The three of them consulted in low-voiced Arabic, then signaled their agreement with a nod of the head. Nasi thanked them, and then turned back to his friend.
“I’d like you to take Manuel. It’s thanks to his intuitions that you’ve got this far.”
“Yes, and you have to keep an eye on me.” The old man stung him, and I couldn’t work out whether he was joking or not. Then, looking at me, “I was right, about that poplar pollen and the hill of Pera. Well, the appointment’s fixed for tomorrow, after the first prayer, at the caravanserai of the Suleymaniye Mosque. I’ll show you ambushes of a different kind.”
24
We left the caravanserai on five haggard-looking bay horses. I was wearing Muslim clothes, to get round the law against infidels riding horses like everyone else. To my right was an Indian girl disguised as a man, then a man who looked like a girl, and finally a German in a cloak and turban. I wondered if the Moor Ali, behind his red beard, mightn’t be hiding unexpected features.
We went down the third hill of the New Rome, the one upon which stood the Suleymaniye Mosque, and reached the Imperial Road. In spite of his age, Ismail sat straight in the saddle and rode at a good pace. I spurred my horse to catch up with him.
“Where are we going?”
“Out of the city,” he replied crisply.
We headed westward, the only direction on the peninsula that doesn’t lead to the sea.
“We’re visiting a pirate, not a peasant,” I said, in a bid to melt the old man’s reticence.
Ismail raised his chin. “We’re not going to see him, we’re going to see the man who can tell us where to find him.”
By now we were near the Column of Arcadius, and the voices from the Grand Bazaar drowned out our words. As we crossed the square, I noticed with surprise that they were female voices, and that behind the stalls and shops selling henna, candles, flowers and yogurt, there were veiled women, most of them peasants, and that the clientele was made up of women, too.
Once we were out of the crowd, I learned from Ismail that this was Avrat Pazari, the only market in the city where Muslim women could buy and sell in peace, without servants or brothers keeping an eye on them.
Our riding party carried on past the Cannon Gate, leaving the Byzantine walls behind. We passed through the suburbs and found ourselves in the open countryside. Low hills followed one after the other, run through with waves of green. I saw snakes darting in and out by the side of the track. Ali told me not to worry, because none of them were poisonous. And the horses remained calm.
Then the countryside assumed tones of yellow and ocher, as sunflower fields filled the horizon. Sparrows and bee-eaters chirped on the branches of the few trees. Their rainbow feathers filled me with unexpected joy. At about midday, Ismail made an announcement.
“Here we are, Cardoso. Nearly there.”
The landscape was unchanged. Grass and sunflowers as far as the eye could see; nothing else. We crested a hill, and on the slope of the next one I spotted a group of men on horseback. Around them, a dance of birds flying in high circles and plunging in dives. They were falconers.
Years before, I had been the guest of a nobleman in the Trevisan marches, carrying out a task for my old bosses. Hunting with falcons was his great passion, but I could hardly say it was mine. I was pursuing different prey. On that occasion I had been bored, and had soon tired of standing with my nose in the air following the movements of the raptors. The nobleman had then bored me further with a long litany of complaints about the decadence of tempora and mores, which put such distinguished birds of prey on the forearms of unworthy priests and courtesans, though they were meant only for men of quite different status. In the end, thank God, he gave me the information I was looking for.
Ismail raised his right hand in greeting and called out a name in a loud voice.
Young men with thin beards replied with profuse salutations and low bows. One of them said he was the son of the man we were looking for, and that his father would be delighted by our visit.
So they guided us to his presence. He was a man of Ali’s age, tall and handsome, who towered above his mount and emanated a calm, mild strength. He got off his horse and we did the same. The hooded falcon perched on his right arm stayed obediently in its place.
From the tone of the greetings and the brief allusions to old memories, I understood that Ismail had been close to the man who was welcoming us. As he introduced him to us, he listed all of his titles, and at last I knew who he was. Hassan Agha, the Great Falconer and second chief huntsman to the Sultan. That evening, back in Palazzo Belvedere, I would discover that he was the husband of Princess Shah, daughter of Selim, and remember with surprise his simple, cordial manners. His friendship with Ismail was doubtless the true motive for that attitude, but perhaps another factor was his habit of living among fields and bushes, in close contact with animals, and not in the halls of a lordly palace, surrounded by deference and submission.
It was thus that I learned that Ismail, during his years in Constantinople, had taken part in Hassan Agha’s hunting parties, along with some illustrious lovers of the sport, one of whom was the fifth vizier, Lala Mustafa, whom I had met at the Divan.
We got back on our horses, and reached the top of a hill, the highest in the area. Below us, beyond a grove of willows and flowering bulrushes, the calls of ducks and toads revealed the presence of a stretch of water.
The falconer removed the hood from his bird, and the creature took flight with a nervous flutter of wings. It soared to a high altitude and began playing in the gusts of wind. Hassan Agha’s men came down among the marsh grasses, beating the ground with their sticks. A flock of ducks rose from the depths.
The falcon flew a few more turns, then fell in a vertiginous dive upon its prey, which it grabbed with its claws. The victim’s flight was cut short in a cloud of down and feathers. The young horsemen hurled themselves toward the spot where it had fallen, and came back to us bearing the falcon, which still gripped the duck in its claws. Hassan Agha drew it to his arm with a big piece of meat. While the falcon was eating, he slipped the prey from its clutches and put it in his bag.
“You Europeans like the company of dogs,” he said, stroking the bird with a finger. “Submissive creatures, anxious to please man, as devoted servants desire to please their master. Hunting with a falcon, on the other hand, is a matter of trust and mutual self-interest.”
The bird’s bright white plumage was streaked with a rainy pattern of dark grey patches. I had never seen an animal like it, and as politely as I could I asked the falconer what kind of bird it was.
“They say that its mother comes from the icy marshes at the edge of the world,” he replied, “and its father from the deserts of central Asia, the cradle of our people. Two different breeds, but similar enough to be able to mate, laying the eggs on the slopes of the Altai, the Mountains of Gold, which give their name to this hybrid.”
I thanked him for the attention he had given me, but he went on talking, as if the answer were a very long one. “He’s a very robust falcon, faithful, easy to train. You don’t have to do anything with an Altai, and a good falconer does as little as possible. It’s the falcon’s nature that impels it to fly and makes it grip the prey with its claws. If you want him to do that for you, you just have to show him why it’s to his advantage.”
The Great Falconer paused again, and then told the story of Prince Temujin, who after losing a battle came home across the desert with a friend. The two men hadn’t eaten for days, when they saw an Altai falcon flying high above them. The friend suggested that Temujin keep an eye on it, to take its prey away from it. The other man replied that you have to earn your food, and caught the falcon to teach it to hunt for them. Two years later, the princes finally came home. If they hadn’t trained that Altai they would have died of hunger and the world would not have known Temujin, or Genghis Khan, the greatest leader of all time.