Byron and the Beauty

by Muharem Bazdulj

  This brief encounter made more of an impression on him than anything since Mary Anne. Over and over he thought about the girl from Sintra, and in his mind he called her “little creature.” This obsession was not always the most pleasant of things, and he attempted to get rid of it by hurling himself into the arms of Lady Spencer Smith, the Circe of our enchanted island. She was a fascinating woman, the daughter of the Austrian ambassador in Istanbul, who combined the elegance of the West with the Eros of the East in her person. But it didn’t work. As the voluptuous woman came noisily to her climax, Byron’s thoughts were in Sintra. Coincidentally, at the same time all of Yannina was booming with hundreds of gun-shots, and all the members of his retinue pressed themselves against the walls like frightened animals.

  * * *

  Long after night had fallen, the door squeaked quietly. Byron was sitting alone at the table in the light of an oil lamp. Isak very nearly tripped over his own feet as he entered. It seemed he has had something stronger than coffee to drink, Byron mused.

  ‘You are awake, my lord,’ Isak said, almost light-heartedly. ‘I thought you’d be asleep.

  ‘I was hoping to write a few letters,’ replied the Englishman, ‘but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

  Isak joined him at the table.

  ‘How was the wedding?’ Byron asked.

  ‘It was a wedding like any other, my lord. A wedding like any other.’ He fell into a brief silence, and then asked softly, ‘You are young, my lord, yet you are not married?’

  Byron shook his head, and, in this fraction of a second a thought ran through his mind. Outside of Albania, he mused, I will never again meet this Isak anywhere; therefore there’s no reason not to be as honest with him as I am with myself.

  ‘I have not married,’ said Byron, ‘although four years ago I hoped to do so.’

  Then he looked him straight in the eye and told him, rapidly, as if he feared he might change his mind, the whole story of Mary Anne and the girl from Sintra. Isak knew how to listen: he interjected not a single word, and his facial gestures showed that he was listening intently. When Byron concluded, Isak merely sighed. They sat there without conversing for a few moments before Isak spoke.

  ‘You know, my lord,’ he said, ‘this is really a beautiful story: painful for you, perhaps, but beautiful. You truly loved that woman, and this is not often the case. That’s why women love you, too; they sense that you are capable of love. The fact that she whom you loved did not return your love is, if I may be so bold as to assert, of perhaps less importance. It is you yourself who have found love.’

  With that suggestive whisper, Isak ended his short monologue. Byron’s eyebrows rose inquisitively.

  ‘Is there any way to discover love other than finding it oneself? Tell me, my lord,’ Isak inquired, ‘how many men courted your esteemed kinswoman?’

  ‘Two,’ Byron replied, ‘Masters and I.’

  ‘Ah, the West,’ Isak said, smiling ambiguously. ‘Even in love, you make the calculations. Here in the Orient, he went on, a girl who is even halfway attractive has dozens of suitors. This Leila, who at this very moment’ and here he rubbed his hands together lasciviously, ‘is probably being deflowered by Ahmed, the son of Zaim Aga, received proposals from thirty other men.’

  Byron remarked that Leila must be a real beauty.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ came Isak’s somewhat indifferent reply. ‘Listen, my lord,’ he went on. ‘You were very forthright with me, but I have not been completely so with you. I told you that I didn’t invite you to the wedding so as not to abuse my host’s hospitality, but I withheld the actual explanation. It would, for instance, have been no problem for me to take Hasan with me, although he was already invited. I could not take you,’ and here he averted his eyes, as if by way of apology, ‘because Zaim Aga simply would not tolerate the presence of a giaour’.

  Byron looked at him curiously.

  ‘An unbeliever,’ Isak said: ‘A non-Muslim. Those people are giaours. Make a note of this expression, my lord, for when you hear it uttered, people are talking about you. Zaim Aga would not have invited me either, for I am distasteful to him, but I once saved the life of his son. I healed a wound he had sustained in battle, after everyone else had written him off. Thus he is for all time indebted to me, and he forgives me for being an infidel. But I doubt that he would forgive a companion of mine. I wanted to confess that to you, my lord,’ Isak concluded.

  ‘There is no cause for concern,’ Byron said in turn, ‘but one thing still intrigues me. If he is indebted to you, then why did you still have to go to the wedding? If I understood you correctly, he would not have held it against you if you hadn’t gone.’

  Isak beheld him with bright eyes filled with what Byron took to be fondness, ‘you are a wise man, my lord: so young, and yet so wise. Yes, he said, in this matter also I was not honest with you. Have you read that book containing the stories from A Thousand and One Nights?’ he asked. ‘You must have read it, for you are an educated man. You must be familiar with Galland’s translation.’ Byron nodded. ‘Do you recall the story of Shahriman’s son Badr Basim?’ Isak inquired. ‘Or the one about Ibrahim and Jamilah?’ Byron didn’t remember them.

  ‘It contains a disguised tale about love in the East,’ Isak added. ‘Here we do not discover love ourselves. You asked if Leila is beautiful,’ he went on, speaking faster and faster. ‘Yes, she is a beauty from Yannina, but that’s nothing. The whole land knows of true beauties; there is a certain Nizama from Tepelena who is known as such a beauty. Meanwhile there are other beauties, of whom entire countries speak.

  In Shkodra, a good thirty years ago, there was raven-haired Belkisa, who had hundreds of wooers but finally took up with Ali Pasha. She died giving birth to Veli Pasha. Once in Thessaloniki there was Rahel, a Jewess, who made the old man Bilal Pasha and his five sons lose their minds. Eventually, she drowned herself in the harbour like Aegeus. No one knows why, although people say it was on account of her beauty. And a long while ago, Sarajevo had Katinka, about whom people sang songs while she still lived; for her, not even Djerzelez Alija – a figure like Robin Hood in your country – was good enough. Once every three hundred years there is born a beauty who becomes known throughout the entire Empire. And then we live those stories from A Thousand and One Nights. Men fall in love with these women by hearsay alone. Nobody, or almost no one, has ever seen one of these women, but every man in the Empire daydreams of one of them, and is sure he would recognize her the moment he laid eyes on her – from the beardless Roma youths right up to the Sultan himself. She’s a beauty of the order of the city Sintra you were talking about; no one could invent her, or dress her in the right words, but she is lovlier than any city, because she’s a living being. You also know that a woman such as this truly exists, because no one could invent her. One may well be able to describe her in metaphors: hair as dark as a night of farewell, a face as beautiful as a whole day of ecstasy, eyes as blue as the sky in May, globes of ivory for breasts, hips as powerful as the crown of a tree, and feet like spearheads. But words are nothing, my lord.

  It is a splendid thing to be born at a time when a woman like this treads the earth, let alone appears before our eyes. That is the reason I went to the wedding, my lord. It was rumored that such a woman would be in attendance; since she’s a relative of some sort of the unfortunate bridegroom, Ahmed. But she did not come, and perhaps it’s better that way.’

  A bit out of breath, Isak paused momentarily and then added, ‘It’s time to go to sleep, my lord.’

  ‘Why now?’ Byron asked.

  ‘Ask me no more,’ Isak said, ‘for I can talk no more tonight, my lord, but perhaps tomorrow. Morning brings fresh counsel.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Byron. ‘But at least reveal her name to me.’

  ‘Zuleiha.’

  Chapter Four: October 9, 1809

  Another sleepless night: Byron lay awake until morning, looking up at the ceiling. But anyone in the same room wi
th him would have believed him to be sleeping. He did not move, neither turning from side to side nor sitting up nor rising; no, he lay there quietly on his back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Zuleiha,’ he repeated to himself. ‘Zuleiha!’ His lips formed the word silently. Three syllables: zu lei ha. Zu: the incisors in his mouth clicked briefly to make the sound. Lei: the tip of his tongue flitted over his teeth. And ha: his lower lip leapt out as if he were amazed. Oh, how tenderly had Isak pronounced this name! Byron doubted he could do the same.

  The local vocabulary and names that had somehow worked their way into Isak’s English possessed a special power. Besa – a word as hot, crackling, and glowing as a flame; giaour – a word as secretive and menacing as a concealed dagger; Zuleiha – a name as rich and multi-layered as life itself, mixed with indolence and serendipity. Can one fall in love, Byron wondered, with a word, or with a name? Does a rose by any other name truly smell as sweet? Would Isak’s story last night have had such an effect on him if, at the end of the conversation, he had uttered a different, but equally beautiful and exotic, name? In his mind he went intently back over every detail of his talk with Isak. Was it not accurate to say that his interlocutor seemed a little drunk? How was it even possible to get drunk at a Muslim wedding, particularly if the father of the bride was such a zealot? Where was Zuleiha supposedly from? ‘She’s known throughout the entire Empire,’ Isak had said. Byron was thus convinced that she was not Albanian. Isak had not said anything about her origin, but the announcement of her arrival would hardly have sparked so much excitement if she hailed from the immediate vicinity. Also, the delay spoke in favour of Byron’s thesis. Zuleiha comes from afar, Byron thought, from a great distance indeed, from one of those regions and landscapes in whose names the magic of her name is matched.

  When it gradually began to get light outside, Byron swore that he would see Zuleiha for himself. At least catch a glimpse of her. The vow calmed him. The morning had already broken when a deep, fortifying sleep briefly overcame him, akin to a drink of cold water. He woke up quickly, much refreshed, and he felt as though he had slept the entire night through. He stood up and dressed. He was cheerful, hungry, and impatient. He supposed Isak had already risen, since it was likely he slept no longer than usual despite the drink he had enjoyed the night before, and was already up and active. He hurried to the refectory with that same nearly forgotten feeling of joyous expectation with which he once hurried towards Annesley.

  * * *

  When Byron walked in, Isak was already eating breakfast. His impression was of one who had also slept poorly: his hair was disheveled, his eyes were a bit red, and pearls of sweat stood out on his forehead. Isak looked so odd that even Byron thought he’d fallen prey to a fever. His voice was hoarse when he wished Byron a good morning. Byron himself mumbled a passing pleasantry as he sat down. Actually, he wanted to ask Isak how he’d slept, and to wish him a pleasant morning and a good breakfast, but only by way of a necessary introduction to what he really wanted: to request that Isak tell him all he knew about Zuleiha. But Isak was the first to speak.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord,’ he began. ‘I talked a lot yesterday. Too much, like a woman.’ Byron felt as though cold water had been dumped over his head. After a short pause, he replied: ‘I enjoyed the conversation. It seemed to me as though we were both sincere and are on the way to becoming friends.’

  Isak nodded his agreement. ‘You bestowed upon me a great honour, my lord, with your story, but I failed to pay you back with the same currency. I was just babbling, my lord, silly stuff, which might have misled you.’

  And for one short, terrible moment, Byron believed that Isak’s story from the night before had been pure fantasy. The disappointment left him feeling as if he’d been impaled. And yet, it appeared to him that Isak could read his mind.

  ‘I invented nothing, my lord. I was just in a lyrical mood, and poets are fools – surely we agree on that point.’

  Byron gave a laugh, wordless but bitter, and Isak went on.

  ‘Zuleiha exists, and she is the most beautiful woman in the Empire, but it’s better to speak of her in ordinary language and simple words. Just in and of itself, her beauty is amazing, and she has no need of ornamental odes.’

  After saying this, Isak fell silent again. Indeed Byron was worried that he was going to have to draw the words out of Isak this morning like buckets of water out of a well, but he was mistaken. Isak hesitated for another brief moment, and then he started to speak again.

  ‘She comes from Bosnia, my lord, and those Bosnians cannot speak about anything without using the words dert and sevdah. And this includes love.’

  Once more, two unusual words had made their way into Isak’s smooth English: dert and sevdah.

  ‘My lord,’ Isak continued, ‘dert and sevdah are one and the same thing and yet different. They mean yearning, they mean craving, and love and burning desire and mania and passion; they mean ecstasy, they mean sighing, and they mean fire. Dert is red like blood, and sevdah is as black as gall. Dert is a wounded wolf, while sevdah is a flower that is withering. And dert and sevdah are songs. Dert sings loudly, and sevdah softly – because the Bosnians must always have their songs. And a song for them, my lord, is what it used to be everywhere: words and music. The Bosnians know nothing of sonnets and other poems; a song is something that is sung, and what one sings of is beauty.’

  Where is this place called Bosnia?’ Byron inquired.

  Isak pointed towards the mountains. ‘North of here, and to the west,’ he said: ‘A stern and beautiful land. I spent my youth there. It is a perfect land, as a Turk once told me; wherever you dig, up comes potable water, and wherever a seed falls, there a tree will sprout. Nowhere is the water any sweeter, or the shade any more beautiful, my lord. This place you were speaking of, my lord, this Sintra, seems to me to be complete sevdah, but Bosnia is at once sevdah and dert.’

  Byron shrugged his shoulders as he reflected.

  ‘You know, my lord,’ Isak added, ‘I don’t know much more about Zuleiha than what I told you last night, but she is currently somewhere in this vicinity and it is quite probable that we will both catch a glance of her. Meanwhile, I still owe you a story about myself, because yesterday evening you were very honest and forthright with me. If I were to fail to talk more, it would be ungracious of me. The night is better suited for such conversations, so I hope it won’t disturb you if we wait till evening.’

  Byron agreed with a nod of his head. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he whispered, ‘if you know it. This name “Zuleiha” – what does it mean?’

  Isak smiled. ‘Do you recall the beautiful Egyptian woman in the Bible, he asked. The one who seduced Joseph?’

  Byron said that he remembered.

  ‘Well, Isak continued, in the Koran that woman’s name is Zuleiha. There is much conjecture about the meaning of her name. But supposedly it means “the one who withdraws” or “she who slips through your fingers”.’

  * * *

  ‘My father,’ Isak began, as the candle sputtered in the background, ‘was a rabbi in Amsterdam. I am, my lord, the child of weak loins. My father was already over fifty-years old when I was born. My mother was not yet sixteen, but I have no real memories of her because she died right around the time I was weaned. My father, incidentally, was a genuine Wandering Jew: I know that he lived in Budapest, Prague, Berlin, Istanbul, and London. He was a distant relative of the famous London rabbi David Nieto. My father’s sister, my Aunt Deborah, lived with us after the death of my mother. It was with her that I first spoke English. In turn she also passed away, before my twelfth birthday. My father had long been fed up with Amsterdam and was looking for a chance to leave. I don’t know how it all came to pass, but one day he departed for Turkey, only this time not to Istanbul but to Bosnia: to Sarajevo, where he would serve as a rabbi. And I moved with him.’

  Isak spoke in clipped, spare phrases, like an encyclopedia entry, or as if he were retelling material that he had memorized, rather than re
calling his own life. But with his arrival in Bosnia, the report got richer in colour and detail. With much ardour he told of foaming rivers, blossom-covered plum orchards, lonely fortresses, grey-coloured mountains, foggy bottom-lands, muddy roads, steep mountain villages and airy forests.

  ‘All of Bosnia is riddled with canyons, my lord, like the wrinkles on an old man’s brow. The rivers there gleam blue and green, like the eyes of Slavic beauties of old, and alongside them twist old, narrow roads, blazed by time and history. Wherever a gorge affords you a wider view, the lights of a city shine forth: ancient, terraced, pocket-sized, and lovely.’

  That’s how Isak spoke of Bosnia. Authentic sevdah gripped him as he began to speak of Sarajevo, and Byron was reminded again of that word. His very voice grew more resonant. Wax ran down the side of the thick candle like giant, heavy tears, and Isak talked himself into a fever pitch.

  ‘When it rains in Sarajevo,’ he said, ‘it’s like a transparent curtain of silk; when it snows, it’s as if someone is plucking a whole flock of white geese; when it’s sunny there, the sky gleams like gold and is as hot as coals – hot enough to melt stone. In Sarajevo, the wind blows mercilessly, pushing everything before it like a sickle in the hands of a mighty reaper.’