JANISSARY

JANISSARY

She needs constant care. She lost her mother too young. She is not a baby or I couldn’t have kept her alive, but her mouth is small and to feed her I chew our grub and spit it in her mouth, as birds do. Often, she won’t eat it, but some she accepts and this keeps her alive. I have wrapped her in a blanket and she is strapped to my back along with my bow and khalig. This is no life for a child. She shouldn’t have seen what she has seen, especially with her cornflower eyes. They had been yellow river pebbles, but I replaced them with flowers. I couldn’t protect her, but at least this way her eyes have a chance to have once been young. A small chance, for once the dew dries she will never again cry.

I collected straw from the stables and shaped her small limbs and chest. It was after the battle at the steep banks and we had gone among the fallen harvesting the spoils. From the infidels I collected what luck threw my way, but from the horses heavily dead I gathered her body. I gathered the straw and fodder we carry in saddle bags to soothe the horse the night before battle and remind him of the hand that feeds him so that he will serve it for love and gratitude, as a horse trained by lash honors no bond and will bolt. I descended the steep banks to the shallow stream, and scooped mud from cut earth and mixing it with the straw and buckwheat, fashioned her small limbs and chest, and solidly I shaped her wattle head and planted the two pebbles for her eyes. Then I said a prayer for her in the language from the village where I was requisitioned for the sultan, a Christian prayer, and breathed life into her. That is why she speaks Slavic because that is her soul, and was my tongue before the madrash, a language for children that I speak to my horse when I feed him. It is made from much the same things as she, steppe grass, melted snow and the voyages of sun and moon across the sky. From these things, too, horses are made, and myself, and especially a prayer and kind hand.

These are the things that made me along with others. Large things moved through the hut where I lived and it was my task to build myself into them from smaller things that I could find. How was I to build myself into my father from a spoon and bowl and buckwheat? Should I add a fish, but how and for what? Could I see a fish in him? And his footfall on the wooden floor, and his voice rooted through my bones. From this collection would I be able to build a bridge into time where I might come alive, a wooden boy, a spoon, a dish and a kestrel, rapture in my eye?

Then, they were lost into forever when I was requisitioned by the sultan at ten.

They built a metal soldier from me, slapping swords and boots on the wattle boy and covering him up, and he can’t speak to his father who had built a passage into time because into the metal soldier they put a voice box speaking Turkish and Arabic, and the saints can’t be called, either.

I have never taken a new recruit to my bunk. I could, now, since I have been in battle and have killed. I would have been taken immediately; I was already ten, nearly over ripe. It would have been by Ukrainian or another Slav, and he would have yelled curses in Turkish as he shafted me, and later whispered to me in our native tongue and comforted me, and treated my bleeding with a salve we use on horses that staunches bleeding and prevents festering.

Instead, I was taken by an officer and for two nights he gave me gifts of jewels and gowns and bathed me. He fed me dates and figs from his hand. Each night he left me to sleep alone perfumed by oils, in a bed with curtains. On the third night he beat me with a riding crop and cursed me in Arabic and slapped me. With the welts rising he forced me to dance and spat on me as I danced, and directed my steps as he would gait-training a horse, snapping my ankles with a stick. Then he entered me, facing me, and forced dates in my mouth.

My madrash studies began and my martial training. We were taught to suffer pain without surrender. Sophia tried to speak to me, but I wouldn’t trust her and wouldn’t mold her to house her voice.

Whenever I could, I went to the stables and the stableman befriended me. He alerted me when foals were to be born, and let me assist. First dropped, they looked to be precipitated from tallow. I suspect them yet of being cast in the inner light, that foundry of tabular light. I watched them in the meadow. Early, the stableman secreted me to the paddocks, and mists would rise from the meadow as the stars dissolved, and the foals coalesced from the mists and gamboled in the grass born still in paradise, and I never took a requisitioned boy.

Tonight I have picket duty. Tomorrow, we will put the infidels to the sword. The horses chew their fodder. The sound gives me peace. The grass tears lushly; I hear the water in its deep note, and they chew with an earthy note, like their hooves on loam. They have no foreboding and remember nothing but calm days and return to them as soon as the battle is over. Should they be killed, they have only known heaven and can never be lost.

“Wake up, Sophia. It’s our chance.”

“Amir, I was dreaming and you have stolen my dream from me.”

“Tell it to me. Then you’ll have it back.”

“You speak selfishly, Amir. I had dreams before you took me and they were all of things just as they are, and now I can only remember them. But, that’s the way it is, and you don’t even give me a pretty dress, and I would prefer periwinkle to corn flower for eyes, they would see more sunrises. I so like sunrises, and evenings, too. I was much given to play at those times. Such light, and the shadows are out for mischief, not even a grouch escapes being wrung into strange shapes. Find me a dress made of such colors, or the colors of fall will do nicely, or shall it be sky blue, or a winter blue? But no, a horse blanket and this sack, but why not let me sleep so once again I might weave a dress from twilight, and jewel it with the first three stars.”

“Hush, chatty girl. My officer’s coming to check if I’m awake at my post.”

“He’s gone. Now tell me what I will dream when I’m at last allowed to sleep.”

“Will you get me the dress?”

“I’ll try.”

“Will you? What’s certain is you won’t let me sleep, anyway. Well, if you wish to know, take me down to the stream, and I’ll tell you things you might dream before the battle tomorrow. But, you must take me to the stream. I won’t tell you until you break an order given to you in Turkish.”

I had to promise her the dress again and then she told me.

“I can tell you where this stream has been and what it has seen. I understand its tongue. You baptized me in such a stream. This stream talks with other rivers, even the Don, and this river knows a certain family that lives beside it in the Ukraine. Yes, it does. Tomorrow, no later, the dress. On your soul.”

“Yes. Yes. I already promised. And my soul, no less.”

“This family has come for years, the river has seen them christened and buried through the generations, and it has collected their reflections, and here is one of them to seal your promise. Two children, a boy and a girl, came to this river and they wee naked and they were all alone but they weren’t afraid. They ate only what grew in trees and the animals weren’t shy around them. They were your parents, before you were born. The world was their garden where they held hands and they walked by the river, and the river tells me it is everywhere like this. If it looks out from its bed it sees all the children like this, their cottages and the paths they follow into the garden. Sometimes the garden is only a single flower, and that is enough because it’s a periwinkle, and it is always that way in reflections the stream caches. So, looking in it you’ll always see yourself reflected in a world where your happiness is promised forever. Now, let me sleep and keep your promise or next time you’ll have to try to dream what horses dream and answer forever to metal spurs.”

Next day we put the infidels to the sword. They had not given the sultan his tribute. With my khalig I pierced the farmer’s heart. His blood gushed out, and from his blood-dyed shirt I will make Sofia her dress, because blood dries into the color of autumn leaves.

That night I dreamed a family across a stream. They came mornings and evenings to eat on its banks; mom and dad and their children, a boy and a girl. I saw the boy fishing, and that day, while dozing, he caught a reflection and brought it up from the stream, and looked across at me where I lay sleeping beneath an apple tree.

Every sultan has ordered his jewelers and smiths to fashion him a golden bird that will sing to him a song that will live forever without tarnishing. When this bird is fashioned, he will live inside the song.

The sultan brings us to the palace from our barracks, those who have kept their golden hair. We are his servants and personal guard, and on Ramadan we sing to him. He asks for cavalry songs during most of the year, and we are dressed in battle regalia. But, for Ramadan we wear children’s clothes and sing lullabys. Every requisitioned boy is required to sing a lullaby to the court musician when he first arrives. The sultan likes best the one taken from the Armenian infidels. We sing of almonds and raisins, a cradle with a little white goat beside it, and the sultan whose beard is white, cries as he listens.

“Do you like the dress, Sofia?”

“It’s better than a rag.”

“Can you hear the lost boy?”

“Maybe I can, but if you want to know you must gather wild flowers and build me a crown from them.”

“You are worse than the officers.”

So, I gathered wild flowers. If you are on the lookout you can find them peeking from any place. The woods and streams have sent emissaries to every neglected spot-a corner in the latrine, a garbage dump. In her new dress and crowned with flowers I tried Sofia again.

“The lost boy is living among the fairies and birds, not far from his parents but invisible to them. When you were first taken, he tried to come with you, but all the military training and religion bored him and he made his way back. The same stork who delivered you to your parents as a baby dangling from his beak, ferried him home again. He called and it recognized his voice and stopped to add him to his cargo received in the clouds.

He could not rejoin his family because by now he could only be heard calling from remembered things, like a ghost. He determined to learn all the animal tongues so he could be heard again. The fairies told him that people only understand the sweet melancholy sung by birds. He snuck into their nests and learned along with their chicks. He learned wren song, and meadow lark and even the nightingale.

When he had thoroughly learned the nightingale song he would sing it by his parents’ cottage and they would think of him and he could enter their dreams. In one of their dreams he was carried towards death, and he stopped his song. Dizzy with his narrow escape, he clambered his way into a swallows nest. He shared their diet of insects that lets them darn the hole opened when they fly between here and the land of the dead. Now, he could escape from the current of his sadness.

This is enough for a crown of flowers and an ill-fitting dress. For more, you must discover what I want. Otherwise, I won’t believe you love me half so much as he does. He can only give me songs, but such songs; you just sing stolen songs for the sultan. Gather a song for me.”

The sultan’s oldest son had rallied his allies to help him usurp his father. We had to closely guard the sultan. His bouts of nostalgia pulled him towards the other world. The sultan didn’t have the will to execute his son, but to his son’s allies who had nurtured this betrayal and impatience, he was merciless. We were called on to torture them until others were named and then execute them. His melancholy grew worse. He had the royal yacht made ready and accompanied by twelve of his palace guard and his boat watched by a small armada of navy ships, we sailed upon the Black Sea and through the Bosporus to the Aegean.

Dolphins led us through the straits.

And then it was night. I woke Sofia.

“I have learned a song from the dolphins”, I told her. Then I sang her their song. It tune is from the Armenian lullaby.

“Soldier, when you will die,

I’ll take you where the sun sleeps,

Deep within the waters.

There you will sleep, too,

Surrounded by stars and by diamonds,

Now sleep while the moon longs for you.”

When I had finished, Sofia told me the stolen boy had sung that same song to her. And that he had learned that death is where the sun sleeps at night and it is not dark there.

“All the seeds that will grow are tended there by songs and they teach about the day by the longing they have for it. This makes their vision of it as sweet as heaven and from this the peach grows, and they have imagined blue sky and green leaves and so it comes to pass, for the seed knows nothing but what they fill it with.

And here Saint Nicholas is loaded with his gifts. Prayers are spoken here, and Jesus gathers them and from them he makes souls that shall always build heaven from longing and the prayers of children.”

That is when they seized me and Sofia and took us to the brig. They took Sofia from me and left me in irons. But soon they came for me and steered me to the sultan’s quarters.

“Since we have entered the Aegean your hair is more golden than ever.”

He was holding Sofia. Was he looking at her with sadness?

“My son who rebels against me is the first child of my first wife. He was born with blond hair and until he was four his hair was blond. I dreamed of his mother before I married her. When I was only twelve, I dreamed of her. And when I had fever, long after I had twenty wives, I dreamed only of her, but as I had dreamed of her before I was knew her. She is the only wife I have loved and her son the only child who gave me joy. My own father would have fared better had I not been born. It is natural. But, I am tired of fighting against life. Only this son and his mother have been abandoned by me, the rest can only accuse me of formality.”

He beckoned the soldiers to release me, and for me to approach him. He waved them from the room and gave Sofia back to me.

“My son had a doll. It looked like you. A young soldier, a Janissary. I had it made for him. He had no weapons, instead a lute and flute. I had him taken from my son when he entered training. I believe life requires this from us. But, what does Sofia say to you that has turned your hair golden on this turquoise sea with its golden sparks?”

I told him the dome of the Blue Mosque is what an infant knows sleeping on his mother’s breast.