On the Sultan’s Service by Douglas Scott Brookes

Author:Douglas Scott Brookes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2019-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Blood of His Ancestors

The ranks of the opposition were displaying a stubborn perseverance in their rancor.4 One day Talat Bey rang up the first chamberlain and told him that a large delegation of deputies from Parliament, opposition members of the Liberty and Harmony Party, were coming to the palace. He recommended that the delegation be received in audience, that whatever they had to say just be listened to, and that HM respond appropriately.

This large delegation did indeed arrive, and as customary they gathered in the waiting salon on the ground floor. Lutfi Bey greeted them cordially and said he would present them to the padishah. Anyway, HM knew they were coming, and when he said, “Bring them in,” they filed upstairs, all in a line.

Whenever a delegation like this was received, custom called for the first chamberlain and first secretary to be present with the monarch. His Majesty was in the large room where he normally worked, on the seaward side of the palace. He was standing in front of an armchair beside the door that led off into a small side room, while the two of us were standing on either side of this door, facing him.

It really was quite a large delegation, perhaps twenty people, maybe more. Who were they? Nowadays I can’t remember who each of them were. But from my visits to Parliament, I recognized them as members of the opposition, among them schoolteachers and Ottoman Greeks. They formed an arc in front of the sultan as they stood there, filling a large portion of the room. His Majesty spoke first: “Do you have something to say?”

At that, Gümülcineli İsmail5 took a step forward from the row and said, “Yes, we have some requests we want to make, but before we do, permit the first chamberlain and first secretary to leave the room.”

The delegation members looked at each other with expressions that reproached their chosen spokesman, as his words quite violated polite behavior when addressing even just an ordinary person, much less the padishah. They looked back at him, surely realizing they had made a poor choice of spokesman and that the audience had gotten off to a bad start.

I teetered where I stood, my head full of fog, as though I were about to tumble headfirst down a staircase wobbling on its foundations.

One’s destiny is always at risk of being completely recast just through the intervention of small things. Blindsided as he had been, if the sultan had quite disregarded the dignity of the monarchy and ordered us to wait outside, what would have happened? What would we have done? There would have been but one thing to do: go downstairs and write out our resignations.

For a couple of seconds that is what I envisioned, until through the fog in my head I heard His Majesty begin to speak. Things didn’t turn out that way at all. He had the same deep voice as did all his ancestors and his older brother, even deeper when he was angry, and he responded straightaway, “These are my men and are always with me.

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