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Dmitri

As I went to wash the tears off my face my mother began to read the letter. It was noble of him to absolve me of all responsibility, but I knew that if I had loved him he would never have given his life away so easily. Orhan’s anger was justified. If I had stayed behind in Konya none of this would have happened. He had taken the decision to die without consulting anyone else. It was an act that could only be carried out within the silence of the heart. The mind could not be allowed to interfere. If his emotional life, in other words the hurt he felt at my decision to withdraw from it completely, had not become too much for him, he would still have been alive. He did not want to admit this to himself or the children, but I knew it was the truth. He found the daily pain of life unbearable and suffering it was useless since hope itself was dead. Nothing he could do would have brought me back to him. Suddenly an awful thought crossed my mind and I screamed, bringing my mother rushing to my side.

“What if it was my letter to him that pushed him into oblivion?”

“Don’t think such things, Nilofer. From his letter it is clear that he acted in this fashion because of his beliefs.”

“You never knew him, Mother. That is not so. He decided to die because life without me was not worth living.”

“Don’t torment yourself, child. Think of the children. They must believe in that letter. It was his wish and there is a nobility of purpose there which I admire.”

“You always used to call him a skinny, ugly Greek school teacher, Mother.”

“He was that too, but ugly people can sometimes be noble.”

Despite the sadness, I burst out laughing. I was sobered by a knock on the door, fearful that it might be one of the children, but it was Petrossian.

“Iskander Pasha wishes to see you, hanim effendi.”

I went to his room, but it was empty. Iskander Pasha was sitting at his desk in the old library. It was a beautiful old room, with wooden panels on the wall and bookshelves that almost touched the high ceiling. Most of the literature was in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, German and French. The classic works of our own culture mingled easily with the encyclopaedias of the French Enlightenment. When he was a tutor here, the Baron had helped to modernise the collection. French novels, German poetry and philosophy had filled the two empty shelves closest to the ceiling.

Hasan Baba had often told us that three Korans in the library dated back to the ninth century and their value was inestimable. This was where we were summoned for punishments as children, which may have had the effect of discouraging us from reading. The library was engulfed in sunshine today, making it seem warm and friendly.

Iskander Pasha was writing in a thick leather-bound volume, a diary in which he made an entry every single day and, since our evening story-telling had been discontinued, the number of entries had multiplied. It had become part of the new routine after his stroke. He could now walk without a stick and his body showed no signs of any disability. He turned around as I entered and rose from his desk to greet me. He held his arms out wide and I fell into them as the tears began to fall again. He stroked my face and kissed me on the head. I could not remember when he had last treated me with such open affection. The fear that he was on the edge of sanity seemed to have been completely misplaced. If anything, the entire episode of the photograph had brought his submerged humanity back to the surface.

His speaking notebook, as Petrossian had named it, was in the pocket of his dressing gown. He took my arm as we walked back to his room. As we sat, side by side, on the divan, he took out the little book. In it he had written: “My little Nilofer, who has been widowed, I want you to know that I have always loved you. Nothing mattered.”

“Did you always know?”

He smiled and nodded.

“But how?”

He wrote: “You had green eyes and red hair, unlike your mother and unlike everyone else in our family for as long as I can remember. I knew for sure when you laughed as a child. It was a very nice laugh and it made your mother very happy. I was sure it reminded her of her lost lover. I did not mind in the least. You were a beautiful child and I was proud to act as your father. You have made one big mistake in your life so far, but, despite what I once thought of him, I’m very sorry that the schoolmaster Dmitri died in such circumstances. Ottoman civilisation has collapsed. Those who seek to fill the vacuum imagine they can make up in violence what they lack in culture. Talk to Halil about this one day. I think he underestimates the problem.”

I talked to Iskander Pasha that evening for many hours, and for the first time I felt that he was treating me as an equal. I told him that I had been somewhat disoriented when Mother revealed to me who my real father was, but that after a few days the knowledge had ceased to matter. He wrote in reply that the importance people attached to blood relationships had a great deal to do with the laws of inheritance and not very much with genuine affection. In this regard, he joked, our Sultans have been remarkably unsentimental, ordering that their male children, bar their chosen successor, be strangled to death with a silken cord — the choice of silk being important so that the royal neck was not sullied by cheap cloth before it was broken, but even more importantly so that no royal blood was spilt by common executioners.

I asked whether everyone in the family knew of my origins. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently and wrote that he had not discussed the matter with anyone and when Halil and Zeynep’s mother had raised the suspicion with him on her deathbed, he had not even bothered to reply. He then insisted that we had exhausted the subject of my birth and he never wished to discuss it with me again. I was his daughter and nothing else mattered.

In a bold attempt to change the subject I posed a totally unrelated question.

“Have you ever read any book by Auguste Comte?”

The question seemed to really shake him. He wrote in an agitated way: “Why? Why do you ask?”

“Someone asked me.”

“Who?” he wrote.

“I think it may have been Selim.”

His eyes softened immediately. “I have read something by him, but Hasan Baba became a complete devotee for a short time, when we were in Paris. He forgot the Sufis and embraced rationalism. He even began to dress in the style of a French plebeian. It all wore off after we returned to Istanbul. This Empire has a strange way of sweeping aside all the refined thoughts in our heads as if they were mere cobwebs. The clergy have made sure that Istanbul thrives on ignorance. We will talk of him tomorrow. The Baron might have a great deal to say on the subject. Organise a conclave after dinner. Let us discuss something serious for a change and tell Petrossian to make sure that Hasan and his grandson are present. I am so proud of the way in which you have taken over the running of this house. Your mother must be relieved.”

I was filled with a very deep love for him, a love I had not felt before. The remote figure I had known all my life and whose wrath I had so often feared had vanished. In his place there was a warm, generous man with a depth of understanding that must always have been there. We are all capable of wearing the mask, but underneath we remain what we are even if we do not wish others to glimpse that reality. I was sure that Iskander Pasha had returned to his true self. Perhaps he had found inner peace at last. I sat there for a short while, looking at him in silence. Then I kissed his hands and left the room.

I went in search of my orphaned children. I was about to leave the house and look for them in the garden when I heard the sound of Emineh’s laughter. Both of them were in my mother Sara’s room. A maid was teaching Emineh the tricks that can be played with a piece of string and a pair of hands. Sara herself had her hair tied back and covered in henna paste. It was a sight I knew well. Orhan was looking out of the window.