I couldn’t resist teasing him. “How did you occupy yourself otherwise, Hasan Baba? I have heard that you began to dress like a Parisian and visited night clubs. Some say you even kept a Frenchwoman.”
“May Allah pluck out the tongue that spread such poison,” he replied. “I spent most of my time in Paris studying the Koran.”
The lie was so brazen that all three of us burst out laughing. Then he asked for permission to introduce us to his grandson, Selim.
“He’s opened a barber’s shop in Istanbul, with three apprentices, one of whom is very talented. The Westerners are his main customers. He was reluctant to follow me, but I told him it was a privilege to circumcise the grandson of Iskander Pasha. Selim! Selim!”
A young man who could not have been more than twenty-five years of age entered the room and bowed stiffly in our direction. My mother motioned that he should sit down and he took a seat without any trace of awkwardness. My first impression was favourable. He had an intelligent face. He was clean-shaven and dressed in Western clothes and did not look at the ground in fake humility when I spoke to him. Unlike Hasan, he spoke with a soft, reassuring voice.
“Orhan Bey is nearly ten years old and I realise you must be worried about the ceremony, hanim effendi, but it will be safe and painless. The thought of it frightens him and that is what will make him scream, not the actual circumcision. Have you determined the day?”
“In three days’ time. Are you sure you can be away from Istanbul that long?”
He smiled. “I told them I would be away for a week, hanim effendi.”
My mother indicated with a slight nod that the two men could leave. As he was walking away, Hasan remembered that he had not yet offered his condolences on my father’s affliction.
“I am off now to pay my respects to Iskander Pasha. It will be the first time that I will do the talking and he will have to listen. Perhaps the shock will be such that Allah will return his tongue to him.”
After they had left I asked my mother how we should break the news to Orhan. To my astonishment, she informed me that she had already done so and that the boy had been greatly relieved.
“He tells me that he was teased at school for being different. He says he will bear the pain like a man.”
“How else could he bear it, Mother?”
And so it happened that Orhan was dressed in a beautifully embroidered silk robe and as the maidservants sang next door, Selim the barber snipped off the offending skin. Orhan did not scream or cry. He smiled. My father, who had insisted on being present, applauded and presented Orhan with a purse, pregnant with gold coins. It had been given to him on the day of his circumcision. The Baron and Uncle Memed entered the room and kissed Orhan. My mother had gone to the kitchen herself and supervised the making of ure. Orhan had not yet tasted this sweet.
“What is it made of?” he asked my mother after he had tasted the first morsel she presented to him in a silver ladle.
“They say that this was first made when Noah realised there was not enough food left in the Ark. He instructed the women to put everything in a pot for one last big meal. In the big pot went wheat and raisins and apricots and dates and figs and dried beans and the mixture was boiled for many hours, until it looked like this. Now will you stand up, Orhan, and come with me so that we can distribute the ure to the servants.”
“Before I do that, can I offer some to Selim?”
“Of course,” I shouted with relief. “He must be the first.”
SIX
Iskander Pasha asks his visitors to explain the decline of the Empire; the Baron points to a flaw in the Circle of Equity; Salman’s deep-rooted cynicism
FATHER’S HEALTH WAS IMPROVING daily. He could now walk on his own and, as my mother confided to me, he was an active lover once again, all the more passionate for having lived through a period of denial. His face, too, was much improved. The paleness had evaporated and the sun had restored his colour. He was reading a great deal, mainly French novels. He loved Balzac and Stendhal, but hated Zola. He would write in his notebook that Zola was a scoundrel and an anarchist, but his written words never became an adequate substitute for speech. If he could speak he would have cursed Zola in language he was too embarrassed to put down on paper. He knew that his powers of speech had deserted him for ever and this was something he found difficult to accept.
But he became more and more assertive, more and more as he used to be when we gathered in his room for our stories. He was now determined to prevent a discussion of family history. He wanted to encourage more elevated talk. One evening he inscribed a question in bold capitals on his book and Petrossian held it up before us in turn. It read: CAN ANY OF YOU EXPLAIN WHY WE DECLINE SO RAPIDLY? IF RUSSIAN TSAR AND AUSTRIAN EMPEROR ARE STILL SO POWERFUL, WHY NOT OUR SULTAN?
Everyone was present. Memed and the Baron looked at each other wearily. Salman gave a sly smile. Zeynep kissed Iskander Pasha’s hands and took her leave. Halil, alone, showed any sign of interest.
“We failed to renew ourselves, Ata. And this is the price we have to pay. We allowed the clergy too much power in determining the future of this state. Istanbul could have been the capital of invention and modernity like Cordoba and Baghdad in the old days, but these wretched beards that established the laws of our state were frightened of losing their monopoly of power and knowledge. I forget the name of the fool who told the Sultan that if the palace relaxed its control, our religion would be finished. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, every major city in the West had its own printing press, while Sultan Selim threatened any person who showed even the slightest interest in it with death.”
Iskander Pasha was waving his hands to interrupt his son. Halil paused while I read my father’s note.
“The fear wasn’t totally unjustified, Halil. The Sultan’s ministers kept a very close watch on Europe. The Grand Vizier was aware that in three crucial years, from 1517 till 1520, the printing press destroyed the monopoly of the Catholic Church: three hundred thousand copies of Martin Luther’s work were printed and distributed in this time.”
“With great respect, Ata, I was aware of that fact, but the price we paid for our retreat into the past was a heavy one. We sealed off the Empire from a crucially important technological advance. The ulema, may they roast in hell, opposed modernisation on principle. Most of the Sultans and the eunuchs and janissaries who surrounded them accepted this view. It is an outrage that we kept the printing press at a distance to prevent the spread of knowledge. And even if you disagree on the printing press, though I really can’t see how you can, surely you must accept that the ban on public clocks was simply senseless. Here, too, the damned beards insisted that time was not linear. It was sacred and circular and could only be determined by the muezzin’s call to prayer. I think our decline is well deserved. This Empire is melting away before our eyes and the clergy and the Sultan watch in silence. It’s too late now. There’s nothing they can do. The Prussians and the British want to keep us alive for their own reasons. If this had not been the case, the Russian Tsar would have eaten us alive by now. We live on borrowed time and borrowed money. Some of us in the army are already discussing the future. The Empire is gone, Ata. The only interesting question is what will take its place.”