Pushing the boundaries of my golden cage, searching for new ways of expression and freedom, unveiling the ambiguities between music and art, friendship and love—that was my summer of 1979. My Farhad-free summer that I swore to live to the fullest.
I couldn’t sleep anymore. I lay in bed counting the hours until Muezzin Rashid’s morning Adhan, afraid that if I fell asleep I might wake up and lose my real-life dream. Every hour unclaimed by Professor Sultan-zade I spent either behind Tahir’s green door or inside Maiden Tower. He painted; I listened to his jazz recordings or played the Mukhtarovs’ clavichord. Sometimes we talked; often we didn’t. We didn’t have to—our art shared the same creative palette.
I had been studying Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 3, both terrified and fascinated by its unfathomable soul, its vertigo of sweeping texture, rhythm, and dynamics. Playing Rachmaninoff was like walking on a rope bridge across a gorge with dreamy skies above and a raging, muddy river below. Sometimes I switched from Rachmaninoff to my Mozart’s Concerto in the middle of the piece without even thinking. Because I had followed in Tahir’s steps and reached the most unique place of inspiration—my own island. The place where Mozart and Rachmaninoff and Billie Holliday and every single expression of joy or misery suddenly become one. The inner reflection of me.
The sun passed across the Islamic window in the cupola, spreading its garnet rings throughout Coronation Hall.
I stopped playing the clavichord and held out my hands, and a few rings melted into my open palms.
“Look. I caught the sun,” I said.
Tahir didn’t respond. He was busy fighting his battle with a canvas, striking it metrically with a brush. Staccato in color. I couldn’t see his face from behind the easel, only the smoke from his cigarette curling around the canvas like a restless sea horse. He was so unpredictable. Blissful one moment, withdrawn the next. His mood shifted like sands in the desert, his eyes mirroring every passing emotion. The most lasting shade was lavender, the lustrous lavender of the Caspian Sea during a summer sunset. That’s why looking into Tahir’s eyes felt like drifting in warm tranquil waters farther and farther from the shores of reality.
Had I complicated my life by tying my music—my whole being—to him, constantly seeking his approval? Never before had I cared about the way my hair looked or if my skirt matched my blouse. Not anymore. Every morning, I smoothed my curls with saffron oil and slipped into my silk sarafan, sundress. I even asked Almaz to put pink polish on my toenails so they would look fancy in my red gladiator sandals peeking from underneath the chador. Tahir never noticed.
But the connection between us was in the air, growing stronger with each stroke of his brush and with every cadenza of my piano performance as we struggled to find our unique voices. He by bringing musical tonality to his painting; me by unlocking my inner sluices, letting the palette of emotions spill freely into the art of my music.
Miriam came in quietly, a book in her hands. Guy de Maupassant. In French.
By now, I knew where Tahir received his gifts—his plentiful intellect, his knowledge of music and art and history. He was raised by Miriam as the only remaining Mukhtarov. As the glory of the vanished clan. And its last hope.
I played the opening theme of “Finale: Alla breve” slowly, the way Professor Sultan-zade taught me to approach difficult new material. Why did Rachmaninoff have to flood this piece with so many notes? An insane quantity of notes. I felt dizzy looking at the pages. My hands were too small to reach for the wide intervals he catered to his own long fingers. I couldn’t do it. I stopped, embarrassed that Miriam witnessed my surrender.
“Don’t think about the notes,” she said as if reading my thoughts. “Search for silence. Music is not in the notes but in what is between them. That’s what makes it powerful, so powerful it can overcome evil.”
“Oh no. Not again,” Tahir muttered from behind his easel. “The jaunty illusion of an idealist. Music can provide an escape from evil, not fight it. Music is for the sake of music, nourishment for the soul. Evil is inevitable and incessant, at least in our lifetime.”
“Our lifetime is less than a square on a chess board,” Miriam said, “and we never know on which one—dark or light—we are going to land.”
“That’s exactly my point. Why even bother trying?”
“Why? Because you might never have another chance to experience the joys of living.”
“I don’t need ‘the joys of living.’ All I need is to be left alone and paint. And hopefully, when the time moves to the light square on your chessboard of life, my works will be the one true statement of this miserable era.”
“What you’re saying is escapism in its most debilitating form. No wonder you prefer to drift away into the world of hashish.”
“What do you expect from me? To be a hero like you? To fight? Fight whom? Evil? You of all people should know that he’s a dragon with many heads. You cut one, two grow in its place.”
“I’m not saying you should fight evil, but I don’t want you to fold your wings, either. You must keep a sense of perspective. The external evils are nothing compared to the evils that we harbor in our souls. This is our true enemy, not the temporary darkness.” Miriam turned to me. “What do you think?”
“Me?” While Tahir and Miriam debated notions of evil and light in the catacombs of Maiden Tower, I lived in their Villa Anneliese, a lucky recipient of both evil and light. “I think we need to discover goodness inside ourselves and hold on to it,” I said, avoiding Tahir’s gaze.
“Beautifully said. The eternal goodness of humanity.” Miriam patted the stone wall as if finding confirmation in its thousand-year-old solidity. “Accumulated goodness will eventually break through the gates of evil, but we first have to find forgiveness in our hearts so we can recognize and welcome the light when it returns to our country.”
“Bravo.” Tahir sprang to his feet, applauding theatrically. “Now you’ve got yourself a follower. But the truth is, if your generation wasn’t so naive, then my generation wouldn’t be paying the price. And the price is our future. A future we don’t have. So I guess I’d better leave you two to generate the goodness. Pardon me—accumulate goodness—while I have work to do.”
He packed his easel and brushes and stormed out of Coronation Hall.
“He’s like a porcupine, my grandson. Sharp needles outside and a fragile soul inside.” Miriam sighed sadly. “When I learned I was pregnant with my daughter Ziya, Tahir’s mama, I kept it a secret, working on lumberjacking in the Siberian taiga, afraid to be discovered and sterilized. My daughter spent her formative years in the gulag and returned to Baku with me in 1953. But her lungs were never strong. And eventually, she died.” Miriam paused, rocking her body. “Tahir is the reward we have been given for suffering. A miracle. What an abundant intellect he possesses. Just like his grandfather.”
I thought of the young man in breeches in Muezzin Rashid’s photograph. Caspar the Poet.
“Who was he, Tahir’s grandfather?” I asked.
“My best friend, Caspar. And the love of my life.” Miriam locked her eyes on the wall, smiling wistfully. “I had known him since childhood. A shy boy with big, dreamy eyes. We never spoke until the annual ball at the Lyceum when I invited him for a dance. After that, we became inseparable. The Troika Society.”
“What is this?”
“Caspar had a friend, Halil, and the three of us created the Society, wishing to bring the arts to the poor. I sang; Caspar recited his poetry; Halil impersonated famous people. When I turned sixteen, I left for Europe to study opera, and Caspar joined me in Paris just before the October Revolution. There he became deeply involved with the intellectual libertarian movement. He believed his place was not among cranky Azeri émigrés but in his beloved homeland where real history was being made.”
“So what happened?”
“He returned to Baku. But once he was home, he realized that his ideas of democracy had nothing to do with the reality of Communism. He published his ‘Fairy Tale about a Maiden Called Truth’ in a small Azeri publication.”
“The story you told me?”
“Yes. And right after that, no more letters from him. I wrote Halil, asking for help. By then, he had a position of power in the Communist regime. He replied that the Azerbaijani government would welcome me back as their ‘national singing treasure,’ and in exchange they would close their eyes on Caspar’s treason. On November 3, 1937, I arrived in Baku. Caspar and I were blessed to spend three days together before they came for him in the middle of the night.”
Miriam traced her silver braid with her trembling hand, twirling the end of her lace collar between her fingers. The lace was as starkly white as her face etched against the impending darkness. The Caravaggio face, screaming out its silent heartache.
“But why didn’t Halil help?”
“Jealousy knows neither morality nor empathy. I had chosen Caspar over him, and Halil was an ambitious young man who didn’t like to lose. Even as a boy, he used to climb on the ledge of my balcony, and standing high up above the city, he would impersonate Napoleon. He did it very well. Maybe too well.” She sighed, shaking her head. “He didn’t become the twentieth-century Napoleon, but he did get a city street named after him. Together with my balcony.”
“What—” I didn’t have to ask. I knew. But maybe there was still a chance. “What was his name?”
“Halil Abbas Badalbeili.”
If I could have scraped off my skin together with my name, I would have done it.
• • •
I found Tahir in the courtyard outside Coronation Hall. Hunkered down in a recess, his back against the wall, he smoked, the light of his cigarette trembling in the shadows.
“You’ve known it from the beginning, haven’t you?” I said.
He nodded.
I slid down next to him and hid my face between my knees. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s not your fault. Has nothing to do with you. We’re all married to our destinies.”
“But we have the power to change our destiny, don’t we?”
“Destiny is a stubborn maiden,” Tahir said. “She likes herself just the way she is. I can fool her though.”
“How?”
Tahir cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered eerily, “The sooner I burn myself into the ground this time around, the sooner I’ll have a better stake in the next life. Hopefully as a human. And with Allah’s help, somewhere far, far away from here.”
He pushed against the wall and got to his feet. “Let’s go make peace with Miriam.”
• • •
In the evening, Tahir and I waited for Miriam to fall asleep before we snatched a cluster of keys from her sheepskin pocket and tiptoed to the inner gate leading to Maiden Tower. Matching one after the other with the gate’s battered old lock, Tahir finally found the right key. The cast-iron portal growled in protest and opened reluctantly into sheer darkness.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here.” Tahir tapped softly on my shoulder. “Hold on to the railing. Some of the stairs are broken.”
It was a long way up—round and round—along a spiral stairway that kept getting steeper, sending my head into a spin. We reached the top of Maiden Tower and mounted its rocky peak, standing so high in the sky that the rondo of shimmering stars around us seemed closer than the city lights below.
“I used to come here all the time when I was young,” Tahir said, his face tilted to the sky, his long eyelashes flickering like a butterfly’s wings. “At dawn, I hid behind the staircase, waiting for the Firebird to return and take on her human appearance. I imagined her—half princess, half bird—standing on the crown of the tower, her wings reaching into the sky. Once Miriam caught me here, and I confessed my fantasy. She sat next to me, right there on the pebble of dreams”—he pointed toward a fallen fragment of the stone crown—“and told me the real Legend of Maiden Tower and Princess Zümrüd.”
“I’ve heard so many variations.”
“But not this one.” Tahir reached for my hand and helped me to climb atop the pebble of dreams. There, aboard the vessel of the night, traveling from one rim of the sky to another, he told me the legend.
The Legend of Maiden Tower and Princess Zümrüd
A long, long time ago:
When the evil Shah of Darkness reigned over the Land of Fire, hiding the sun inside his underground caves;
When the orphan sky peered at the Caucasus Mountains from the black dome of sorrow;
When the rain shed its tears of ice upon the barren earth—
The old Shah Samir and his most favorite wife, Queen Mehriban, welcomed to darkness their only child, Princess Zümrüd.
No celebration took place in the Land of Fire. The court heralds didn’t blow the plangent sounds of their powerful nays. The ashiks didn’t pluck the harmonious strings of their golden sazes. And the sad troubadours recited in silence the admiring verses they had composed for a long-awaited royal heir. For it wasn’t a daughter whom Shah Samir needed so desperately, but a son. A strong young man, a great warrior to stand up to the Shah of Darkness. To free the sun from the dungeons. To bring harvest to the fruitless soil. To return life and prosperity to the people of the shattered kingdom.
But the first time Shah Samir laid his gaze on the baby princess, he loved her with all his aging heart. Her olive skin was as clear as the spring air, and the sun had found its way into the brilliance of her deep brown eyes. With beauty like hers, the princess could only be a gift from heaven.
Shah Samir dressed in his finest white robes and rode his horse for twenty-seven moons to the heart of the desert, the Desert of the Blind Dervish. There he lay on the cold sand, turned his face to the sky, and waited. At the onset of the seventh moon, the Blind Dervish emerged out of the dim horizon.
“Oh, worthy son of Moon—”
“Say no more,” interrupted the Blind Dervish, penetrating into the Shah’s mind with his hollow sockets. “I see your Land of Fire submerged in darkness. There is more hardship and suffering ahead, but light will prevail over the darkness. The roots of joy grow out of the seeds of despair.”
The sage moved apart the clouds blocking the moonlight. “The Fire and the Sea will carve a castle out of a rock. With a tower—a Maiden Tower—high enough to scrape the dome of the sky. So high that one day in the future your beloved daughter, Princess Zümrüd, will leap from its crown, reach the sun, and lead it back to its blue cradle.”
“Then Princess Zümrüd is destined to save my kingdom?” the Shah cried out in euphoria.
“She may…or may not… It all depends on the choices she makes…”
With these words, the Blind Dervish disappeared behind Shah Samir’s stone-heavy eyelids. The Shah exhaled his last breath, lay down once again upon the sand, and locked his eyes with eternity.
As the Blind Dervish foretold, a splendid castle grew out of the Caspian Sea with a tower ascending into the sky. Princess Zümrüd, unaware of the reign of darkness outside, lived merrily in the castle surrounded by the riches of the world. Lavish carpets of dazzling colors covered the austere stone walls. Exotic birds from faraway forests sang cheerfully, evoking the sounds of never-ending spring. Musicians and poets fashioned glorious verses in different tongues, praising their princess’s youth and beauty. And fire torches, placed in every niche, illuminated the castle like a thousand suns, preventing the gloom from sneaking into Princess Zümrüd’s life.
All this continued until her fifteenth birthday. On that day, the princess was playing hide-and-seek with her friends when she ran upstairs to conceal herself behind a rug, the most beautiful rug in the castle. It was there, while standing quietly and admiring the picture of two lovers floating on a magic carpet across the turquoise sea and into the blue sky, that she discovered a secret door.
“Where does this door lead?” she asked her nanny.
“Oh, light of my eyes,” wailed the nanny. “Promise me you’ll never come near that door again. There is a cursed world outside that door, and the evil Shah of Darkness is waiting there to take you away from us.”
The joy left Princess Zümrüd’s heart. From that time on, she sat alone in her stone chamber, clad in a shimmering white and silver gown adorned with the finest emerald jewels, but she felt neither love nor lament, buried in the monotony of lasting darkness.
Until, finally, she made up her mind. That evening, after everyone in the castle had fallen asleep, she tiptoed up the stairs, pulled aside the beautiful rug, opened the secret door, and stepped into the pitch black outside. The night blinded her eyes. The mysterious smells of the sea and the unfamiliar touch of the air against her skin clouded her senses. Overwhelmed, she stood at the crown of Maiden Tower, taking in the majesty of the night with tears of joy rushing down her cheeks. So beautiful was the sight of the maiden—her black silken hair blowing in the wind, the flawless curves of her body draped in a fluid satin gown, fine emeralds sparkling around her long neck, her slender wrists and ankles—that the stars began to break through the clouds, one after the other, greeting Princess Zümrüd with their silver smiles.
And then she saw him. A Knight in Lion’s Skin. Riding the waves of the Caspian Sea, looking up at the princess of his dreams showered in brilliant starlight. The moment they laid eyes on each other, love struck the hearts of the Knight in Lion’s Skin and Princess Zümrüd with a double-edged arrow of fire, lighting the knight’s path to Maiden Tower.
But it also awakened the evil Shah of Darkness in his cave of sleep. A fierce fight broke out. The clashing sound of steel against steel and steel against stone. A deadly battle for every step leading to the beautiful princess.
Princess Zümrüd stood at the top of the tower, helpless and frightened, begging the Sun and the Moon and the Sea to spare the life of her beloved. Offering her own life instead.
Then silence came. Deafening silence. Followed by the sound of heavy footsteps echoing like thunder throughout the stone tower. Shah of Darkness, thought Princess Zümrüd in anguish. The monster has defeated my beloved and is coming for me.
“Death is more dear to me than life without my beloved,” she whispered to the stars, waved her arms like wings, and threw herself into the roaring waves of the Caspian Sea. But the sky and the sea traded places, and the beautiful Firebird—Zümrüd Qusu—was born.
By the time the Knight in Lion’s Skin reached the top of the tower—for it was he, not the Shah of Darkness, who had won the battle—his beloved Zümrüd had soared over Maiden Tower, burying the Shah and his Kingdom of Darkness under pillars of smoke, carrying the infant sun in her powerful wings to the dawning dome of the sky.
Tahir finished his story and lit a cigarette.
We sat silent for a long time at the very edge of the tower with our feet dangling over the faraway city. Just Tahir and me, alone in the infinite space where nothing else mattered, where everything was possible.
“If you could make one wish now, what would it be?” I said, both fearful and hopeful that Tahir would ask for permission to kiss me. I had dreamed of it for a long time. To be so close that I’d recognize my love in the mirror of his face, feel his black currant breath closing around my lips, possessing them. Like in my book Legends from the Land of Fire—Knight and his Princess sharing their first kiss on the magic carpet floating between the stars and the crescent moon.
I closed my eyes and waited, the breeze stroking my face, caressing my hair. Then I felt Tahir’s fingers touching my skin, tracing invisible lines from my eyes all the way to my lips. Slowly, tenderly. Tossing a trillion tiny fireflies in my direction. I could feel the first one landing somewhere around my neck and then the next one on my shoulder, then more and more and more. Until I was completely wrapped in the invisible veil of seduction.
“I desire to know you,” Tahir whispered. “Every breath of your heart, every fleeting look on your face, the rhythm of your joys, and the melancholy of your sorrows.”
Suddenly, the touch was no more. My eyes blinked open.
“But you’re still very young and vulnerable.” Tahir shook his head, his intensely violet-blue eyes reaching deep inside my soul, making me shiver. “And I don’t want to complicate your life any more than I’ve done already. Maybe in a different place and different time it would be a different story. But we are here and we are now. I have no future. While you’re at the launching point, with your life ahead of you—a career, the whole world at your feet.
“I can’t give you what you need. All I’ve got is my art…and my inner freedom. That’s what keeps me afloat. Feelings…love…those are luxuries I can’t allow myself. They will enslave me, suffocate my creativity, make me miserable, and, ultimately, will hurt you.”
“I don’t understand… Why? Why are you saying this to me now?” I sought his eyes like a beggar, hoping to stir him into changing his mind.
He looked away.
“It’s not just now. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while. And tonight we have come to the point of no return. We should probably stop seeing each other.”
“But why?” I almost shouted.
“I explained why. Let’s go.”
Tahir got up and helped me to my feet. We descended the long staircase in silence, a sob stuck in my throat. A dark abyss opened inside me. What had I done to make Tahir turn into this stranger? Why had he smashed my heart against the stones of Maiden Tower? Of all places.
I knew he cared about me. Of course he did. I could see it in his face even as he spoke those painful words. Then why? Why? How could I wake up tomorrow knowing that he was no longer a part of my life? The center of my life? That his green door had closed, shutting me out forever. How could he do this to me? And how could he say my love would suffocate him?
We stopped at the foot of Maiden Tower. Tahir took my hand, my skin against his—warm and slightly moist—brought it to his chest, and pressed it firmly against his heart.
“You will always be here,” he said. “No matter what. You are my Princess Zümrüd. You asked me if I had only one wish to make what it would be. I will tell you. It would be to ask for a pair of wings to carry you away from darkness, all the way up to your dreams.”
Silence. A long, hopeful silence before he let go of my hand.
“But we still can be friends. Just good friends, the way we’ve been,” I pleaded, swallowing my pride, tears gushing down my face.
“It won’t work like that, Leila. It’s better to cut down the tree with one quick stroke than to keep chopping away at its branches.”
Why do we have to cut the tree at all?
Tahir walked me to my bus stop. Not a word exchanged. The soft rustle of an olive tree. The lights of the approaching bus. Too soon. Before the bus door even closed, Tahir turned away and headed back toward Maiden Tower. I watched him through a blurry window. The slender figure, the gait with a bounce, rushing back to his solitude, shouldering the heavy burden of our flawed world. I waited for him to change his mind, turn around, catch up with the bus, pull me out of here, and tell me he was wrong. Or at least to look back and wave good-bye.
He did neither, just kept to his strenuous pace before fleeing into the first alley.