Şehsuvar Sultan

The rain has finally stopped. Dark clouds are slowly sinking into the
horizon behind the thick fog. A clearing has opened in the sky above the
Palace and expands slowly outward. It is the year 1703. The ample formal
ballroom of Topkapi Palace has new decorations. Its walls are lined with
antique ceramic tiles and its ceiling is covered with frescoes of dreamy
landscapes. Unmistakable woman’s touches. It is a stunning room, but it
languishes unused behind its thick blue-velvet curtains. Şehsuvar Sultana is
suffocating in this disquietingly peaceful environment. It makes her feel
lonely and conflicted. As if she doesn’t belong here. It overwhelms her. Her
heart flutters like a trapped bird. She runs to the light in her
pearl-embroidered slippers, which hurt her feet. She opens one of the windows
wide and leans out over the Bosphorus. She fills her lungs with deep breaths
of Black Sea air. A few years back, she had attracted the Valide Sultana’s
attention with her tall and shapely figure, her abundant auburn hair, her
extraordinary beauty, her intelligence. The Ukrainian-born girl, only
sixteen, was to become a concubine to the Sultan Mustafa II, and renamed
Şehsuvar, which means "elite”. Mustafa seduced her and made her love
him, only to forget her utterly when he tired of her. Her heart is broken for
all time, she is in despair. Elbows trembling on the window sill, she wants
to scream: “Oh, my Sultan! You are my hell and my heaven. I cannot fall
asleep when I cannot dream of you. Without you the sun will not warm me. It
is you who stirs the winds to blow. And unless you wink at the roses they
will not grow and never fill the air with perfume.” Her chest is heaving
rapidly up and down. She can’t hear anything but the loud thumping of her
heart.