The Sultan's Seal: A Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels)

by Jenny White

  It seems to me that the sultan has less to fear from these bright young men, most of whom simply wish to keep the sultan to his promise to revive the constitution and reopen the short-lived parliament he shut down seven years ago, than from those who have twice attempted a coup intending to replace him with his elder brother Murad. Murad is first in line of succession, but was replaced after only a few months as sultan due to a nervous condition. The radicals think Murad is now cured and more receptive to a constitutional government—or perhaps simply more tractable. In any case, Sultan Abdulhamid has decreed a hunt on all equally, loyal and disloyal. He shifts members of his staff continually and reportedly trusts no one. Several of our regular dinner guests were recently sent into exile. I find it frightening to think of the consequences.

  To make matters worse, the city is full of refugees. Now that some of the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans have become autonomous, terrible reports have reached our ears of Muslims killed by Christian neighbors in revenge for the sultan’s brutal repression of their earlier rebellions. They are all fleeing to Istanbul, the center of the Muslim world, where they believe themselves to be safe. The streets are a Babel of languages and colorful regional dress, even more so than usual.

  There have been more riots in the streets of Stamboul—not to worry, my dear, not in Pera—about the banned parliament, although food shortages and high prices contribute to the instability. We are safely fortified here amid the other foreign residences. I suppose it is not surprising that the sultan has tightened his grip on the reins, although it is hard to imagine what might topple a sultanate that has reigned for half a millennium. Pax Brittanica surely would benefit the people here, as it has done the peoples of India and Asia. Father tells me that this is a possibility. I dearly hope so, for the sake of peace. At any rate, the sultan is no enemy of Europe. I’ve heard he is a devotee of theater and opera and of detective stories and police thrillers, if you can imagine. I’m told his chief of wardrobe sits behind a screen and reads to him every night, sometimes an entire book, as he is an insomniac. He is particularly fond of detective mysteries and has new books immediately translated and read to him. He also engages in wood carving and cabinetmaking, rather unusual hobbies for a regent. I can’t help but think that a man who loves to read and who crafts his own furniture will bring progress and discipline to his empire. Mother thought him quite charming, but he rarely receives visitors anymore simply for the pleasure of it, so I shan’t have a chance of making up my own mind.

  As for my own entertainment, you needn’t worry, dear sister. There is much to do here. Thursday evening, I am going to the theater with Madam Rossini and her family to see a new French play, and a few weeks hence the Italians are holding their annual saint’s day fair in the garden of their Residence. There is a charity ball soon at one of the new hotels. Tonight, in fact, we’re having a ball here at the Residence. There’s no shortage of entertainment in Stamboul. You needn’t worry that I have withered on the vine. And I have Father. His work keeps him occupied, but I share in this, to his great satisfaction, I believe. I must run now and consult with the chefs and the musicians.

  Be well and give my love to all our family. Perhaps I can convince you yet to come on a visit. You will be well surprised at our comforts and the color and excitement of living in the Orient.

  Affectionately,

  Sybil

  7

  Your Rolling Pearl

  I never did learn to ride the water like Violet. Our pond was a different kind of classroom than the sea. Eventually I learned to move freely in this different medium. Tired of the confines of the pond, Violet wanted to swim in the Bosphorus. I told her about the boys who had not reemerged. She wanted to ask Halil about the currents, but I was anxious about questioning him. I had the sense that he knew about our swims at the pond and disapproved, but his loyalty to me, I think, kept him from reporting our indiscretions to my mother. After all, Violet, as my servant, was responsible for looking after me. But I doubt he would have kept a dip in the Bosphorus from my mother, since, apart from the danger, it was likely we would be seen and bring disgrace on the family.

  Violet stamped her foot. “Well, I’ll go to the village, then, and ask the fishermen. You’re afraid,” she taunted me.

  I was scandalized. A young woman did not venture outside the home except to go, accompanied, along a circumspect route to the home of a relative or female friend. She wore a feradje and covered her face. Under no circumstances would she speak with a male stranger. That had been my life up till then, and I had no reason to believe anyone else’s life was any different.

  I accompanied my mother on her visits to Istanbuli women of our standing during their weekly at-home days. During the hot months, the women, children, and their entourages moved from the city to their summer houses along the forested northern banks of the Bosphorus, where it was cooler. This proximity made visiting easier and my mother seemed to regain her spirit during those short months. But for me, summer meant perching on cushioned divans in cool, tiled harem sitting rooms and shady courtyards, sipping black tea from gold-rimmed glasses and listening politely to the women discuss the coming and going of relations and debate the qualities of prospective grooms and brides for their children. They dissected upcoming marriages, the amount of bride wealth paid by the grooms’ families, and the dowries the brides would bring with them. Colorful silk thread slipped through the delicate fingers of the younger girls as they negotiated the tight choreography of embroidering their trousseaux. In those years, I paid little attention to the conversations, but instead lay on the divan, elbow propped on my cushion, examining the details of other people’s rooms, letting the timbre of their voices draw across me like a musical instrument in reverse.

  The women wore white chemises of the softest silk, their breasts braced in low brocaded vests. Over this, they wore flowered or striped silk robes in all the colors of the garden and the jewel box: apple green, cherry red, heliotrope, peacock blue, the yellow of songbirds, pink, ruby and garnet, eau de nil. The robe was wrapped about with a silk girdle, and a bright, contrasting tunic with long, slit sleeves and trailing, divided skirts. Their hair was plaited into many braids, entwined with ropes of pearls and strings of jewels, or twisted up in colorful scarves dripping with embroidery and beaded fringes that framed their faces and swayed softly against their cheeks when they moved. They looked gay, like the colorful parrots and sweet-singing canaries some kept in fanciful cages in their courtyards. Their chirping lulled me into the languorous restfulness when nothing is expected of you and everything is given. The short bliss of childhood.

  In ensuing years, the mesh of information and conjecture became tighter and caught up young girls like myself, ladies in training who were expected to be of serious mien, although pleasant and polite. Giggly girls who ran about and smiled too easily were spoiled and inevitably would come to a bad end. I tried my best not to smile out of place or too often, and I believe I succeeded all too well, given my increasing boredom at such functions.

  My secluded life at Chamyeri gave me no practice in the skill of light conversation. I knew next to nothing about our family, except what news my cousin and tutor, Hamza, brought when he visited, and what Violet, who had her own mysterious sources, shared with me, much of which was unrepeatable. Nor did I know the stories of other prominent families and the characters peopling them. Our secluded lifestyle left me ignorant of changes in fashion. Mama and I were always at least a season behind. Once a year, in the fall, Mama sent for a Greek woman from Istanbul who came to the villa with samples of cloth and took orders for new clothing. But by the following summer, these were again outdated.

  The fact that our household did not include live-in servants caused great consternation among the other women. Every household had to have servants, they chided my mother. It was a necessary sign of social stature, the more the better. Some middle-class homes had dozens of slaves and servants, society households many more. It was a duty to support as
many poorer people as possible, a pious act that brings sevap, Allah’s reward. Besides, they asked my mother, how did she manage at night? It was unimaginable that she would make her own tea and undress herself. They would look at me and say to my mother, “A young girl needs to know how to run a household.” I never knew how Mama felt about the lack of servants. Papa’s house at Nishantashou had many servants, but Mama never complained about Ismail Dayi’s odd aversion to them. After Violet came, she helped Mama and me in the evenings after the servants had left. For my part, I did not even know how to make tea.

  I did, however, know quite a bit about literature and international politics, thanks to afternoons under my cousin Hamza’s tutelage, and about Islamic jurisprudence and Persian poetry learned on long winter evenings in Ismail Dayi’s study. I could recite the Quran and, moreover, knew enough Arabic to understand it. I also knew the tides of the Bosphorus and how to move through water. I did not know fine needlework or how to embroider linens and prayer mats for my trousseau. I did not know how people died, but I was to learn that soon enough.

  I much preferred spring with its blossoming cherry trees and chilly squalls of rain and the marmalade colors of autumn when the summer houses stood empty, and I began again my love affair with water. A year older, Violet knew more of the world, and I was her willing pupil. On warm days, she spread a carpet along the mossy edge of the pond. When we tired of swimming, we stretched out in our shifts and unpacked the basket she brought along. With her knife she disrobed red peaches flush as babies’ cheeks. When their juices flowed across my wrists, Violet bent over and licked them clean. She wedged open black mussels and taught me to suck their brine and take the pearl of flesh between my teeth. In the season of artichokes, we took turns plucking the leathery outer leaves one by one. Then, with her sharp knife, she cut the inner leaves down to the heart, exposing the fur, which she scraped until the choke was smooth and bare. She handed me a lemon and a twist of salt to rub into the flesh of the chokes. It stung my hands, but I did as she asked. With her thin fingers, she took the chokes from my slippery palms and immersed them in water infused with lemon, heating it slowly to a boil on a portable charcoal stove. When it was done, she fed me morsels of the delicate, fragrant flesh.

  Violet did not accompany us on the summer trips; she was not of our class and would have had to stay in the servant quarters, something my mother found unacceptable, since she was, after all, a blood relative. I envied Violet the privacy of our house in summer. I imagined her slipping through the black pond like an eel, while I rested, a stone in a kaleidoscope, in the colorful rooms of the summer families. Violet, I was sure, delighted in her freedom and gave no thought to me, confined in a gilded cage like the nervous songbirds. My boredom was tinged with jealousy.

  Until Violet, I had no real friends except Hamza, who accompanied my father during his weekly visits. When my father stopped coming to Chamyeri as often, Hamza still rode up from Nishantashou regularly and brought me books. He would tutor me in the garden pavilion, going over my lessons for the week, then sit for a while with my mother. He spent the night in the men’s reception room, and left after breakfast the following day. As a child, I moved freely through the house and crept at night under Hamza’s quilt for an hour or so. Holding me in the crook of his arm, he read to me from books he had hidden in his satchel, colorful tales of Frankish fairies and Arab djinns, French love poems and fantastic stories quite different from the earnest literature we read and discussed by day. When his eyes began to close, he put his hand below my chin and turned my face to him. He kissed my forehead and whispered, in French,

  “Who is your prince?”

  “You are, dear Hamza.”

  “Am I your only prince?”

  “Of course, my only one.”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever.”

  His breath was hot on my ear.

  “Sleep now, princess. Dream of your prince.”

  It was our secret signal that I should return to my room. I disentangled myself from his arms regretfully. He did not tell me to walk softly and make certain no one saw. Somehow I knew that this cherished ritual would vanish if exposed to the gaze of others.

  My uncle was my other tutor. On evenings when he did not have company, Ismail Dayi was happy to discuss what I had read and guide me to other readings he considered appropriate for my age. During the cold months, dressed in quilted robes, we put cushions on the thick wool carpet and tucked our legs under an enormous cotton-filled comforter that had been stretched over a box-like brazier to trap the heat. My eccentric dayi had no sense, of course, of what was considered appropriate for a girl, so he trained me as he would a young apprentice, a relationship both familiar and comfortable to him. Snug under our comforter, we sat opposite each other, read Ottoman jurisprudence, and took turns reciting mystical poetry.

  One who sees my aimless turning might take me for the desert whirlwind

  I am nothing within nothing, if I have any being, it comes from you.

  While I was your rolling pearl, why did you let me go astray?

  If my dust is on the mirror of life, it comes from you.

  “Look to your own heart for knowledge of the divine,” my dayi instructed me, “not the interpretations of scribes and clerics. Nature is a sage; hear it with your heart. Be humble in your knowledge, but glorify Allah with what you have learned. Sheykh Galib was educated at home, like you, and was composing poetry when he was little older than you are now. Nothing in life is aimless or out of place. All is inspired.”

  Ismail Dayi urged Mama to join us, but she preferred to stay in her rooms, wrapped in the ermine robe Papa had given her the first winter of their marriage. She had developed a taste for reading French novels and, although he disapproved of what he said was the frivolity and dangerous foreign pollution of novels in general (and French novels in particular), Ismail Dayi kept Mama supplied with them from the booksellers in the city. A steady stream of apprentices brought him parcels of new books. Indeed, I saw scattered about the library a great number of books and journals in French and other languages I did not recognize. Those I could read tended to be difficult treatises that I attempted but soon laid back on the shelf.

  Some evenings, I did not find Ismail Dayi, though I had heard the carriage arrive and the groom Jemal sing a soulful folk song as he walked the horses past the kitchen door toward the orchard. Jemal was slender and boyish, but very strong. Unlike most men, he did not have a mustache, although he wore a felt cap and the long, baggy shalwar pants of country men. He loved pomegranates. When they were in season, he would keep one of the leathery red orbs in his hand for hours, carrying it about with him and kneading it with his fingers. One late summer day, I was watching the silver-bristled kangal dogs that slouched around his yard. I was afraid of these large dogs, so I crouched behind the jacaranda bush. Jemal was sitting on a chair just outside his blue-painted front door, sleeves rolled above his elbows, concentrating his full attention on the pomegranate he was rotating rhythmically in the palm of his right hand. His back was tense and the muscle in his arm rippled. Suddenly he stopped and, raising the fruit to his nose, sniffed it, then stroked it gently across his cheek. He put the red skin to his mouth and slowly nipped it with his teeth. Examining the opening he had made, he raised the pomegranate to his mouth and sucked at the opening until all that remained was a leathery sack. Afterwards he sat, staring into space, his face flushed, his lips slightly pursed. Ruby drops glistened on his chin. The husk lay on the grass at his feet.

  Late one night in the lonely period after Madam Élise’s departure, I was roaming the house and was startled to see Jemal moving stealthily in leather house socks through the dark kitchen toward the rear door, his outdoor overshoes and turban in his hands. His black hair was long as a girl’s. His face had the same expression as when he had finished with the pomegranate.

  8

  Rules of Engagement

  Light floods through the open doors onto the lawn of the Br
itish Residence. Orange paper lampions have been strung along the paths. Servants circulate with trays of savories and fruit and bottles of chilled French wine. Kamil is here in search of someone who knew Mary Dixon. He finds this the most difficult part of his work, interacting socially with strangers. As a young man during his father’s reign as governor, he had endured long hours of empty pleasantries at endless functions, each word inflicting a dull pain until he had to pull away. From a vantage point in the garden or a quiet room, he would watch as figures met and merged, then withdrew and rejoined others in a complicated board game. He could see patterns in these interactions: the wealthy, the powerful, and the beautiful, and those who vied to be in their presence; respect shown or withheld; the sheep cut from the fold by a predator; the individual of wit or erudition and an admiring but unstable crowd of consumers; too obviously averted glances; the interplay of men and women when the rules of engagement were unclear. It was endlessly fascinating. He still prefers to watch, unless he finds an engaging partner for conversation. Good conversation is becoming rarer, he muses, since the sultan increased the number of his spies and people no longer dare venture opinions on even the most mundane subjects in their own drawing rooms.