The albanian, p.8
The Albanian, page 8
I think of the Albanian.
‘And when the mystery is revealed it may not be what you want. Sometimes a mystery can just be us not understanding the full story,’ she says.
We enter a large cloistered garden. He has lit a fire in my imagination. Everywhere are the pale trunks of plane trees with sparse, falling leaves. Rows of cypress line the walkways and there are bushes with bright coloured berries. It is tranquil, despite the wandering tourists and guided groups. Once this was a home, a sanctuary to the Sultan and his family.
At the end of the path there is another gate — Bab-üs Saade, or the Gate of Felicity says the map — and beyond there are more gardens of cypress and plane trees, pavilions with ornate roofs and pillars and arches. I can see the Australian man tagging along with a group; he stands and listens to their guide speaking.
‘Let’s try and get into the museum before that big tour group.’ Anya pulls me by the hand, down the walkway, past the elderly group and through the palace doors. The Australian is behind us in his shorts and checked shirt, hiking boots and backpack.
‘It’s a good lookin’ dormit’ry this place, isn’t it?’ he says in his broad accent.
He smiles at me. He has a lot of freckles, red hair, big glasses. I smile back. Anya ignores him.
‘That tour guide reckoned this place was a dormit’ry but my book says it’s the kitchen. So d’ya wanna join me for lunch?’ He smiles again and waits for me to answer.
Anya wanders silently away, staring into the glass cabinets. I smile back at him and follow her without answering. There are embroidered costumes, armour, swords, daggers with emeralds, tortoise-shell spoons, mother-of-pearl, muskets. Anya has stopped and is pointing into a display case.
‘Look at this guy Rosa. He was a sultan but he looks like a child. So sweet.’
A young face looks warily at me. It is enamelled onto a square medallion hanging from a gold chain. It is a child’s face but with a heavy black beard that looks strange, as if it is a fake.
‘He’s very young, 1808 to 1839, only thirty-one when he died.’
‘He looks frightened,’ I say.
‘Maybe he was.’
We walk on — engraved glass bottles with gold collars and rubies, silver and precious stones. The air is stifling hot. The big tour group is right behind us and the Australian man approaches again.
‘Gotta keep ahead of those oldies,’ he says as he goes past us. There are enamelled eggs and other delicate and beautiful objects which seem to have no use and tea sets and coffee pots. My eyes, reflected back at me from the cabinets, look as wary as those of the young sultan. In the fourth room Anya stops again. I am bored with all the beautiful objects.
‘I think I might go and sit outside,’ I tell her.
She is fascinated by a large, pear-shaped diamond surrounded with little diamonds. ‘The flyer says this is the Spoonmaker’s Diamond. It was taken from Ali Pasha by Mahmud II — that’s the frightened looking boy sultan we saw! And it came from the Maharajah of Madras to a French officer to Madame Mère — Napoleon’s mother — to Ali Pasha, then here. What a beautiful stone the diamond is — so perfect,’ she says.
The crowd is shoving around us and a tiny Japanese guide is waving a flag to her group. They gather in front of the diamond and I can’t see Anya anymore. I pass quickly from one room to another to another, past the arm of John the Baptist, a piece of his skull, under a walkway lined with columns, past manuscripts, golden books encrusted with jewels and filled with flowing Arabic script, fine ink drawings. My head is churning with colour and information when I re-emerge into the air for a moment. The Australian man is behind me.
‘I’m Keith, where you from?’ he says.
‘Bunbury, WA, and you?’
‘Adelaide, but I live in London. How do you like the names of all these places? Like the Sacred Safe Keeping Rooms — all Mohammed’s shit is in here. It used to be called the Suite of the Felicitous Cloak, what a great name, ay?’
I have my own flyer and I know this. I have enough facts, I am saturated. I walk on.
‘Interesting place isn’t it?’ he says.
‘Sure, but I really am sick of looking at all this stuff, I just want to get out.’
He laughs at me. ‘You won’t get to see anything like this in Bunbury, I’ll bet. You wanna make the most of it.’
At the moment I don’t care and he really is irritating. We are caught up in the parade of tourists again and the crowd re-enters the pavilion with me amongst it. It is hot inside, the air is thick with breath and the rumbling of speech. The tourists snake slowly past the Hair from Mohammed’s Beard, his pressed footprint, wide as a Neanderthal. There is too much for me — a written page, brown and torn and scripted by God to Mohammed — the air fizzes with significance. I feel panicked because I can’t see Anya and we don’t have a meeting place. I can’t get out. The parade moves slowly around the glass cabinets and I can feel sweat trickling inside my clothes. My face is burning, I can’t even see this stuff anymore. My heart is beating strong and fast and time has stretched and slowed, a forty-five played at thirty-three. And there is the hair and the brown pages again, the felicitous cloak in its gold casket, his armour, all his stuff, all his stuff and I go round it, round and finally the exit comes.
She is waiting in the air on a step of the Sultan’s Library, looking above the heads for mine. What a relief it is to see her long burnished hair amid this crowd.
‘What an annoying man, that Aussie fellow, he just told me all about his studies in toxicology and the experiments he does on cabbages. He went on and on about it and on and on telling me which building is which and then he asked me if we’d like to meet him tonight for dinner. Sure! He said you went back to look at the beard again,’ she shakes her head.
‘Did I? I must have gone around in a circle.’
‘I think he likes you, he left you a note. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.’
I sip water from my plastic bottle, breathe deep in the air.
‘There’s just too much to take in, and it’s so crowded. I couldn’t get out and I started to panic.’
‘I guess you’re not up to the Harem today then?’
‘No Anya, you go though, if you want to. I might just wander in the gardens.’
‘I’ll see you back here in an hour then.’
She hands me the note, touches the top of my head with her fine hand and walks away. Her thongs slap against the soles of her feet. I tuck the note in my bag and pick up a plane tree leaf, yellow and browning, still soft. It is big enough to hide my face behind and I soak in its soft odour. I fold it in half and souvenir it in my guidebook. I walk into one of the courtyards, not looking for its name. There are flowers in the garden, and a marble fountain without water and I walk into a little open-air pavilion. It’s the one from the picture on my bedroom wall in Bunbury: a woman stands beneath a golden, onion-shaped roof with ornaments and fine carved edges, and out beyond her you can see the dome of a mosque and its minarets piercing a blue sky. I stand where the woman stood and for a moment I feel relief. I am here, I have fulfilled my dream. I lean over the fancy stone balustrade — it overlooks gardens and the expanse of Istanbul, swathed up to its shoulders in smog. I don’t know how they hid the smog in the photograph. The pavilion is a vacant room, all its colours eroded. There are no cushions now, but once it would have been lined in velvet and someone would be playing music and there would have been women in layers of fabrics, licking honey from their fingers. No cushions or honey now, it is the home of dead people.
I find a seat on a bench and search inside my bag for some food. I thought I had an orange in here somewhere, and there it is, and there is a comb I recognise. Not mine — his. A relic of him, with his fingerprints and his hair. It smells like orange. I draw out the hair and hold it in my fingertips. It is something real, something really him. I hold it close to my eyes, my lips. I wonder if I will ever pass this relic back to him?
Frozen. I am frozen. The orange rolls to the ground.
7
We are standing in front of an enormous obelisk and the air is heavy with the calls of street vendors. A man shouts in English. He wears the little caps he is selling stacked on his head. They are embroidered in blues and reds and yellows and some have a tassel or a bead or a bell. He smiles broadly and his white teeth contrast against the deep olive of his skin. He is standing on a low wall and points at people and shouts, ‘For you fife tousan lira,’ and, ‘For you dis one specially my mother make.’
‘Can you take a picture of us please?’ says an American man, handing me his camera. He is with a woman and they are both smiling in front of the obelisk, wearing the embroidered caps. I take the photo.
They walk off to the next monument. Anya and I are sitting on the low wall beside the cap-seller, watching the crowd. I can hear a muezzin singing out, the call for prayer. A little boy walks up to us. Strapped over his shoulders is a tray filled with perfume bottles. I guess he is about seven years old.
‘Osa-cr-della-renta! One US dollar!’ he shouts in my face. Anya and I both look at him. I look into his eyes, his metallic spirit. He shouts at me again.
‘Char-nel! Ro-chas! One US dollar!’
His little fingers grip the wooden sides of the tray. I wonder if they play in the sand, in the water with tadpoles, are learning to write. He wears shorts and giant-sized dirty white sneakers. He waits for us to buy his perfume. Anya looks away. I reach into my bag, take out some Turkish lira and hand him a couple of notes.
‘One US dollar!’
‘No, sorry, I only have Turkish money and this is more than one dollar.’
‘One US dollar!’
‘Ow!’ He pinched me! I stand up and he hurries away into the crowd. Anya shakes her head.
‘Come, let’s go to the mosque.’
We get up and walk among the crowd on large flagstones. The mosque is huge before us, with domes and minarets.
‘You know it’s only water in those perfume bottles, Rosa. I’ve seen them in Cairo. They spray a real bottle onto the tourists, take their money and give them a bottle from the tray, all in a genuine, nice box and it’s just full of water or rosewater,’ says Anya.
‘I didn’t want the perfume. I just wanted to give him something and for him to leave me alone.’
Men wash their feet. We take off our shoes, leave them in a row of footwear. Someone hands us each a cotton scarf. Anya ties it over her hair so I do the same. We enter in silence. Sunlight shows particles in the air. It is echoey inside, I can hear footsteps, the murmurs of prayer. I want to hold my breath. Men are curled over on the floor on carpets.
Great pillars hold up the dome of the mosque. They are hard stone, corrugated and pale and creamy, cold to touch. Standing like Christ against one of the pillars is the Australian man. He is barefoot, with a blue cloth wrapped about his waist as a sarong.
‘Silly eh? They wouldn’t let me in in me shorts,’ he whispers. It echoes and he smiles at me.
I can see the blue tiles reflected in his glasses. Anya turns to leave. I follow her. Outside we put our shoes back on and he is there too.
‘Hi girls! Good to see you again. I’m heading over to the ark-a-logical museum, wanna come?’
‘Thanks, but no, we have other plans,’ Anya says without looking at him.
‘What you doin’ tomorrow then?’
‘We’ve got other plans then too,’ she says, again not making eye contact with him.
‘Ah, okay, well, have a great time, eh.’
He ties up the laces on his hiking boots in silence. I feel a little sad for him, he seems lonely. We step away from the mosque.
‘Bye Keith, we might see you again,’ I say, trying to make it better. I feel sorry for him because she was so mean.
He squints at me in the sun and smiles.
We walk out to the Hippodrome.
‘You can go with him if you’d like to,’ Anya says.
‘No, he’s a dickhead.’
‘But you like him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
I don’t know why I like him. Maybe because he’s friendly and there doesn’t seem to be that mystery factor that makes me attracted. His friendliness makes me smile and he isn’t scary.
‘He’s nothing like your Albanian, I’ll bet, probably much safer.’
I laugh. She read my mind.
She turns and looks at me, pierces my eyes. ‘Your life must have been too safe,’ she says. ‘That’s why you fell for a man who makes you uneasy.’
My heart jumps. It’s true, it’s true. I feel like she’s unlocking me, seeing things I can’t work out for myself. Anya can sear right through me, with a look or a word. She leads me through the crowd of sellers and tourists to a shorter, broader mosque. I try to find my face again, something familiar, as she reads the map in her guidebook.
‘This is Hagia Sophia: that means Divine Wisdom. It’s been a church and a mosque and it is very old, nearly fifteen hundred years old. Wow!’
She takes my hand and leads me through the gate, through the crowds of tourists. Inside it is noisy, and the crowd is a thick python carrying us along. I look up at a painting of Our Lady, worn away with ages. I look up, I look up at the dome, I look up at the arc where the columns meet the ceiling, I look up at the giant black discs painted with the elegant gold strokes of Arabic script. They are names — Allah, the Prophet Mohammed, Caliph Omer — eight of them hang against the walls of Hagia Sophia. I am looking up for Divine Wisdom. I hold myself against a pillar, resisting the wave of movement from the crowd. I do not see Anya. The pillar is cold and I am alone. Amongst all these people I feel alone. My heart hits at me inside my chest and I close my eyes.
I find Anya waiting for me outside Hagia Sophia. She has bought some fruit for us for lunch.
‘I’ve been waiting out here for ages, I thought maybe you’d bumped into that Aussie fellow again.’
She stands up, washes some grapes in the fountain and we sit together, eating.
8
‘I want to buy some tea glasses. The ones that sit inside little brass holders and have tiny brass teaspoons. I also want some amber.’
We are walking fast across the lanes of traffic. Nobody slows down and Anya calls her plans to me above the hurried roar of trucks and buses and cars. On the crowded pavement at the other side, she says, ‘Rosa, slip the handle of your bag over your head, or someone will pull it right off your shoulder.’
She is breathless and we walk quickly past bunches of chicken feet tied with white string and dead ducks with floppy necks and no feathers. I cannot smell them above the petrol fumes. I call back above the roar, ‘Anya. I think I’m ready to leave Istanbul.’
She hooks my arm in hers. ‘Me too. We’ll go tomorrow shall we? I’m guessing this is the Bazaar.’
She stops at a broad entranceway. ‘This looks like a good meeting up place. If we get separated in there, I’ll meet you here around three, okay?’
I’d be happy to follow her around, but she sounds like she wants some space.
We leave the street, flow into the Bazaar. There seems to be a gravitational force inside this building and I lose Anya in the maze of alleys almost immediately. I wander around and around, past woven carpets and jewellers, tight racks of clothes, plastic baskets of toys, shoes and silver and brass, around and around through alleys, past hanging carpets and toys and the smell of coffee and just the type of teacups Anya wanted.
Proprietors sit outside their kiosks on low stools with coloured cushions. So many moustaches, thick and black, and men look quickly at me with black, darting eyes, making me nervous.
‘Café?’
He is young, selling carpets, with a deep voice. He gestures to me.
‘Come, look carpets, I make café.’
I hesitate. I’d like to sit down and I haven’t really looked at anything yet, I’ve just been wandering.
‘Come, come, you don’t need to buy. I not hurt you. I not steal your money.’
I walk up to a long hall carpet which hangs at the front of his shop. It is fine, like velvet, with an intricate border of flowers and birds.
‘Is silk carpet, this one. Very expensive. Beautiful uh?’
‘Yes, it’s very nice. Is it handmade?’ I ask, not knowing what to say.
‘Of course, all my carpet is handmade. Come from east part of Turkey near Diyarbakir. Some I buy from Azerbaijan. My brother, he take truck in there and buy from girls. They make very traditional way. But is sometimes dangerous and maybe he don’t do this year. You should buy now, maybe we not get one like this again.’
I want to, I’d like one, but I can’t imagine carrying it around until I get home. As I look at the carpets, we have inched our way inside his shop. It is dimly lit, musty. Richly coloured carpets hang all around us, and two other men sit on low stools. One is old, with a skullcap and a grey moustache, the other is younger, bearded, smoking. They stop speaking when they see me. The carpet seller pulls aside a curtain to reveal a small electric hotplate and a brass pot with a long handle. He pours coffee for me into a small glass, stirs three heaped spoons of sugar into it and indicates a low stool with a cushion, beside the men. I sit. The three men watch me. He hands me the coffee and crouches beside me.
I thank him. I’m aware that my skirt lifts up too much on this stool and I keep pulling at it. He smiles at me. The other two watch my hands. They are silent.
‘Where you come from? America?’
His eyes dash at my legs.
‘No, I’m from Australia.’
‘Ahh.’
He is silent. I sip coffee, look at the carpets on the floor.
‘You like Istanbul?’
‘It’s a big city, there are lots of things to see.’
His eyes dash at my legs again. The other men say something to him in Turkish, and he says, ‘We have many tourists. You want other café?’
