The Sultan's seal

14

At the entrance to the grand vizier’s villa waits a eunuch. He is wearing a spotless white robe that makes a startling contrast to his blue-black skin. His face is smooth and rounded as an aubergine, but his limbs seem stretched, longer than one might expect for his size. Into the broad sash that binds his substantial middle is tucked a flywhisk at a rakish angle, like an ornament or egret feathers on a turban. As Sybil climbs from the carriage, he bows deeply, sweeping his hand against his mouth, then his forehead, in a grand gesture of obeisance. There is a haughtiness about him too. His eyes always rest on a spot above Sybil’s head. He takes no notice of the British regimental lieutenant in scarlet coat saluting Sybil with a white-gloved hand, then leading the remainder of her armed escort toward the guardhouse. The eunuch never speaks. When he guides Sybil through the massive marble doors, the palms of his hand flash yellow, like fish turning.

Sybil trails the eunuch through rooms of rich furnishings and enormous fine carpets. Oil paintings and framed Quranic inscriptions are hung high up near the ceiling. She can see her reflection in the mirrored walls-a white wraith gliding behind a black eunuch, two ghosts in the halls of empire.

At a door carved with gilded swags of roses, the eunuch gives her yellow slippers embroidered with flowers made of tiny colorful crystals. But the women who receive her beyond the door are dressed in European fashion, Oriental only in the surfeit of gold and silver thread and embroidery covering every surface. They are encased from top to bottom in jewels, like Fabergé eggs. They sit stiffly in upholstered armchairs, held upright by their corsets. Some have silk scarves draped rakishly over their hair, pinned by diamond brooches.

What, oh, what have we wrought, Sybil thinks dejectedly, if this is what the world has learned from us?

Asma Sultan rises and walks toward Sybil, hands spread in greeting. Her face is round and pleasant, with a button nose and small eyes. An undistinguished face, the kind one sees but doesn’t remember seeing, sipping afternoon tea in a hotel lobby or handing tuppence to a grandchild. Delicate white skin hangs loose along her cheeks and below her chin. The eyes that look her guest over, however, are sharp as flint.

“My family is honored by your presence at my grandson’s circumcision.”

“I’m happy to be here, Your Highness.” Sybil can’t remember whether she should bow or curtsy, does both, and stumbles in the unaccustomed slippers.

Large windows frame the blue expanse of the Bosphorus. A French door stands open. The scent of jasmine drifts in from the terrace. The room is flooded with light.

“May I introduce Sybil Hanoum, daughter of our illustrious English ambassador,” the hostess announces in slightly accented French.

The women smile and greet her in their high-pitched voices. Sybil responds in Turkish, causing murmurs of approval. She moves around the room, stopping before each woman and waiting while the hostess introduces the guest and mentions, in flowery Turkish praise, the positions of each woman’s husband or father. The women are introduced in order of their prestige.

“Your coming is welcome.”

“I am happy to find myself here.”

“How are you?”

“Fine, thank you. And you, how are you?”

“I am fine, thanks be to Allah.”

“How are your father and mother? Your family?”

“They are well. And your father, is he well?”

Of course, the hostess will have told the women all she knew about Sybil before her arrival. They would not ask about a mother who was dead, or a child, when Sybil is unmarried at what most would consider the advanced age of twenty-three. Clearly, after the death of her mother, Sybil has devoted her life to caring for her father, forgoing a family herself. A good, dutiful daughter.

All the chairs are pushed against the walls, as if the women are still reclining on a long divan. This makes conversation impossible with anyone other than Sybil’s immediate neighbors, so she has trouble following the conversations. One of the women switches to French, but Sybil’s French is poor, so they return to Turkish.

The seven-year-old boy who will shortly be lifted into manhood at the point of a knife is dressed in yellow and blue silken robes and struts about among the women like a peacock, trailed by his governess.

Later in the afternoon, the women move through the French doors and across the patio toward a shaded grove beyond sprays of jasmine and stands of roses for refreshments. Sybil finds herself walking beside Asma Sultan. Her hair is bound up in a turban of silk gauze edged in pearls and held in place by a diamond and ruby ornament made to resemble a bouquet of flowers. One side of the turban hangs free. The silk slips across her face when she moves.

“Tell me,” she asks Sybil as they walk through the garden, “what is life like for a woman in Europe?”

Having had little experience, Sybil tells her about Maitlin’s struggle to become a doctor.

Asma Sultan interrupts. “What about Paris?”

“I’ve never been to Paris, Your Highness,” Sybil admits reluctantly, stung by her lack of interest in Maitlin’s accomplishments. “But London is a fascinating place,” she ventures, launching into a somewhat imaginative account of life in London, where she has been only briefly, but has read about in Dickens and Trollope. She throws in the new underground railway she heard was recently completed.

Before long, Asma Sultan interrupts again. “My nephew went to Paris many years ago.” Then she falls unaccountably silent.

Sybil now realizes that Asma Sultan’s previous questions were mere preludes to this, the important matter. She also has the impression that Asma Sultan herself is surprised and disconcerted by her admission but, at the same time, compelled to speak it.

She inquires tentatively, “Did he enjoy his stay?”

“He died there.”

This, Sybil thinks, is the key to the matter.

“May your head remain healthy.”

They walk in the garden apart from the others.

“Ziya was a good man. I wished him to marry my daughter, Perihan, but as the sultan’s granddaughter, her hand was too valuable to waste on a relative. My husband thought it more useful to buy the loyalty of a minister. My husband is clever, a ship with sails that catch the slightest wind. He did well under my father until he helped depose him. Now my husband serves the present sultan.”

Sybil tries to hide her surprise at Asma Sultan’s admission. “But that’s normal, isn’t it? When there’s a change in government, people serve whoever is in charge of their country.”

“You do not understand, Sybil Hanoum. We are all slaves of Allah. But we are also slaves of the sultan. His will determines all our fates. The palace is not a place or a government, but a body that reaches every corner of the empire. My nephew could not escape it even in Paris. I am less than the tip of a small finger. Even though I myself am the daughter of a sultan.”

At the palace, Sybil has heard, loyalty counts for everything, kinship and friendship not at all, unless one is born of the same mother. Those closest to the sultan are in the most danger, as they are directly in the compass of his critical eye. She wonders whether this is true also for the relations of former sultans. Perhaps more so, she decides, since they might be competitors for the throne. The eldest male of the family inherits.

“I was there when my father was deposed by his own trusted ministers,” Asma Sultan continues softly. “They shamed him until he took his own life. The most powerful man in the world and he wasn’t allowed to see anyone except his women. Ordinary guards watched his every move, can you imagine? It was unspeakable.”

Shocked, Sybil can offer little comfort. “How dreadful, Your Highness.”

In a melancholy voice, Asma Sultan continues. “He loved my mother and he loved me because I was her daughter. He loved us most of all. We wiped the blood from his arms with our own veils.”

Sybil doesn’t know what to say. She had arrived in Istanbul just before the coup and remembers the frightening riots in the streets, the talk of troops and warships surrounding the palace.

“It destroyed my mother,” Asma Sultan whispers.

“My mother told me about her, Your Highness. She met her once,” Sybil says in a sympathetic voice.

Asma Sultan turns sharply. “When?”

“It must have been 1876, just before…” She leaves the thought unfinished. “Mother visited the harem in Dolmabahche Palace while my father had an audience with your father. I remember she said he had brought a pair of pheasants as a gift for the sultan.”

“My father had a passion for colorful animals,” Asma Sultan recalls fondly. “Parrots, white hens with black heads. He even had a collection of cows of many colors, beautiful animals.”

“My mother told me she thought your mother very beautiful.”

“She was a highborn Russian lady, educated in France. Her ship was captured on the high seas and she was sold to the palace. Her given name was Jacqueline, but in the harem, they called her Serché, “the Sparrow,” because she was so small. The other women were jealous of my father’s love for her.”

Sybil waits for Asma Sultan to continue the story of her mother, but she turns and walks on without another word. Still curious, Sybil follows her.

After a few moments, Asma Sultan turns to Sybil and says, “There is no loyalty except blood, Sybil Hanoum. One’s duty to one’s parents is paramount. You have done the right thing by staying at home with your father. The world is in your hands. When one marries, the flame extinguishes.”

Sybil is taken aback by this admonition. “But Your Highness, a woman’s duty to her parents doesn’t have to take the place of having a family and a home of her own.”

Asma Sultan turns her sharp eyes on Sybil.

“How is your father, Sybil Hanoum? Is he well?”

Sybil is startled by the sudden change in her tone. She is briefly tempted to say the truth, but instead responds diplomatically, “He is well, thanks be to Allah.”

“You use the name of Allah, yet you are Christian.”

Sybil has not expected a theological argument. “It is the same God, Your Highness.”

Asma Sultan sighs as if vexed with herself. “Don’t mind me. I’m only concerned for your health and that of your family.”

She leans toward Sybil, her veil falling across her mouth, and lowers her voice. “Perhaps you could deliver this message to your father.”

“A message?”

“Yes, that we are concerned for his health, which is so vital to the health of our empire. It’s hard for us to know what is happening outside these walls, and it is really not the concern of women. But I would like your father to know that I rely on him, as the representative of your mighty empire. You have helped us in the past, and you will help us again. Our road is hard, but we endure. Will you tell him this, in these words?”

Puzzled, Sybil responds, “Of course, Your Highness. I will tell him. And we thank you for your trust. We do what we can for freedom in the world.” Sybil winces at her own grandiose statements, but reminds herself that this is the way diplomats speak.

“There is no freedom, Sybil Hanoum,” Asma Sultan responds dryly, “only duty. We go where our betters command. Equally we do not go where they forbid us. Please deliver the message just as I have spoken it.”

Some of the other women are looking at them.

“May Allah protect you.” Asma Sultan turns and walks down the path.

Asma Sultan’s daughter, Perihan, appears beside Sybil and, giving her a long look, compliments her on her Turkish.