The Blue Hour

Chapter 67: Flora

After their lovemaking, Flora had fallen asleep and when she woke, Hamid was no longer lying next to her. She went to the balcony to find him, and saw him standing under the pergola, in intimate conversation with a veiled woman. Siran told her the woman's name was Peresto.

Peresto had looked up to the balcony, and Hamid had followed her gaze. When he saw her, there was something in the way he did a double-take which told her Peresto had caught a strand of their tightly woven cocoon, and that it was unravelling. She wanted to cry.

Still now, after he had left her alone in the yali, tears burnt under the eyelids. He had sworn he would return, he had asked her to trust him, and she wanted to. A long wail of pain had escaped from her mouth when he announced that he would return to the palace. She pounded her fists into his chest and clawed at his face. He grabbed her arms and held her, his fingers dug into the naked skin of her arms. Her nails ripped the skin on his left cheek, leaving a thin trickle of blood. 

Gasping, they pulled away, equally unnerved by what they did to each other. When he released her arms, there were deep, red marks on her skin. He looked at them, then dropped to the chair with the face buried in his hands. She refused to understand what he said, refused to help him. A wave of bitterness filled her heart and a long, heavy silence settled between them.

Then she tried to reason with him. "They will not let you leave again. How can you trust Murad? What if he is truly mad, then what will you do? You don't owe him anything."

"It's not for him I must return, it is for us, don't you see? I'm the Crown Prince, I'm next in line. When the Swiss doctor declares him unfit to rule, they will come for me." His voice was thick with emotion.

"You will be on the steamer on your way to America."

"No. That's in seven days, it will be too late."

"It's a trap. It's a way to lure you back."

"The Valide is right. I can make the stakes clear to Murad. He will think that I have come to depose him, he will see conspiracies everywhere, and he will do anything - cut the drink, cut the morphine - to keep me from the throne. I know he will."

"He will have you killed like he did your uncle."

"The Valide has sworn to protect me."

"You believe her?"

"I will come back to you. To us. I swear."

He tried to convince her that there was hope, but his words changed nothing. She didn't speak, she simply listened, bruised and resentful. The double doors to the balcony stood open, and the curtains fluttered in the warm breeze.

"And when you come back here, what will we do?"

"We will board the steamer and leave for America."

"Will we?"

"Yes, we will. Reshid has made the arrangements."

Flora looked at the fluttering curtains, put her hand out and crushed the fabric between her fingers.

"And you think there will be a place for us in America?"

He blinked. "Are you doubting us now?" His eyes searched hers, and seeing his pain, she softened. None of this was his fault.

"I do not doubt us."

"Good. Then I will return to the palace and speak with Murad."

"If you think it's what you must do." She stepped through the double doors to the balcony. It was a cloudless day, the afternoon sun was still bright. On a boat which slowly drifted past, musicians played cheerful music for summer guests in the yali along the coast. The captain waved at Flora. 

She said: "I believed that we could carve out a small part of the world for us."

"We will."

"You are right." She sighed and brushed away a strand of hair from her face. "I'm being unreasonable, it's not helpful."

He wrapped his arms around her.

"Trust me. Placing Murad securely on the throne is the only way for me to leave the empire."

They discussed some practicalities. Hifsi would watch over her. She should trust no one else, none of the eunuchs or kalfa, not the caretaker, and none of the guards. It was laughable to imagine that someone would go through the trouble of harming her, but his words made her shiver.

There was a knock on the door. Hifsi informed him that Peresto was ready to leave. Not looking at him, Flora took the miniature painting of the two lovers off the wall and gave it to him. He flashed a glance of pure fear at her and for a moment, they stared horrified into each other's eyes. Then she kissed him. He turned and quickly left.

She blinked away the burning tears and listened. A terrible sense of foreboding filled her, and an urge to hold him in her arms one more time.

Flora rushed through the harem to catch up with him. Eunuchs blocked the revolving door to the selamlik and the doors to the harem garden. Desperate, she returned to the salon, and not knowing what else to do, placed her hand on the cool glass of the large windows. In the driveway below, Hifsi loaded a small trunk into the carriage. The gilded coat of arms on the side glowed in the sun.

She turned away from the window. The room where she had spent so much time with Hamid felt as silent and abandoned as when she had first arrived in the yali. Forlorn, she passed from one piece of furniture to another, touched the rich fabrics with an expert hand, and returned to the drapes that framed the window. The soft fabric flowed smoothly between her fingers. This was raw silk, she could tell by the prism-like imperfections in the weaving and the lack of sheen, which made it look more like thin wool than silk. Although here and there, the sun had made the colour fade to white, the curtains were of superior quality. Very satisfactory. It felt like an eternity since she had paid attention to fabrics in that way, like a professional, like the owner of a glove store.

Her heart tightened, she felt vulnerable. Hers was a vaporous existence, fragile, at risk, dissolving. She didn't want to think about the shop now, or of anything else outside of this quickly fading world.

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Author's note

In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was a major player in the global silk trade, with the city of Bursa at the heart of its silk industry. Bursa, located in northwestern Anatolia, was renowned for its high-quality silk. The city's silk production reached its peak in the mid-19th century, with an estimated 1,000 tons of raw silk being produced annually. The Ottoman silk industry employed thousands of people, from silkworm farmers to skilled weavers and artisans. 

Interestingly, the empire's silk production was so important that the sultans themselves took a keen interest in its cultivation. Hamid's father, Sultan Abdülmecid I (1839-1861) even had a special room in his palace dedicated to the raising of silkworms, where he would personally tend to the delicate creatures. This fascinating detail underscores the significance of the silk industry to the Ottoman Empire's economy and culture in the 19th century.