the crumbling monuments and carved imagery.

  The caravan passed the mourning head of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, King of Lydia, and wife to Amphion, king of Thebes. A tremendous rock structure bearing the image of a sitting woman. It was said that God turned Niobe to stone as punishment for her sins. She lay there at the side of the road, a river of melted snow streaming over her face for an eternity of weeping. She sat there waiting, just waiting. She waited, her heart a slab of stone, waiting for her spirit to free her from the trappings of God’s punishment, free her from the carvings of a mountainside.

  Murat waited. Weeks turned into months. Seasons passed and colors changed. The sky darkened and lightened and the moon waxed and waned. Years went by and still he waited. He grew more desperate in time, certain she was alive, and that he could find her, that he would find her. He dispatched a small army in search of an emerald-eyed girl possessing a ruby ring with a cryptic inscription. This girl, he explained, was indebted to him. His soldiers searched far and wide but nowhere did they find Murat’s beloved.

  His father the Sultan died in the arms of the one that he loved. Murat ascended the throne. He ruled the empire from his lonely niche. Heartbroken by the loss of Tamar, he retreated from state politics and allowed the state to be governed for the most part by his grand vizier and chief adviser. Some thought he’d gone mad. Thrashing out for no apparent reason at all, he’d turned bitter and reclusive. He took concubines and bore many children, and yet, never forgetting his love for Tamar, he continued the empire’s policy of religious tolerance towards persecuted minorities, welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees from Europe’s inquisition into his empire.

  At the hour of his death, he summoned the royal scribe to his chamber. Murat was waiting. Waiting for a debt that was never repaid. Waiting to have been rescued, unearthed, through a labor of love that never came. In the chapter on his life in the Osman Secret Chronicles, it is written that Sultan Murat III died in waiting.

  PART II

  15

  Selim Osman

  Istanbul - Present Day

  Selim Osman was born waiting. Waiting for love, waiting for enlightenment, waiting for the meaning of the tragedy of his life to make itself known. From one day to the next, Selim Osman, the sole living descendant of the last ottoman sultan, was waiting.

  He pulled into a circular entranceway around a tall, stone obelisk in the center of the courtyard. The headlights of his Beemer swept the packed dirt road leading up to the manicured grounds of the hilltop villa illuminating a dozen or more parking attendants in white suit jackets and bow ties looking bored. His headache had worsened throughout the day and was now nearly intolerable. Selim reached over toward the empty seat beside him and popped open the glove compartment, withdrawing a white plastic pillbox. Ignoring the recommended dosing instructions, he knocked back four ibuprofen tablets, downing them with the last remnants of a warm bottle of Diet Coke that had been rolling beneath the back seat all throughout the drive. He turned off the ignition, stepped out of the car, then handed the keys and some loose change to a skinny boy who didn’t look a day over fourteen. “Keep it close by will you?” He followed the winding, red-carpeted path before him, enclosed on both sides by trim walls of lush, overarching hedges. There were a few neatly planted torches freckling an otherwise dark path leading to the old, western-style villa. The ten-bedroom mansion had been built by an Italian architect and had last been inhabited by a once-favored Egyptian dignitary and his family. Now the place was an upscale nightclub, rented out occasionally by wealthy individuals for weddings or charity functions.

  The evening’s gala was meant to benefit Istanbul’s children in need, and Selim had written out a sizeable check to the charity and mailed it in along with his RSVP three weeks back. He said hello to fat Musa, the security guard who worked the club on weekends, then lent Mrs. Fatih, an elderly widow he’d known all his life, an arm to lean upon as she ascended a few shallow steps leading to the doorway. When he entered, he was surprised by the extravagant orchid arrangements, sleek lucite bars stationed throughout the inner ballroom, and a steaming dinner buffet that could have fed the charity’s hungry children for months, perhaps even through the start of Ramadan. The smell of spring rolls and sweet sauce filled the air.

  White-gloved waiters circled the room offering skewered lamb and teriyaki-glazed treats to Istanbul’s upper-crust elites and a smattering of well-to-do European ex-pats. A life-size ice sculpture of Kemal Ataturk, the national hero, was situated in the center of the room, melting under the warm glow of the orange and rose spotlights.

>   Selim looked about the room and spotted all the usuals, friends he’d grown up with and known since childhood. They were all part of a small community of privileged Turks who had been educated in private German or French lycees, and summered with parents and grandparents on the Turkish Riviera, or along the pebbled shores of the Cote d’ Azure. They were from families that had publicly touted the benefits of Kemalist secularism and western-style modernity, still, they suffered from an emotional jet lag, a squeamishness towards progress that grew ever more acute as the secularization of the country began to intrude upon the old class system.

  Selim made his way over to the bar and was surprised to see Ayda Turkman standing at the far end sipping a plum-colored martini. Until now, he’d only ever seen the actress on screen.

  She seemed to be examining the room, her long slender fingers wrapped delicately below the gaping rim of her martini glass. She was unusually tall and startlingly pale, with chiseled shoulders and a striking collarbone. A small beauty spot rested at the tip of her cheekbone beside eyes the color of mahogany. Her untamed hair cascaded down the length of her back and swept across her narrow waist in full ebony waves. She moved throughout the room quietly, as her hips swayed like a pendulum.

  A few feet away, the Dogan twins sipped wine and laughed coquettishly with the minister’s son, gossiping in French while casting sideways glances in Ayda’s direction. They spoke more loudly than they would in their native tongue, confident that Ayda, with her presumably stunted education, would not understand their petty insults. Speaking French while not in France was an elitist affectation Selim’s contemporaries took up upon their return from whatever Swiss boarding schools they’d attended, usually L’ecole Aiglon near the Alps, or sometimes, Le Rosey.

  These Euro-Turks regarded the city’s rising glitterati with a mixture of feigned disgust and casual scorn. Models were considered glorified strippers, disposable arm-candy for upper-crust playboys, and actresses were regarded as temporary playthings for the aristocracy’s naughty adolescents. While they debuted the latest designer trends on billboards across Istanbul and Ankara, at the end of the day, these starlets were condemned to an ambiguous rung in the Turkish caste system. They were femmes scandaleuses. Scorned by the religious masses for their promiscuity (real or imagined) and shunned by the secular elite for their growing presence in Turkish society. This was Istanbul’s Hollywood, a class amongst itself, glorified and ostracized, like Roman gladiators at the Coliseum. Istanbul’s upper class was a closed society, membership regulated by a strict grandfather clause, bequeathed at birth to those whose ancestral lines could be traced to some legendary war hero, or to the prophet Muhammad himself.