The Blue Hour

Chapter 13: Hamid

In the past year, Hamid and Murad had made a habit of flying their hawks on Sunday mornings. They had been drifting apart, and flying the hawks was one activity they enjoyed without tension. It was Sunday, and Hamid stood before the mirror in his private salon, while two agha, eunuch servants, dressed him, directed by Jurad's replacement - whatever his name was - a sleeveless, gold embroidered jacket over a blue shirt, wide white pants, red leggings, and his leather falcon glove. He felt a familiar heaviness settle in his chest. The opulent room, the rich fabrics adorning his body, the silence that seemed to envelope the whole world, it all felt suffocating.

During the four years of isolation in the 'cage', falconry had been a common activity with Murad. It alleviated the solitude and the boredom which was driving them mad. During those years, Hamid became restless and emotional, he started talking to himself, became moody and forgetful. At times, he hallucinated, saw flashing lights, bizarre visions like processions of dogs or a divan changing form. Sometimes he heard singing voices, or felt the whole room in motion. To calm his distressed mind, he counted the steps to the cabinet-making workshop in the garden where the touch of soft wood under his fingers and the exacting concentration on intricate details, soothed him. Murad too suffered, but sought refuge in raki and champagne.

The hardship of their forced isolation brought them together, but it also festered resentment, each mutely blaming the other for their frustration and suffering. Watching their hawks take off with a sharp swoop of their wings and graze the wide sky, took some of the pressure off. The distraction and the fresh air cleared the cobwebs of their minds.

Four years he spent in the 'cage' before Peresto persuaded Sultan Abdulaziz to grant him leniency. Murad was not so fortunate. He was the son of a less capable mother and subject to the Valide's personal dislike. Their paths diverged. Hamid did not have permission to leave the palace, but he got access to books, attended concerts and other festivities in the harem, and resumed his lessons with Reshid, the one the harem ladies called 'the lame teacher' because of his limp. The books and the intellectually stimulating conversations became a waterhole which brought him back to life, and he clung to it like a buoy.

"You've abandoned me," Murad said. "But what do I care? You can have your lessons. I'm a practical, visceral man. A man of ideas, and soon enough, I'll be Sultan."

Hamid angrily rebuffed the accusation. He would not admit that, deep inside, he was relieved to escape Murad's company, or that in Murad's weak-chinned face he recognised their father. Medjid had died of depression and addiction, and resenting the likeness, Hamid could no longer endure Murad's company. To prove Murad wrong and to clear his conscience, he suggested they should spend time together. Fly their birds on Sundays.

With meticulous attention, one agha brushed Hamid's jacket, another his gilded slippers. His clothes were already impeccable, brushed and re-brushed, the act was meaningless, but an ordained part of the dressing ceremony. Hamid paid them no attention. His gaze floated.

This would be the first time he stepped outside his apartment since his escape. Upon his return to the palace, he had been unwell and taken to bed for two days. Peresto had been alarmed, worried that his recklessness and subsequent apathy, were signs of his father's melancholic disposition. To the harem, Peresto announced Hamid was ill. The doctor came to examine him, opened his mouth, checked his eyes, measured his pulse. A fever, he declared, provoked by the shock of Jurad's disappearance. The eunuchs fussed over him, odalisques brought his favourite food. Two times the muezzin called to prayer before the Valide visited with her entourage of mystics and gypsies to put her blue handprint on the doors of the heirs to the throne. The first day of May, Hamid thought as he listened to their voodoo invocations. The paint dripped on the floor.

When Murad asked to see him, he turned him down. Too tired, he said. So Murad sent him a note: salamtak, get well soon. In the cramped scribbles he could sense his brother's anxiety. Hamid felt ashamed. The Valide had her gypsies make baleful dolls linked to Murad's spirit, and cursed them. There would be a blue handprint on his door too, with a malicious spell. Hamid felt guilty to turn him away. He felt guilty towards Peresto for leaving her to clean up the aftermath of his adventure.

For the next two days, he stayed on the divan in his room, unmoving. For many hours he watched a small painting on the wall of a blackbird strung up by the feet, the head pointing heavy towards the floor, its lifeless form suspended in captivity. A cruel, yet strangely serene image of death which he had painted shortly after he moved out of the harem.

Murad sent him a present, a box of embroidered handkerchiefs, and another note: will you be well on Sunday?

Hamid fixed his gaze on the dates on the sliver plate, and whispered: one, two, three, four, five. He thought of nothing, but in his body, he sensed a familiar dread. He was back to being the heir, Abdul Hamid, stuck in a place where today was the same as yesterday and the day before that. There were markers of time in the palace, the ticking and chiming of European style clocks, there was the arrival of meals three times a day, the call to prayer five times a day, sunrise and sunset. But the next day, the cycle started again and in substance, nothing changed. He felt trapped in eternity, in an endless spiral from which there was no escape, like a throat swallowing him whole.

Mostly, he wondered if he had dreamt that night. It felt like a separate story about someone else, in a world where every second and every breath was enthralling and unique. The unrestrained student called Hamid was an identity he had unwittingly stumbled across on the square with the softa. No one had doubted it or regarded him with suspicion. The deception was not premeditated, he had not lied, he had not invented or denied anything. On the contrary, he had no choice in the matter. When he emerged from the conduit, a drawer opened with intense feelings and thoughts he did not recognise as his, and he had no choice but to follow them.

He stroked the scraped fingers which were still healing, felt his blistered feet, pressed down slowly to feel the pain. The pain was real. The pain was always there, he thought, no matter what he did. A familiar panic mounted and he struggled against an urge to escape before it was too late. Too late for what?

He felt cowardly and ashamed to feel this way. That he should want another life, free from the crushing weight of history, of the weight of God. Especially when Peresto returned to check on him. She sat in a chair by his bedside and spoke in a calm and clear voice of her meeting with the Valide. She had accepted Jurad's disappearance with surprising ease, all trace of Hamid's escape had been blotted out. He never escaped the harem; Jurad was not dead, but alive and free, back in his native land somewhere in Africa. Jurad's things had been burnt in a kitchen oven, his name erased.

"I have decided on his replacement," she said.

He knew he should be grateful. He closed his eyes to shut out the image of Jurad's head in the dust. He thought of Jurad's knife floating in the air. One, two, three, four, he counted, pearls in Peresto's hair.

___________________________

Author's note

Artists of the Ottoman era designed bird palaces, like the one in the embedded image, to provide birds with a sanctuary. The bird palaces  were placed on mosques, houses, libraries, and tombs. They were not only beautiful to look at, but also reflected the belief that those who built them would be blessed for their benevolent actions.