The Reign of the Favored Women

by Ann Chamberlin

  “No, of course not. You are too innocent to go around suspecting lies.”

  “Do you think it was a lie?”

  “I have little doubt.” I lied. “You know what bad blood there is between Nur Banu and your aunt. The Valide Sultan would stop at nothing to see that Safiye’s power is thwarted.”

  “She would lie?”

  “She would do worse than lie.” Even...

  “Yes, even attempt murder at your guileless hands. Thank Allah we stopped that crime in time.”

  “Thank Allah...”

  “Come. If she were guilty of your sainted father’s death, do you think Safiye could sit there coolly day after day, looking your mother in the eye?”

  Gul Ruh shook her head. What this meant was that she was certain she couldn’t do such a thing. She projected the outcome of her contemplated deed into the future with increasing horror.

  “So this is what all this recent attention was? Just a ruse to gain the trust of those in Safiye’s camp. You haven’t really fallen madly in love with your cousin, have you?”

  She shook her head in despair. “But what am I to do now?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call soldiers to get rid of him,” I threw my head in the direction of the closet, “and we won’t say another word to anyone about it.”

  But suddenly Gul Ruh made a lunge for the dagger on my waist and had it unsheathed and on the way to her ribs before I could stop her. Our hands strained, shook. Her lips quivered like those of the thirsty for water. It was the struggle of madness, for under normal conditions she would have been no contest for me. Sanity returned at last and returned her to more than natural weakness. I put my dagger out of reach this time, but then hurried back to her side. She disintegrated into tears in my arms.

  “Angel, angel, you didn’t really want to die, did you?”

  “No, no,” she sobbed. “But that should be my punishment for even thinking of such a horrible thing. I should live, marry Muhammed, and live forever among these schemers, never knowing peace or happiness or love again. I deserve it now. Death would be easy compared to that.”

  It occurred to me that her “Can’ts” and “Nos” had been more shrinking from the possible futures she envisioned than from the murder. She could only ever think of murder in an abstract less real than the future—of that I was certain.

  Then, without warning, I began to tell her of my first days as a eunuch. The presence of the newly circumcised brought the memory forcefully to mind. I told her how I’d struggled to accept my fate. At the time any sort of future at all seemed precluded.

  “I remember saying T can’t, I can’t’,” I told her, “over and over again. But somehow, I was able to. Here I am, thanks be to Allah. And it has not been so bad. It has not been the end of the world as I imagined.”

  She made an attempt to take comfort from my words, but there was still bitterness in her voice when she said, “Yes, to marry for a woman is what becoming a eunuch is for a man.” I didn’t tell her how closely her words echoed those of her mother shortly before Esmikhan had been given to Sokolli Pasha.

  At that moment Safiye and some of her maids returned.

  “By Allah, what’s happened?” she asked, looking hastily to make certain her son’s breath was still coming deeply and slowly in sleep.

  Gul Ruh couldn’t answer so I did. “My lady had a scare. She...she saw, or thought she saw, someone, a woman...a woman in black who sought to...who sought to, Allah forbid, harm the Prince.”

  The maids echoed my prayer that Allah should forbid such a thing. They never doubted my word, for such beings are well known to haunt the pavilions of the newly circumcised, seeking to steal their souls. They have names that are known and incantations by the bookful to which the women immediately fell lest the ghoul return.

  Safiye was a bit more skeptical. She looked hard at Gul Ruh and asked, “And you, you stopped this...this woman—whatever?”

  “She did, thanks be to Allah,” I replied, ‘but you can see it was clearly a trying experience for her.”

  Then I quickly swept Gul Ruh out of the pavilion.

  I was not quick enough, however, to catch the reader-murderer. Having overheard our conversation, he thought it wise to break through the lattice window at the rear of his closet and escape. Since no one I knew admitted to ever having seen his face, he was never apprehended.

  Safiye appeared less skeptical of our story later, in spite of the broken lattice. She came up to report that her son’s fever seemed to have broken and all, Allah willing, would be well.

  Then she said, “It’s curious. He woke from that sleep having dreamed a dream. It took a while to convince him it was a dream, it seemed so real. He dreamed that he had died and gone to Paradise where he was waited on by scores and scores of sparkling-eyed houris.

  “‘Of all races and types in the world. Mother,’ he said. ‘Great black Africans like pleasure barges, Russians like pure banks of drifted snow, Circassians like armfuls of apricot blossom in spring. My member,’ he said, ‘grew from the cutting into a flaming sword with which I cut through their ranks, making them melt before me like butter, sweet, sweet springtime butter I ate and anointed myself with and swam in. It was wonderful. It was Paradise indeed. .And was it only a dream?

  “‘Mother,’ he asked at last, ‘why would you marry me to my cousin? Marriages and cousins, they are supposed to last forever. But this dream has taught me that girls are of no use unless they’re disposable. I can get fresh every day, every hour, by Allah, every minute if I tire of them. That’s the greatest part of their beauty, its fragility, its ability to fade like cream. Like a dream. If there are no limits to it—and, by Allah, a Sultan has so very, very few limits—it is meaningless. Oh, Allah, Mother, how I crave meaning!’

  “Who has been teaching my son such things? To what pagan of a tutor should we quickly give the choice: ‘Islam or the sword, by Allah!’?

  “At first, Gul Ruh,” Safiye continued, “when you told me about a woman in black, I thought Nur Banu. I thought...well, I didn’t believe you. Now? Now I’m not so sure. Something...something dark has come over him. Something I am not sure we can control.”

  I remembered the black scar on his cheek.

  “He has grown up, Safiye,” Esmikhan suggested quietly. “All you put in him from the beginning—of good and evil—has now come to manhood.”

  “But he is my son. There must be a way I can control my own son.”

  Esmikhan said nothing.

  Safiye paused, then: “All I can say is it will take some hard work and maybe even a little shove through Murad—which I’m not at all sure I can manage right now, since Nur Banu’s got that new dancing girl in favor—to bring Muhammed around to this marriage we all want so much. By Allah, control! I need more control...”

  Her voice unraveled out into a deep musing which maybe never reached but certainly pushed towards the realization: “I need control like my son, Allah spare us, needs meaning. And perhaps, for people like us, neither ever truly exists.”

  LX

  The morning after the final boat race and the final fireworks display, when word came to us that the Prince was recovering well and beginning to walk around a little, Gul Ruh sighed and declared to no one in particular that she longed to become a Christian.

  “Allah forbid!” her mother cried, making signs against evil as it she had just wished for her own death. “Whatever makes you say such a thing?”

  Gul Ruh’s reply showed that she was really too naive of other religions to be taken seriously. The gist of her longing was only that, nun-like, she wished never to marry anyone at all.

  As fate would have it, not two hours later we, all three, were commanded to appear before the Sultan himself. Esmikhan had not seen her brother except on formal occasions since his ascension, and for Gul Ruh, the memories of childhood meetings had faded altogether. It was an honor not to be refused and yet one so great as hardly to be borne. Gul Ruh, who thought she could guess its purpose
(her aunt Safiye had been busy all morning), clung to me all the way down, as it she were as crippled as her mother.

  “Oh, Allah,” she kept praying over and over, “I wish I could be a nun.”

  Murad sat on cushions in the cool of the garden, his legs coiled under him and under a sheet of paper on which he was practicing the art of illumination. The recent festivities, he declared had given him great inspiration.

  Esmikhan replied politely that, yes, the festivities had been worthy of his majesty.

  “Tell me. Sister,” Murad asked, applying color with a brush no more than three hairs wide, “which do you think was the greatest festivity? Your wedding to Sokolli Pasha, may Allah favor him, in that tumbledown town of Inönü, or these most recent events?”

  Esmikhan smiled, remembering a similar test question placed before his vizier by her legendary grandfather, Suleiman the Magnificent. “My wedding, of course,” she replied, “because you favored it with your presence. And even this most recent circumcision, magnificent as it was, could not boast such an illustrious guest for you were busy being host.”

  Murad smiled and applied gold leaf with a liberal hand. “And you, my young niece?” he asked. “Did the festivities please you?”

  “Indeed, Uncle, majesty, very much,” Gul Ruh replied. When pressed to tell her favorite event, she confessed that her mind was a blur but that perhaps the confections made of spun sugar in the shapes of animals and plants suited her fancy most.

  “What about the religious debates?” the Sultan asked, looking sidelong up at her from his paper. “Did you enjoy them?”

  “The religious debates?” Gul Ruh asked, confused and half fearing she was being led into a trap. Quick calculation told her that while the debates were going on, her mind had been full of her cousin’s death. She had been seeing black witches in the circumcision pavilion. Did her uncle wish her to confess something? Something that would make life in Safiye’s harem even shorter and more intolerable? Deciding with a deep breath that martyrdom was perhaps the best alternative to the Christian convent Islam had to offer, she concluded the truth would be best to tell in any case.

  “I’m sorry, most illustrious uncle. I’m afraid I did not watch any of the debates at all. There were other entertainments, you see...”

  “No, I don’t suppose silly girls’ minds find much of interest in the intricacies of Holy Law.”

  “Actually, I usually find it quite interesting, but I...”

  “Well, I am glad you found entertainment elsewhere more suited to your sex and nature.”

  Gul Ruh wanted to say that the events that had interrupted her at that time had not been at all to her liking, but she remained silent. Her uncle continued without noticing her hesitation.

  “Nevertheless, I am sorry you missed this particular round. I’m convinced you would have found much of interest in it.”

  “I will try and pay more attention next time,” Gul Ruh promised.

  “Good,” Murad said. “I suspect you will find great opportunity to watch the religious banter back and forth to your heart’s content in the very near future.”

  The Sultan blew gently on his miniature to let it dry, then held it up for his audience to admire. They did, as ardently as he could wish. Murad had made a representation of the very debates they had been discussing, with himself an avid listener in the center of the page. To the right was the circumcision pavilion with—edited for history—Muhammed smiling bravely through a window.

  “Do you recognize the man debating here?” Murad asked.

  Gul Ruh had been struggling so with the emotions the sight of the pavilion brought to her that she hadn’t even bothered to look at the left-hand side where the debaters were. But a quick glance failed to enlighten her. Her uncle had striven not so much to render individual characteristics as to meet the miniaturists’ traditional criteria for showing handsome pious young manhood. One handsome, pious young man looked pretty- much like another. Gul Ruh did not recognize him.

  “A remarkable young man.” Murad began to describe with words what the picture failed to make plain. “He cannot be much over twenty. Still he defeated many of his elders and betters most brilliantly in a discourse as lucid and learned as it w as to the point. The son of the late Mufti, I am told, but the youngest son and with still manv, many years of successes ahead of him.”

  “He won the debates?” Gul Ruh exclaimed. She almost pronounced the name “Abd ar-Rahman” aloud but caught herself in time to keep her uncle thinking she did not recognize the man from his descriptions either. “Such a young person, I mean?”

  “Yes. Won quite handily. Not only that, but he made me so drunk on his words that I hardly knew what I was saying. As a prize, I offered him anything at all it was in my power to give, even to half of the Realm of the Faithful.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘Forgive me, O Shadow of Allah,’ the young man said, ‘but the Realm of the Faithful is not yours to give.’ Then he quoted page and verse proving that it was given to me in trust from the Most Merciful and I should not even jest of giving it away, et cetera, et cetera. But finally he came around to saying that there was something it was in my power to give him that he desired more than anything in the world. Can you guess, Gul Ruh, what that might be?”

  “Such a modest young man!” Esmikhan exclaimed.

  “No, I cannot guess,” Gul Ruh said, feeling her heart pounding in her throat.

  “Modest, Sister, maybe. But he is not above demanding for riches when they fall near his hand. He has asked me to give you to him, Gul Ruh, in marriage. What do you think of that?”

  Gul Ruh could say nothing, but dropped her head and pretended to examine her hands. I do not doubt that if I, too, had examined them I would have found them wet with tears.

  It was Esmikhan who had to reply, “What did you tell the young man. Brother?”

  “I asked him to look in his books and see if there isn’t a commandment not to give women in marriage against their will. ‘Even a sultan is bound by this,’ I told him. ‘I must ask the young lady’s will in this matter before I make promises like that.’

  “Ah, it was gratifying! To beat the winner on his own ground! Hurry and anxiety, those are two things a debater must avoid at all cost and that young man let them get the better of him in this case. I think I could have been something of a legist if only...

  “Still, I gave him my word to ask the young lady and do what I could to sway her opinion if it could be swayed. What am I to tell him? That she looks sullen and says nothing? I fear the young man is to be disappointed and I shall have to give him half the Realm of the Faithful after all, to mollify him.”

  “Oh, no. Uncle, please!” Gul Ruh exclaimed, then sank into modest-and tears again.

  Murad laughed and repeated “ ‘Oh, no, Uncle, please’? It sounds as if she has turned him down, does it not?”

  Gul Ruh managed to catch her mother’s hand with ferocity and this prompted Esmikhan to say, “Now, Brother. Don’t be a tease. You may tell the young man to make his preparations for—for the earliest day at his convenience.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” Murad said. “And though the treasury is already broken by this circumcision, I think we can find enough to get together a wedding at least to match yours. Sister. And there will be an Ottoman heir or two to grace it, besides.”

  Gul Ruh quickly kissed her uncle’s hem in gratitude.

  “My only worry now is...” Murad folded his hands and looked sharply at Gul Ruh over them. “Just how these two young people came to be of such a common mind. I fear a leak in the security of my harem and that, khadim, is your department.”

  The sharp, dark eyes of the Shadow of Allah fell on me. I could feel them, but I couldn’t meet them, and that must declare my guilt. The entire world must be guilty in his presence.

  The Sultan laughed. “Still, if you will assure me my honor has nothing to fear by this match—”

  I assured him quickly.

&n
bsp; “Then be off with you, girl,” the Sultan said, planting a quick kiss on each of his niece’s eyes, “and may you be as happy a wife as you are a bride.”

  So Abd ar-Rahman and Gul Ruh were married before the summer reached its peak, and my young lady went off with a whole train of slaves and eunuchs to be her own mistress—under Umm Kulthum, of course. Had she not been so overjoyed by the prospects for her future, she might have spent more time rejoicing at what a relief it was to escape the Serai.

  Safiye had the good grace to realize when she had been defeated fairly and honestly. I think her only consternation was that it should have been innocence and virtue that defeated her instead of more devious machinations.

  For my part, I had my faith restored in the possibility of a present-day princess living happily ever after.

  LXI

  It was probably in a mad attempt to revenge herself for the failure of her plot against Muhammed during his circumcision that Nur Banu infiltrated the ranks of the eunuchs with another product of the knife of Mu’awiya the Red. This fellow was caught and disposed of long before he got as far as the Persian, but word of it came to Murad, and the Sultan took steps to see that neither party took his honor so lightly again.

  By imperial decree the whole household was reorganized. Instead of white and black eunuchs in charge of the women together, from now on it would be blacks only who, in the heart of Africa, are cut off right at the belly and hence can prove no threat at all. Or if they did, by accident or design, avoid this fate, it was assumed their race would render them less attractive even in desperate eyes.

  Ghazanfer Agha, myself, and a few of the other more trusted white eunuchs were spared immediate shift to the outer household. It would take years to build up the necessary black population—only one in three or four survives the severity of that operation—and the change could happen but slowly. White khuddam glutted the market and suffered such a drop in price that, in spite of myself, it preyed heavily on my self-esteem.

  Then, after a few months of dreadful uncertainty we were finally promised our positions for life.