At Besiktas the girls could barely go outside, unchaperoned; they could not open the windows, for fear of being seen. They swept the dirt into the corridors, where it blew back in again; and half the carpets were nailed down. It all looked very grand from the outside, no doubt, but Ibou knew better. Just the other day, he had reprimanded a girl for wearing a shift so grubby that she looked like a beggar-and she had the cheek to answer him back!
Sometimes he yearned for the old days in the library, where everything was still and in its place. Books were cleaner than women.
“I have been to the laundry, also,” Talfa continued. “Two of the other girls are washing in there. My girls.”
The chief black eunuch bit his lip. Talfa was royal by blood; she could take care of herself. It was these other girls who fell into slovenly ways. It all came of living in this box.
“Explain to these girls, Ibou aga, that you will inspect their rooms yourself every week from now on. They are not gozde. They are not favored by the sultan’s attention-nor ever will be, unless they learn to take their responsibilities seriously.” She bent forward. “Amalya is the worst. Let us see how she feels about slopping out for a month. Tell her this.”
“Yes, hanum. She will be very unhappy.”
“That is the point, Ibou. We cannot have these girls making the rules.”
“No, hanum. I shall tell her that this is your decision.”
She eyed the eunuch narrowly. “Your decision, aga. I may advise-but the girls are your responsibility. And Bezmialem’s, of course,” she added. “But the young valide seems to have a headache. Poor thing.”
The lady Talfa waddled off along the corridor.
Ibou put a hand to the lattice and peered out. He could see ships on the Bosphorus, and he sighed. Lately he had felt so tired. Wondering about the girls. Sleepless nights. Climbing these stairs.
He knew that he was afraid of Amalya. Of what she might do to him, in revenge.
He needed advice. But Ibou, the Kislar aga, did not know who to ask. He did not know who he could really trust.
58
High summer vegetables glutted the market. Every stall was piled with pyramids of glossy eggplants, both the purple and the white; sacks of spinach, green onions, fresh beans of every shape and color, popped from their skins. Everyone sold tomatoes, even George-who made a pyramid of fruit that resembled purplish turbans.
“So sweet, Yashim efendi!” He kissed his fingertips. “Truly, these tomatoes are a gift to us all-and the poors, especially.”
Yashim met Kadri in the market, where he had gone to buy the ingredients for the pickles he always made at this time of the year. The boy helped him carry the baskets home.
Yashim tipped a basket of peppers onto the bench where he worked, the long peppers shaped like slippers, pale green and subtly aromatic.
“If your hands are clean, Kadri, you might wash the peppers,” he suggested. He set the kettle to boil, and poured a pint of white wine vinegar into a bowl, in which he dissolved a couple of spoonfuls of salt, and let it stand.
He sliced a few carrots and broke out the cloves from two heads of garlic, brushing away the dry skin but leaving the cloves intact. In deference to George’s unexpected enthusiasm, he had bought tomatoes; they had discussed the question, and George had agreed to supply him the tomatoes green and still hard, as unripe as the apricots he always used. Ripe tomatoes, Yashim insisted, would spoil the crunchiness of the pickle. Finally, he took a pointed cabbage and tore it into pale shards.
On the bench he lined up his jars, all French, with tight-fitting lids, imported by English merchants and sold in the Egyptian bazaar; Yashim used earthenware crocks, too, which were cheaper-but pickles winking behind glass were irresistible, like a warm fire on a cold night.
He sluiced the jars with boiling water and began to pack them, laying the peppers and the other vegetables on a carpet of cabbage leaves, alternating the layers as he filled the jars. When they were full, he used a wooden spoon to press the layers down, satisfied by the sound of crisp vegetables creaking and snapping.
“Now, Kadri, the vinegar.”
Kadri poured carefully, his tongue between his teeth, until the vegetables in each jar were completely submerged. To make sure, Yashim dropped a small ceramic disc on top, to weight everything down; then he screwed on the lids.
“It’ll be good,” he said. “But not for a few weeks yet. We’ll make something quicker, too. Can you shell those peas?”
Yashim laid a colander on a cloth and began to chop vegetables-a cauliflower broken into florets, some carrots. He tossed in a bunch of tiny green beans topped and tailed, and sprinkled each layer with a handful of rough salt.
“Drop the peas straight in,” he said. “We’ll leave it to sweat while we go to eat.”
Yashim took Kadri to the Kara Davut, where the air was tinged with the scent of hot charcoal and roasting meat. They sat on tiny wicker stools outside a kebab shop that the porters used, opposite the bakery, and within minutes their kebabs were spitting over coals while the baker made up pide by ripping a chunk of dough from a bowl, working it on a marble slab, then shaping it and slapping it onto the side of his oven.
“ Ayran, efendim? It’s iced, very cool.”
Ayran was a drink of yogurt, whipped with water and a pinch of salt, and they accepted it gratefully, smiling at each other over the rims of their glasses. “I see you’re growing a mustache at last,” Yashim said. Kadri grinned, and wiped his upper lip.
“You know, Kadri, it’s at times like this that I pity sultans in palaces.”
It could have been him, of course. If Talfa had her way, the luxury of eating on the street would be all but lost to him.
Kadri nodded. “I don’t want to go back to school,” he said. “Not yet.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say.” Yashim sighed. “They may not have you back if you leave it too long. If that matters,” he added, after a pause.
He glanced at his new young friend. Kadri looked better than he had looked just a few days before: the pimples on his forehead had cleared up and his eyes were brighter than ever.
“What do you think, Yashim efendi?”
“About the school?” Yashim looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure I can advise you, Kadri. The school exists to produce a special caste of men, who go on to run this empire. You can become one of them.”
“You didn’t,” Kadri said.
“Efendim!” The waiter set a tray before them, with the little cubes of roasted lamb, bread, and a gypsy salad of cheese with red onion and peppers.
Yashim laughed. “I like to believe I have my uses, Kadri. The school also, perhaps incidentally, gives you training. Persian, Arabic, the classics. Things that a man should know. Rhetoric and logic. You study ethics, and the wisdom and poetry of the holy Koran. Those are things that can give you happiness; a consolation, at least.”
“It sounds-gloomy.”
“Not at all.” Yashim smiled. “It’s learning how to live. But it’s not the only way,” he added. He popped a morsel of tender lamb into his mouth and glanced at his young friend. “The medreses will teach you a great deal, if you prefer that route. Or books. Books teach you a number of things, including how to distinguish truth from fiction; and how to govern yourself.”
Kadri nodded. “I can’t decide.”
“No matter. I’ll have coffee, and then we must finish our work.”
Back in his kitchen, Yashim inspected the vegetables: the cloth under the colander was soaked. He squeezed four lemons into a bowl and beat them into a pint of olive oil.
“We’ll pot this up,” he said, “and then-I have an idea.”
Yashim tossed the vegetables in the colander, and then raked them into two glass jars, finishing with the dressing.