Father’s sitting-room, organised and decorated on the model of a French salon, was full today. Prior to his illness, Ottoman women had been barred from entering this sanctuary. French females, we had noticed, were permitted entry, but only if accompanied by their husbands or fathers. As a rule, this, the most beautiful and spacious room in the house, was reserved exclusively for male friends and visitors.
Once when Father was in Paris, Zeynep and I and our two mothers had come into this room, ordered mint tea and rose-water and then had settled down to play cards. I loved watching the changing moods of the sea from the three large balcony windows that lit the room during the day. We had used the space every single day, to the great amusement of the maids. They, too, had enjoyed being here in the absence of Petrossian.
Everything was different now. This is where we met after dinner every evening to exchange information and listen to a story, before retiring for the evening. Father had frowned at the exchange between Uncle Memed and the Baron. The reference to prostitutes in the presence of his wife and daughters must have irritated him. Orhan was fast asleep on a chaise-longue near a window and had not heard the remark.
Iskander Pasha lifted the stick that never left his side and banged it hard on the floor. This was the signal to end all the whispered conversations in different corners of the room and for the story-teller to begin. Uncle Memed cleared his throat. Salman smiled. Halil played nervously with his moustache. My mother, Sara, tightened the shawl around her. Zeynep and I looked at each other, trying hard to restrain our mirth. If Uncle Memed was going to speak, anything was possible.
Father, looking slightly nervous, summoned Petrossian and pointed in the direction of Orhan. The gesture was understood. My sleeping Orhan was lifted gently and taken away. I now wished I had brought my little daughter Emineh here as well. I wanted her to be part of our family. Uncle Memed assumed a look of fake humility and began to speak.
‘I will now tell you the story of our great Albanian ancestor Enver, as it was transcribed on the dictation of his son. The document itself used to be read once every five years on the occasion of our Prophet’s birthday, when the whole family assembled to celebrate the feast. The ritual was considered necessary so that we never forgot our humble origins. Unfortunately, it was lost about fifty or sixty years ago. Some say that our grandfather Mahmut Pasha destroyed the slim bound volume because he was in the process of reinventing the history of our family and the truth, even though it was four centuries old, disconcerted him. Mahmut Pasha did manage to produce an alternative book which still sits in the library unread and unloved, though the calligraphy is exquisite.
Those of us who have attempted to read it have given up after the second set of lies, according to which the founder of our family was of pure Arab blood and descended from the tribe of the Prophet rather than an Albanian whose first job was to clear the mounds of horse-dung that had accumulated on the edges of an Ottoman military encampment in that region. He cleared the dung with such efficiency that his prowess was noted and appreciated. He was brought back to Istanbul by the Aga in command of the encampment and later became responsible for cleanliness and hygiene inside the palace.
Mahmut Pasha manufactured untruths because he intended to marry a niece of the Sultan and thought it prudent to improve his pedigree. I think the falsehood was unnecessary. The Sultan probably knew the truth in any case and was unconcerned. Though I wish he had objected to the suit on other grounds and spared our family an unnecessary tragedy.
The Ertogruls have always preferred their ministers and courtiers to acknowledge their modest backgrounds. The Sultan creates and destroys Viziers. It is easier to maintain this style in the absence of a nobility. The knowledge that they are the only true hereditary ruling family gives our Sultans a feeling of stability and self-confidence, based on a belief that the Ertogruls are the only genuine hereditary ruling family in the history of our great Empire. Alas, this is true. And, incidentally, it is one reason why this Empire is rotting before our eyes. The colourful description of the Baron is close to the truth. Sultan Abdul Hamid II knows this. When I accompanied him to Berlin last year, he asked me: “Do you think I will be the last Caliph of Islam?” I smiled, without replying.
My grandfather Mahmut was a vain and conceited peacock, but he was not a complete imbecile. He must have been aware of Ertogrul sensitivities. The Sultan traces his descent from Osman, who founded the dynasty. Why did our idiot grandfather claim descent from the Prophet? Why did he feel the need to embellish the truth? Why create an imaginary world from which our family supposedly emerged? Grandfather made a complete fool of himself. His book was foolish and vainglorious, divided evenly between fantasy and fact.
Our family, of course, knew the truth, but though they laughed at Mahmut and found his conduct to be an embarrassment, none of them had the courage to confront him. If a delegation of stern-visaged family elders had called on him and insisted he stop lying, it might have had a temporary effect. Who knows? Perhaps it didn’t really matter. After all, despite Mahmut Pasha’s well-known habit of embroidering the truth, he was permitted to marry a niece of the Sultan and she, in due course, gave birth to our father and his three sisters. Not that this stopped the Sultan and his courtiers from laughing at Mahmut.
My aunt once told me that whenever Mahmut Pasha visited the court to pay his respects, the Sultan would question him about his book, forcing him to repeat some of his more absurd inventions before the assembled courtiers. The Sultan, of course, maintained his poise during the reading, while encouraging the sycophants to release their mirth at regular intervals, and so it came about that Mahmut Pasha’s recitations were always punctuated by the noise of suppressed laughter.
What did he think while all this was going on? How could his greatly vaunted pride survive this ritual humiliation? When he came home from the palace, he would tell his wife how her uncle had honoured him once again and how the Vizier had congratulated him on the composition of a very important and top secret aide-mémoire which he, Mahmut, had drafted on the Russian Question and which had been despatched, without a single alteration, to the Chancellery in Berlin.
Did our beautiful grandmother, Sabiha, whose portrait welcomes visitors as they enter the house in Istanbul, believe any of this nonsense? I think not. She had married him not because he was good-looking or wealthy or a habitual liar, but simply because her father had decided that Mahmut Pasha would make a kind and good husband. I note that the mother of Orhan is smiling. She is asking herself, could our great-grandmother have been that stupid? And the answer, my lovely Nilofer, is a simple yes.
Your great-grandmother Sabiha was undoubtedly very pretty. The drawing is accurate enough in this regard but Bragadini, who painted her, was not, alas, a very gifted artist. He painted only what he saw. He lacked both intelligence and a real interest which might have pushed him to peer underneath and locate her real character. He failed abysmally to uncover her interior. She had a fair skin, luscious lips, a broad forehead, dark flowing tresses, blue eyes and it was claimed by him who knew that underneath her robes she possessed a body that was an “embarrassment of riches”. For myself I hate this phrase, but Grandfather Mahmut used it often when in his cups, as a boast and an explanation to old friends who wondered aloud how he could possibly tolerate her mindless obsession with all things trivial.
Mahmut himself was not a very profound person. He had chosen not to burden himself with too much knowledge but, Allah be praised, how he enjoyed the three pastimes common to believers since the days of the Prophet. My grandfather loved wine, hunting and fornication and in that order. He could not hunt without a drink and he could not mount my grandmother without having killed some unfortunate beast. Even a rabbit helped him perform well in this respect.