by Selcuk Altun
‘If you know a beauty ready to live in Byzantium, I’ll propose to her,’ I said.
‘I know a spinster ready to go anywhere on earth with you,’ she replied. Then she phoned Costas of Edremit and said, ‘Papa! Halâs just proposed to me. What’s become of your idea that a Turk wouldn’t want an infertile woman?’
I’d found the love of my life, but evidently I wasn’t to discover the joys of fatherhood. It was a dilemma worthy of a Byzantine aristocrat. Maybe destiny didn’t want to enrich history with another Byzantine Sultan after me.
We planned to marry at the end of the fall semester. Mistral would continue her academic career at an Istanbul university, and I would find some kind of keeping-up-appearances job. I called my mother and Hayal, who were not surprised at the news. Akile said, ‘You’ll have to give the good news to your grandmother yourself, because she’ll kill me if I tell her.’ And Hayal said, ‘Big brother, tell Mistral to wear flat shoes to the wedding – she’s not shorter than you.’
In Istanbul I was immediately welcomed into my grandmother’s presence. When I broke the news, she started rapidly thumbing her prayer beads. Her mind was troubled by a more prominent nuisance than the infertility of the bridal candidate.
‘Halâs, my son, take that blonde girl to the imam before you marry her. Let her pick a holy name like Emine or Ayşe and convert to Islam.’
‘Grandma,’ I said. ‘I proposed to Mistral and didn’t ask her to do anything beyond moving to Istanbul. Maybe she’ll be impressed by you and volunteer to convert, who knows?’
‘Son of a worthless American, do you think you’re pulling the wool over a child’s eyes?’ she said, and threw her prayer beads at me. I caught them in mid-air and we started laughing. I hugged her on the way out and kissed her on the cheek. It smelled of rose water.
I woke at dawn in orgasmic delight. In my dream Nomo and I had mounted the four horses stolen by the Venetians from Constantinople, and were riding back to Istanbul on air. I was in the front and wearing a purple caftan. Our laughter mingled with the joyful neighing of the Quadriga. The brass plate left behind under the empty niche in the Church of San Marco said, ‘Home, Sweet Home.’
I went into the living room to watch the movement of dawn into daylight. The ancient Galata wind and the seagulls all hushed; the ezan was about to issue from the city’s 3000 mosques. I went into the study and took my fanciest Venetian notebook from the desk drawer. I wrote ‘B. Homework’ on the first page and burst into laughter. On the back of the page I drew a chessboard. Over it I wrote, in the favorite poly-alphabetic code of the fifteenth-century Italian city-states, ‘Saving the Quadriga’. Had I discovered the pleasure of composing puzzles instead of solving them? I went back to bed. When I was a child, if I couldn’t sleep I used to recite three little nonsense prayers my grandmother gave me to shut my eyes. This time it was lines from Karacaoğlan that sprang to my lips:
Square in the heart of her fair breast
Lies the sacred fount of Zemzem
If I drink from it they’ll kill me
And if I don’t, I’ll die.
(March 2009 – July 2010)
SELÇUK ALTUN was born in Artvin, Turkey, in 1950. He is a retired banking executive, a bibliophile and philanthropist. His novels, Songs My Mother Never Taught Me and Many and Many a Year Ago, were listed amongst the top one hundred foreign crime fiction by the International Association of Crime Writers. He lives in Istanbul.
First English edition published 2012 by Telegram
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Copyright © Selçuk Altun 2012
Translation © Clifford Endres and Selhan Endres 2012
ISBN 978 1 84659 148 8
eISBN 978 1 84659 150 1
Published in Turkey as Bizans Sultani by Sel Yayincilik, 2011
The right of Selçuk Altun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved.
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A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
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