The Sultan's Daughter, стр. 98
And, too, I was responsible in a very acute way for the terrible pain that was tearing my lady apart at just that moment. It was not sheer blind vengeance that made husbands kill the eunuchs as well as the adulterous wife when the crime was discovered. If it were that this strange God Allah, whose will I had, perhaps, misunderstood, were taking it upon Himself to punish the sin even when it was still a secret to mortal eyes, He would have revenge on me as well. I was certain I could not live if Esmikhan were dead and that reflected, eternal part of her beyond my reach. If Sokolli Pasha did not have me killed, I would, I decided alone in the mosque, be obliged to kill myself.
When the morning call to prayer brought ranks of men to interrupt my sanctuary, I participated, but without much faith, as if this Allah were a capricious master I could not trust. Then I went back to the house.
During the night, the child had begun its descent down the birth canal.
“Thanks be to Allah,” I blurted.
The Quince shook her head soberly but wearily. She had had no time to enjoy her own drugs, and reality, more than the long hours, was telling on her.
“Now your lady is so exhausted she cannot push. The pains come like swift waves and merely wear her away like the crumbling of a shoreline. I do not know if she can do it. Allah alone knows.”
I escaped this news into the streets of Constantinople once more. Making some attempt to learn word of the army was diversion, although very little and seemingly very useless. By evening the rumors had begun to have a common tint, which spoke of some truth, behind them. There had been disaster. Some ships of the fleet had been sighted off Pera, but they were loathe to enter the harbor before nightfall.
“Sokolli Pasha dares not show his face by daylight in this city,” one man said. “You mark my words, the Sultan will replace him for this.”
There was no word of joy I could take home with me, nor did I meet one at the birthing room door.
“It is useless,” the Quince said. “We can do no more. She cannot even hold herself up on the birthing stool. She will die in any case. As Allah is my witness, I have no choice but to cut the child out.”
To cut the child out, to murder the mother. “I will take that same knife and use it, still warm, on myself when you have done that!” I cried.
So saying, I pushed the old woman out of the way, sending the numerous charms on her headdress and bosom a-jangle. I stepped over the gunpowder in one great stride: in a moment or two we could all come and go as we pleased, for my lady would be dead and the gunpowder of no earthly purpose but to fill cannon and cause more death. I passed the bundles of dead-weary women, whose “Allah akhbars” were no more than sighs, and whose hands fanned themselves instead of the woman in labor. I picked Esmikhan up off the floor. She lay there like some discarded rag with all life drained from her, but when I moved her, the increased pain brought some stiffness of life in her limbs.
“Abdul...,” she murmured.
Her lips were white, cracked, and dried as if they were made of mosaic. Her face had begun to take on in reality the aspects of the death mask I had envisioned several weeks before, but I ignored it, searching for the life that still glimmered in the other mirror. I grasped my own elbows around her distended waist and squatted to the floor, holding her tightly between my thighs. I felt a spasm of pain go through her, and I took it on myself.
“Push, my lady.”
“Can’t.”
“You must.”
“Hurts.”
“You must. You will die if you don’t.”
“Already...”
“No, by Allah. Think of the child,” I hissed in her ear, hoping the other women would not be listening, but of course they were. “Think how it was conceived. Think of Rumi’s Stone in Konya and the blessings of the Almighty. Think of the nightingale’s song.”
“Uh-uh,” she gave a little grunt of refusal.
I could feel the swell of another pain building in her and I countered it with the vise of my arms.
“Esmikhan,” I shouted. “Push! Push!”
“Allah’s will…”
“Esmikhan. I will not let you die. If you die, I will die as well. By all that is holy, I swear it. I will not live without you. I love you, Esmikhan. More than life. Do not kill me as well.”
I think she could feel my tears hot upon her neck where the sweat was already clammy as a corpse.
“Abd...” She began to say my name, but turned her strength into a push instead.
“That’s it,” I exclaimed. “Again. Once more.”
“No...,” she said, but she did, sucking strength from my arms until they felt as weak as mint jelly. Again.
She did, and suddenly there was a sound of rushing water. Through my slippers, my feet got wet. And a tiny wriggle of white and red slipped out into the Quince’s hands.
The attendants opened their mouths to rejoice as if they had witnessed a miracle. They shut them again immediately and went about their work in silence. Whatever the miracle of life, etiquette would not allow them to jubilate.
“What...What...?” Esmikhan found strength to ask, for the Quince was keeping the child to herself for a moment—a long moment of internal struggle, or so it seemed.
The Quince blinked away some nagging thought and then said, with a faint smile, “I’m just tying off the cord, lady. She’s a perfectly healthy girl, Allah shield her. There, the