I watched from behind the wooden lattice that screened the women’s quarters from the street as Papa and Hamza got into the carriage for their trip to the Sublime Porte. I caressed the words “Sublime Porte” in my mouth. I imagined it to be the entrance to the palace, an enormous carved wooden door studded with jewels and guarded by Nubian eunuchs, through which Papa and Hamza entered every day to go to their offices. When I was little, driving by in a carriage, my governess had pointed out the palace gates. They were enormous, of white stone, and set into an endlessly high wall the color of dried blood that rose on both sides of the narrow road. That first time, driving past the gates, I panicked and screamed, imagining that, with so little of the sky visible, the walls had begun to move together and would crush us. I learned that this was the Dolmabahche Palace, the home of Sultan Abdulaziz, not the Old Palace of many gates and pavilions that sat like a jewel box on a promontory at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.
Some years later, when Sultan Abdulhamid had replaced Abdulaziz and I was living with Mama at Chamyeri, Hamza pointed these palaces out to me as we slid past them on the bright water in a caïque. Hamza was escorting Mama and me on a summer picnic trip to the islands at the mouth of the Marmara, our caique propelled by six strong rowers. Even though mother and I were invisible under our feradje cloaks and yashmak veils, the rowers studiously avoided looking toward the stern of the boat where we sat on cushioned benches. Hamza sat beside me, not touching, but so close I felt the heat of his body. The Russians had invaded the empire two months earlier and were slowly making their way toward Istanbul, but on this peerless summer day, the horizon was that of a young girl in love.
The first palaces we passed were ornate white confections, first the smaller Chiraghan Palace, crumbling around Sultan Abdulhamid’s elder brother Murad and his family, who Hamza told me were imprisoned there, then the endless expanse of Dolmabahche right along the water’s edge, wing after wing of ornamented white stone behind enormous white marble archways. I realized it must have been the landward walls of Dolmabahche that had so frightened me, but I did not tell him that, so he would not think me a baby. I was, after all, eleven.
“Sultan Abdulhamid’s family and retainers live and work in Dolmabahche,” Hamza told me, “but the sultan wants privacy and security. He trusts no one, not even members of his own family and staff.” He pointed toward the top of the hill. “So he has built himself a new palace on the hill above the old one.”
I looked up and saw a yellow wall snake through the trees. Looking higher, I caught glimpses of pitch-roofed buildings within the forest. From Nishantashou, I could see the lighted Yildiz Palace fill up the night like a hill of stars. I had always wondered who lived there, but since no one in the household ever looked in its direction, I hadn’t wanted to reveal my ignorance by asking.
Finally, as the boat slipped from the narrow Bosphorus into the open sea, Hamza pointed to the breast of land riding the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara. The Old Palace on the hill was like the magic land from Hamza’s tales, its turrets and pavilions set like jewels among trees and gardens.
“This is Topkapi Palace, where servants and slaves are sent to live out their days when they are old. And the harems and households of former sultans, and their widows.” He pointed to a door in the enormous red wall that stretched along the entire expanse of the waterfront.
“That’s the only door through which the women can leave again. It’s where the dead are taken out for burial.”
Irritated at Hamza for spoiling my vision with his depressing observations, I responded in a determinedly sprightly voice, “Still, I think it’s a lovely place. I should like to live there.”
Hamza looked at me thoughtfully.
“You shouldn’t wish that, princess. They are not allowed to leave, nor are their children. Sultans fear their brothers and their children. If they’re in line for the throne, they might try to depose the ruler. If they’re not, they’ll scheme to eliminate those in line before them. Even the daughters, should they marry, might be used by their in-laws to meddle in palace affairs. Connections and family links between the royal House of Osman and the rest of the empire are always kept to a minimum. One way to do that is to isolate members of your family. Another way is to kill them.”
I averted my eyes from the Old Palace then. A leaden chill made me pull my feradje more tightly about my shoulders. I felt vaguely resentful at Hamza for telling me this. In a small gesture of punishment, I let my yashmak fall forward so it hid my eyes and mouth and didn’t speak again until we landed on Prinkipo Island.
The Sublime Porte, I learned later, was nothing more than a heavy stone building crouching by the side of the Golden Horn.
When I was a child at Nishantashou, only Papa moved freely between the harem, where Papa’s mother and Mama presided, and the rest of the house. As a child I had a certain freedom to explore, as long as I did not interrupt the gatherings of men that my father held many evenings in the salon. That was easy enough to do, as the rumble of their voices could be heard at quite a distance.
Hamza and a succession of other tutors taught me to read and write Ottoman and Persian and introduced me to French and English, all of which my forward-looking father considered necessary skills for a modern Ottoman woman in order for her to be a suitable wife, entertaining and speaking intelligently with her husband’s guests. I overheard Papa explain this to Hamza and wondered at the time why Mama refused to help Papa entertain. Later, I understood that Aunt Hüsnü was willing to dress in a Frankish gown, her face uncovered, and mingle with Papa’s male guests and their modern wives, while my mother was unable to bring herself to drop her veil and stand naked, as it would seem to her, before strangers. Servants used to stretch a tunnel of silk between the front door and the carriage so that Mama could leave the house without being seen.
Of all my lessons, I looked forward to Hamza’s the most. I practiced intensely in order to impress him, to gain the reward of his broad smile and words of praise when he realized what I had accomplished-and to avoid the thin drumming of his fingers on the table when I struggled. I strove to tether his eyes and was anguished when his gaze floated free, perhaps mesmerized by the brilliant reflections on the distant water or drawn through the vivid sky to thoughts that precluded me. I was jealous even of the sea. I was infatuated with Hamza and in love with Papa and, at least in that, I did my duty as a young girl. I learned in order to please them. It was my luck (although some might think it misfortune) that just then I moved into the orbit of Ismail Dayi, who had no such preconceptions about what and why young women were to learn.
But when we moved to Chamyeri, I was heartbroken at leaving Papa and Hamza. I missed the familiar rooms and servants and the view from my window of the minarets of the grand imperial mosques. In Nishantashou, we had countless servants. I was surrounded by the babble of their many languages: Turkish, Greek, Italian, Armenian, Arabic.
Chamyeri, by contrast, was frightening in its silence. The servants came during the day, as needed. For the most part, they did their work silently, sliding sideways looks at Mama and me when they thought our attention elsewhere. I wondered what they gossiped in the village about this unusual household-my uncle, his dreaming sister, and the lonely girlchild no one was raising. But eventually I came to appreciate the silence, the unlimited time to read and explore, the riches of my young life-a library, a wide sky, mine for as long as I cared to hold it, the flexing waters of the strait, a fragrant garden, and, in the forest, the pond with its ebony depths that made me just fearful enough to be satisfied.