“I want to hear everything, Mother. Everything.”
‘Suleman was a distant cousin of my mother. His family, like ours, had moved to Istanbul from Cordoba in the fifteenth century, when we were expelled by the Catholics. My father came from a family of physicians who claimed kinship with Maimonides. My mother’s family were merchants and traders. They were made welcome here. The Ottomans gave us refuge and employment. Suleman’s forebears moved away and settled in Damascus, but without ever losing contact with the family in Istanbul. Since they were traders they travelled a great deal and, as a consequence, contact was never broken. The marriage of my parents, which was a happy one, had been arranged through the exchange of letters.
Suleman wanted to be a physician. He was tired of Damascus. He found it far too provincial and he wanted to be close to Europe. His father wrote to mine and, naturally, Suleman was invited to stay with us indefinitely. My father had agreed to procure his entry into the medical school in Istanbul. I was eighteen years of age at the time. He was a year older. It was as if the sun had entered our house.
All my friends had brothers and sisters and I had always felt odd that I was an only child. Mother could not conceive again after my birth, which had been difficult. She said that if Father had not been present, the midwife would have been incapable of stemming the flow of blood and she would have died. Strange that I, too, have only produced a single flower, which has fruited so beautifully. I was truly relieved when you produced Orhan and Emineh. I felt the old curse had been broken.
Suleman was like the older brother I never had and certainly my parents treated him like a son. There were no restrictions. I took him everywhere, both in the coach and on foot. I showed him the hidden delights of our city. Visitors from the West look at Sinan’s mosques and sigh with admiration. They are bewitched by the palaces and they marvel at the rituals of the Court, but few of them ever penetrate the inner life of our city. The loves we share with a city are always secret, adolescent day-dreams, especially if that city is wide open like Istanbul, but I felt like keeping nothing secret from Suleman even though I had known him for less than two weeks. The affinities between us were deep, but there were also differences. I was wilful and headstrong. He was emotional and tender-hearted, but also insecure in many ways.
We would often dress like Westerners and take tea in a hotel and speak in French to the waiters. It was only when we heard them wondering in Turkish whether we were brother and sister or a newly married couple on their honeymoon that I replied in pure Stambouline, just to observe their amazed expressions. They were the happiest days of my life, Nilofer. The innocence that precedes true love can never be repeated. When it vanishes, it has gone for ever.
Everything seemed magical when Suleman and I were together. We would sit in a café sipping coffee in Europe as we observed the sunset drowning Asia across the Golden Horn. We could speak with each other about everything and anything. There were no taboos. Nothing was sacred. It was not simply that we exchanged reminiscences or discussed the more peculiar episodes in the history of our respective families. From the very beginning there was something much more intimate. It was as if we had never been without each other. And we laughed, Nilofer. I have never laughed so much in my life before or since that time.
Till I met Suleman, nobody had shown any real interest in me. I was the daughter of the house and, no doubt, I would soon be married off and that would be the end of my story. My father, in particular, was so busy looking after the health of his more illustrious patients that he had very little time for me.
Suleman was the first and last person to ask me what I wanted of life. He did not laugh when I confessed my deepest fantasies. He encouraged me when I said that I wanted to be a novelist like Balzac. He gave me his undivided attention. He never attempted to impose his will on mine — not that he would have succeeded if he had ever tried. At moments like this, it is sufficient simply to love life. Everything else will follow, or so I dreamed. It would be just as beautiful as now. This was not to be.
One evening, Suleman and I found ourselves alone at home. My parents, attired in all their finery, had left to attend a wedding feast at the palace. The servants had been permitted a free evening. At first, we amused ourselves by playing duets from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni on the piano. Then we ate. It was only later, when our conversation had reached a natural pause that I felt slightly tense in his company. My heartbeat quickened its pace. He left the room and returned with a sheaf of papers. It was on that evening he first showed me those three sketches he had made. If I shut my eyes now I can see them very clearly.
“I never knew you were an artist,” was all I could say as I attempted to mask my confusion and remain aloof, calm and sophisticated at the same time.
“Nor did I,” he replied.
The first sketch was a tender reproduction of my face, the second was the same face, but this time in sharp profile. I hated this one because he had exaggerated my nose, drawn it too thick, like a shapeless cucumber, but before I could remonstrate, he showed me the third… O, the third, Nilofer, the third. It was how he imagined my unclothed body. His hands trembled as he held it up for me. I was thunderstruck by his audacity but also very alarmed by his accuracy. Many months later he confessed that he had spied on me bathing one afternoon, but by then we had reached a new stage of intimacy and nothing else mattered.’
Sara paused. The memories had stirred old passions and she was upset. She poured herself some water from the jug near her bed. I saw her now in a completely different light. I still could not believe that she had permitted Suleman to make love to her. If that were the case, why had they not run away together? He could have taken her with him. But why should it have reached that stage in the first place? Had my grandparents forbidden her to marry Suleman? Why?
“I can hear all the questions going through your mind, child. You want to know the exact degree of intimacy we enjoyed. Why we didn’t marry or run away like you and that Greek with ugly eyes. As you know, I have never spoken of these matters to any living person. It is not easy speaking of such things to one’s children. There is always an innate desire to conceal, but I feel like telling you everything. There is too much secrecy in our world, and concealment usually hurts more than the truth.
“If I was dead and buried and one day, by accident, you heard this story from one of Suleman’s brood, you might or might not have believed it, but you would be upset at your ignorance. You might think badly of me. You are the only treasure I have left in this world. I want you to know so that one day you can tell Orhan and Emineh about their grandmother. Who knows but that it might even help them live a better life. Press my feet, child. I’m beginning to feel tense and tired.”
I had never pressed her feet before, but, over the years, I had observed so many maidservants at work on them for hours at a time that the task posed no mysteries for me. I pressed each toe in turn, then moved to the soles, kneading them gently with my knuckles. Slowly, I felt Sara beginning to relax again.
‘Suleman and I fell into each other’s arms so naturally that evening it did not feel as if it was the first time. It had always been intended. The passion that we had hidden from ourselves poured out of us. We did make love then and on many other days. Sometimes our longing for each other became so great that we would rush out of the house in search of safe spots, but these were not easy to uncover. Often we had no other alternative but to hire a covered boat, oblivious to the world as the boatman, pretending to be blind, took us first to one continent and then another. This was always risky because the boats were often used for these purposes by the lower classes and I was always nervous lest one of our maids, who had confided in me regarding her adventures on a boat, should catch sight of us. In fact, that was how I knew that love-boats existed in the first place.