Orhan and the children from the servants’ quarters were watching him, trance-like, just as we used to when we were young. I walked slowly in their direction, but I knew which story was being retold even before I heard the words being spoken. I was pleased and irritated at the same time. I wanted Orhan to be part of this world, to be accepted by my father, but I wanted things to change. Here it seemed that, like the Stone Woman, everything stood still.
“And do you think, my young master Orhan, that Memed the Conqueror listened to the whimpers and the moans of his frightened old woman of a Vizier? No. He raised his hand to say ‘Enough’. The Sultan had heard enough of such talk. Now he wanted to take the city they called Constantinople. He wanted to stand erect on the old walls of Byzantium and look at Europe. Memed knew that if we were going to be a power in Europe we had to take that city. Without it our Empire would always be one-eyed. We needed Constantinople to look at what lay beyond the Bosporus.
“They say that it was a beautiful spring day when the Sultan Memed gave the orders to prepare for battle and lay siege to the city. We will build a fortress on the other side of the water to control all access to their city. It will fall. Memed the Great was sure of this and his strong will and determination infected every soldier. Mothers told their sons to go and fight for the honour of their faith. Imagine the excitement that must have swept through the army. The Sultan has ordered that we will take the city. His Exalted Majesty has ordered the soldiers be properly fed. That night hundreds of lambs were covered with fresh herbs and roasted on spits for the soldiers. The exquisite scent of grilled meat pervaded the entire encampment. I’m sure it must have reached the defenders of Constantinople…”
Why does nothing in this house ever change? When I was told this same story by this same story-teller, I’m sure it was goats and not lambs that were being prepared, and perhaps ten years from now it will be peacocks. I have stopped caring. It makes no difference and yet I could not help being touched as I watched Orhan’s face alight with excitement. His eyes were fixed on Petrossian. My little boy had entered the world of Sultans and holy wars. How different all this was from the bedtime stories Dmitri and I told him at home. I had brought him up on stories of our family, of my uncles and aunts and all our cousins in different parts of our Empire. It was a way of instructing him in the geography of our world and its cities. These were tales of happiness and adventures, designed to make him feel at ease with the world inhabited by his family.
Orhan’s father never spoke of our great Empire. In this way he avoided both denigration and praise. The vices and glories of the Ottomans were not a subject very close to Dmitri’s heart. His own people had fought to free themselves from our rule only a few dozen years ago. Dmitri, not surprisingly, was on their side, though as a school teacher he had to keep his opinions to himself. Even at home we rarely discussed these matters. In fact, if I’m honest with myself, I would have to admit that ever since our marriage we rarely spoke of anything important. There were occasions when I deliberately provoked him. He would lose his temper with me, curse the day he had fallen in love with an Ottoman. Remarks of this nature only made me laugh, which was unfortunate since it only served to prolong his irritation. He found it difficult to believe that both my brothers were more critical than he of the Sultans and their Court, but then, as Dmitri never failed to point out, they had nothing to fear.
Dmitri is a good man. Of this I’m sure. And yet there are times when goodness becomes a bit wearisome. After my daughter was born I began to wonder whether I had made a mistake. Had I really loved him, or was it my father’s opposition that had closed my mind to any other alternative? The value of defying Iskander Pasha had long since depreciated, leaving me alone to confront my daily existence. I was tired of Dmitri. Tired of his jokes. Tired of his bad poetry. Tired of his resentments. Tired of seeing him wear the same style of clothes every single day and, what made all this doubly bad, I had tired of his body. It no longer gave me pleasure. There was nothing left. My life became a burden. I felt stifled.
He felt my growing indifference. It was difficult to hide my feelings all the time. His pride was hurt. Inside his head he must have begun to hate me. Sometimes I caught a look on his face that gave him away, but he restrained his anger. He was fearful that one day I might take the children and return to my father’s house. That must be why he suffered my alienation in complete silence and this made everything worse. He never allowed it to affect outward appearances and this only succeeded in enraging me further. I would have thought more of him if he had lost his reserve and hurled abuse at my face or shouted at me, but he remained silent. Most important of all, he never neglected his children. This was the big difference with our household. Here and in Istanbul the men in our family had nothing to do with children or their needs. It was the women, aided as always by an army of servants. We had only one serving-maid in Konya. Yes, just one!
Dmitri used to put Orhan to bed with stories of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses. And Orhan always wanted to be Hermes. Never Zeus or Neptune or Apollo or Mars or Cupid, but Hermes. He liked the thought of a god who was a messenger and he sometimes flew from his father to me with imagined messages. What Orhan and I really appreciated when Dmitri spoke of the old gods was that they were like human beings. They fought over each other. They had favourites on earth. They competed for the affections of Zeus. It was all very real.
Old Petrossian’s tales of Ottoman heroes could have been like that, but the old man had learnt his craft in the school of slaves. I have no idea how long Petrossian’s forefathers had worked in our household, but he and we knew that the relationship was very old. There had been Petrossians in our family for nearly a hundred and fifty years. And so Memed the Conqueror was above criticism, even of the mildest variety.
When we were young, my brother Salman used to invent stories, which cast Memed in a very ugly light. He would stop Petrossian in the middle of a story and ask with an innocent expression, “But Petrossian, is this not the same Memed who had his own mother’s brother boiled alive in oil and then fed his entrails to the dogs simply because the unfortunate man had been unable to control his wind in the Sultan’s presence?”
Remarks of this sort were designed partially to make us laugh, which we did, and partially to challenge and irritate the story-teller. Petrossian remained impassive in the face of every provocation, neither irritated nor amused, his expression unmarked by the tiniest smile or the trace of a frown. What annoyed him was losing our attention and, at those moments, he began to resemble a shepherd whose crook has been stolen and whose sheep are straying all over the hills. Instead of ignoring Salman’s jokes, Petrossian ended up taking them very seriously and he defended every imagined atrocity dreamed up by my brother to blacken the name of the Sultans.
Only once did Petrossian lose his control and laugh. Salman had interrupted him in full flow and asked for his views on an important matter.
“This concerns Sultan Selim the Sot. Do you think the stories they tell of him are true, Petrossian? They say that he drank so much that he became incapable of performing his main function as a man. This angered him greatly, because the more alcohol he consumed the more it inflamed his desire. He became desperate for the little thing between his legs to rise and commence its work, but, alas, Allah had willed otherwise. They say that when he summoned a wife to his chamber, he used to be hoisted upwards by silken cords and while he was held thus by the eunuchs, young boys with delicate hands would fondle him between the legs so that he felt some sensation while a healthy, blindfolded janissary was brought in naked. The loyal soldier would proceed to impregnate the delighted princess with tightly shut eyes; she who lay below the floating Sultan, expecting the worst, was delighted by the vigour of the surprise. And all this time, Allah’s representative on earth, in a drunken stupor, would see the happiness on the face of his wife and hear her delighted squeals. So, or so they say, everyone was satisfied. Could this possibly be true? If it is so then the line of descent that our Sultans claim from Osman himself would have been decisively broken. Answer me, Petrossian!”