Authors: Tariq Ali
“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
.”
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.
Unfortunately for him, Sabiha regarded all three practices with the utmost repugnance. She had grown up in the palace. Even as an eight-year-old she had observed men in their cups and spoke often of how the sight had filled her with nausea, without ever being more specific. Who knows what she saw or experienced as a child in the palace where the Caliphs of our faith held sway, or how deeply it affected her? It was said that her father’s decision to marry a Japanese courtesan had upset her greatly. In the conflicts that followed her father always backed his new wife against his children. Sabiha felt abandoned and it coloured her attitude to men and the power they possessed, but this is not what she told her friends.
They were informed casually that Mahmut Pasha was not a real man, that she derived no pleasure through coupling with him. That he was less effective than a dog and that after his children were born he had, Allah be praised, become impotent. However hard she tried, his little radish refused to stir. In fact she did not try at all. She never permitted him in her bed again.
Mahmut Pasha, self-loving and pleasure-seeking as ever, was enraged by these slurs on his manhood. He responded characteristically by lifting a Circassian serving wench from the kitchen and transporting her to a chamber near his bedroom. She became his mistress. Petrossian’s grandfather was the Sultan of our kitchen at the time. He, too, had a soft spot for the woman, but bowed before the superior will of his master.
The Circassian—to this day I have never heard her real name mentioned—was illiterate. As a young girl, she had been bought for the household from a passing trader in Istanbul and trained as a kitchen maid. They say she possessed a natural intelligence. They say she made Mahmut Pasha laugh a great deal and, most important of all, she rejuvenated him between his legs. It was not long before news of her existence began to spread outside the family.
She began to accompany Mahmut Pasha on his hunting trips. Her presence compelled him to reverse the order of his pleasures. Now he could not hunt until he had been pleasured by the Circassian and only after the sport was over did they both share a cup of wine. He should have married her, but Mahmut Pasha was a coward. He was cowed by three fears. He feared the Sultan’s displeasure. He feared a decline in his own social status. He feared the wrath of his father.
None the less he frustrated all Sabiha’s attempts to have her Circassian rival removed from the scene. Why did Sabiha care so much about this particular concubine? The practice was as common then as it is now. I think it was the public humiliation that upset her. If my grandfather had remained discreet she would not have felt insulted, but Mahmut Shah was angry with Sabiha for impugning his virility. And so he refused to hide his wench from the public gaze. He liked her to dress in the fashion of a lady so that he could show her to his friends. Halil’s mother once found a carefully preserved, beautiful, though faded, Parisian gown in a small box in this house. It had belonged to the Circassian.
One day, she disappeared from our house in Istanbul. At first Sabiha was delighted, but a month passed and she noticed that her rival’s absence, far from affecting Mahmut Pasha adversely, appeared to have improved his humour. Sabiha realised that something was being hidden from her. She sent for Petrossian’s grandfather, but he denied all knowledge of anything related to his master’s passion.
I think it must have been one of the maids who, jealous of the social ascent achieved by her Circassian peer, told her mistress the truth. The Circassian was carrying Mahmut Pasha’s child and had been sent here for the period of her confinement. Who knows but that the child was intended to be born in this very room and in this very bed where Iskander Pasha now lies, unable to speak, but frowning at me because he disapproves of this story? Forgive me, dear brother. But every beginning needs an end. You disagree?’