Sofia (25 page)

“Don’t bother.” Esmikhan divined Safiye’s thoughts and bent over the hand she was painting to warn her in a whisper. “I am nothing like my brother at all.”

The older women passed another joke, putting verbal shackles on a man who wasn’t present to defend himself, and was shackled by his male nature in any case.

This did not keep Safiye from wondering all the same.

After both hands and the painted soles of both of Safiye’s feet were bandaged, she was finally allowed to use the latrine, which she couldn’t do without assistance, and then offered food and drink. Meanwhile, the rest of the harem had availed themselves of the remaining henna.

And then, at long last, came the dancing while the low-burning lamps scalded down. Safiye could hardly contain herself. The thunk, thunk-a-thunk of drums and the squeal of shawms fairly tickled her feet and her hands, which she was forbidden, forbidden, forbidden to scratch. There was nothing for it: she must leave the dancing to those whose allotment of henna had not been so incapacitating.

A harem is nothing like a convent,
Safiye mused in her inactivity. She wondered what her aunt would have said to the gyrations now executed in the tight space of floor in front of her.

It was one thing to perform the dances as she was taught them, feel the Tightness of the roll and thrust as her body reached for the tugging rhythm of the music. It was another thing altogether to watch Esmikhan work out the tense burden of a long time at delicate work, to watch the exquisite release and expect none of her own, no, not even from clapping.

Is this what henna night is all about?
Safiye felt the tension of her shoulders and arms slipping down to the glowing heart of her pelvis. She must no more release that than she must scratch her hands and feet.

Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan began the dance by trying to outdo one another with mimicries of their brother.
They are not very respectful,
Safiye thought.
Can you imagine if the nuns had taken it in their heads to characterize Father Confessor so?
Father Confessor had not been a young man like the dance portrayed: sometimes swaggering, full of himself, sometimes reeling from his opium, sometimes broiling with rage. But the priest had had equal foibles at which Safiye might have enjoyed poking fun.

Do they mean to turn my thoughts from Murad altogether? If I am to love this man, revere him as a master, why do they portray him to me thus, now? Is this sisters’ tease to answer the hunger I feel?

But then Safiye realized that the sisters danced by way of promise. They offered her the power of objectivity, of refusing to take the outside world of men too seriously. Whatever should come of her dance with Murad, whatever needs he might not fulfill, or however brief his infatuation, there was, they promised, nothing like other women for understanding and compassion.

The lamps swayed and burned like kettles over a fire. The music rose to match their glowing heat and the Sultan’s daughters, exhausted with their efforts and with laughter, gave way to other dancers. Other arms and legs delineated other fantasies with the shimmer of bangles and the float of gauze. No convent girl could imagine what Safiye saw in the dancing that night, what she learned. But then other things are expected of convent girls when they come to their marriage beds than are expected of odalisques when they come to the heir of the Sultan.

Last of all, way was given to Belqis and Aziza. Safiye thought she could see Murad in their dance as well, but it was a different picture of the young prince they painted altogether. The two young slaves reeled and arched, the clicks of their wooden spoons pulsing faster and faster. The sway of their sash ends plunged and rose; the metallic cicles of their waists throbbed in the lamplight like arterial blood.

Safiye’s throat grew dry and her breast constricted with sympathetic desire which no amount of Esmikhan’s proffered pomegranate juice could quench. Climax neared, wriggled tantalizingly away, neared, escaped, until at long last the two odalisques collapsed, moaning in each other’s arms.

Safiye caught her echoing moan in her teeth and closed her eyes. As the music faded, she yearned for the release of sleep to bridge the time to the festival as quickly as possible.

So Safiye opened her eyes on the day that would consummate in Id al-Adha. The henna paste, which had gone on cold, seemed—unlike the rose petals—incapable of absorbing her body’s heat. Even in the half-dreams before full waking, she felt the pattern of tendrils laid like a network of cold lead on her hands and feet. She wanted to peek under the bandages to watch the magic happening there, but she knew she must not or the effect would spoil. She wanted other things, too. She wanted, oh, so much to know what—! But everything, even desire, must not be peeked at vet. Not vet. Come evening...

Safiye must have been unconsciously avoiding the use of her hands even in sleep, for an uncomfortable stiffness pressed her shoulders back among the cushions where she’d slept with the rest of the harem tor company in the big main sitting room.

Now I am helpless,
Safiye thought.
I shall have to lie here forever.

But even as she thought it, Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan saw that she was awake and picked their way to her side with giggles that would not cease and baskets lull of more rose petals. With her silk-mittened hands, Safiye found it impossible to fend them off and so had to submit—and enjoy— another cool, scented shower followed by the warm hugs and kisses of the two girls. Other women entered then with breakfast on a tray which consisted mostly of Safiye’s favorite “little Turkish bonnets.”

“No, no!” Esmikhan cried. “You must not use your hands.”

And she and Fatima Sultan proceeded to feed their charge with tidbits until Safiye pleaded vehemently: “If I eat any more, I’ll burst!”

“There is so much to be done today,” Nur Banu hurried them. She betrayed her own nervousness by not eating at all. “Time cannot be taken for another meal. You must avoid meat, onions, leeks, and heavy spices in any case. Women who eat such things are bound to lose their attractiveness.”

Throughout the day, however, Safiye found that sweet-smelling fruits and pastries were never tar from her, and should she so much as look in the direction of the tray, there was always someone ready to pop another bit in her mouth.

So her attendants got her out of bed and, the whole harem following with more rose petals, laughter, and song, they led her to the citadel’s bath. Safiye had grown used to the ritual of steam and water. She had even grown to like it. Like any self-respecting Muslim woman, she, too, now felt the dirt if she failed to participate at least twice a week, particularly during the summer’s hottest days and after her bleeding time.

“A bride is bathed the day before her wedding, hennaed after.” While they progressed, Nur Banu explained this for Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan—girls who would be lawful brides—more for than Safiye. “But then a bride’s day is filled with the rites that make her consummation legal in the sight of the world. A slave’s purchase is the legality in this case. So we all bathe now for the feast to come while outside the men are busy with their prayers.

“First we had better see to those hands,” Nur Banu directed, interrupting the usual flow of the bath ritual when they had all undressed and reached the second room. “Should the stain remain too long, it will turn black and that would be a bad omen.”

So with great solemnity and flourish, Esmikhan unwound the bandages from first one hand and then the other. The gold coins dropped from Safiye’s palms into her lap.

“Keep them,” Nur Banu said. “They’re yours.”

The first that is really my own — in my life.
Safiye pulled them as close as she could with neither hands nor feet to work for her.
The first of so much more. If this is slavery, the institution has been greatly maligned.

Safiye forgot the good thoughts as she reacted at first with horror to what a quick flush of warm water discovered. The dried-on henna paste sloshed down the water channels about her pattened feet. Her hands were revealed, as veined and splotched as an old woman’s. Closer inspection, however, revealed the color was not brown but a brilliant, warm, rich orange, like sun-ripened fruit. The color formed a delicate pattern of tulips, dots, and tinted nails that Safiye joined all the others in admiring. When she moved her hands, Safiye noticed the butterfly-like flittings the design helped them to make. Her hands were the one part of her anatomy that might be exposed, even in a bazaar. But henna plunged those hands and all they touched into the perpetual mystery and allure of half-seen forms behind a lattice.

What might they so flittingly touch, come evening?

Her bathers made some attempt to avoid her hands and feet as they worked, but no matter what they did, the stain would remain vivid for a week or more. On every other part of her body, the scrubbing Safiye got was so vigorous that she feared she would be left quite raw. She discovered, however, that the skin she had left when they were finished was softer than a baby’s and glowed a delicate pink.

Then, from that tender skin, every vestige of hair had to be removed. A pair of women, expert at the task, cooked up the depilatory favored for brides because of its sweetness and because it tore the hair out below the skin. Made of two parts beet sugar to one of lemon, it was stirred constantly over a flame until a drop crystallized in water, then spread on the offending areas. When their experience judged the time was right, the women removed the hardened candy in quick, sharp yanks. Safiye’s underarms, legs, as well as her pubes were soon cleaner than a five-year-old child’s.

A beauty pack followed to ease the sore skin. It was made of oil and rice flour mixed with honey and various sweet-smelling spices. In the heat of the steamy baths Safiye began to feel herself to be a living pastry, baking for the festive day.

Another bath followed with more lathering and scrubbing to remove the pack save for the scent and smoothness it gave Safiye’s skin. As they scrubbed her down, Esmikhan and Fatima Sultan repeated the word
Mashallah
! over and over as a crooning song. It was an invocation to their God to keep the evil spirits that might covet such a beauty from casting a spell on her while she was naked and helpless.

The sun was now past its zenith and came in, in long beams made tangible by the steam, at the high west-side windows. Safiye’s hair was washed with water in which roses and heliotrope had been allowed to steep. Then, stretched out naked on a bed of snow-white cushions and towels, she submitted herself to the hands of the harem masseuse from the time the sun was dappling the water in the pool until it was reflected off the smooth tile wall at shoulder-height.

Now is the pastry kneaded,
she thought,
made light and full of puffs of air for the young master’s festival.

Remembering the fancy Easter breads of her Italian childhood rather than the thin-crusted pastries that were actually baking at that moment in the citadel ovens, Safiye sometimes daydreamed, sometimes dozed, sometimes drifted fully asleep and dreamed true dreams of delight throughout the long, hot afternoon. It would leave her fresh and wide awake for the exertions of the night.

***

As the masseuse’s firm hands caressed the soft, pink skin, Safiye began to work her hips in an ardent response to that kneading, unconscious of what she was doing. A climax came in a smart slap across her buttocks.

“Save that for my brother!” Esmikhan teased.

Having just come from bathing herself, Selim’s daughter found that the wet end of her towel was more useful as a whip for bare backsides than as a cover.

“Why, you little—! Safiye cried and, throwing aside the masseuse’s hands, she dashed off in hot pursuit, armed also with a towel she paused to dip in the bath as she passed. Safiye made up for a slow start with her long legs and limberness compared to the other girl’s plumper docility. Neither would cry halt and the battle raged on all about the pool.

The two girls’ screams of laughter and of pain echoed off the marble walls and brought Nur Banu in from the latticed corridor where she’d been watching for the men. Her anger and concern were infectious and immediately brought the two dripping, panting, naked girls to bay.

Nur Banu wasted little time in either scolding or apologies, for the marks of Esmikhan’s towel on Safiye’s skin needed instant attention with oil and aloe lest they turn to welts that would last until the morrow. Nonetheless, a quiet smile crept to Nur Banu’s lips to see her young charge in such lively spirits. Safiye could tell that if the older woman was cautious, it was only to make sure that those spirits would not all be spent before nightfall.

“The men are returning from the mosque,” Nur Banu announced when the emergency had passed. “You can hear and see them from out there in the corridor. Make haste, make haste!”

“Auntie, may we bring Safiye out there in the corridor so we can see, too?” Esmikhan begged. “Her hair will dry so much faster there in the sun.” Nur Banu gave her permission and now the toilet began with an earnestness that all but stifled any carefree chatter.

“The sheep are being led into the courtyard,” Nur Banu reported, her voice crosshatched against the carved wood of the grille.

Safiye raised herself off Esmikhan’s knee, where she had been resting while the other girl brushed and combed her hair. By shifting her head from side to side, first to one diamond-shaped opening, then the next, she found it possible to see most of the courtyard below.

“Hold still!” Esmikhan begged. “I shall mess your hair.”

But Safiye couldn’t resist. The large company in the yard were all men, of course. They were differentiated, however, into dusty peasants on the perimeter, dumbly watching the motions of their betters under banners and poles dangling horsetails at the center.
This might be a costume play at home, in the theater of the Foscaris.
Safiye felt herself grow warm and was grateful no one else here remembered the occasion. Not just actors but all men dressed in such costumes in this land, these long robes that blinded with their richness when the sun hit them just right.