The Debt of Tamar (13 page)

Still, there was one lesson that caught his attention. The Sufi Sheik expounded upon the ruins of an ancient city named Pompeii. It had been a vibrant city inhabited by Romans and shaded by the colossal peaks of a mountain called Vesuvius. One fateful day, eighty years after the birth of the prophet Jesus, the mountain overlooking the city rumbled, then swallowed the city in her fiery breath. Within minutes, the bustling city was obliterated, the city’s inhabitants transformed into pillars of ash and molten lava.

“It is said that beneath the layers of ash, the city is perfectly preserved,” the old Sheik’s eyes glistened. “Beneath the surface, time stands still. The babies still lay in their cribs, the dogs, still chained to their fences—they’re all frozen in time. Tables are set with silver cutlery. Great artworks cover the walls of homes belonging to wealthy merchants and Roman princes. The secret story of a civilization lies frozen in time. Don’t you see Murat, they are waiting, waiting to be discovered. Under the ash and the rubble, beneath the hardened ruins of the lava’s surface, the treasures of a secret civilization glisten.”

The young prince was paying close attention now, his dark eyes wide with wonder.

“My dear Prince,” the Sheik continued. “The entire city of Pompeii is waiting— Waiting to be discovered, waiting for the memory of her existence to surface. Hidden treasures are buried beneath the rubble. Jewels and gilded baubles, gold and diamonds too. For the ones who seek only treasure, the city of Pompeii swallows them in her ruins. Many men have set out to loot and plunder, to stake a claim to the priceless booty buried in her midst. They ride towards the horizon. Of the men who have embarked on these greedy expeditions, not one has ever been seen nor heard from again. And still, she waits, the city of slumber, beneath the ruins, she waits for someone pure of heart to come uncover her secrets, someone to discover her true beauty, but only, only
in a labor of pure love
.”

Murat slept beneath a netted canopy glistening with a thousand shimmering sea-pearls. He thrashed about, tossing and turning on his satin bed cushions. He was haunted by her image, drifting out somewhere over the sea.

He cried for the gaping hole that Tamar had left in his heart. He prayed that someone might rescue him from a place he did not know, from an affliction he could not name. Until that day, he would wait under heaps of charred rubble. He would wait for someone to come find him perfectly preserved, completely alone. He would wait for someone pure of heart, who would unearth him, save him, and give themselves to him, all in a labor of pure love.

Murat waited.
He prayed that Sheik Suca was correct—that Tamar was alive and she would come back to him—that she would find him and unearth him, and through a labor of love, he would be rescued.

Upon his return from Buyukada, he was informed that he would be sent to govern Manisa, a bustling Anatolian province where he would educate himself in matters of state and prepare to take over an empire. Along the journey, he passed ancient Greek ruins, temples belonging to the Greek gods Zeus and Aezani. There was an acropolis in the distance atop the highest peak in view. From the ground rose ancient stone goddesses of the Hittites. To make an image of God was forbidden according to Islam, but Murat let his eyes drape over every inch of the crumbling monuments and carved imagery.

The caravan passed the mourning head of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, King of Lydia, and wife to Amphion, king of Thebes. A tremendous rock structure bearing the image of a sitting woman. It was said that God turned Niobe to stone as punishment for her sins. She lay there at the side of the road, a river of melted snow streaming over her face for an eternity of weeping. She sat there waiting, just waiting. She waited, her heart a slab of stone, waiting for her spirit to free her from the trappings of God’s punishment, free her from the carvings of a mountainside.

Murat waited. Weeks turned into months. Seasons passed and colors changed. The sky darkened and lightened and the moon waxed and waned. Years went by and still he waited. He grew more desperate in time, certain she was alive, and that he could find her, that he
would
find her. He dispatched a small army in search of an emerald-eyed girl possessing a ruby ring with a cryptic inscription. This girl, he explained, was indebted to him. His soldiers searched far and wide but nowhere did they find Murat’s beloved.

His father the Sultan died in the arms of the one that he loved. Murat ascended the throne. He ruled the empire from his lonely niche. Heartbroken by the loss of Tamar, he retreated from state politics and allowed the state to be governed for the most part by his grand vizier and chief adviser. Some thought he’d gone mad. Thrashing out for no apparent reason at all, he’d turned bitter and reclusive. He took concubines and bore many children, and yet, never forgetting his love for Tamar, he continued the empire’s policy of religious tolerance towards persecuted minorities, welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees from Europe’s inquisition into his empire.

At the hour of his death, he summoned the royal scribe to his chamber. Murat was waiting. Waiting for a debt that was never repaid. Waiting to have been rescued, unearthed, through a labor of love that never came. In the chapter on his life in the Osman Secret Chronicles, it is written that Sultan Murat III died
in waiting.

Selim Osman was born waiting. Waiting for love, waiting for enlightenment, waiting for the meaning of the tragedy of his life to make itself known. From one day to the next, Selim Osman, the sole living descendant of the last ottoman sultan, was waiting.

He pulled into a circular entranceway around a tall, stone obelisk in the center of the courtyard. The headlights of his Beemer swept the packed dirt road leading up to the manicured grounds of the hilltop villa illuminating a dozen or more parking attendants in white suit jackets and bow ties looking bored. His headache had worsened throughout the day and was now nearly intolerable. Selim reached over toward the empty seat beside him and popped open the glove compartment, withdrawing a white plastic pillbox. Ignoring the recommended dosing instructions, he knocked back four ibuprofen tablets, downing them with the last remnants of a warm bottle of Diet Coke that had been rolling beneath the back seat all throughout the drive. He turned off the ignition, stepped out of the car, then handed the keys and some loose change to a skinny boy who didn’t look a day over fourteen. “Keep it close by will you?” He followed the winding, red-carpeted path before him, enclosed on both sides by trim walls of lush, overarching hedges. There were a few neatly planted torches freckling an otherwise dark path leading to the old, western-style villa. The ten-bedroom mansion had been built by an Italian architect and had last been inhabited by a once-favored Egyptian dignitary and his family. Now the place was an upscale nightclub, rented out occasionally by wealthy individuals for weddings or charity functions.

The evening’s gala was meant to benefit Istanbul’s children in need, and Selim had written out a sizeable check to the charity and mailed it in along with his RSVP three weeks back. He said hello to fat Musa, the security guard who worked the club on weekends, then lent Mrs. Fatih, an elderly widow he’d known all his life, an arm to lean upon as she ascended a few shallow steps leading to the doorway. When he entered, he was surprised by the extravagant orchid arrangements, sleek lucite bars stationed throughout the inner ballroom, and a steaming dinner buffet that could have fed the charity’s hungry children for months, perhaps even through the start of Ramadan. The smell of spring rolls and sweet sauce filled the air.

White-gloved waiters circled the room offering skewered lamb and teriyaki-glazed treats to Istanbul’s upper-crust elites and a smattering of well-to-do European ex-pats. A life-size ice sculpture of Kemal Ataturk, the national hero, was situated in the center of the room, melting under the warm glow of the orange and rose spotlights.

Selim looked about the room and spotted all the usuals, friends he’d grown up with and known since childhood. They were all part of a small community of privileged Turks who had been educated in private German or French
lycees
, and summered with parents and grandparents on the Turkish Riviera, or along the pebbled shores of the Cote d’ Azure. They were from families that had publicly touted the benefits of Kemalist secularism and western-style modernity, still, they suffered from an emotional jet lag, a squeamishness towards progress that grew ever more acute as the secularization of the country began to intrude upon the old class system.

Selim made his way over to the bar and was surprised to see Ayda Turkman standing at the far end sipping a plum-colored martini. Until now, he’d only ever seen the actress on screen.

She seemed to be examining the room, her long slender fingers wrapped delicately below the gaping rim of her martini glass. She was unusually tall and startlingly pale, with chiseled shoulders and a striking collarbone. A small beauty spot rested at the tip of her cheekbone beside eyes the color of mahogany. Her untamed hair cascaded down the length of her back and swept across her narrow waist in full ebony waves. She moved throughout the room quietly, as her hips swayed like a pendulum.

A few feet away, the Dogan twins sipped wine and laughed coquettishly with the minister’s son, gossiping in French while casting sideways glances in Ayda’s direction. They spoke more loudly than they would in their native tongue, confident that Ayda, with her presumably stunted education, would not understand their petty insults. Speaking French while not in France was an elitist affectation Selim’s contemporaries took up upon their return from whatever Swiss boarding schools they’d attended, usually L’ecole Aiglon near the Alps, or sometimes, Le Rosey.

These Euro-Turks regarded the city’s rising glitterati with a mixture of feigned disgust and casual scorn. Models were considered glorified strippers, disposable arm-candy for upper-crust playboys, and actresses were regarded as temporary playthings for the aristocracy’s naughty adolescents. While they debuted the latest designer trends on billboards across Istanbul and Ankara, at the end of the day, these starlets were condemned to an ambiguous rung in the Turkish caste system. They were
femmes scandaleuses
. Scorned by the religious masses for their promiscuity (real or imagined) and shunned by the secular elite for their growing presence in Turkish society. This was Istanbul’s Hollywood, a class amongst itself, glorified and ostracized, like Roman gladiators at the Coliseum. Istanbul’s upper class was a closed society, membership regulated by a strict grandfather clause, bequeathed at birth to those whose ancestral lines could be traced to some legendary war hero, or to the prophet Muhammad himself.

Selim stood in front of a large table covered with place cards. He found his name. Table three. Scouring the room once more, he found Ayda sitting at table eight. He reached for his pen, changed the three on his place card to an eight, then headed over and seated himself by her side.

A waitress passed with a tray of finger foods. “Some
Kibbeh
for you, Sir?” He shook his head and turned his attention to Ayda, who waved away the waitress politely.

She glanced inconspicuously in his direction. Selim leaned over as though he were going to say something, but found himself tongue-tied.

“This is painfully boring,” Ayda whispered, while the applause and rambling speech of a committee chairman blared throughout the speakers. When he didn't answer, she took a thin wedge of lemon to her teeth and in one seamless stroke, peeled the pulp from the rind, depositing the naked crust in her glass with a small splash. She licked the tip of her index finger.

Selim kept his eyes on the speaker, who was saying something about children in Istanbul suffering from iron deficiencies. He sipped his whiskey, closing his eyes as the burn sauntered down his throat.

“
Pardón.
” She stood, then surveyed the room for a moment, her frame towering like the lean and stunningly arrogant obelisk in the courtyard.

He studied the sculpted cliffs of her bare neck and jutting, almost masculine, jaw.

She removed a tall cigarette from a jewel-encrusted purse. Then, with it perched between her red glazed fingertips, she leaned forward to catch a little fire from the flickering candelabra beside him. She brought her lips past his, taming the flame with a few short breaths, offering him a tantalizing trace of
the eau de parfum 
dabbed between her breasts.

“You can’t smoke in here.” Selim frowned, instantly regretting his words.

She straightened up, smiled, and polluted the air nonchalantly. “I guess I should leave then.” She swept her hair to one side then turned, exposing the smooth, fleshy scoop of her backless ensemble. She took another careless puff then sauntered off.

He watched the tiny vertebrae in her back as she walked towards the exit, and it was but a moment later that he found himself following her out of the banquet. In the vast quietude of the grand entrance hall, his steps echoed coolly off green stone tiles and the carved, empty shells of high-vaulted, flat-frescoed ceilings. From the banquet hall came uproarious laughter and a round of applause muffled by the thick, wood-paneled doors that had sealed shut behind them.

He followed her until her silhouette slowed, and stopped in the frame of a centuries-old, wrought iron entrance. Its gates embraced an arched swatch of night whose silvery corners lit up like the edges of velvet in the light.

“Maybe you should tell your driver you won’t be needing him,” he heard himself say. He watched the stem of her cigarette glide into her smooth pout. His eyes lingered, as a cloud of smoke escaped from lips that seemed to part like the petals of a black rose.

He moved towards her and found his lips on hers. Her kiss tasted of smoke and orange sugar candies. He held her cheeks in the palms of his hand, pulled away, winced, then quietly scolded, “Filthy habit.” He leaned forward again and found his tongue probing the depths of her mouth taking in all that sweet smoke and marmalade.