by Jenny White
Balkis had lain curled in bed in a ball of pain, refusing to speak with anyone. She could keep nothing down but simple broth. They brought four-year-old Amida to her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She refused her breast to the baby Saba, who had to be given to a wet nurse.
When Balkis finally kept down some bread and yoghurt, the midwife sat beside her and fed her morsels with her own hand, since Balkis was too weak to sit up. When she needed to urinate, she screamed and wet her bed. The midwife lifted the covers and pushed her legs apart. Balkis could feel her manipulating her flesh, but was too weak from pain and hunger to protest, although no longer too weak to wonder what had happened to her.
When she was alone, she reached between her legs and was shocked to feel sharp needles pinning her flesh together. She cried out with fear.
“What have you done?” she wept. “What have you done to me?”
Gudit, who slept in the next room, ran in and stood by the bed, her arms crossed. She looked proud. Balkis never forgot that look.
“You’ve been cleansed in the way of our ancestors,” she explained portentously. “You’re a virgin again.”
“What ancestors? What did you do?”
“It’s an ancient Abyssinian custom. We cleanse a woman by removing her extra flesh, just as boys are circumcised. To close you up, I used special thorns brought from Abyssinia,” she boasted.
“There’s a stick,” Balkis moaned.
“A reed so you can urinate and other fluids can drain. I’ll take it out when the wound is healed. You’ll see. It’ll leave just a small opening. Very beautiful, like an ostrich egg.”
“Are you…?”
“Oh, no,” she responded, shaking her head. “I’m not important enough. Back home in Abyssinia, every girl is circumcised, but here it’s the privilege only of the priestess, once she has provided for the succession. It’s shameful to let such an old custom die. We’ve been doing it since the pharaohs.”
When Malik was finally allowed to see her, Balkis saw that he was shocked, but she was too embarrassed to tell him what had been done to her. Too weak to sit up, she simply grasped his hand and cried, Balkis remembered, feeling again her helplessness. “Stay with me,” she had begged her brother through the miasma of pain.
Malik had confronted Gudit. “What’s the matter with her? Why is she so ill? Why didn’t you tell me? And why haven’t you called a surgeon?”
“It’s my duty to continue the traditions. You have your duties as caretaker,” Gudit responded smugly. “The initiation of a priestess is none of your business. There’s no need for a surgeon. She’ll be fine.”
“She doesn’t look fine. I’m going to get Pericles Fehmi.”
“That man doesn’t know how to grow a mustache, much less cure anything. I told you, I forbid anyone outside the family from seeing her.”
Malik stepped closer and looked down at her unyielding face. “And who are you to forbid anything?”
She smiled, showing a mouthful of stained but perfectly aligned teeth. “I am the only person alive who knows all of the traditions of the Melisites. You need me. She needs me.”
Balkis waited in vain for the surgeon to arrive. When Malik came again, she asked him why he hadn’t sent for him. Malik said that he had, but that Gudit had locked the doors and Fehmi had gone away.
“You look better,” he commented, gently sweeping a strand of hair from her forehead. “You must have had a bad reaction to the tattoo.”
Balkis realized then that no one else besides the old priestess and the midwife knew what the initiation involved.
“I know the tattoo is painful,” Malik continued, “but look, I have it too.” He turned, pulled down his tunic, and showed her the powerful line of a wing at the top of his shoulder.
“You fool. What about this?” She pulled aside the sheet and spread her legs.
Malik clutched the side of the bed, his knees buckling beneath him. “Who did this to you?”
“Gudit said that this was the initiation,” she replied through clenched teeth. “Now I’m ready to be priestess, but my life is over.”
“Oh, my dear God.” He tried to caress Balkis’s hair, but she jerked her head away. “I remember Mother being ill when we were young, but I never thought…”
“Stupid,” she wailed. “Stupid. The only way they can get the priestess to go through with this is not to tell her, to tell no one. That old bitch Gudit has all the power.” She began to cry.
Later that day, her mother had come to see her for the first time since the initiation, the bones of her neck so frail they seemed barely able to hold up her head.
“Mother, how could you let them do this to me?” Balkis had pleaded tearfully.
“Hush, child,” she replied. “I went through this. So did all the women who were priestesses before us. In exchange, we have power, honor. We alone are allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. To be in the presence of the Proof of God, you have to be pure.”
THE CEREMONY OF accession was held in the prayer hall one month later. Three animals were sacrificed on the stone, the blood draining from their throats into a bowl before they were butchered and set to grill for the feast.
The caretaker and the new priestess stood before the iron gate adorned with a weeping angel and led the congregation in prayer.
Balkis turned to face the angel gate.
“Behold Balkis,” Malik intoned. “Behold the Proof of God, Container of the Uncontainable. Behold the Key to all religions.” He lifted the cape from her shoulders, revealing the wings tattooed on her back.
She heard the congregation gasp and whisper.
He let his own cape fall.
Two winged creatures with their backs to the hushed congregation.
She unlocked the gate, beyond which lay the Holy of Holies, and went inside alone.
25
THE BACK OF ELIF’S head barely moved as she became an instrument of her art, capturing the shapes and colors of Kamil’s orchids amid grand gray shadows and the trickle of moisture over the back of the windowpanes. She wouldn’t allow him to watch while she painted, but once, when she briefly left the room, Kamil had taken a quick look. He was stunned by the powerful thoughts and feelings these simple lines and fields of color evoked in him. Sadness, hope amid ruin. Before she returned, he sat back down in his wicker chair on the other side of the winter garden, facing away. He pretended he was reading and watched the reflection of her head in the rain-darkened glass.
After an hour and a half, Yakup signaled to Kamil that a small meal was ready. Elif put her brush down and busied herself with cleaning the trays of watercolor. When she looked up at him, it was as if from a great distance, but by the time they had sat at the table and sampled Karanfil’s lamb-stuffed pastries, Elif was chatting gaily. She looked, Kamil thought with pleasure, as if she had finally come home.
Afterward, they sat on a sofa in a room overlooking the back garden. The rain had turned to mist, fogging the windows. Yakup had lit the wood in the fireplace. Kamil brought several of his watercolor sketches of rare orchids to show Elif. Occasionally he sent a sketch and description of particularly interesting orchidaceae to H. G. Reichenbach, the world’s leading authority on orchids, who directed the botanic gardens at Hamburg University. Kamil had never received a response, but hoped through his persistence to interest Reichenbach in the many varieties found only in Ottoman lands.
He held out a sketch of an orchid with yellow-green sepals. “This is an Ophrys lutea. I drew it in a cemetery in Bursa.”
“It’s lovely. You have such a delicate touch that I can almost feel the weightlessness of the bloom. They’re remarkable flowers.”
Embarrassed by her praise, which he was convinced he didn’t deserve, Kamil put his drawings away.
Elif rotated the glass of tea in her hands, warming them. Kamil could sense her appraising him.
“Would you like something more, Elif Hanoum?” He was beginning to worry about the time.
“Pleas
e call me Elif. I stopped calling you pasha.”
Kamil was amused. “I’ve never much liked the title myself. It sounds pompous.”
“I’ve always disdained rank and titles and authority. I’ve never understood why they’re necessary.” Suddenly her voice became serious. “But I learned about that during the troubles at home.” She twisted around and faced him, tucking her feet under her on the sofa. “What I learned was that no matter what country you live in in your head, you can’t afford to ignore the one on your doorstep. If you do, it will punish you. People who have power are proud and they want tribute. You can pay it in respect or you can pay it in blood. That’s your choice.” She stared into the fire. “It’s the people who don’t have power and who suddenly get it that you have to watch out for. They never give you a choice.”
Kamil saw tears sliding down her cheeks and wondered again what she had lived through in Macedonia. He handed her a handkerchief. Elif wiped the tears from her face. He put his arm around her as if it were the most natural thing to do, and they sat silently, engrossed by their thoughts. Her shoulders under the jacket felt thin and fragile.
After a while, Elif said, “That was the first time I was able to cry since…”
Kamil reached over and pulled his finger across her forehead as he did to Feride when she was sad. “Even to grieve, you need to feel safe. You’re safe now.”
“I didn’t tell Feride and Huseyin the whole truth about what happened,” she admitted.
“You don’t need to tell anyone anything.”
“I would like to tell you.”
“I would be honored.”
“My husband wasn’t killed by the Christians. He was killed by the Ottoman army as a deserter.”
Kamil wasn’t surprised. He had heard that the armies in the provinces were so desperate for men that they were conscripting even boys and old men. It was a fatal symptom of what Huseyin had pointed to the other night, the inevitable decline of Ottoman power. How much longer could a government hold on when it had to force its citizens to abandon their own families in order to fight their neighbors?
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. The conscription is unjust.”
“He was an artist who didn’t know the butt end of a gun from the barrel.” She shook her head. “That’s not an excuse. I had to learn. Sometimes you have to do things that kill you inside. But whatever else I thought about him, he cared about his son.”
She shifted her feet and sat coiled into herself with her arms around her knees.
“He would have done it, but he didn’t want to leave us unprotected. Guerillas had put flags up all over the district like dogs leaving their mark. There was a little flag stuck into our front gate. I’m sure if I had plucked it out, they would have shot me. But it wasn’t just the flags. We heard rumors of terrible things that had happened to Muslim families in the next town. The guerillas shot the men and then…” She grasped her knees tightly. “Anyway, Dimitri told the Ottoman patrol that came to our door that he wouldn’t go, that he had to stay and protect his family. They asked him his name and he told them the truth, that his father was a Slav and his mother a Muslim. The soldier leading the patrol was very young. He didn’t even have a mustache. And here was this man telling him no and all the men in his patrol hearing it. So he had to put his foot down. He had to show them he was a man. So he said to Dimitri, ‘Well, you’re not one of us anyway,’ and just shot him point blank in the chest.” She looked up at Kamil with fathomless eyes. “And do you know what he did then?” she asked incredulously. “He pushed Dimitri aside and walked up to me and made this formal bow. I was wearing a charshaf and standing in front of the door. He bowed and said, ‘My apologies, hanoum. You’re safe now.’ Can you believe it? A polite murderer.”
“Allah protect us from people who mistake cruelty for duty and politeness for compassion. Unfortunately, our administration is full of people like that.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “I had a gun in my hand under my charshaf. If my son hadn’t been inside, I would have shot that man. My finger was on the trigger. I’ve never felt such a powerful desire to kill someone. It’s remarkable, as if you’re standing on top of a mountain and one more breath will bring on Armageddon. You can choose. Destroy or not destroy. It does something to you.”
She sat hunched up, leaning against Kamil’s chest.
“Later, when they killed my boy, I was beyond that. To kill someone else or to kill yourself, sometimes there’s really no difference.”
“What did you do after your husband died?”
“Oh, he didn’t die. Not then. He lost a lot of blood, but not enough to kill him. I went next door to our neighbor, who was a surgeon. He had delivered my son. Dimitri’s paintings hung in his house. In the summers, we drank wine together under our grape arbor. His wife was my best friend.”
She stopped speaking, unfolded herself from the sofa and walked over to the fire. She took off her jacket, then took a poker and stabbed angrily at the glowing coals. The faint shadow of her body showed through the cotton shirt and Kamil was shocked to realize how thin she was under all that material.
“Shall I send for fresh tea?” he asked. The day’s imperatives had receded. He was caught in the anguish of her reminiscences.
She shook her head and sat down beside him, keeping her eyes on the fire.
“He refused to come. They wouldn’t even open their door to me. They were Christians, you see. Even though they saw what had happened, that Dimitri had been shot by Muslims, they wouldn’t come out. I pulled Dimitri inside the house and took care of him as best I could, but the wound festered and he died, but much later. He was in great pain.” She held her hands over her ears. “I’m sure they must have heard him next door. I didn’t have the strength to bury him, so I covered him with his paintings, oils mostly, and set them on fire. I didn’t want the neighbors to get his paintings, to get anything. But I stole their carriage and two of their best horses.” She grinned, tears running down her face.
Kamil’s mind raced with images of Elif, hair cut short and dressed as a man, loaded revolver in hand, bundling her son into her neighbor’s carriage and driving away as her house went up in flames. He took her hands in his and said, “I can’t tell you how much I admire you, Elif.”
“I don’t deserve any praise. I lost everything. We got as far as Edirne before we were attacked by bandits. I don’t even know who they were.” She shrugged. “Bandits have no religion. I shot two of them, but there were too many. When I woke up, we were lying in the bushes by the side of the road.”
Kamil waited, but when she didn’t continue, he offered, “Bashiniz sagholsun. What was your son’s name?”
Her voice shuddered. “I can’t say it.”
“I understand.”
She let her head rest on his shoulder for a long while, their hands entwined.
“I’m grateful to you, Kamil. I feel you are truly my friend.”
“I’m honored by your trust.” Kamil felt his response was stilted, but in the emotionally charged atmosphere he didn’t know what else to say. “I’m your servant in all things.”
She sat up suddenly and said, “How selfish of me to take up your morning like this. Please forgive a woman who’s been living outside of time for so long, she’s forgotten that other people have duties. I can be such a bully when there’s something I want to do. I’m sure Huseyin would claim it’s a family trait.” She realized what she had said. “Oh, I didn’t mean that Huseyin is a bully.”
Their eyes met and they laughed. Her face was flushed, her eyes brilliant. Kamil thought she looked like an archangel, both beautiful and frightening. He reached for her hand and pressed it to his mouth.
He wished he had something to offer that would pull her back into the world. He had a sudden thought. “Did Feride tell you about the woman from Sunken Village?”
“Your half sister Saba? Yes. She was very excited. Other women might have been jealous or afraid, but not Feride.”
>
He told Elif he would be right back and left the room. In the hall, he took out his watch and was horrified to discover that it was eleven o’clock.
He returned a few moments later with Malik’s letter. He explained who had written it and what had happened. “We’re looking for two things, a reliquary and a lead sleeve that fits inside the reliquary and contains a valuable old document. Malik took the document out and hid it for safety. He wanted me to find the reliquary so he could reunite it with the document and give it back to the sect. But now that he’s gone, both are missing.”
“What is this document?”
“People refer to it as the Proof of God, but I’m not sure anyone really knows what it is. The important thing is that a lot of people seem to be after it.” He was about to warn Elif that this might be dangerous, then bit his tongue. “We looked through Malik’s house and didn’t find anything, so he must have hidden it somewhere else after the reliquary was stolen. I thought there might be some clues in his letter, but I couldn’t find them. Maybe you’ll see something I’ve missed.”
In addition to the story of Saba’s birth, Malik had reminded Saba of her duties as priestess.
“They have a priestess?” Elif asked. “Are they Christians?”
Kamil shook his head no. He didn’t want to go into the complications of that now; some things were not his to share.
At the end, Malik had included a prayer:
Hail Mary, Mother of the Word,
Hear those who bear your message,
