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what he saw. He lacked both intelligence and a real interest which might have pushed him to peer underneath and locate her real character. He failed abysmally to uncover her interior. She had a fair skin, luscious lips, a broad forehead, dark flowing tresses, blue eyes and it was claimed by him who knew that underneath her robes she possessed a body that was an “embarrassment of riches”. For myself I hate this phrase, but Grandfather Mahmut used it often when in his cups, as a boast and an explanation to old friends who wondered aloud how he could possibly tolerate her mindless obsession with all things trivial.
    Mahmut himself was not a very profound person. He had chosen not to burden himself with too much knowledge but, Allah be praised, how he enjoyed the three pastimes common to believers since the days of the Prophet. My grandfather loved wine, hunting and fornication and in that order. He could not hunt without a drink and he could not mount my grandmother without having killed some unfortunate beast. Even a rabbit helped him perform well in this respect.
    Unfortunately for him, Sabiha regarded all three practices with the utmost repugnance. She had grown up in the palace. Even as an eight-year-old she had observed men in their cups and spoke often of how the sight had filled her with nausea, without ever being more specific. Who knows what she saw or experienced as a child in the palace where the Caliphs of our faith held sway, or how deeply it affected her? It was said that her father’s decision to marry a Japanese courtesan had upset her greatly. In the conflicts that followed her father always backed his new wife against his children. Sabiha felt abandoned and it coloured her attitude to men and the power they possessed, but this is not what she told her friends.
    They were informed casually that Mahmut Pasha was not a real man, that she derived no pleasure through coupling with him. That he was less effective than a dog and that after his children were born he had, Allah be praised, become impotent. However hard she tried, his little radish refused to stir. In fact she did not try at all. She never permitted him in her bed again.
    Mahmut Pasha, self-loving and pleasure-seeking as ever, was enraged by these slurs on his manhood. He responded characteristically by lifting a Circassian serving wench from the kitchen and transporting her to a chamber near his bedroom. She became his mistress. Petrossian’s grandfather was the Sultan of our kitchen at the time. He, too, had a soft spot for the woman, but bowed before the superior will of his master.
    The Circassian—to this day I have never heard her real name mentioned—was illiterate. As a young girl, she had been bought for the household from a passing trader in Istanbul and trained as a kitchen maid. They say she possessed a natural intelligence. They say she made Mahmut Pasha laugh a great deal and, most important of all, she rejuvenated him between his legs. It was not long before news of her existence began to spread outside the family.
    She began to accompany Mahmut Pasha on his hunting trips. Her presence compelled him to reverse the order of his pleasures. Now he could not hunt until he had been pleasured by the Circassian and only after the sport was over did they both share a cup of wine. He should have married her, but Mahmut Pasha was a coward. He was cowed by three fears. He feared the Sultan’s displeasure. He feared a decline in his own social status. He feared the wrath of his father.
    None the less he frustrated all Sabiha’s attempts to have her Circassian rival removed from the scene. Why did Sabiha care so much about this particular concubine? The practice was as common then as it is now. I think it was the public humiliation that upset her. If my grandfather had remained discreet she would not have felt insulted, but Mahmut Shah was angry with Sabiha for impugning his virility. And so he refused to hide his wench from the public gaze.