An Evil Eye

6

Yashim ordered the halberdiers to move the baggage to the carriages: the new girls were already beginning to paw at it themselves. The soldiers moved slowly, with infinite gentleness, eyes down: the women lunged and clung to their arms.

The women who served the late sultan were to leave for Eski Saray, the old Palace of Tears, for centuries a home for the harem beauties whose sultan had died. Some-the lucky ones, maybe-would marry, entering the harem of some Ottoman officer of the guard, or a pasha of the civil bureaucracy. The rest could hope for little more than to drag out their existence behind the walls of the Palace of Tears, forgotten and ignored.

Getting the luggage away made things easier: the women followed their belongings. Others-dragging their fingernails down their cheeks, or cramming their things into little sacks-felt suddenly resigned to do what Yashim suggested. They were drawn to him, just as the lady Talfa had been; they relied on him, as Ibou the chief black eunuch relied on him, instinctively. Against the bright plumage of the harem women, Yashim’s brown cloak was modest almost to invisibility. He spoke quietly, in a room that rang with shrieks and tears; his gestures were restrained. There was a stillness in Yashim that made the women pause and listen. His low voice wearied and fascinated them, as if it carried an echo of the burdens of life. It was the voice of a man, perhaps: yet Yashim was not, quite, a man himself. Yashim was a eunuch. By evening the women had taken to the carriages, and gone.

Upstairs, in her new room, Elif picked up her oud and began to play.

Farther along the corridor, a pale woman reclined on her divan, shading her eyes with the back of her hand.

Bezmialem had heard the pandemonium and locked her door. She sought only peace and seclusion.

At her moment of triumph, when her son returned to the palace as sultan, Bezmialem had a headache.