The Sultan's seal

8

Light floods through the open doors onto the lawn of the British Residence. Orange paper lampions have been strung along the paths. Servants circulate with trays of savories and fruit and bottles of chilled French wine. Kamil is here in search of someone who knew Mary Dixon. He finds this the most difficult part of his work, interacting socially with strangers. As a young man during his father’s reign as governor, he had endured long hours of empty pleasantries at endless functions, each word inflicting a dull pain until he had to pull away. From a vantage point in the garden or a quiet room, he would watch as figures met and merged, then withdrew and rejoined others in a complicated board game. He could see patterns in these interactions: the wealthy, the powerful, and the beautiful, and those who vied to be in their presence; respect shown or withheld; the sheep cut from the fold by a predator; the individual of wit or erudition and an admiring but unstable crowd of consumers; too obviously averted glances; the interplay of men and women when the rules of engagement were unclear. It was endlessly fascinating. He still prefers to watch, unless he finds an engaging partner for conversation. Good conversation is becoming rarer, he muses, since the sultan increased the number of his spies and people no longer dare venture opinions on even the most mundane subjects in their own drawing rooms.

Stepping indoors, he sees the ambassador stoop to listen to a dignified man in a uniform with red piping and gold epaulets. Women in low-cut evening dresses stand in groups like bouquets of gaudy, overblown roses. None are veiled. It startles Kamil to see such expanses of gleaming hair and pale skin exposed to view. The orchestra plays a waltz. Women lean backward into men’s arms, their opposing forces channeled into a vortex of movement. The women’s wide skirts swing like bells, their jewels blaze in the lamplight. Men in dark suits and uniforms, their shadows. Kamil thinks of bright autumn leaves captured by the current.

He wanders back into the garden. Sybil came to him briefly after his arrival, a swirl of skirts and color, to take his hand and welcome him before she was swept away by newer guests. The pressure of her hand remains in his.

A middle-aged man with irregular features and carrot-colored hair corners him against the patio railing.

“So, you’re the pasha. Sybil said she had managed to browbeat you into coming to this shindig. It’s a rough game, ain’t it?” he says, shaking his head and sweeping a hand toward the buzzing crowd. “Nobody wants to talk about the really interesting stuff anymore.” He squints his small blue eyes at Kamil. “Glad you could make it, though. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m Sybil’s cousin, Bernie Wilcott. From the U. S. of A., as I’m sure you’ve guessed.” His breath smells of mint. Serious eyes trapped in a taffy-pull face.

“Kamil. A pleasure to meet you.” Kamil extends his hand.

Bernie grasps it and pumps it, once. “Forgot. Sybil told me you learned your English in the Old Country.”

“Cambridge University. I studied there for a year. Before that, I learned English here, with tutors. How is it that Sybil Hanoum has an American cousin?”

“Sybil Hanoum? Has a nice ring to it.” Bernie chuckles. “Well, her uncle, that’s my father, was the younger brother. You know what that means. Eldest takes all, the whole farm. Or, in this case, the manor house. So he did what younger brothers have done since time immemorial, left the kingdom to seek his fortune. Found it in railroads, but his kids inherited a gawd-awful accent.” He bends over, chortling at his own wit.

Kamil can’t help but laugh along with him.

“You are visiting Istanbul?”

“Well, actually, I’m here for the year. Teaching at Robert College.”

“Ah, you’re a teacher.” Kamil thinks this unlikely, given the man’s eccentric nature, but he hasn’t met many Americans.

“Bernie Wilcott, itinerant scholar.” Bernie bows low and touches his hand to his brow and chest in a mock Ottoman greeting.

Kamil, disbelieving, asks, “What is your area of study?”

“Politics. East Asia, China, but I have a weakness for the Ottomans, and am mighty curious to know more.” He takes Kamil’s arm and steers him into the garden. “Maybe you could be my guide.”

It doesn’t take long for Kamil to feel at ease with Bernie and to recognize that what he had perceived as buffoonery was simply a lack of the formality that usually encases people like lacquer. Moving in society, people rub and clack their carapaces against one another like mating beetles. In contrast, Bernie seems immediately available. They sit on a bench, facing away from the crowd and chatting. Kamil is relieved and pleased to find an intelligent observer of the world. The embers of their cigarettes pulse alternately in the dark.

Later that evening, Bernie brings Sybil to the garden. She is breathless and appears tired, but her eyes are bright as they meet Kamil’s. Wisps of hair have come loose and are plastered to her forehead.

Kamil lowers his eyes and bows. “Madame Sybil.” It is rude to look at someone so directly, especially a woman. Nevertheless, he is smiling.

“I’m so glad you were able to come.”

Before long, Bernie excuses himself and disappears into the Residence. Kamil and Sybil sit on the bench facing the garden, their faces in shadow. Kamil is uncomfortably aware of the revealed expanse of neck and the plump mounds of Sybil’s breasts pushed upward by her décolleté gown. He imagines he feels the heat of her body radiating into his, even though they are sitting a discreet distance apart. It both pleases and disturbs him. He keeps his eyes focused on the shadowy blooms of a nearby oleander, the tree that the Quran says grows even in hell.

“Your cousin is an interesting man.”

“He’s always been like that, even as a child. Irrepressible, I think is the word.”

“I find him quite refreshing. Is the rest of your family like him?”

“No. He’s one of a kind. I do have a sister, though, Maitlin, whom I admire tremendously. She’s irrepressible in a different way-she never gives up pursuing what she truly believes in. So she’s led quite an adventuresome life.” She tells Kamil about Maitlin’s travels, and her long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle to become a physician.

“So now she volunteers at a clinic for the poor where they take advantage of her medical skills, but without giving her any formal recognition. She doesn’t seem to mind, although I mind for her.” Sybil’s voice becomes wistful. “Maitlin just takes the next step. She never lingers over setbacks.”

“And you, madame, if it isn’t impertinent to ask? Is this not an adventure?” He gestures with his hand toward the ancient city slumbering behind the garden wall.

Sybil doesn’t answer right away. She is strangely off guard with this man. She feels innocent, like a child, willing to confess, penitent.

“Yes, yes, it is. But it always seems out of reach, on the other side of that wall.”

Kamil looks at her curiously. He knows that she sometimes goes out escorted only by her driver. The police are aware of the movements of all embassy foreigners.

“Do you not go out?” he asks.

“Oh, of course I do. I’m quite active. I go on visits. Father has a busy schedule and I help him whenever I can.” Her voice is defensive.

“You are far from your family,” he suggests gently. “That is always difficult.”

It is too much for Sybil. She blinks angrily.

“Yes, I do miss my sister. I’ve never even met my nephews. I have no other family, except for my aunt and uncle in America and cousin Bernie. My mother, you see, passed away.” She pauses, balancing her head so the tear that has formed in the corner of her eye will not spill and betray her.

“Health to your head,” he says softly in Turkish.

The light from the party behind them reflects on her wet cheek.

“Thank you, teshekkur ederim,” she replies in kind, her tongue tripping over the many consonants.

Not wishing to draw attention to her distress, he waits silently for her to continue.

Frightened by her sudden weakness, Sybil straightens her back and continues in English. “That was five years ago. Father keeps her memory alive by staying on here, where she was by his side.”

“A mother’s memory is precious.”

“I think he simply finds it easier to bear Mother’s absence if he doesn’t break the rhythm of their life together. He keeps up an endless round of functions and formal visits. I think Father finds the routine soothing. It helps him forget. And this is where he was happy,” she explains.

“You are to be commended. Our society values a child that looks after his mother and father.”

“It isn’t difficult to direct the household, and Father doesn’t impose too many other duties on me.”

“Does this make you happy as well?” he ventures.

“Of course!” She turns to him indignantly. She sees mild green eyes, full of concern.

She turns her face from the light. Several moments pass before she speaks again.

Kamil feels an urge to take her hand, to confide his own father’s seemingly inconsolable grief, his unraveling ties first to work, now to his family, and, Kamil fears, eventually to life. He would like her advice on how to help his father. The death of his wife had catapulted Kamil’s father into training for his own oblivion. After her body was taken to the mosque, washed, wrapped in white linen, and consigned to the tomb under a hail of prayer, Alp Pasha never again stepped foot in a mosque or in the house where she had lived. Instead, he devoted more and more time to smoking opium in a darkened room, eventually giving up any pretense of governing.

When the grand vizier reluctantly took the office from him, Alp Pasha moved into his daughter Feride’s home. He refuses to visit Kamil in the villa where his mother had lived, preferring the opium-induced vision to the real thing. When he prepares himself with a pipe, Alp Pasha told Kamil once, he can smell the roses in the garden and feel the breeze in his hair. Kamil worries that he hasn’t done enough, that he is not a dutiful son, leaving the entire burden to his sister. He ponders how to bring up such a personal subject, then wonders if it is appropriate. The opportunity passes.

“I’ve never thought about it, to be honest. I suppose keeping Father happy keeps me happy as well,” Sybil answers finally. She sounds unsure. “I do have other interests,” she continues in a stronger voice, “that keep me amused.” She tells Kamil about the tutor who comes twice a week to teach her Turkish.

“It’s infuriating when someone speaks at length and then the terjuman translates it with only three words, so I determined to learn it myself.”

She admits to Kamil that she occasionally slips out on her own, concealed under a feradje cloak and dark yashmak veil, and walks around the city, wanting to try out her Turkish without a retinue of servants, guards, and official translators.

“They’re probably spies! So how much will anyone really tell me in their presence?”

Animated now, she shares with Kamil her interest in religion. They discuss Islam, not simply as a revealed book, but as a way of life. He finds that she knows a great deal about the present political debates and intrigues. After all, she has hosted many of the participants in her own home.

Sybil suggests that she practice her Turkish, and they end the evening laughing over mistranslated witticisms and slips of the tongue. Nevertheless, Kamil thinks her command of the language remarkable. She has none of the finesse of those raised at court or schooled in the byzantine labyrinths of bureaucratic politesse, but can converse quite freely and understand much of what she hears. He compliments her sincerely and, for the first time in a long while, is sorry to see a social evening end. On his way to the door, Bernie catches up with him, pats him on the back, and winks.

“Fancy a game of billiards sometime?”

As his horse negotiates the steep paths on the way home, Kamil wonders at the sudden flashes of companionship and trust that sometimes kindle between total strangers. Can he trust his new friendship with Bernie or is real friendship something that emerges only over years of shared history and challenges faced together, like the bond that has developed between him and Michel? In his experience, the initial bridge of trust and comradeship too easily splinters under the pressure of personal ambition or rots through as proximity leads to a greater understanding of the other’s flaws. Before long, a promotion or a move to a different province sends the last planks sweeping down the river.

He realizes there had been no opportune moment to ask Sybil about Mary Dixon.