The Sultan's seal

16

On a September day in the Rumi year 1294, or 1878 by your reckoning, I accompanied Hamza as he led his horse toward the main road. Slick yellow leaves plastered the ground. The forest exhaled a dusty, pungent odor of rain. It was one month since I had found the woman in the pond. Madam Élise was gone and Ismail Dayi was away, so Hamza had come to visit openly. He wanted to see Mama. She served us tea in the reception room, pleased at seeing him after all this time.

“Mama so enjoyed your visit, Hamza. I haven’t seen her this lively in a long time. It makes me happy to see her smile; she doesn’t very often. I wish you would come more often.”

“Your mother has always been very good to me.”

We reached the gate.

“It has always surprised me that your father took a kuma,” he said without looking at me, “given his views.”

“His views?”

“He’s a modernist, Jaanan. A man who believes, as many of us do, that the empire will survive only if we learn the secrets of Europe’s strength. Some think it’s enough to copy their technology. But there’s more to it than that. If we are ever to be respected as a great power again, we have to join the civilized world. That means we must change the way we think and live.”

He turned to face me. “Polygamy has no place in this new world.”

“Who will decide what’s allowed in this new world of yours?” I asked with an asperity that surprised me.

“Scientists, statesmen, writers. There are more of us than you might imagine, Jaanan. Some of us have gone to Paris, but we have many supporters here as well.” His voice was low and rapid. “We publish a journal, Hurriyet. Perhaps you’ve seen it in your uncle’s library. I know he collects reformist journals, although I don’t know whether he reads them. You should read the journals, Jaanan. We are going to rip the empire up by its rotten roots and plant it in the clean soil of science and rational thinking.”

I felt rather alarmed at the extent of what he was proposing. There was nothing rotten here that needed fixing. Science and rational thinking rattled dry as bones in a cup.

But I did not say any of these things. To please him, I would look at the journals later.

Hamza smiled down at me, and tugged gently at a curl that rested on my shoulder beneath the loose drape of gauze.

“I won’t be able to come see you for a while, princess.” The soft, stretched vowels and sibilant tail of the French word wound themselves about me and muffled his unwelcome news in a haze of pleasure. “I’ll be traveling.”

“For how long? Where are you going?” I asked plaintively.

He shook his head. “I can’t say. I have to be careful. The sultan has suspended parliament. He’s gambled away a third of the empire to the Russians. If not for the British, we would have lost Istanbul and much more. And just when we need Europe most, he’s threatening it with a worldwide Muslim revolt that he claims as caliph he could lead. It’s time for us to act. We’re Turks, Jaanan. Your ancestors and mine rode the steppes of Asia, women and men together. There’s no need for religion in a Turkish empire. Religion is the enemy of civilization.” He cupped my chin in his hand and added softly, “But not everyone wants change. I don’t want to get you or your family into trouble, so I can’t come here anymore.”

“It’s also your family.”

I felt angry at Hamza and his politics that took him away from me. I didn’t think my evenings studying Islamic texts with Ismail dayi were uncivilized. I took a step backward in protest. Hamza reached out his hand and gripped my arm so tightly that it hurt.

“Hamza!” I yelped in protest, and pulled away, but he drew me over so that his head was next to mine.

He slid an object into the shawl tied around my waist, his hands leaving a burning trail, and whispered, “Your eyes are as luminous as this sea glass.”

Then he dropped my arm and, without another word, mounted his horse and rode away.

I reached into the folds of silk and extracted a smooth green stone that seemed to glow from within. It was encased in gold filigree, hanging from a slender chain.

Could this beautiful object really be the mundane shard of a medicine bottle after years of being battered by the sea and scoured by sand? I felt then that there was a meaning to be grasped, a parable of some kind, but it eluded me.