Jenny White - The Abyssinian Proof

“Where are the girls?” he asked.

“They’re taking a nap. Now that Elif is gone, it’s so quiet here. You should bring Avi with you sometime.”

“Elif is gone?” Kamil asked, startled. “Where?”

Feride tapped his face gently with her fingertips. “Not far, brother dear. Don’t worry. She has her own apartment now in Pera. Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve just been to visit.”

“She never said anything to me,” Kamil protested, then realized how ridiculous that sounded. Why would Elif have told to him?

“It’s really lovely,” Feride prattled on. “It’s in the new Camondo family building, the one on the hill. You should see it. Her windows open right onto the sea. You could throw yourself into the blue. Oh, I’m so happy for her. Huseyin offered to pay rent, but the Camondos wouldn’t take it. They said they were proud to have such a famous artist as their guest.”

They arrived at the sitting room and Feride settled herself comfortably on the sofa. Kamil remained standing.

“How does she know the Camondos?” They were a wealthy and very distinguished Ottoman Jewish family.

“Hamdi Bey arranged it. She’s going to start teaching at the academy, and well, we are a bit far away out here in the suburbs. She needed a respectable place to live. The Camondos have taken her under their wing. She’s painting again too.” Feride’s excitement had taken on an element of wistfulness.

Kamil was speechless. Elif had leapt suddenly from Feride’s dining table into a full-blown life of her own.

Feride said, “She left something for you. I’ll go and get it.”

When she was gone, Kamil pulled out his amber beads and walked aimlessly about the room, calming himself with the rhythm of the beads as they slipped one by one through his fingers. It wasn’t like him to be set adrift by a passing swell.

Feride came back with a thin parcel and handed it to him.

“Thank you, Ferosh.” He sat and rested the parcel against the chair, intending to open it later, in private. He wished he could leave now.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Feride demanded.

It seemed somehow indecent to open it in front of Feride, yet he acknowledged that he could not focus on lunch until he did. Setting the parcel on his lap, he untied the string and removed the paper wrapping.

It was a watercolor. He recognized the image right away. “ Orchis pinetorum ,” he exclaimed. The pure white blooms flashed across the page like an arc of tiny startled birds. He felt her exhilaration there, her vulnerability. There was also a tensile strength in the arc that surprised him.

Half an hour later, Ismail Hodja and Hamdi Bey arrived in the same carriage. They greeted Kamil and their hosts effusively. They seemed in excellent spirits and the conversation at lunch was lively.

“It’s too bad Elif Hanoum isn’t here,” Hamdi Bey said as the servants took away the soup bowls. “But I take full blame. She’s needed at the academy.”

Kamil listened, but ate little. His headaches had returned. He planned to ask Courtidis for more Balat Balm. He hadn’t liked the hallucinations and emotional untethering-he assumed they were side effects-but it had cured his headache, at least until Remzi hit him on the head and Owen put a bullet through his shoulder.

“The Proof of God should remain in the museum,” Hamdi Bey was saying, “where it can be copied and studied. Above all, where it can be guarded. I’ve taken a look at that flimsy prayer hall in Sunken Village. An artifact of this historical value needs to be preserved and protected. Saba Hanoum is welcome to come to the museum to look at it whenever she likes.”

Feride nodded and looked interested. Kamil had told her and Huseyin only that the Proof of God was an important sacred object and that people had tried to steal it. He wondered what they made of the conversation.

Ismail Hodja told Huseyin that Saba was keeping up the tradition of Malik’s ecumenical dawah.

“Ecumenical dawah?” Huseyin asked.

“Theological calls to discussion across religious lines,” Ismail Hodja explained, setting aside his fork. A servant whisked his plate away and replaced it with a clean one for the next course.

“I’ve taken the liberty of convening a discussion group made up of my Jewish, Muslim, and Christian colleagues, all scholars of the highest caliber. I reached out to as many denominations and sects as I could. We had our first meeting last night,” he added. Kamil could hear the excitement in the sheikh’s voice.

Huseyin was uncharacteristically silent and Kamil found himself feeling sorry for his brother-in-law, who, on this subject, was clearly out of his depth. Kamil wondered what Feride thought about her half sister being the leader of a religious sect. She had wanted to meet Saba, but Kamil wasn’t ready to let her into their lives just yet. His feelings about Saba were too confused, wrapped up in some way with that profoundly disturbing dream and his father’s betrayal.

Huseyin set to cutting up his meat with great concentration.

Hamdi Bey asked, “Will Saba Hanoum attend these meetings?”

Ismail Hodja nodded. “I asked her to come to the meeting last night. There was some resistance to having a woman in the group. But after I explained that Saba had authored some of the calls and was leader of her own sect, the others agreed that she should join us. They call her Sheikha Saba. Do you know what she told them? She said all the Prophets point in the same direction, and if we look to where they point and go there, we all end up at the same spot. Remarkable insight for someone so young.”

“What is a sheikha?” Feride asked.

“A Muslim woman who is a spiritual leader,” Ismail Hodja explained.

“I didn’t know there was such a thing,” she exclaimed.

“One of the most famous is Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, who lived about two hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his name, in the city of Basra. She was a servant of poor origin, but one night her master woke to see the light of saintliness shining about her head and illuminating the entire house. He released her and she went to live in the desert. She debated highly esteemed Sufi leaders, but outshone them all with her intellectual forthrightness and spiritual powers. It is said that one such leader, Hasan al-Basri, became envious and approached her as she was sitting on the bank of a stream with some of her followers. He threw his carpet on the water, sat on it, and called to Rabi’a to come and converse with him. Do you know what she did?”

Feride was rapt with attention. “No, what?”

“She stuck a knife in the inflated sheepskins he was using to hold the carpet up,” Huseyin suggested, eliciting a scowl from Feride.

Ismail Hodja laughed. “Excellent guess, but no. She threw her carpet up in the air, sat on it, and said, ‘Well, Hasan, come up here where people will see us better.’”

Feride laughed in delight.

“Hasan couldn’t do it, of course. And Rabi’a told him, ‘What you did, a fish can do, and what I did, a bird can do. The real work to be done lies beyond both of these.’”

“A very wise woman,” Hamdi Bey applauded.

Huseyin tore off a hunk of bread. “Thanks be to Allah, women can’t be politicians.”

They laughed.

“The Quran doesn’t forbid it, you know,” Ismail Hodja commented, his fork pausing in midair. “In verse twenty-three of the Sura of the Ants, the Queen of Sheba is described as a mighty ruler who, although she consulted with men, made all the final decisions. It is her ignorance of the true faith that is faulted, not her inability to govern.”

Feride said tentatively, “I remember something about the Prophet’s wife Aysha riding into battle on a camel.”