Sofia
keen as ever, though, and she spends her days at needlework from sunrise until the colors blur into one another at dusk. Her work is delightful, intricate, colorful patterns of flowers and birds such as I have never seen before.”“It sounds rather idolatrous,” Esmikhan attempted.
“Anathema to pious Muslims, perhaps, but I suspect such designs are native to Bosnia where the master was born. Clearly her religious education has been lacking, but I could not speak to her of that. I couldn’t speak to her of her work— I could speak to her of nothing, for in the twenty years since her son brought her to share his fortune, she has learned not a single word of Turkish. Visits from her son—which he performs not because he especially likes his mother, but because they, too, are a duty—they are the only dialogues she ever has. I suspect the babble with which she greeted me was incomprehensible as much from senility as it was from foreignness. Though I smiled and nodded in reply, I was convinced life in Sokolli’s harem would be as lonely as its great halls were empty and full of echoes.
“‘Don’t fret,’ old Ali’s wife, who cleans and cooks for the woman, said when she read my thoughts. ‘The bride will soon fill this place with life.’ I see it is Allah’s will that her words become reality.”
Esmikhan tried to take comfort from what I said, first because she knew I wanted her to desperately and secondly because I was still her only friend in this strange new harem that was now peopled by a mother-in-law. I have only just begun to realize what a truly remarkable, powerful thing it is to wink in the face of what anyone else would call an unforgivable betrayal, to wink and come back with more unfeigned grace and desire for friendship than before.
At the time, I thought it was either fate or something of my own virtue that made sharing our lives so easy, even after such a mistake on my part. I see now that it was effort, great effort, like an army of slaves straining to raise a stone the size of a small hill, their veins and muscles popping, their skin a-shower with sweat. This effort was all Esmikhan’s, the strength of her little hands, soft brown eyes, and boundless heart. After all, there was very little of a previous life she had to barter with me for mine. Sheltered as she was in her father’s harem and but fourteen years old, her life, as she said, was “more like a poem than a story,” and she recited these verses from the poet:
Think, in this battered caravanserai
Whose portals are alternate night and day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp
Abode his destined hour, and went his way.
But she had that divine skill of listening whereby the speaker is made to feel not as if he has won a bargain with his words, but that his words are more precious than gems in the ears of his hearer. It was remarkable how she turned from her fears of Sokolli Pasha’s mother and made my fears overshadow them.
There, alone in the night rooms of Inonu’s governor’s harem, with my lady tucked under strange quilts for bedtime, I told her of my childhood and of my adventures at sea. That was easy enough; I could hide behind the voice of a market storyteller and delight us both with how exotic it was to our present lives.
But with the skillful fingers of a blood-letter, Esmikhan also drew from me scenes from my more recent past. I did not give her details of what happened to me in the close, dark house beyond Pera, the real poison festering my core. That I avoided like a hot stove. But she prodded closely, as close as I thought I should ever let anyone venture. She gleaned and I gave, enough, I thought, in a couple of brief events that happened to me in the bazaar while I was making the purchases for her nuptials.
“Given plenty of coin,” I told her, “and the name ‘Sokolli Pasha’ to throw around, the task was easy and also quite pleasant.”
I did not say, but I prided myself that my taste was more to a woman’s liking than Ali’s had been. At first I had hoped for praise from the master, but I knew enough now not to hope for that. Still, I found I wanted praise for a job done well and with sensitivity. It was all I could do to keep from spoiling the surprises to get praise from Esmikhan before we got home.
“While in the market,” I hurried on with the story to resist the temptation, “I saw two men of my native land. In their feathers and hose, they stood out as if they had been silly peacocks in a crowd of sensible, domestic hens. Now I was thankful for my somber clothes—the long robes I had feared at first would surely trip me—and I hoped to avoid their notice, for I was suddenly burning with shame. Still, I was as exotic for them as they were for me and, as they took no care to guard their speech, I heard one say to the other, ‘By Jesù, there’s another one!’
‘Poor devil. He’s a young one, too.’
“‘And very fair-skinned. I’ll bet he’s a Christian lad the damned Turks have stolen and lopped. Say, try some of your Christian tongue on him, Brother Angelo.’
“With this encouragement, the second Venetian began to babble mass-Latin at me which anyone born from Ireland to the shores of Crete should have stopped for. I ignored it studiously, however, by pretending to take an interest in some pink satin in one of the shops. Actually, I had found much nicer stuff at a better price not half an hour before, and it was a difficult pretense to maintain in the face of a pushy shopkeeper. But, I felt, worth the trouble.
“‘Leave him, Angelo,’ the