The Past Tense Of Youth: The New favourite

On February 9, 2014October 9, 2014 By Renee Lou Dallow ( Bourgeoise Bloomers )In Changing the world, Now and then, stories of mystery and romance

It was late afternoon and our precession had moved through the entrance gate and on past the imperial council chambers where various statesmen awaited an audience with the sultan. Behind the council chambers was the tower of justice and the armoury heavily patrolled by armed guards no doubt anticipating a break from their duties so that they could raid the nearby bakeries for fresh loaves and simit rings. We would continue on through the main gate to the courtyard of the concubines which is where I would alight the carriage along with my consorts and assigned guards and eunuch. Behind us came the servants carrying trunks loaded with the fabrics and other trinkets purchased from the markets. As we moved toward the pavilion we were greeted by pigeons playing some sort of game.

They would fly toward us and as soon as we put out our hands to provide a safe perch they would fly off . Were they carrying messages? Maybe there was a way afterall to contact the world outside. All the while I watched as Rana’s carriage continued on to the other end of the palace grounds. The courtyards and apartments of the favourites. I wondered how long it would be before we saw each other again. Not long I surmised as I too would be moving into their quarters though I doubted the sultan would have eyes for any woman other than Rana once he had summoned her. The three who had shared Rana’s carriage were now being led through the corridor to the bath house. I would be joining them after a meeting with the valide sultan. The others were now openly hostile toward me. ” You with your yellow hair pale as the moon ….. what makes you so special? Little comedienne with your tricks and your hidden curves …. why not fly away with your pigeons? ….. oh maybe you can’t fly at all …. maybe you are not so clever as you thought …. You may be favourite now but it won’t last Emine” I made my way to the imperial hall for my meeting with the valide sultan under guard of course.

My eunuch ,whose name was Jamahl , carried the chosen fabrics for her perousal. ” You have done well my dear” , she purred as as she traced her elegant but wrinkled little hand decked in golden rings, across the silk brocade. She smiled her cheshire smile and waved me out of her presense. Just as I reached the door she spoke again. ” You have been assigned to the new girl … Rana …. is it? ” I turned and smiled. I could not believe my luck. ” Yes I believe that is her name your excellency” . She turned away from me then toward the window from which she could see the Imperial hall. ” I believe she is just now being presented. ” I moved toward the valid sultan hoping for a glimpse. She did not turn again but in a very firm voice bade me leave immediately. I met with Jemahl who waited outside in the courtyard and was escorted to the bath house where I would be bathed, perfumed and robed before being moved to the court of the favourites.

The Past Tense Of Youth: Chosen to dance

On January 2, 2014October 9, 2014 By Renee Lou Dallow ( Bourgeoise Bloomers )In Now and then, Romantic interludes, stories of mystery and romance

The carriage ride back to Topkapi was quite an event for me for it was a whole new world full of noise and colour and …. dust.
So much dust rising up from the winding roads caking the curtained windows from which I viewed the passing villagers and the beautiful countryside which they had the freedom to wander at leisure.
The women, though veiled, appeared contented as they went about their family errands.

I shared the carriage with two black eunuchs and with another of the servants much younger than I . She was , in fact, my dresser as well as being a sort of consort there to watch me and report my every move back to the sultan. I have mentioned the sultan many times but have not yet described him and so I will attempt to do so now from my own very distanced and very subjective point of view not having all the facts. The man who had reigned as sultan at the time of my entrance to the harem in the year of 1908 was Abdhul Hamid the second. I was twenty one years old and had apparently been there since 1897 when the sultan’s men had taken me from my parents in our small Albanian village at the age of ten. I had only fleeting memories of that life but the memories of my life in Cumberland at Greylin castle in the years up to and including 1936 were all too clear.

Abduhl Hamid 11 was a strange but kindly little man who was to me like a father figure though he was nothing like my father back in England at all. The sultan was also very cultured and was a lover of European operas and of all the arts. He also loved to design furniture and specialised in exquisite wood turned chairs. That very morning I had heard from others in the harem that a visiting opera company would be performing for the sultan and for select officials and dignitaries at Yildiz Palace close by and that his excellency was trying to decide on which of his favourites should dance for the company at curtain close. As I sat there in the carriage, listening to the whirr of wooden wheels and the clanking of spokes rotating in their sockets and pondered on the likelihood of my being chosen to dance. Behind us was another carriage escorted by carefully chosen guards and at least a dozen janissaries on fine horses. In this carraige was the divine Rana and the three others purchased on that day. I could see the sultan’s men jostling for a place beside the carraige door so that they could peer in and gaze at the circassian beauty who was as unobtainable to them as was a mountain of gold. I knew that Rana , after appearing before the sultan, would be chosen.

How could he resist her? She was by far the most exotic creature I had ever seen. Her wild raven hair would surely complement my honey locks and we would make quite a contrast. I peered out through the slits in the window bracket with only a gauze veil to sheild my mouth from rising dust particles and thought I noticed a lone horseman following her entourage. A white horse. A dazzling white horse. It was he. Gurel. My Gurel come to save us. I thought then of the painting I had seen in ‘The Long Hall’ at ‘ The Hydro Majestic’ and realised that we three would be forever entwined but that the love Gurel felt for Rana was not the same as the love he would feel for me. Somehow this understanding seemed to make everything right. All would be the way it was meant to be and there was nothing I could do to change it. I must just be content to love for the sake of love and to be able to share the one I had chosen with one who would make him whole.

For without having loved Rana his soul would never be free and he would never have found me. ‘The Blue Mountains’ in that far distant land of Australia were of the same hue as the Caucases where Rana and Gurel had roamed as gypsies and danced with nature as their universe. How I longed to emulate that wild spirit but knew that to do so would be to dishonour my calling. I must remain true to myself. I was the slow burning flame never to be extinguished.

© Renee Dallow ( Hybiscus Bloom ) 2/1/2014

The Past Tense Of Youth: Emine from concubine to favourite

On October 1, 2013August 11, 2014 By Renee Lou Dallow ( Bourgeoise Bloomers )In Now and then, stories of mystery and romance

So where did I fit into this picture? How had I become a favourite of the sultan and Rana’s unofficial hand maiden? I had never actually studied my ancestry but remembered talk of family connections in Albania . I learned from Rana’s diary that I had been chosen by the sultan after that day at the slave market to be her personal servant. I was no longer Emma. My name was Emine and I had been sent to the market that day to buy cloth for the dressmakers of the harem ,under guard of course, along with others of my status. What was my status? I had only recently been chosen as a favourite having been a mere concubine just days before. Memories came flooding back of the day I had been taken from my family.

I was all of ten years old at the time and had tried to flee with my mother but we were captured and thrown onto the horses of Ottoman soldiers. My mother had died before we reached Topkapi having tried to escape and been thrown from the horse in the attempt. I had seen her fall and knew that if I struggled the same fate could befall me. The pain I felt at losing my mother was immense but I resolved to do whatever I had to in order to survive. I had decided to endear myself to my captor if that were at all possible and use the skills taught me by my parents to do so. I had never actually been chosen to go with the sultan as he had regarded me more as a daughter than a potential conquest. I was energetic and fiesty with a grand imagination which the sultan found endearing. When he came to visit the harem he would bid me tell him one of my stories or mime the events of the day. The others were very protective of me and also a little afraid of the things I could reveal about them.

Being the daughter of Abdyl Frasheri the Albanian hero responsible for the league of Prizren in the year of 1878 which stipulated the need for an independent Albanian state had made me a fighter. I was born in 1887 one year after my father, who had been captured and imprisoned by the Ottomans, was at last released and reunited with my mother. Ten years later in the year of 1897 there was another uprising led by my father during which the Albanian Nationalist union was dispanded. This is when It was decided to punish the leaders who had fled by scattering their families and that is how I came to be a child of the harem. It was now 1908 and I had just turned 21. The sultan had begun to look at me through new eyes. I was no longer the amusing child he had found such a diversion. I was now a beauty and as such was to be primed for a private audience with the sultan in his chambers.

Before this could happen I had to be taken to the part of the harem reserved for the favourites to undergo the training necessary to make me everything and more in accordance with the sultan’s pleasures. I was taught to move with the sensuous stealth of a young tigress, to smother myself in sweet smelling oils and perfumes after bathing, to drape myself in silks and satins which would reveal the soft curves of my body and sit for hours while my hair was braided and coiled with flowers and diadems. It was part of my training too that I waited on the sultan and on his wives including his mother the dowager sultan. It was she, his mother who had sent me to the markets that day and for this I am eternally grateful. For from that day forward only Rana could fulfill the every desire of the sultan. I was chosen to be her handmaiden, confidante and friend and it was I who knew her for the catalyst she would become.

The Past Tense Of Youth: Odalisque

On August 30, 2013August 11, 2014 By Renee Lou Dallow ( Bourgeoise Bloomers )In Now and then, stories of mystery and romance

How could he have made his way past the guards and through the gates of the first and second courtyards into the harem? How could he, my Gurel, have made his way into the past at all? How had I come into the picture? I no longer knew what year I was in or even when or where I had been born. Everything… all my time lines … had been thrown into dissaray.

Was I still 22? Was I still married? How far back in time had I travelled and what was I to Rana? How had I first met her and how had I been made privy to her innermost secrets? She had left the diary there for me on purpose. It would contain my story too surely. I had played an instrumental role in her love life and she in mine. But was this really the same man? Somehow all three of us had formed a bond in a former life that had been broken.

Something terrible had happened to one or all three of us that had never been resolved. Now here I was living the life of a concubine in a harem which was so much more than just the room In which I was now standing. It was an entire neighbourhood with kitchens , bath-houses,mosques, laundry, infirmary,courtyards and apartments. All connected by stairwells, corridors and cobbled laneways.

Trees shaded the pathways and beautiful gardens surrounded the fountains. There was life everywhere. What part had Gurel played in this life and what had he been to Rana? It was clear from the diary that she had longed for him ever since their eyes had first met at the slave market. How had he made his way to her or was this still to come? Suddenly I could hear voices on the stairs. A group of women were returning from the bath house and Rana was amongst them. I returned the diary to it’s position on the table making sure it was right way up and with it’s marker in place and then quickly returned to my own room across the hall.

I stood in my doorway and waited for her to pass me. She smiled at me as she floated past like a gossamer breeze. She whispered softly so that only I was able to hear. ” I am now odalisque”. There was a hint of sadness in her tone but she laughed as she returned to her room and closed the door behind her.

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