CHAPTER 35

I was taken by surprise one day when the heir to the throne, Prince Selim, shyly approached me, stammering his request as he fumbled with his spectacles. He would put them on for a moment, just long enough to get a clear look at me, then take them off again, and conceal them in the full embroidered sleeves of his caftan only to take them back out and put them right back on again.

Speaking in such strangely accented French I barely recognized my own language, he asked me if I would read some of his French books aloud to him. He knew his accent was atrocious, and he was anxious to improve it. He had learned the language from his Italian tutor, Lorenzo, and that, along with Selim’s native Turkish, accounted for his uniquely awful accent.

Selim confided that he greatly admired the French and he had even written a letter of friendship to King Louis XVI, though he had been disappointed in the short, stilted, formal reply he had received several months later.

I told Selim I would be happy to help him with his French; my Turkish might profit by the experience as well, and it would be a pleasure to read some French books again. I urged him not to be downhearted about King Louis’s stiff phrasing. The King of France was a very shy man, I explained, a man more at ease in his own company, with his beloved books, and the clocks and locks he liked to make, than with other people, especially strangers. Everyone said he was like a fish out of water amidst all the court pageantry and he was often, unjustly I thought, judged cold and aloof.

Selim had amassed a marvelous library of over three hundred French books; there were works of history, fairy tales, philosophy, novels, plays, poetry, science, medicine, military tactics, and even a full set of the encyclopedia. Each one was beautifully bound. It was customary in Turkey that each prince of the blood must learn an honest trade, and bookbinding was not only Selim’s chosen profession but also his passion. “Beautiful books deserve beautiful bindings,” he said, and often set those texts he considered jewels of wisdom, verse and prose, into bindings rich with gold, silver, pearls, and precious gems.

I began to read with him for an hour or two each afternoon. At first I read to him; then we began to take turns, passing the book back and forth between us, so that I might correct his pronunciation. Often we would linger sipping coffee and discussing what we had just read. He delighted in asking me many questions about France, the customs, people, and government, and I in turn learned much from him about Turkey.

Through Selim I learned that France was in a terrible state of upheaval, a full-blown revolution was sweeping the land, much blood had been shed, most of it aristocratic, and the King and Queen were now prisoners of their own people. Things had gone rapidly from bad to worse since I had left. I wondered about Rose and prayed that she and her children were safe. Perhaps she had finally had her fill of Paris and gone home to Martinique?

I enjoyed talking with Selim; he was a gentle, soft-spoken, beautiful dreamer. Beneath his jeweled turban, his head was filled with noble ideals and dreams of dragging his country out of the mire of ancient traditions that he believed only held Turkey back and made people think it a primitive and barbaric land. He wanted to modernize the law, education, and the whole system of government, using France as his inspiration. He wanted a printing press, a newspaper, French books translated into Turkish, and to encourage friendly diplomatic relations between his country and mine. Most of all, he despised the Janissaries, the enemies of progress, and the terror and peril of sultans, and dreamed of replacing them with a new, modern army. He hoped, one day, when he was sultan, to ask the French to help him accomplish this by sending officers to advise him and help equip and train his new army. Everything—infantry, artillery, cavalry, navy—was to be modern and new, modeled precisely on French lines. And he wanted new ships, not heavy, antiquated relics, and to build a cannon foundry and new walls and forts.

Selim’s eyes shone like stars when he spoke of it, and I could not help but be drawn in. He made me want to share his dream, to see it all come true someday. But there was a certain vulnerability about Selim that also made me fear for him. There was a disturbing delicacy about his face, a weakness of the chin, a feminine cast about his eyes, that made me fear he would crumple in the face of cruel reality. He was so happy ensconced in his little private world of books and dreams, musing about philosophy, or sitting on the rim of a white marble fountain, playing his lute, or reciting poetry, in his brocade robes and turban amongst the tulips in the garden where his pet white peacocks roamed, that I could not even imagine him occupying a throne of absolute power, commanding all that he surveyed. He was a lovely, gentle man who would have made a far better, and I think far happier, scholar than a sultan; there was no ruthlessness or meanness in him at all. To be a great ruler and change the world a man must have not only the will but also confidence in himself and his convictions. Yet whenever I saw Selim sitting on the dais beside Abdul Hamid for some court entertainment or ceremony he seemed woefully out of place, wretchedly uncomfortable in his stiff-backed and bejeweled throne. He was like a bat caught in the sudden blinding brightness of full day wanting to fly back to the safe dark haven of its sheltering cave.

I felt a special tenderness in my heart for Selim, something akin I think to what I would have felt if I had had a brother or a male cousin near my age whose friendship I cherished, but not carnal love, never passion. Selim was simply not a man to stir a woman in that manner; he might arouse a woman’s maternal feelings, the urge to nurture and protect, but not her baser natural instincts. My heart belonged to Abdul Hamid and I dreaded the day when Death would close his eyes and take him away from me. I didn’t even want to think about that day.

* * *

The time I spent with his sweet nephew began to fuel jealous feelings and fancies in Abdul Hamid’s heart and head. One night when I went to him, he told me a story, an old Turkish fable, that also concealed a veiled warning.

“Once upon a time, a nightingale loved a rose,” he began as he drew me down to sit upon his knee, “and the rose, aroused by its song, awoke trembling upon her stem. It was a white rose”—he caressed the pale skin of my bare arms beneath the slit gold-latticed coral satin of my trailing, floor-length sleeves—“like all the roses in the world at that time—pure, white, innocent, and virginal. As the rose listened to the nightingale’s song, something in her heart was stirred. Then the nightingale came ever so near and whispered into the quivering heart of the white rose: ‘I love you.’ At those words, the little heart of the rose blushed, and in that moment, pink roses were born. The nightingale, encouraged, came closer and closer, and though Allah, when He created the world, intended that the rose alone should never know earthly, carnal love, the rose opened her now pink petals wide”—Abdul Hamid’s hand drifted down, between my legs, and caressed me through my coral satin trousers, causing me to grow moist and tremble with desire—“and the nightingale stole her virginity. In the morning, the rose, in her shame, turned red; thus the red rose was born. And although, ever since, the nightingale has come every night since to ask for her divine love, the rose has refused him. For Allah never meant roses and birds to mate. And though the rose trembled at the voice of the nightingale, her petals remained forevermore closed to him.”

We sat in silence for a moment, and then he asked me what I thought.

“I think that I am neither a rose, nor is Selim a nightingale, nor have you, Allah’s Shadow on Earth, any cause for the least concern that his voice might make me tremble and open my pink petals,” I said frankly.

I stood and gave Abdul Hamid my hand.

“I also think that that which you do not attempt to chain you keep more freely and firmly bound.”

“Ah, Nakshidil!” he sighed as he enfolded me in his arms, his fingers weaving through the golden waves of my hair. “Why could I not have been a young man like Selim when you came into my life? It is the curse of old age to always believe that youth wants youth.”

“But age has given you wisdom and taught you patience and kindness,” I answered, “and I would not trade that, I would not trade you, for anything, or anyone. Just think—if I had come to you in your youth, hasty lust might have blinded you and prevented you from seeing me, and loving me, as you do now. Once you were sated you might have been done with me, my novelty would have quickly paled and you would have been on to your next conquest, and I would have spent the rest of my life languishing like a fat, pampered cat on a velvet cushion instead of coming to you like this.” I looked deep into his dark eyes and caressed his bearded cheek. “I would not sacrifice a single year of your life, or even a single wrinkle or the gray hair you hide under that terrible black dye, for a young man’s body, whether it was your soul within it or another’s. It is you, as you are, that I love,” I said, with my heart and the whole truth in every word, and then I kissed him.

* * *

In the morning I awoke so ill I thought I had been poisoned again. I struggled and stumbled across the room, bile burning my throat and tears blurring my eyes. I could not contain the sickness and grasped the nearest vase and vomited into it. Before I was finished, I fell, the great green and gold vase, almost as high as my breasts, falling with me and shattering beneath my weight.

Abdul Hamid woke at the sound and found me groaning and gasping, naked and miserable upon the floor, shivering, pale, and weak in a pool of broken porcelain and vomit. He tenderly stroked back my hair, heedless of the mess that soiled it, and gathered me up in his arms and carried me back to the bed. He sent for his physician and brought a gold basin filled with water and tenderly cleaned me as best he could while we waited.

The Greek physician came and examined me and, after asking a few significant questions, solemnly delivered great instead of grave news. I was pregnant.

* * *

I had the most arduous and unpleasant pregnancy I think any woman ever endured. The sickness never left me. I lost flesh even as my belly swelled. My hair lost its luster and my skin took on a sickly yellowy ashen hue and there was a constant, panging ache in my pelvis and lower back. The mere mention of food made me ill. The smell or sight of it made me retch. I lay abed all day, so listless and weary no matter how many hours I slept that I could barely bear to lift my head up. It took every ounce of will I possessed to rise, bathe and dress, and go to Abdul Hamid, carried in the gilded litter he now sent every night to carry me along the Golden Path, and to smile for him and assure him that I was well.

Even when it was deemed no longer safe to take pleasure from me, he still sent for me every night. He liked to talk over the business of the day with me and hold me in his arms, my back resting against his chest and his hands enfolding my belly, to feel the child move within. He gave me an even larger apartment with sumptuous hangings of has ulhas silk twinkling with diamonds and pearls, and the ebony wood bed and the cradle beside it, to await our child’s arrival, were both encrusted with bloodred rubies.

My rivals reveled in my sickness and the loss of my looks and spent even more time than ever over their own beauty rituals and practicing the arts of love, confident that the day would surely come, and soon, when Abdul Hamid would tire of me and desire another livelier and healthier woman.

At any given hour the baths were crowded with women, all desperate to be more beautiful than ever before. The dressmakers and embroiderers feared for their sight, they were at their labors day and night, and the bath attendants’ arms ached to the point where they would almost have welcomed amputation they were in such demand for massages, but the harem of Sultan Abdul Hamid had never looked more alluring. The women’s hair shone like black satin and their dark eyes sparkled like starry nights. They plied their pumice stones more diligently than ever before, lined their eyes with black kohl or even ink, reddened their lips and cheeks with cochineal, whitened their skin with a paste of jasmine and almonds, used masks of egg whites to tighten their skin, and experimented with a hundred and one perfumes, and rubbed their skin with a cream made of pulverized pearls to lend it luster. They washed their long hair with egg yolks or even butter to make it shine and some even resorted to henna and indigo to lend its darkness enticing, come hither red and blue flashes. They painted intricate lace-like designs and whole gardens of flowers on their skin with henna; some even dared draw delicate but erotic pictures on their denuded pubic mounds and even perfumed their interiors by crouching over bowls filled with fragrant embers of frankincense, sandalwood, and myrrh, using their robes like a tent to prevent the sweet fumes from escaping. The singers had never sung better, the dancers had never possessed such sinuous sensuality, and those who recited poetry had never put such passion into the words before; even the shadow puppet shows exuded eroticism. Every woman was wishing, willing Abdul Hamid’s handkerchief to drop for her, but it never did. From the night I met Abdul Hamid no other woman’s foot ever trod the Golden Path.

The women gossiped, and some even gloated, about how grim and solemn the harem midwife and the Sultan’s physician looked whenever they left my room after examining me. Some even came in feigned solicitousness just for the pleasure of standing over me, to see with their own eyes just how low and wretchedly ill I was. Bets were being placed all over the palace about not whether but when I would die, would I succumb before the child was born or after, and if it would die too, or, if by Allah’s grace I survived, I would retain the Sultan’s favor.

* * *

As the hour of birthing grew nearer, a great gilded kiosk with one immense open-air chamber was prepared for me in the palace gardens amidst a sea of red and yellow tulips. It was scrupulously scrubbed from floor to ceiling and the walls were painted red. The bed was laid with red silk sheets and a quilt of the same material, and a diaphanous red curtain was hung across the center of the room like an immense veil. A birthing chair, like a throne of gold ornamented with rubies, and pitchers, and basins, and even birthing utensils made of gold were brought in and laid out in readiness. Even the linen towels the midwife would use were embroidered with golden threads.

In the harem the birth of a sultan’s child was viewed as a celebration. Instead of giving the expectant mother privacy, alone with the midwife and a trusted few she wished to have near in her travail, the doors were thrown open wide in welcome and any woman or eunuch who wished to might enter. Everyone came in their finest array bearing gifts, including the wives of important men eager to gain or retain the Sultan’s favor.

Endlessly replenished refreshments were served on gilded plates with drinks poured from golden pitchers into golden cups. The smell of strong coffee was constantly in the air. One hundred strong and sturdy mules had been sent on the seventy-mile trek to the great ice pits on Mount Olympus to bring pure, fresh snow to make sherbets especially for this occasion. Every manner of fruit juice available was put to use to flavor them, and there were even some special ones made of violets and roses or coffee flavored with cloves. My favorite, cinnamon, was there in abundance, but I was too sick to even think of taking a sip.

Musicians, dancers, singers, the palace dwarves, jugglers, acrobats, magicians, and puppeteers all came to perform for the lady laboring in agony upon her glittering gold birthing chair with only a sheer red curtain not quite modestly veiled between them and her open legs. The midwife had only to move away for them to see everything.

Everyone believed I was going to die and they had all come to see it. The triumphant reign of the golden-haired kadin was about to end. Her pearl-white skin would be even whiter when all the blood had drained out of her, they whispered.

There was so much red in the room it seemed awash in blood. I was unbearably hot; the maids assigned to fan me only annoyed rather than cooled me with their cruel eyes and malicious chatter. One of them kept “accidentally” resting her hand on the back of the birthing chair, just where my hair fell, and pulling it. If I hadn’t been in so much pain I would have gotten up and slapped her; I was just mad enough to do it. Even Naime’s tears falling on my face as she stood over me, wiping away my sweat with a perfumed handkerchief, failed to cool me. My eyes kept fading out of focus, I was light-headed and nauseous, and twice I vomited.

The noise was simply unbearable! Why couldn’t I have peace and quiet? I caught hold of Lâle’s hand and begged him to make them all leave. He looked down at me with sad eyes and said he was sorry, but that was not permitted, this was a centuries-old tradition. I didn’t want all these people dancing, juggling, singing, telling jokes, and performing puppet shows, acrobatics, and magic tricks all at the same time through a hazy red curtain, all trying to distract me from my pain, ingratiating wives kneeling beside my chair to show me the gifts they had brought me and my unborn child, servants offering me sherbet, candied fruits, Turkish delight, feta cheese, and cool melon slices to help keep up my strength, dwarves making funny faces capering in circles around my chair making me feel even dizzier, and the harem women all watching me with hard, narrowed eyes, waiting to see the life leave me. My head began to spin and I had to close my eyes. There was a high-pitched ringing in my ears drowning out the noise on the other side of the curtain. The pain was like a red fist pummeling my stomach and then reaching up, between my legs, deep inside of me to savagely grab and twist. My nails raked furrows in the gilt arms of my chair and blood streamed from my lips when I bit them to keep the screams from flying out.

Untold hours passed; sometimes I was encouraged to rise and walk about, or to lie upon the bed and rest, but nothing eased the pain and I always ended up back in the chair again with the midwife kneeling between my legs. She massaged my stomach and sometimes had me kneel on all fours upon the bed while she crouched behind me, attempting to shift the child within. She said it seemed to be turning cartwheels inside of me.

The Sultan’s physician was summoned and the midwife stepped away, into a corner, to consult with him. The midwife gestured frantically, adamantly, and the doctor frowned and shook his head. His expression was very grave and she seemed close to tears. And then my enemy Senieperver, head to toe in black encrusted with rubies, with ropes of those big bold red sparkling stones entwined in her turban and hair, layering her throat and wrists, and bloodred brilliants spotting her veils, swept in like a queen and went to speak with them.

Lâle, alert at my side, started toward them, but at his approach their intense little cluster broke apart, and Senieperver sailed grandly past him as though she didn’t even see him. Yes, she even dared snub the Kizlar Aga. She came to stand before me, towering over me, and this time I saw pure evil in her soulless black eyes.

“They are going to try to save your child by cutting it out of you with a knife,” she said coolly, “but you will not live to see it. The harem is full of beautiful women; one more or less will not matter to Abdul Hamid. Do not bother to beg for it; your life is worth nothing.”

Silence, I suddenly noticed, had fallen all around us. There was a rustle of heavy silk behind Senieperver and all fell to their knees as Abdul Hamid approached and laid a jewel-heavy hand upon her shoulder.

“You do not speak for me, Senieperver,” he said, his soft tone more ominous than any words shouted in anger. He thrust her aside, ignoring her when she threw herself down upon her knees and began kissing the hem of his robe.

“You!” He pointed to the doctor and the midwife. “Attend her!” He indicated me as I groaned and writhed and grasped the arms of my chair, determined to hold on to my life and the one laboring to be born inside me. “Look at me and listen well,” the Sultan said as they knelt before me, peering between my legs and shaking their heads and frowning helplessly. “If there is a choice to be made you will save her. You will do everything possible to save the Lady Nakshidil, and if that fails, then you will do the impossible and save her, or else her labor will be as nothing, smooth as silk, compared to the pain that you shall suffer before you die.”

He then turned to regard the harem women, performers, palace servants, and dignitaries’ wives all staring at us in amazement. Such a scene had never transpired in the history of the harem. The Sultan had never entered a birthing chamber before. What Senieperver said was generally held true—a woman’s life counted for nothing, her sole purpose was to please the Sultan, and if she died in childbirth she died gladly sacrificing herself for the gift she was giving him.

Abdul Hamid’s stare seemed to take them all in one by one. But this time the women trembled with terror at having the Sultan’s eyes linger upon their faces.

“She is worth more to me than all of you,” he said.

Senieperver was still groveling and kissing the hem of his robe and he kicked her away like a man annoyed by a dog trying to mate with his leg.

He came to me and knelt at my side, unclasped my quaking hand from the arm of the chair, kissed it, then held it tight, entwining his fingers with mine.

“Come, Nakshidil,” he said gently, “hold on to me, and we shall do this together. . . .”

And that is what we did. I don’t know how, but God, or Allah, gave us another miracle. With a last wrenching, tearing pain my son slipped from my body in a gush of blood, still and blue as my eyes.

“He is dead,” the midwife said, laying his body in the golden basin on the floor between my open legs. She said it as though it were nothing at all, in the same voice as she might have said, It is going to rain.

“Give him to me!” I cried, and when she hesitated I slapped her. I had never struck anyone in my life before, but, weak as I was, I slapped her so hard I left the print of my hand on her face and my rings cut into her cheek, bringing bright rivulets of ruby-red blood. I snatched up my son and gave him my own breath. I massaged his little heart through his tiny blue chest and begged him please to “Live! Live!” In desperation, I pounded his small back. “Breathe!” I begged. And he did. God, or Allah, someone, answered my prayers. My son coughed and spluttered and the blue began to fade from his skin, replaced by a healthy pink. And then he cried, hearty and loud, protesting the indignity of being struck on his first day of life.

“We have a son,” I said as I cradled his little body against my breast.

“Allah be praised!” Abdul Hamid said as he enveloped both of us in his arms. “We have a son! A son with hair of gold just like yours, Nakshidil! This is a good omen.” He touched a tiny gilt curl, glimmering through the blood of my body. “His name shall be Altin—Golden! And when he is sultan, with you as his mother to guide him, he shall usher in a golden age; in Turkey everything shall be golden! If only I could live to see it!”

I had never seen Abdul Hamid so happy before.

“You will!” I promised him with tears streaming from my eyes. “Come what may, you shall live forever in my heart, and in our son’s—I shall see to it!” I swore.

“Nakshidil”—he leaned his brow against mine—“for me, everything already is golden; it has been since the day you came into my life.”