The Blue Hour

Chapter 8: Peresto

The ground-shake had woken Peresto, but the tremor had been so light, she doubted it had happened at all. She was deeply asleep again when, Mustafa, her trusted helper, gently touched her shoulder. Prince Yusufeddin had been apprehended by protesting softa. Shocked but unharmed, the Prince had returned to the palace with a message for his father, Sultan Abdulaziz: reinstate Midhat Pasha.

"Midhat Pasha?"

Mustafa nodded.

She inhaled. "The Valide is...?"

He nodded again. Mustafa was mute. As a boy in Africa, slave traders delivered him to a Copt monastery in Egypt. The Copts castrated and sold him to an Ottoman Pasha. The Pasha cut out his tongue and offered him as a precious gift to the Imperial Palace. Recognising his potential, Peresto took him under her wing. Together, they learnt ixarette, the ancient imperial harem sign language which had long since been abandoned. In those olden days when silence reigned in the Imperial Harem, deaf and mute servants were less of a rarity, and signalling the most common form of communication. She valued his silence, and that he could not betray secrets, even if bribed.

Now, Mustafa briefly explained by signalling with his fingers: the Sultan's mother, referred to as the Valide, had convinced herself that Crown Prince Murad and Prince Hamid, had orchestrated the softas' demand to bring Midhat Pasha back from exile and make him Grand Vizier. The Valide was beside herself with rage and she blamed the heirs.

"What does she say?"

Mustafa signalled: disloyalty, treason.

She sighed. Murad and Hamid were sons of the Sultan's brother, the late Sultan Medjid - may her sweet husband rest in peace. As the eldest princes, they were the rightful heirs to the Ottoman throne. The Valide had always doubted their loyalty to her son. As the Sultan's mental state deteriorated, her paranoia got out of hand. The heirs had nothing to do with the softas' demands. Not for the first time, Peresto would have to find a way to reassure the old woman of Hamid's loyalty.

The Coiffure Mistress hurried forth to arrange her hair. Her Maid of the Robes helped her slip into a loose fitting, muslin robe. The blue colour reminded her it was early May. A month the Sultan's mother believed to be unlucky especially for her son, a month when evil ghosts and spirits roamed abandoned houses.

When she was awake her servants were awake. Even so, she offered each a smile of recognition as she left her apartment. From deep inside the main part of the harem where more than nine hundred women resided with their children, clamouring voices were heard, and the high-pitched cries of eunuchs, castrated black slaves who were keepers of the harem, herding everyone back to their sleeping quarters. It was notable, because the harem was usually so calm it was hard to detect any movement at all.

Dolmabahçe Palace, the political heart of the empire and the residence of the Sultan and his family, was European in style, but followed an age-old Ottoman tradition in its ceremonial ordering of space. It was organised horizontally around the Sultan, in three concentric spheres, with the outer sphere open to the public for events such as marriages, circumcisions, and births.

The second sphere, a semi-public theatre of government, contained offices of state, archives, salons for ceremoniously receiving foreign ambassadors, and a nearly fifty-metre long throne room.

The Gate of Felicity led from the second sphere to the Imperial Harem, the sacred vortex of Ottoman power where the Sultan resided like an oyster in its shell. He was surrounded by family and staff: boys, mutes, dwarves, women, and children. No adult males who might challenge his reign were allowed.

In this innermost sacred space the Valide ruled assisted by the Chief Eunuch, referred to as the Kizlar Agha. Access to the harem was severely restricted. Its inhabitants rarely crossed the boundary to the outside world, and the outside world rarely entered the harem. Communication was conducted by intermediaries, the eunuchs and other slaves who governed the empire in the name of the Sultan.