The young princes solve a difficult problem for the caliph

  THAT DAY THE SULTAN’S daughters realized they’d made a big mistake. Even though Müşfika, Sazkâr, Peyveste, Fatma Pesend, and Saliha Naciye were their mothers, these tall Circassian beauties with eyes like gazelles were also the sultan’s wives and by staying in the same room with them they deprived them of the opportunity to go to and from their husband without being seen. They regretted this situation.

  The sultan had many wives and concubines at the palace; he would choose who he wanted and go to one of the many mansions on the palace grounds, and although this was customary, it was always done as if in secret. He would invite the woman through one of the eunuchs, she would sneak down the corridors to the sultan’s room, or flit like a spirit among the linden trees to one of the mansions, seen by no one but the eunuchs and the guards, who in any event weren’t considered human. She then shared the sultan’s bed in secret, and when dismissed, would scurry back to the harem, her heart fluttering like a bird’s at the prospect of becoming pregnant with a prince or even a sultan.

  The sultan’s daughters admired these women, some of whom were the same age as them, for their beauty and grace. Indeed some of the wives were younger than them. Did they have the right to deprive their father during this most difficult time? Since the five wives, some of whom were their mothers, had joined the exile in Thessaloniki, it was the daughters’ duty to see that they were as comfortable as possible. Their venerable father had the right to call one of his wives whenever he wanted. This was a sultan’s most natural right.

  The daughters were all thinking about this, but it took a great deal of effort to speak of the private affairs of the mighty Caliph of Islam in a delicate and seemly manner. It was as if they wanted to resolve this sensitive issue, of which they pretended not to be aware, in a sublime and noble manner without having to put it into words.

  In the end Şadiye Sultan found a way to mention the issue and to give it a name. “The issue of love is important,” she said. “This is the only way the Ottoman dynasty will not be left without an heir. Otherwise, God forbid, the dynasty would wither away. So we have to resolve the issue of love.”

  Ayşe Sultan said, “Yes, love is truly important.”

  Refia Sultan hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t understand. “What’s all this about love? Why are you going on about it?”

  The two sisters looked at each other and wondered how they were going to explain in a seemly manner. Şadiye Sultan decided to resort to poetry. She drew close to Refia Sultan, looked her in the eye, and recited the following couplet:

  From love Muhammed came to be

  What is the result of love without Muhammed

  Then she smiled faintly. Refia Sultan opened her eyes and said, “Of course. Yes, you’re right.” She seemed somewhat embarrassed to have been so slow to understand.

  That day they moved their father’s wives to another room on the top floor. The caliph could now send for the woman he wanted. Of course everyone in the mansion would hear doors opening and closing and the creaking of the steps, they would see the lamplight under the doors and would know who had a tryst with the sultan, but in keeping with the traditions and manners of the palace, no one would know anything.

  The mansion had only sixteen rooms and halls, and it would take the denizens of the palace some time to get used to it.

  The unlucky brother’s bulging eyes—Morning bath—The imperial nose—The scourge of boils

  HE’D WOKEN EVERY MORNING as sultan for so many years and was confused at first about where he was, then when he realized he was no longer emperor and caliph, he felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart. They must have put his brother on the throne, what were they thinking? He thought his brother was a complete fool. He was also unlucky and brought bad luck to everyone around him. When they were young he’d shown his brother a parrot he’d grown attached to: “Look, Reşad, how beautiful it is.” The blessed bird died suddenly that evening. Prince Hamid wept for his beloved parrot, but it didn’t occur to him to suspect Reşad.

  Sometime later he showed Reşad his favorite horse, and when that magnificent animal died suddenly a few hours later it was clear that it was the result of the evil eye, of the envy and malice in Reşad’s bulging, spooky eyes. He never again showed any of his animals to his brother.

  His brother was also an ingrate. During his long reign he’d allowed Reşad and Murad to remain in Istanbul and to live a life of luxury in their palaces with their wives, concubines, and servants, but on his first day in power Reşad had no qualms about sending his elder brother to Thessaloniki. Nevertheless, he was the sultan now, and he and his family were at his mercy. Reşad had only to say the word and executioners would descend on them like birds of prey. That’s why he couldn’t share his thoughts with anyone, not even his family. His only recourse was to pray constantly. But the rebels would tear the empire apart, and his brother would watch like a puppet as it collapsed. He was certain of this. Because unlike him, Reşad didn’t have the political skills to play the rulers of France, England, Russia, and Germany against one another. Murad was different, he was clever, but after he’d had their uncle Abdülaziz killed by having his wrists cut, he vomited constantly for a day and a half and then lost his mind. No doctor had succeeded in curing the seizures and vomiting. Then the poor man went mad; he would talk to the walls and laugh to himself. They even had trouble getting him to come to the sword-girding ceremony because he was terrified of everyone. Three months later, when it was clear the madness could not be cured, he was deposed, and Abdülhamid became sultan at a moment when he least expected it.

  When the sultan let it be known that he wanted to take a bath, there was panic in the mansion because there was no hot water, and the towels hadn’t arrived. His family tried to convince him not to take a bath, to wait a day or two, but he stopped them by saying, “Do you remember a single morning when I didn’t bathe? I take lukewarm baths in winter and cold baths in summer, sometimes twice a day. This is my most important habit. I have no intention of changing this. And there’s no need for hot water, I prefer cold water in summer.”

  When they realized they couldn’t convince him, the eunuchs took the sultan to the bathroom upstairs. There was a small dressing room and a steam bath with a marble basin. In the dressing room there was a mahogany closet, a small sofa, and, directly across from it, a large mirror. “Ah,” sighed the sultan, “how I miss my wonderful bathhouse.” That bathhouse in Istanbul had been designed by Raimondo Tommaso D’Aronco, who had served for sixteen years as the imperial chief architect. This brilliant architect had erected buildings all over Istanbul, including the sultan’s palace, which employed twelve thousand people. Of course the sultan had showered the Italian architect with money and praise.

  He locked the door carefully, undressed, and when he was naked he couldn’t help looking at himself in the mirror. Mirrors of this size weren’t seen in the palace, and there were certainly no mirrors in the bathhouse. When he took off his fez, frock coat, and underwear, he felt more than physically naked; he felt as if his soul had been exposed. In the mirror he saw a hunchbacked ghost with deep-set, languid eyes. A thin, pale body with little hair; a head that seemed too big for his body, a sunken chest; purple burn marks on his throat, chest, and abdomen from the red-hot metal he used to try to alleviate his bronchitis and stomach pains; it was as if there was a pressure on the back of his neck that pushed his head forward and forced him to hunch his back; broad but weak shoulders; his beard dyed black, with occasional patches of white; and then his most salient feature, his nose. That world-famous nose. The imperial nose that was mocked in French and English newspapers, that had been in the middle of his face all his life, that couldn’t be concealed or ignored, the nose that had been a symbol of the empire for thirty-three years. It had been so many years but he still couldn’t get used to it. His father, Sultan Abdülmecid, had been an elegant, slender, handsome man. Indeed, when he wore his cape and ceremonial clothes, he was as dazzling as a fairy-tale prince. His uncle Sultan Aziz wasn’t slender like his father; he was a fair-skinned, gray-eyed wrestler who seemed to make the ground shake when he walked. When he went to Paris with his uncle, he noticed how the ladies of the court, and particularly Empress Eugénie, looked at him. Everyone was looking at his uncle and Murad. Murad was slender and elegant like their father; he was a crown prince with a likable face. His French was fluent and he was skillful on the piano, often playing waltzes and rondos of his own composition, and he became a favorite of the ladies of Paris and London. It was said that even Queen Victoria took a fancy to him. As the Ottoman prince most amenable to the West, Murad gave European courtiers great hopes for the future. In any event, he had the English national anthem played at his ascension ceremony.

  Meanwhile, no one noticed or took an interest in the other prince, who wore a gray Istanbuline frock coat that came down to his knees. The Europeans were dazzled by his uncle and his brother, but treated him as if he were invisible. In a way, he found this to his advantage. The young Hamid had the opportunity to examine and reflect on everything and everyone he encountered.

  As he looked at himself in the mirror, he asked himself why. For six hundred years his ancestors had married the most beautiful Russian, Ruthenian, French, Circassian, Polish, and Italian women, so how had he ended up with this nose?

  He believed it was his ugliness that had lost him the love of his life, Firdevs, for whom he had been pining in secret for years; indeed he still couldn’t go to sleep at night without uttering her name. She hadn’t said this, she’d given a completely different explanation, but he felt that this angelic Caucasian girl had rejected him solely because of his nose. Why else would this tall, green-eyed flower, who’d been raised with expectations of being sent to the imperial harem, and indeed had been trained in religion, music, dance, and needlework, turn down the opportunity to enter the emperor’s bed, give him a son, and perhaps in the future become the sultan mother, the highest rank a woman could reach in the empire?

  From time to time he looked at portraits of his ancestors and tried to find a resemblance. Most of these centuries-old paintings were not accurate depictions, but some, like that of Mehmet the Conqueror, had been painted by Italian artists. His illustrious ancestor had a nose like an eagle’s beak, it curled down almost above his mouth, but at least it was slender. It didn’t distort his face.

  The sultan was so obsessed with this that the word “nose” had been banned for decades. There were countless phrases that could no longer be used, and people had to be creative in finding substitutes.

  The nose was one of the most important topics for the people of the empire. However, the issue of population was a bit complicated; the population had been higher at the beginning of his reign but had gradually been reduced to twenty million after the empire lost one and a half million square kilometers of land, including Tunisia, Egypt, Cyprus, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania.

  The skin under his right shoulder was red and swollen, and itched terribly. It was probably one of the boils that emerged from time to time in various places. He felt it. At the moment it was quite hard, but later it would grow softer, it would mature, it would fill with pus, then it would burst. He knew he had to wait patiently for this moment or he would share the fate of his heroic ancestor Yavuz Sultan Selim, who died because he squeezed a boil before it was mature. When the boil reached that point he would immediately call Hasan, an amateur surgeon who’d trained in the military. Hasan would put his mouth on the sultan’s boil and suck. Hasan was so good at his job that the sultan promoted him to a high rank; he never left even a drop of pus. But unfortunately Hasan was not here. He didn’t know what he was going to do when the boil matured.

  After washing in cold water, he banged on the door, took a piece of flower-printed cloth from the eunuch, dried himself as best he could, then put on his Istanbuline and his fez. He would later learn that this primitive towel was cloth that had been torn from one of his wives’ dresses.

  After his bath he spent some time examining doorjambs, hinges, windows, and floorboards, behaving more like an engineer than an exiled sultan. Then he said, “I’d like to meet the carpenter who did this work. He’s probably an Istanbul Greek or an Italian. The work is superb.” Then he added, “In fact it would be easy to find out. All we’d have to do is pull up a couple of floorboards.” This alarmed the others in the room. He said that Istanbul Greeks put coal dust under the floorboards to prevent woodworm and termites. Istanbul Greeks were the only people in the world who did this. If they pulled up one or two floorboards, they would be able to determine the carpenter’s ethnicity.

  If there was coal dust beneath them, they would know this work had been done by an Istanbul Greek. His daughters begged him not to do this, they feared arousing the suspicions of the ill-tempered soldiers patrolling outside the shutters. They knew he was trying to conceal how badly shaken he was by the blow he’d received, but still, they couldn’t start tearing up the floorboards. They begged and pleaded until he changed his mind. He went to his room, calculated the direction of Mecca, then prayed on his prayer rug. Then he called the chamberlain and said, “Could you politely ask the guards at the door if I might have a word with the commander.” He was no longer thinking about the floorboards.

  Meanwhile at Yıldız Palace—The eunuch’s secret—Jewels like pebbles—Long live the sultan!

  AS THE SULTAN WAS thinking these things, mind-boggling events were unfolding at Yıldız Palace. The new government had arrested six thousand of the former sultan’s men and had seized all of his property. The eunuch Cevher, who’d been castrated when he was brought from Africa as a slave and sold to the palace, where he rose to the rank of chief eunuch, was hanged from a lamppost on the Galata Bridge, and was left swaying in the breeze for days as an example. When they raided his mansion on the Bosphorus, they found a young slave girl who was beautiful enough to make the angels envious. They saw her weep bitter tears of grief. “My man is gone!” cried the Egyptian girl, and the mustachioed Ottoman men felt offended. Because despite their masculinity and their carefully groomed mustaches, no girl had ever been this much in love with them.

  Even stranger events were taking place at Yıldız Palace, which had been ransacked and looted, and where soldiers had smashed and broken random objects in righteous indignation. After Cevher Ağa had been executed, a government delegation went to the palace to interrogate Nadir Ağa, who under torture revealed all of the places where Abdülhamid had stored his wealth. Incidentally, they were quite impressed by the former sultan’s carpentry skills. They were amazed by this beautiful furniture crafted from mahogany and Lebanese cedar; not only was it beautiful but some pieces contained secret, invisible mechanisms and hidden compartments with locks that could not be opened. If Nadir Ağa hadn’t cracked under torture, they would never have found these secret compartments. Each one they opened contained stunning amounts of gold and cash in various currencies. There were as many jewels and precious stones as pebbles on a beach. The delegation was mesmerized by the mystical shimmer of the sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and emeralds that had been brought up from beneath the ground.

  As the delegation, accompanied by a squad of soldiers, inspected every corner of the deserted palace, they became aware of strange sounds coming from one of the rooms. Who could have remained in a palace that had been emptied and sealed? They looked at one another in surprise. They banged on the door and asked who was there, and dozens of voices shouted, “Long live the sultan!” Was this a detachment of guards determined to protect their sultan to the last breath? Perhaps these reactionaries were prepared for a final suicidal attack to kill as many rebels as they could before they died.

  One of the delegation shouted, “Who’s in there?” and again there were shouts of “Long live the sultan!” “Surrender!” they shouted, and once again the reply was “Long live the sultan!”

  “There’s no way out for you, try to think clearly, don’t throw your lives away, your sultan is gone, those days are over, no one is going to protect you,” they said, but it didn’t work. The only response was the repetition of the same slogan. However, they noticed something strange. The shouting voices were odd; they weren’t female voices, but they didn’t seem like men’s voices. Could they be eunuchs?

  In the end the delegation lost patience, and ordered the soldiers to break down the door while they hid around the corner. They were to arrest everyone in the room and shoot anyone who resisted. The soldiers didn’t hesitate to ready their rifles and kick down the door. Then the delegation and the soldiers received a great surprise.

  The room was full of parrots, maddened by hunger, flying around the room screeching “Long live the sultan!” as they’d been taught. They were all white, and white feathers flew as they fluttered here and there. Some of them flew out the open door, while the rest continued fluttering about the room. The soldiers stood there with their rifles, looking at their young commander. The commander looked at the delegation, waiting for orders. If they were ordered to shoot these parrots who insisted on repeating this forbidden slogan, they were prepared to do so.

  Once the delegation had recovered from the surprise, they decided to let the parrots fend for themselves. They opened the windows and the hungry parrots flew out across Istanbul looking for something to eat. Whether it was the will of God or a homing instinct, the parrots found Yeni Mosque, where the merciful citizens of Istanbul sprinkled grain for them, then they fluttered around the minarets of the mosques of Sülaymaniye, Sultanahmet, and Hagia Sophia, confusing the muezzins as they cleared their throats to recite the call to prayer. Because they heard shouts of “Long live the sultan!” It seemed to them like a bad omen. Which sultan were people hailing? Were they praising the new sultan or did they want the old one back? They didn’t know, but they had enough experience to know that nothing good would come of this. The wisest thing to do was to finish the evening call to prayer quickly, climb down from the minaret, and hide in some corner. As the call to prayer mixed with the slogans, some of the muezzins panicked and stopped before they were finished. Some of the congregation left the mosques and rushed home, just in case.