The Sultan's Seal Read Online Free PDF Page B

language that separated Michel and Kamil in school, but the nature of their interests.
    Soon after becoming magistrate, while Kamil was walking up the narrow streets toward his office, a man got up from a stool outside a coffeehouse and approached him. Kamil recognized the flamboyant colors of his old schoolmate’s clothing and his wrestler’s glide. That evening, they sat together in the coffeehouse and, over narghiles of apple-cured tobacco, exchanged news of their activities since graduation. Michel was finishing his training in surgery at the Imperial School of Medicine. Kamil was among the young men chosen for training in France and England as magistrates and judges in the newly introduced European-style secular courts that had shouldered aside the religious courts of the kadi judges. Michel had volunteered his services to Kamil, who eventually sponsored his appointment as police surgeon. Michel’s intimate knowledge of the neighborhood had helped Kamil solve several cases. Michel also introduced him to the Grand Bazaar, a city of tiny shops all under one roof, surrounded by a warren of workshops—hundreds of establishments, some no bigger than a man’s reach, owned by men of all the empire’s faiths. Michel’s father and two generations before him had been merchants there.
    Kamil pauses under the arched doorway leading out of the hamam, the polite formula of parting dying on his lips, unwilling to intrude on Michel’s concentration.
    Kamil turns and makes his way through the echoing antechambers. He stops at a basin, turns the metal cock all the way open, and rubs his hands together under the cold water. There is no soap, but he feels less polluted. He shakes the excess water off his hands and strides out of the gloom. At the threshold, he is momentarily felled by the brightness of the world.
    His hands still chilled, he mounts his horse and winds his way up past the village and into the forest. Here, the morning sun filters softly through the trees. Birds chirrup madly; the shrill calls of young children fall through the air like knives.
    When he reaches the road beyond the forest, he spurs his horse to a gallop.

2
When the Lodos Blows
    E very morning, my dayi, Ismail Hodja, put a soft-boiled egg in his mouth and sat without chewing, eyes lowered, until the egg was gone. It was not until I was in my twenties that I understood. Anticipation is the brilliant goad to pleasure. But at the time, I was only a child of nine, transfixed at the breakfast table. Ismail Dayi always ate the same breakfast: black tea in a tulip-shaped glass, one slice of white franjala bread, a handful of black, brine-soaked olives, a chunk of goat’s cheese, a small bowl of yoghurt, and a glass of whey. In that order. Then the egg, which lay peeled and shivering in a cobalt blue saucer, blue-white and glinting with moisture. Its broad end was slightly raised, the yolk casting a sickle-moon shadow. My uncle ate his breakfast slowly and methodically, without speaking. Then he reached for the egg with two long, slim fingers. His fingers indented the pudgy waistline of the egg as he lifted it, quivering, to his mouth. He deposited it carefully on his tongue, taking care not to brush it with his teeth. Then he closed his lips around the egg and, eyes lowered, sat until it had magically disappeared. I saw him neither chew nor swallow.
    During this time, Mama was in the kitchen, rinsing the plates and topping up the double boiler in which the tea brewed. We did not have live-in servants in Ismail Dayi’s house and Mama herself prepared our breakfast before the cook and her assistant arrived for the day. When I would ask Mama, “Why does Ismail Dayi keep the egg in his mouth?” she would look away and busy herself.
    “I don’t know what you mean. Don’t ask silly questions, Jaanan. Drink your tea.”
    Ismail was my mother’s brother. We lived in his house because Papa had taken a second wife, and Mama had moved out of our big house in