The Black Tulip

City of the World’s Desire

Finally, one day the doors to the small hold open, and light spills in. The brothers order everyone out, growling at them to hurry, and the girls stumble to their feet after being folded into the same cramped position for so long that some of them collapse and have to be helped up. Laleena dodges out of the way, pulling Lena with her, and the two make their way through the crush of girls to a railing to hold onto. She breathes in the fresh air deeply for the first time in what feels like weeks, then lifts Lena up so she can see over the side of the boat.

Before their eyes is the most exquisite beauty Laleena has ever seen. It’s evening, and a light fog is filtering through the air. The boat glides through a narrow strait lined on each side with marvelous mansions and forests, and boats of every kind travel alongside them. The first sight of the city looks as though it has stepped straight out of one of the Thousand and One Nights stories Father used to tell. Tall, narrow spires sprout from the hills, and Laleena realizes they must be the minarets Cafer Efendi told her about. She thinks this has to be İstanbul, one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world, and so much bigger than Trabzon.

When the boat drops anchor, the girls gather their ragged bundles and baskets, all that remains of their belongings, and climb down to land on legs still unsteady from the voyage. Laleena holds Lena’s small hand tightly as they’re loaded into covered oxen carts. Lena falls asleep in her arms almost immediately, but though the curtains are drawn, the other girls compete for the slits where they can peek out at the beautiful city passing by.

As the cart rolls on, Laleena listens intently to sounds so different from home: loud horns, and then a man’s voice rising in song, “Allahüakbar! Allahüakbar!” Before it fades, another voice answers it from a different minaret, carrying the same call across the rooftops. It becomes their lullaby that night.

Cafer Efendi delivers the girls to a house larger than any Laleena has ever seen, where women lead them straight to a women’s hamam, a public bathhouse. There they are scrubbed and cleaned, and their heads are examined for lice; some girls have their hair cut, and some are deloused. When it’s Lena’s turn, Laleena begs the attendant to spare her long, wavy white hair, insisting Lena is a special being. The woman considers this for a moment, then lets the hair be.

Dressed in simple cotton gowns buttoned to the waist, the girls are brought together with others gathered from many different places, including some with skin the color of coffee, from a place called Africa. A hearty lamb stew follows, the first real meal they’ve had in weeks, and then the girls are led to a dormitory so clean the beds smell of freshly scythed grass. Laleena falls asleep almost instantly.

Before bedtime, though, the older girls are separated from the younger ones, and Lena cries at being pulled away. Laleena doesn’t know where Lena has been taken and only hopes she isn’t getting into trouble for crying too loudly. The next morning, Laleena still doesn’t see her.

Instead, she’s led up a winding stairway to a large room, where a broad-shouldered woman soon arrives, dressed in a yellow feradje lined with blue. A translucent, striped yashmak covers her mouth, neck, and eyebrows, and the edges of her dress are trimmed in fur. When she raises her arms, an emerald ring and gold bracelets flash and jingle at her wrists, and dangling earrings swing beneath a tortoiseshell hotoz. She is so tall and strongly built that Laleena at first mistakes her for a man, until she lifts her veil to reveal a strong, beautiful face.

The woman introduces herself as Madam Siranush. She speaks in Turkish. She tells the girls plainly that they are simple, with no manners, gathered from all over the Ottoman Empire, and that over the next several days she will teach them how to use their eyes, how to sit and walk gracefully, and how to speak sweetly and serve guests properly. “You must obey,” she says firmly.

Laleena is glad she already knows Turkish and pities the girls who don’t understand a word of it. Slowly, on the outside, they stop being girls from the Caucasus or other far-flung corners of the Empire and become girls from İstanbul instead. What’s happening to them on the inside, though, is something none of them dares speak of yet.

Laleena manages to learn that Lena is being kept elsewhere in Madam Siranush’s household, and she hopes she’ll soon be able to catch a glimpse of her.