Muhtesem Yuzyil Imagines ♡

Ch. 1 Over Every Sea {Nigar Kalfa} (By moonbeam_lightning)

Act I

I have never been a stranger to violence, my life before me being taken isn't a paradise lost that I remember dimly with tears in my eyes, as is the case for many as I have come to learn.

I was born in Sulina where the Danube River meets the Black Sea. It was a beautiful fishing town, and my father was a fisherman. My mother died giving birth to me, it hadn't been a sudden death, she was in agony for months. All the residents of the village had endured her screams and didn't neglect to tell me all about it as soon as I was grown up enough to understand. They also told me that I was the spitting image of her. "It is like she gave birth to herself," old Paula told me one day. That used to frighten me.

My grandmother was my mother in all but name. She was a Russian priest's daughter who became pregnant with my mother during a Tatar raid. Unable to inhabit her village after this disgrace, she migrated south. She was a cold, serious woman, but she loved me. She taught me to read and write in Russian which she learned from her father. I grew up isolated from the other children of the village, speaking Russian, singing Russian lullabies while playing with my grandmother's brown braid.

My father hated me. I have never known why. Perhaps he resented my grandmother's influence over me, but he feared my grandmother, so he took it out on me. My grandmother who had never been subordinate to a man in her life drew the ire and fear of many in the village, and many rumored her to be a witch. People thought my father was crazy to have dared to marry her daughter whose father was rumored to be a demon. Perhaps he resented my mother too, he only married her because she was good at spinning and could make him a lot of money, "she was ugly like you" he frequently said, "only useful for her spinning". Instead of making him any money, she quickly became pregnant and died, and he was left with me.

My father was supposedly violent, but only towards me. Interestingly, though I remember all about my childhood and can recite you all the Russian tales my grandmother told me from memory, I don't remember my father ever being violent to me, I only remember crying about it to my grandmother once, and since no memory of my grandmother can ever be a false one, I conclude that he must have been violent.

And when I was fourteen, that fateful day came when I killed him at last. I don't remember the whys and hows of it, so I can't ever feel guilty about it. The only thing that I remember is that he had just returned from his fishing and had somehow learned that I cured his headache the other day with my grandmother's medicine. I vaguely remember him calling my grandmother a "whore". The next thing I remember is my grandmother eyeing me coldly while I held a bloodied bowl in my hands. My father's corpse's large empty-looking green eyes sent a chill down my spine. I remember my grandmother instructing me "Dumitra, wipe your hands".

We got rid of the corpse, but we couldn't inhabit this village any longer. People would notice the absence of my father and search for answers. We packed and ran away. We resided in another seaside village for a year. That year was the happiest of my life. Then the Turkish pirates raided the village, and I was taken. I have never seen my grandmother again.

Act II

After some weeks' journey crossing the Black Sea, I was taken to the slave inn at Istanbul where I would live in for three years and get my first education at being an efficient slave.

We would get lessons in music and writing. I have learned how to play the oud there. Most of the girls there were illiterate, but I had previous experience in writing, so I had a less difficult time in learning how to write in Turkish and quickly became a prized slave. My traders had high hopes of selling me for a good price to the Palace. Me acquiring these skills before coming to the Palace lead me to have my later career as a Kalfa, I can't deny that.