The Sultan of Byzantium

by Selcuk Altun

  The Despot’s Palace was in fact a building that lacked aesthetic distinction. It had been the residence of the district governor and therefore was meant to be as large and pretentious as possible. Strangely enough, it seemed to have something of the soul of a Seljuk caravanserai. I found the hall that the old map in my hand said was the ‘Throne Room’. Restoration had not yet penetrated this space, which was dim and austere and seemed to have been left empty for generations. I identified the prevalent aroma – wet hay. When I pressed the switch on the penlight, no pigeons or bats took wing and no bugs began to chitter. Something must have altered the atmosphere not long before. There were mosaic compositions in the center of the stone floor. The most prominent featured a half-naked philosopher warding off a monstrous tiger with the scroll in his hand. This part looked slightly less dusty than the rest. I used the penlight to scrutinize the mosaic square by square. And there was the purple square, in the holy man’s beard. It stuck to my hand the moment I touched it. Was it a laughing matter that the person who’d hidden the second clue might be in charge of the Mistra restoration team?

  I didn’t want to show rudeness by exiting the building too soon, so I remained in the meditative atmosphere and reflected on the Palaeologan tekfurs who consorted with philosophers. In particular Manuel II, a man of wisdom and an aesthete, had made Mistra the center of the last Byzantine renaissance. There enlightened priests, scientists, philosophers, scholars and selected artists had gathered. Churches and palace were transformed into colleges. Classical philosophers were studied and criticized; new philosophies were born. And so Mistra attracted the attention of Europe and became the target of Vatican suspicion. In my sources thus far, the reasons why a small rural town was chosen for this melancholic renaissance remained vague. But in my opinion the Palaeologoi simply felt hopeless about their swiftly crumbling Constantinople. They depended on this site – now an archaeological park – for the same reasons that Constantine I, fearing Rome, had founded Constantinople. My eyes focused on the cobwebs dangling from the corners of the walls and ceiling. Perhaps they were still holding for safekeeping the unrecorded words of wisdom uttered under their roof 600 years ago.

  Neatly wrapping the new clue in a paper napkin, I murmured my favorite prayer and left the building. The restoration chief sat under a portable sunscreen at the edge of the courtyard. Feet stretched out on the small table in front of her, she continued to shout orders in English and Greek at the walkie-talkie in her hand. Her legs were long and shapely. Next to her boots lay a copy of Javier Marias’s When I Was Mortal. She shut off the walkie-talkie and lowered her feet to the ground. I was curious about the face that she kept concealed behind her hat and sunglasses. ‘I suppose you weren’t too impressed with what you saw?’ she said.

  I handed back her penlight while I lined up a few sentences like, ‘I conversed in a time-tunnel with the philosopher Plethon and Byrennius and Bessarion. Those great halls are imbued with their presence. I’m grateful to you for enabling me to enjoy this pleasure.’ Behind my generous expression of gratitude might have been my easily found second clue.

  The young woman sat still for a short while, perhaps because she wanted to think about the words I’d just said and those I was about to say. She began with, ‘Well, I’m glad to meet a Turk without a moustache who loves Byzantium,’ and continued with, ‘I’ll be in Istanbul in December to deliver a lecture. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to invite you. If you’ll leave your e-mail address, we can notify you.’

  I scribbled my e-mail on my card and gave it to her. ‘May I ask the title of your paper?’ I said.

  ‘In short, I’m claiming that Manuel II was the most superior but unfortunate Byzantine emperor.’

  ‘H.G. Beck offered the thesis that Manuel was one of the most sympathetic emperors, appreciated even by his enemies. Steven Runciman seems to agree with him. I’ll definitely come and listen to you.’

  ‘So is there a marginal Byzantine emperor that you like a lot?’

  ‘I’ve always liked the Palaeologus dynasty. If I had to choose one emperor among them, that would be Constantine XI.’

  ‘Should I ask why?’

  ‘I could reel off a dozen reasons, but the best one is probably the instinctive one – blood ties.’

  The young woman started to laugh. In all this time she was the first woman – except for the prostitutes – I was able to make laugh, and she was an academic whose full face I couldn’t even see. (I wondered what color her eyes were.) As she handed me her card, her cell phone rang. I understood from the fact that she began speaking Italian coquettishly that it was her boyfriend. Soon enough I was sorting out the mystery of Dr Mistral Sapuntzoglu. She was an assistant professor in Classical Archaeology and History at Stockholm University, and either her father or her grandfather must have belonged to one of the families torn away from Anatolia, as I inferred from the adaptation of her last name, ‘Sabuncuoglu’ (‘son of the soapmaker’ in Turkish) to the Greek alphabet. Dr Sapuntzoglu’s phone conversation was not long. When I mentioned my surmise she said, ‘Yes, you’re right. My father Costas was a native of Edremit. And my mother is Swedish. But my name has nothing to do with Mistra.’

  ‘Don’t I know! More precisely, I know about the winds that show up in poems. The mistral is a cold and obstinate wind that blows from northwest Europe down to the Mediterranean. It’s a nice poetic word, though. I once bought a book of poems by Gabriela Mistral for that reason, and then learned that she won the Nobel Prize in 1945.’

  As one of her assistants hove into view, we were shaking hands with the prospect of meeting again in Istanbul.

  *

  As a team we walked to the neighboring church of Saint Nicholas. I wanted to see how Nomo would react to my choice of the Santa Claus church as a venue for deciphering the clue.

  The third stop would be Sumela Monastery. I’d never been to the monastery, which was carved out of a mountain outside my ancestors’ home town, Trabzon. The Sumela that I’d seen on postcards and in documentary films looked like a cartoon mansion. When I was in middle school I once begged my grandmother to take me there. She said, ‘Son, are you crazy?’

  We’d finished early in Mistra. But at the last minute I was inspired to drop by the Church of Saint Demetrius, where the coronation of Constantine XI took place on January 6, 1449. It gave me a thrill to be inside the small holy place: to be crowned emperor in Byzantium was synonymous with receiving an open-ended death sentence. I gave the team one hour to visit their monuments of choice. Pappas and Kalligas preferred staying with me. Askaris wanted to see two deserted churches on the southern edge of town.

  We stopped off in Sparta to take a break at the Palaeologus Café – the name was enough for us. The place looked like a bomb shelter. The TV was set to a fashion channel, and it was amusing to watch the male customers ogling the swimsuit parade. Had I seen more men with moustaches in the crowd, I’d have sworn that I was in Tire or Bergama on the Turkish Aegean.

  ‘Pappas, call the waiter to take our order,’ I said. ‘And ask him if they have a discount for family members.’

  We all had a good laugh.

  KAPPA

  At one time, if I felt assured that the word ‘Laz’ – the name of a regional tribe prey to national jokes – would not come up, I would admit that I came from Trabzon, which was founded by Miletus in the seventh century B.C. as Trapezus. On any antique map or chart, I knew I would find Trapezus on the Black Sea. (When I first separated it into two words, ‘trapeze’ and ‘us,’ I felt fulfilled, like I’d solved a tough puzzle.) After the Latins confiscated Constantinople, ‘Pontus’ was the name of the rump empire whose capital was Trabzon. It sounded like a password. Its fierce independence, which lasted until 1461 when the Ottomans finally took it, was a constant irritant to Byzantium.

  After my grandfather had settled in Galata even to utter the name ‘Trabzon’ was forbidden. Ten years after he died I went with my grandmother to the city that he’d abandoned because of f
inancial disaster. Trabzon was sandwiched between two hills and the Black Sea but had begun seeping out of this enclosure toward the south and west. In place of the family mansion, which was neighbor to the Atatürk Museum and had a birds’-eye view of town, now stood three apartment blocks. Had Eugenio seen them he would have said, ‘Only King Kong could have been the architect of this tragedy.’ In the dazzling green and purple of the exterior plasterwork I found only the mirth of caricature.

  I could barely endure a week of hospitality at my grandmother’s cousin Samiye’s house. The childless widow’s parlor was a field of potted plants; moreover, she owned an ill-tempered cat named Cimcime. She was constantly offering food to everybody and if they declined she was hurt. My head ached every time she attempted to sprinkle cologne on our hands. She spoke to her plants and her cat in different tones of voice and belched loudly before going to bed.

  During that first visit I decided proudly that visiting Trabzon was like being back in ancient time; it had fortifications from Miletus, an aqueduct and church from Byzantium, and a mosque, baths and several mansions from the Ottomans – none of which I was ever taken to. Samiye and my grandmother were not aware that such monuments existed. I imagined that the Tabakhane and Zagnos bridges were markers that divided the town into upper and lower, and I conveyed to them salutations from the Galata Tower. I went there to sit and watch passersby. I assumed that half of the males in the population of 200,000 had gone fishing. The shopkeepers who perpetually dozed off while on duty would perk up when they strutted the streets and puffed out their chests in greetings to each other. The funniest of all were the bowlegged guys with noses like eagles’ beaks. I kept a daily record of these sightings. From the vantage of the Atatürk Museum the thin sound of a kemençe, the small violin that was a folk instrument of the region, would occasionally rise and grow until all Trabzon would link arms and dance the horon together. Such was the video clip in my mind on my way back to Istanbul.

  The summer of the year I entered high school, Eugenio presented me with a monograph on Trabzon. I read this encyclopedic book like I was studying for a final in an elective course. The Trabzon of nineteenth-century engravings was not much different from a fairy-tale city. The tombstones in the Imaret cemetery stood up like dervishes preparing to whirl. In the panoramic photographs shot from the seaside, the melancholic atmosphere of the city was obvious. The Trabzon folk in these faded pictures looked as if they had all assembled for a masquerade. Frame by frame I observed my fellow citizens staring at the camera with distrustful eyes. The procession of images took me back to the bridge memories of my childhood visit. Just as every nation that had once ruled the place left behind stone monuments, so also they left traces in the people still drinking from the fountains. Among these were men and women with long faces. I thought I knew them from Byzantine frescoes. The common feature of the men was the stubbornness in their eyes. And I knew where I’d seen that attitude of casual challenge: in the figure of Sultan Yavuz Selim – Selim the Grim – who served his apprenticeship as governor of Trabzon.

  Sumela Monastery was carved by hand from the side of a mountain. Construction began in the fourth century and lasted a thousand years. I used to push the limits of my childhood imagination by studying postcards of Sumela: if not as brave as an acrobat walking a tightrope, it was as sublime as a romantic chateau on a cliff side. I told myself that one day I would fly to Trabzon to get to know it and would come back without going into the city center here. I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of my grandfather – I liked him a little more with every prayer that his wife and daughter offered for his damnation.

  *

  Now after twenty years, again for the sake of not hurting the soul of a forefather, I was in the skies over Trabzon. I told my grandmother I had a business meeting in Ankara; she would have been suspicious if I’d asked about her Trabzon cousin. As we came into the city from the airport, words like ‘balaos’ (mad), ‘kambos’ (bug) and ‘zazal’ (bald) were dancing in my head to a melody that united the Pontus Greek language with Samiye’s Turkish. If I were writing a novel, my protagonist would likely not be captivated by the woman in Samiye’s role. But I was getting a little worried about my own life, which had already slipped beyond the borders of a novel.

  If I needed to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming all this, I could turn around and look at Askaris following me like a languid street dog – I found him so strange that I didn’t want to know anything about his private life. I understood from his behavior as we neared Trabzon that he was not very familiar with the city. His heavy beard put me in mind of my grandfather’s last photograph in the family album. I was sure he grew it to camouflage his nearly bald head and long nose. His frown and the disapproving gaze he turned on the camera with his large eyes – these were perhaps also signs of his charisma.

  When my grandfather ran into difficulties at the University of Paris, he moved on to the Department of Economics at a college for immigrants in Geneva. His daughter considered him a lazy dreamer and failed businessman. His wife thought he was a man up to no good, who dropped in and out of clubs and restaurants and went on ‘business trips’ abroad at every opportunity. On the other hand, Galata denizens knew him as a gentleman and a philanthropist. I’d forgotten which Joannes my grandfather Yahya was, but it was perfectly clear from his way of life that in the eyes of Nomo he was not one of the Elect. I suspected that Nomo had provided a certain standard of living for him and thus had exempted him from either the fortune or misfortune reserved for me.

  Downtown Trabzon stopped progressing 2,700 years ago and now looked like the River Ganges. Even a little fender-bender meant enormous traffic chaos. The increased number of women in headscarves caught my attention. They looked like a collection of young and eloquent girls with ivory complexions who would abandon their scarves and leave the set as soon as the movie was shot.

  I liked my hotel just fine, with its rose-colored atrium that looked like a sheik’s tent. It was a mild November day. After lunch I visited the Haghia Sophia of the Pontus with Askaris. As we entered the church courtyard the roar of the Black Sea came at staccato intervals. I recalled the majestic Sea of Marmara. If it had a message to impart, it would deliver it in squiggly lines accompanied by imaginary musical notes.

  The front of the plain thirteenth-century church had become a storage place for archaeological fragments. A tombstone next to the ladies’ room bore the name of Kamer Sultan, daughter of an Ottoman emperor. I saw a family resemblance between the building’s design, the color and cut of its interior stonework, and the Armenian and Georgian churches and Selçuk mosques of the region. This sense of collaboration impressed me. The ceiling frescoes offered the pleasure of viewing a painting. I felt the warmth of wandering through a naïve art exhibition in provincial Byzantium as compared to Constantinople. I called Askaris’ attention to the deficiency of expression, as well as the translation-cumprinting errors on the descriptions posted in the church and said, ‘If I were an emperor not in exile, I would know what to do.’ I thought that I would get used to the roaring as we moved closer to the spacious windows on the north side. I was wrong: the Black Sea was like a restless tiger that sensed its master being threatened.

  Pappas and Kalligas were waiting in the courtyard. I set them free, telling them I wanted to explore Ottoman Trabzon. But since Askaris wanted to linger at Haghia Sophia a little longer, my bearded guards had to go with me. We went straight to the Ottoman bridges that divide the city between north and south. Those monuments, which in olden days had served as escalators to the time tunnel that carried me away to the Ottoman city, now looked a size smaller. I enjoyed the prospect a while, scanning the town for traces of the Trabzon that Sultan Yavuz had governed for twenty-two years, and where his son Suleyman, the future Magnificent, was born.

  First I watched the commotion enjoyed by a group of ten- or twelve-year-olds joshing with each other on their way home from school. What was musical about them was their shouting at each oth
er all at the same time in their accented Black Sea Turkish; what made it really dramatic was how they used their accents to demonstrate superiority. A little later began the promenade of older youth. It was odd how I couldn’t predict whether they would finish their sharp-edged conversations in a quarrel or a laugh. They pronounced each word with a special lilt and only when they came to the end of a sentence did they decide on the intonation. Then there were the young girls – their procession over the bridge was a folkloric fashion show. They would appear in small clusters and ritualistically divert their eyes to the ground as they passed in front of the boys. I didn’t want to think about how Pappas and Kalligas, walking like puppets on either side of me, would – if necessary – sacrifice themselves to save my life; but also – if necessary – would sacrifice me just as quickly for Nomo. For now they didn’t look much different from minor characters in a comic book.

  We passed into the Ortahisar neighborhood together with the late afternoon ezan. A feeble autumn breeze caressed my face, which I took as a sign. I started to chase it, without asking where or why, when I suddenly felt my feet nailed to the ground. It was like I was wearing kaleidoscopic glasses. I stood, squinting. If no password was demanded of me, did that mean a message was forthcoming? My head began to hurt and a weariness crept into my cells. Then the thin curtain of fog facing me slowly lifted. There before me stood a row of Byzantine, Ottoman and Republican buildings shoulder to shoulder, resisting time and humanity and apparently issuing a challenge.

  In this neighborhood squeezed into a confined and hilly plot there were other venerable structures showing respect for the topography. The faded pastel exteriors of picturesque houses that I wanted to call ‘little mansions’ recalled the ceiling frescoes of Haghia Sophia and the calm hotel atrium. I felt more rested as I strolled those narrow paths, occasionally passing a dry fountain with an inscription like ‘Every death is an early death’. I had street dogs for company and the paths usually ended in a cul-de-sac of wild fig trees. On these cool nameless streets I savored duets of silence and serenity. The sky grew darker but I felt that every corner had its own light to emit.