CHAPTER 37
I stood upon the crenellated walls and watched the white-shrouded body of my lover, my friend, my would-have-been husband, Sultan Abdul Hamid I, being borne out of Topkapi Palace upon a plain wooden bier, to be entombed with his ancestors in the imperial mausoleum. There was no coffin, for the Muslims believed that the body must be returned directly to the earth with the head pointing toward Mecca. His nephew, the newly proclaimed Sultan Selim III, led the funeral procession. The only women allowed to walk behind him were the professional mourners Lâle had hired. Not one of the five hundred women who had belonged to the Sultan, known, desired, aspired to his favor, bedded, or even truly loved him were allowed to see him to his grave. The hired mourners shrieked and tore at their black hair and fell to the ground and groveled and rolled in the dirt and threw dust on their veiled heads, making sure the Kizlar Aga got his money’s worth. It was quite a spectacle.
My heart was a fountain of endlessly flowing tears. I wore white, the color of mourning, spangled head to toe with diamond brilliants weeping teardrop pearls. I had been brought up to believe that it was bad luck for a bride to wear diamonds and pearls upon her wedding day or else in the years to come she would have cause to shed many tears. Though most women put luxury over superstition and wore these impressive adornments anyway, it seemed somehow most fitting that I should wear these emblems of sorrow now as I mourned the husband of my heart.
Mahmoud stood solemnly beside me and held my hand.
“You really loved him,” he said.
“With all my heart,” I answered, “and always will. I didn’t really begin to live until I met him, and the funny thing is everyone who ever knew me thought I was dead, but I had never been more alive. And he gave me the greatest gift of all—you!” I knelt and embraced my son.
“No.” Mahmoud smiled and shook his head as he wrapped his arms around my neck. “He gave me the greatest gift of all—you!”
I smiled through my tears and stroked his thin little face. “You are the reason my heart still beats.”
“Don’t cry, Maman.” Mahmoud reached beneath my pearl-fringed veil to dry my tears with his own silk handkerchief. It was blue, the color of hope. “You will be with him again someday. The Koran says: The fortunate fair who has given pleasure to her lord will have the privilege of appearing before him in Paradise. Like the crescent moon, she will preserve all her youth and beauty and her husband will never look older or younger than thirty-one years.”
“Abdul Hamid will like that.” I smiled and even laughed a little through my tears. “He always lamented the years that lay between us, but in Paradise he won’t have to worry about that anymore. He will be both the man I love and the man that he wanted to be.”
I strained my eyes for one last sight of my beloved as the doors of the royal mausoleum swung open wide and swallowed him. As the top of his white-shrouded head disappeared inside I reached out my hand as though my love could bridge the distance and caress him one last time. Then he was gone. I didn’t wait to see the rest of the procession pass; none of that mattered. As tears blurred my eyes, I let Mahmoud take my hand and lead me back inside.
* * *
It was the custom that when a sultan died his harem was banished to the Old Palace, the Eski Saray, the Palace of Tears, the House of the Unwanted Ones, to live out their remaining years celibate and bitter. Situated down by the sea at Seraglio Point, it was mocked as an almshouse for old ladies, though its residents could be as young as twelve and most were in the prime of life and beauty. Its nearness to the sea was a constant reminder to those that dwelled within that their survival was truly an act of charity. Men who had dived off the point often came back with tales of hundreds of bodies, women sewn into weighted sacks, standing upright, bowing and swaying, with the current. That could very easily have been the fate of the dead sultan’s harem, but the new sultan chose to be merciful and grant them a living death instead of a watery grave.
Entombed alive within the Eski Saray’s grim gray walls, waited upon by sad-eyed and arthritic eunuchs too old and feeble to serve in Topkapi Palace, these discarded women spent their days weeping to the tune of melancholy music or else seeking consolation in food now that there was no sultan’s eye to catch, and no one to care if they got fat, or finding solace in Sapphic affairs. Some of them could not bear to live without the sun of the sultan’s favor and committed suicide. Those he had never noticed and bedded believed their lives had been for naught and lamented that they would live and die without ever knowing a man’s touch. Some of them decided the eunuchs were better than nothing and did what they could with them; a man’s hands and mouth after all are still capable of giving pleasure even when he lacks the vital member. The moment the sultan died time was said to stop for the women in his harem, only it didn’t really, it yawned on and on for years and years and years and years....
Far better, I thought, to be a sultan’s sister or daughter. The sultanas were also sent away from the splendors of Topkapi Palace, but they went to begin new lives as the wives of provincial governors or other men of wealth and eminence.
As the reigning favorite, the First Kadin, I had no choice but to go with the others to the Palace of Tears. My heart broke yet again when Lâle told me that this meant I must also leave Mahmoud. It would be up to the new sultan, Mahmoud’s cousin Selim, and Mahmoud’s tutor to ensure my son’s safety now. Entombed in the Palace of Tears there was nothing I could do to protect him; I would be powerless.
* * *
As I embraced Mahmoud one last time and climbed into my litter, to join the long, mournful procession of women and baggage heading down to Seraglio Point, my life changed again in a way I never expected.
Selim appeared, resplendent in red and white, his new authority resting lightly as a silk cloak upon his shoulders. Saddened by his uncle’s death, Selim was yet euphoric in anticipation of all the wonderful things he planned, and he wanted me there to see them.
Boldly, he advanced, put his arms around my waist, and lifted me down from my litter.
“Your place is here,” he said, “with Mahmoud, and with me.”