Miroslav Penkov - East of the West

“He watches as she comes near.

“ ‘Why, my poor brother,’ the girl asks him, ‘have you forgotten your own? It is your blood you shed as you slay them, my brother. It is your blood you spill.’

“Ali takes out his yataghan and jumps off the horse to cut the girl. The frightened eyes of the villagers — Christians he has sworn before the sultan to convert to Islam — follow him as he swings the sword through the air, desperately trying to butcher this apparition. But, as usual, the girl is gone. She has sunk back in his mind, only to return again on some other occasion and in some other form.”

I stop for a moment to catch my breath.

“Taté?” Elli says. “How is this story about our family?”

“Wait,” I say. “Just listen. And try to fall asleep. It’s getting late. So this story,” I say, “does not begin with Ali Ibrahim, really, although it ends with him. It begins eighteen years earlier with the birth of my great-grandmother — the prettiest woman who ever lived.

“It is well known, even before her birth, that my great-grandmother would be the most beautiful woman in the world. So on the day she draws her first breath, men from all over come to pay her tribute. The line in front of the house is so long that it takes the last man twelve years before he finally falls at her feet and presents his gifts of honor.

“Because of my great-grandmother’s supreme beauty, the laws of cause and effect in the village break down for a while. An event is no longer followed by its usual consequence but instead leads to something completely unexpected. This is first noticed when a few of the men waiting to see the newborn get so anxious that they start throwing stones at the house. Contrary to all expectations, the windows do not shatter, but the leaves on the nearby trees momentarily turn red and begin falling as if autumn has come months before its time. Five houses down, a girl desperately falls in love with her uncle because two kids try to drown a bag of black kittens in the river, and an old woman is run over by a bull because on the other end of the village a housewife forgets to put potatoes in the stew.

“Word that the child destined to be the most beautiful woman has been born spreads quickly. It travels from the steep banks of the Danube through the snowcapped peaks of the Balkan range to the vast rose valleys of Kazanlak and the strait of the Bosporus until it finally reaches the ears of the great sultan in Istanbul. His Greatness immediately loses sleep over the beauty of my great-grandmother simply by listening to others talk about her. For days, a wretched shadow, he sits under the fig trees longing for her, and nothing seems to bring him pleasure anymore. The songs of the most exotic canaries of Singapore are but dreadful noise to his ears. The caresses of the prettiest of his wives chill him to his bones and make him want to weep in solitude. Eating is his only way out of the misery. With every sunrise the sultan devours a dozen dishes of baklava, each one more soaked in honey than the one before. With every noon he feasts on three roasted lambs garnished with trout liver and woodpecker hearts, and when the sun sets behind the palace he seeks comfort in the meat of twenty ducks and two baby calves. All this food makes him so obese, so absolutely humongous, that nothing within a hundred steps can escape his shadow.”

“He’s a fat bastard,” Elli says, and giggles. “Like in the movie.”

“Exactly,” I say. “Fat bastard describes him spot on. For eighteen long years this fat bastard of a sultan prays to Allah to give him good health so he can live long enough to hold the most beautiful of all women in his arms. On one misty spring morning after almost two decades of suffering, the sultan disbands his harem and sends his servants to call for the great vizier.

“ ‘It is obvious that I have lost my mind over this woman,’ the sultan tells him. ‘I have waited long enough for her to grow up, and now I should finally hold her in my arms. Tell the best silk weaver to make the finest black feredje . Then send our most merciless janissary along with one hundred soldiers to take her from her house. Tell them to veil her with the feredje and never to look at her face, because whoever lays eyes upon my bird I will punish with blindness.’

“The vizier signs a firman and puts the sultan’s red seal on it, then gives it to the best rider with the swiftest Arabian steed and tells him: ‘Run all day and all night until you reach the village of Klisura, where Ali Ibrahim is converting slaves by the sword to our true faith. Find him and give him this firman . Tell him to obey every word in it lest he lose his head. Be back in one moon and the sultan will give you your weight in gold. Come a day later and your head will roll in the dirt.’

“The rider finds Ali Ibrahim waving his yataghan through the air near the chopping log in the yard filled with peasants and soldiers. He gives Ali the firman and waits for him to read it.

“ ‘Never have I been more humiliated,’ Ali Ibrahim says, and throws the letter at the feet of the notice bringer. ‘I should at least take the pleasure of killing you for bringing me such news. Go back to His Greatness and tell him that Ali Ibrahim will bring him the most beautiful of all women. But along with her, you tell him, Ali Ibrahim will turn her whole village to the true faith; for Ali has sworn to reveal the face of Allah to the slaves, not to chase harlots for the sultan.’

“After these words he jumps back on his black stallion and casts a last glance at the yard washed in red and the crowd of trembling faces. He orders half of his men to carry on with the conversion, while the remaining hundred soldiers he leads out of the valley, heading for the village of my great-grandmother, the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Elli’s breathing has become soft and even, but she isn’t sleeping yet. She’s just dozing off and coming to again. I lie quiet for some time until suddenly she perks up, surprised at herself for dozing. “Ali Ibrahim,” she chatters. “Who is he, taté? Who is Ali Ibrahim?”

I pet her cheek and hair and tell her to lie down and close her eyes.

“Ali Ibrahim is a janissary,” I say. “It is Bulgarian blood that runs in his veins. According to the orders of the sultan, every five years the slaves have to pay their blood tribute — the devshirmeh . No one can escape the recruitment; the most capable boys are taken away to become part of the imperial army, and those parents who try to hide their sons are punished with death.

“Ali was parted from his mother when he was twelve, when he still had his Bulgarian name and still believed in the power of the Holy Cross. At dawn one morning, the recruiting soldiers came like crows of darkness, and by the time the sun died behind the Balkan Mountains they had selected forty of the healthiest and strongest boys in the village to take away. Ali Ibrahim was not among them. But it was his mother who chased the soldiers and fell at their feet and begged them to take him. She was a widow and meant well for her boy: as a peasant, she knew, he had no future, he was destined to die a slave. But as a soldier, as a janissary, the whole world could be his. ‘Take him, Aga,’ she cried, and pushed the boy forward, and the boy did not know why his mother did this, could not understand.

“For weeks, then, the convoy of boys, guarded by fifty soldiers, walked the path to Istanbul — south through the Rhodope Mountains and east through Edirne, then farther east. In Istanbul the boys were bathed, their hair was shorn and torched. The names of their fathers were erased and they were given good Muslim names. No past lay behind them: they were faceless in the hands of the sultan. Humble servants in the name of the true God.