Muazzez Sultan

An azure, cloudless sky has luxuriated over the palace for more than three weeks. It has shined unabated on a plethora of deeply scented roses and carnations and all manner of colourful wildflowers, the combined perfume of which intoxicates all who are near them. This is the miracle of springtime and it echoes melodiously in the youthful innocence of Muazzez Sultana. She visits the garden every day at sunset accompanied by her odalisque.

She walks delicately to the second elm tree, under which a gilded sofa has been readied for her with soft cushions, under a canopy which is silk-embroidered in crimson carnation designs. The hem of her dress, made of diamond-embroidered velvet, sways with every steps she takes, mirroring the undulating waters of the ever-breezy Bosphorus as they flow past the palace at Sarayburnu. It is 1642. Not even a full year has passed since her wedding to Sultan İbrahim whom she has learned to love passionately and devotedly.

She is the most beautiful of all the favored women of the harem, and its newest arrival. She desires to be with her husband every night, but she tells this only to her tambour. The tall Venetian beauty with the dark blue eyes and long lashes takes the bejeweled tambour from the hennaed hands of her odalisque, and plucks it passionately, singing: “Do not tell your secret to unworthy people. Do not open your heart to anyone.

Don’t share this joyful yearning with the courtiers, lest it become gossip, and you become the object of derision, a target for their scorn. Oh, my master, my Sultan, my very own Ibrahim! When I look into your eyes all my pain disappears. When you are by my side all the happiness of the world is mine.”

The heart-felt verses pouring out from the rose colored lips of Muazzez Sultana melt into the melancholic sound of the tambour and become part of the aromatic garden air that wafts high into the sky where angels dance.