She rarely stayed in the summer house and had not been present to witness Salman’s humiliation, but the news had been relayed to her in Istanbul and my mother was sure that Iskander Pasha would have felt the whiplash of her tongue. Perhaps she tried to persuade Salman not to go. If so, she failed. He had arrived at a decision and nothing would dissuade him. He told us he would travel for some time and let us know when he decided to settle in a particular town.
A penitent father offered him money for his travels, but Salman refused. He had saved enough from his salary over the last four years. He embraced us all and left. We did not hear from him for many months. Then letters began to arrive, but irregularly. A year after he left a message was received from Uncle Kemal, who had just returned from Alexandria. He informed us that he had stayed with Salman, who was successfully trading in diamonds and married to a local woman. He had sent a letter for Zeynep’s mother. Its contents were never divulged to any of us. Zeynep searched every hiding place in her mother’s room but failed to uncover the letter. One day, in a state of total despair, we asked Petrossian if he knew what had been said in the letter. He shook his head sadly.
“If too many stones are thrown at a person, he stops being frightened of them.”
To this day I am not sure what Petrossian meant by that remark. Zeynep and I had nodded our heads sagely and burst out laughing when he left the room.
It was strange that they had all arrived here on the same day. What memories would float through Iskander Pasha, when he saw Salman, Uncle Memed and the Baron walking into his room together? Halil later reported to me that Father had wept on seeing Salman, embraced him gently and kissed his cheeks. Salman was touched, but his eyes remained dry. The gesture had come too late. The pride exhibited by grown men is something I have noticed for a long time, but never really understood. It is something that was not completely absent in but firmly suppressed by my husband Dmitri.
As the days passed I had occasion to observe Salman. My brother who, in his youth, had been the most lively and ambitious of us all, was now afflicted by a melancholy that made him bitter. I think it was his inability to accomplish more in his life that caused him great anxiety. It was almost as if his success as a diamond merchant lay at the root of his unhappiness. He was never satisfied. He had married an Egyptian woman in Alexandria, “a beautiful Copt” in Uncle Kemal’s words, but had kept her from meeting his family. Even now as his father lay disabled by a stroke, Salman had not brought his sons to see their grandfather at least once. Halil alone had been invited to Egypt and accorded the privilege of meeting Salman’s wife and children. On one occasion when I persisted in questioning Halil about Salman’s indifference I received a sharp and surprising reply.
“Salman is very depressed by the fact that the Empire has been irreparably decadent for three hundred years. I’m aware of this fact as well, but Salman takes it personally.”
My instincts rejected such reasoning. I recognised Salman’s impatience with the rituals of Istanbul life. He was deeply frustrated and wanted change, but, at best, this could only be a partial reason. I could not believe that my brother, once so mischievous and full of fun, had become so deeply affected by a sense of hopelessness in relation to history. Our family had always made history. How could we now let it crush us? There had to be another reason for Salman’s sadness and I was determined to discover its roots.
THREE
The Baron reads an extract from the Qabus Nama on “Romantic Passion”; the unfinished story of Enver the Albanian; Sabiha and the Circassian maid who thought the only way of escape was to fly
“YOUR OTTOMAN EMPIRE IS like a drunken prostitute, lying with her legs wide open, neither knowing nor caring who will take her next. Do I exaggerate, Memed?”
The Baron and Uncle Memed were on their second bottle of champagne.
“As usual Baron, you express lofty thoughts with great clarity,” replied Memed, “but I do wonder sometimes whether the great master Hegel might have been a bit disappointed in you. According to your contemporaries, you showed great promise as a student in Berlin…”
The Baron’s interruption took the form of laughter, which resembled the staccato burst of gun-fire: ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha and a final ha. This was not the sort of laughter which starts as a smile and develops at a slow rhythm. His laughter was part of his verbal armoury, deployed to humiliate, crush, interrupt or divert any opposition.
“Whenever I visit this family, I’m lost to the real world, Memed. The real world, as I’ve often told you, is the world of ants. The only way human beings can survive in this world is to become like ants. It is our future. It beckons us, but you resist. You pretend that your home is the real world and in this fashion you keep the monsters at bay, but for how long, Memed? For how long? Your Empire is so bankrupt that you can no longer even afford to buy time as you have done for nearly three hundred years.”
My uncle remained silent for a while. He replied in a soft voice. “What your philosophers call progress, my dear Baron, has created an inner drought in human beings. They show a callow disregard for each other. Look at France, a country we both love, not to mention England. There is no solidarity between human beings. No belief in common except to survive and get rich, no matter what the cost. Perhaps this is the way of the world. This is where we will all end up one day. Not you and me, of course. We will have died long before that day, and who can say we will not have died happy? Why shouldn’t we seek pleasure in each other’s company. Why shouldn’t I enjoy my life, this house, my family…”
The Baron roared with laughter, but this time it was real.
“Why do you laugh?”
“I just recalled the Qabus Nama. When I was translating it into German I found it incredibly dull and commonplace, not worthy of even the slightest attention. I remember thinking: if this is the moral code for the Sultan and his princes, it is hardly surprising that they degenerated so rapidly. Even feeble heads filled with imperial vapours could safely ignore this nonsense. There was, however, one arresting passage. It was headed ‘Romantic Passion’ and I recited it so often to my wayward uncles and cousins that I never forgot the words. I was reminded of it when you spoke of those who are interested only in getting rich. Listen now, old Memed, to the wisdom of the Qabus Nama: ‘For your part resist falling in love and guard against becoming a lover, for a lover’s life is beset with unhappiness, particularly when he is without means. The penniless lover can never achieve his aim, more particularly when he is elderly; the goal cannot be reached except with the aid of money, and a lover not possessed of it will succeed only in tormenting his soul.’”
It was Memed’s turn to smile. “To be elderly and penniless is bad enough without being tormented by irrational emotions. There is a lot of truth in that, I suppose. It is true we are getting old, my dear Baron, but I don’t think that the passage you have memorised so ably could affect us in any way. I think even if we were penniless, we would find pleasure in each other’s company. Perhaps we should open another bottle to mark the uselessness of the Qabus Nama.”