The Sultan's seal

46

I wanted a celebration, a proper setting for my response to Mary. Violet insisted on coming, saying she had prepared special foods for us. By the time we arrived at the sea hamam and the driver was dispatched with instructions to return in three hours’ time, the lip of the sky bled magenta. But inside the walls of the sea hamam, we could see only the sky’s unclouded blue eye following Violet as she spread the covers, set up the brazier, and unpacked the copper pans of dolma, cheese pastries, fruit, and savories. It was a feast. I slipped off my feradje, revealing a new gown of sheerest apricot silk under a striped satin tunic of apple and ginger. My breasts were wreathed in a transparent cloud of silk gauze. My hair was woven into a hundred braids wrapped in diamonds and pearls.

Mary had taken off her shoes. Her slim white feet dangled over the pool. In water, she was slippery as an eel. Like most women, she couldn’t swim, but the water in the sea hamam wasn’t very deep. I remember it made her anxious when I ducked below the surface. I used to slip along under the boards and burst up in a spray behind her so that she shrieked with fear. The hamam walls protected us from the wind, and the strait here was tamed, drawn continually like a fan across the sand. The water was so clear one could mistake it for a shadow.

I wondered whether anyone else had come here since we had abandoned it the previous year. The winter damp had warped some of the boards. I noticed that our mattress, the mattress Mary had hired someone to bring here in anticipation of our first visit, was stained where it had not been stained before. I supposed anyone could have come here while we were gone, perhaps young boys thrilled at being masters of a realm that soon would be off-limits, haram, dangerous. Once we had spread our new quilt, though, we were almost as before.

“Why did you bring your maid?” she whispered, looking at Violet sitting in a cubicle near the brazier.

“Violet? She can serve us. Don’t you like being served?” I cocked my head at her, but I could see she hadn’t decided whether I was joking.

“Well, I suppose.”

“She insisted on coming and I couldn’t say no. She’s so unsettled by everything, even though my father has found her a good husband-so she won’t be alone.”

Mary looked at me expectantly, but I said nothing more.

I knew Mary didn’t like to undress in front of strangers, so she wouldn’t go into the water tonight. It was too cold, in any case.

“We’ll just chat, then.” I pulled the quilt out to the walkway circling the water and lay on it with my face to the sky. She came and sat next to me.

“Lie down, Mary. Come see the stars.”

She let herself down, using her elbows, and arranged her skirts so that they covered her legs. She wore a simple white blouse. Her cap of hair shone gold in the dark.

The quilted satin smooth against our palms, we looked up into the square of night sky revealed by the geometry of the hamam walls.

“It looks like your hair, Jaanan. Braided with diamonds,” she whispered.

I took her hand.