The Sultan of Byzantium Read online

  I was not impressed that Askaris turned out to be a cheerleader for Byzantium. I slowed him down by asking for another glass of wine, then got set to listen to the second part of his spiel, which was intended to connect his monologue to the agenda. I was curious about his proposal, but I knew I was not going to say yes. Maybe this explained my calm demeanor, which appeared to surprise the team. What I was actually curious about was how these three boring Greeks had learned to speak Turkish so fluently.

  Askaris and the two behind him took their seats again, and the horse-faced Askaris continued in an even higher pitch.

  ‘For eleven centuries eleven dynasties ruled Byzantium. During the last, the Palaeologus dynasty, eleven emperors held the throne for a total of 192 years. The Palaeologi ruled the Empire for the longest stretch and during her most trying times. It was founded by Michael, who came from a noble family. In fact his last name, meaning ‘old word’, is a sign of deep roots. The Palaeologus dynasty’s performance during their rule has to be considered a success, given the conditions of the times. The last emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus, was forty-five when he ascended the throne in 1449. He was a model leader. Both the army and the people claimed him as their own. When he rejected Sultan Mehmet II’s terms of surrender, the Ottoman army of 80,000 men began the siege of Constantinople on April 2, 1453. The Byzantine army had about 7,000 soldiers, whose task was to defend a city whose population had been reduced to 60,000. The emperor put his trust in the city’s walls – which invaders had failed to breach for 800 years – and the support of allies like Pope Nicholas V and the European monarchs. But help against the fifty-five-day siege was late in coming, and merely symbolic at that. It was like the Pope wanted to stab Orthodox Byzantium in the back because she had never recognized his sovereignty.

  ‘The army had lost its defensive strength, and the people, in dire economic straits, were anxious. Constantine distracted the people with empty promises and paid his soldiers’ wages by melting down the precious metal vessels belonging to the churches. But his heroic efforts were not enough; on May 29, 1453, Constantinople succumbed! The corpse of Constantine XI, dressed in his imperial vestments, was paraded through the city. The 53,000 civilians and soldiers who were taken as slaves by the Ottoman forces were dead certain to a person that the body was not that of their emperor. Most of them were of the belief that he had disappeared into the massive walls and would emerge when the day of independence came again.

  ‘George Sphrantzes wrote that Constantine XI died in combat on the city walls. In time this claim gained authority. The same historian also concocted the story that the Ottomans brought an army of 200,000 soldiers to the siege of the city. Sphrantzes, who was born in 1401, was not only the confidant of the emperor but also his match-maker and private secretary. The historian Nicola della Tuccia, the poet Abraham of Angora, and the Byzantine bishop Samile, on the other hand, all wrote that the emperor escaped by ship.

  ‘At the time of the siege the emperor was forty-nine years old. If you consider the average life span in those days, he must have been about as strong as our own seventy-five-year-old grandfathers. Perhaps he couldn’t fight sword-to-sword with the Ottomans, but he did even more. As commanderin-chief he coordinated the deployment of the army along five miles’ worth of defensive walls. As the Ottoman victory neared, his close circle implored him to retreat to the Morea. He could remain there in exile for some time and return to the throne when circumstances were right, just as the dynasty’s founding father Michael had done. Seeing his army dissolving before his eyes and furthermore feeling the pressure of these unheroic suggestions, Constantine fainted. His robes were put on an officer whose head had been crushed. The emperor’s hands and feet were bound and he was put on the last Genoese boat to leave the city. The history books missed the fact that the emperor had been hijacked.

  ‘Among the noble names on the boat’s passenger list were six Palaeologi, two Cantacuzeni, two Comneni, two Laskaris and two Notaras. Loukas Notaras was the Grand Duke of the palace. Both he and Sphrantzes were Palaeologus sons-in-law, but they never liked each other. Notaras was a mysterious statesman – he was a citizen of Genoa and Venice both, and had great fortunes in both places.

  ‘Notaras and Sphrantzes surrendered to the Ottomans because the Sultan granted the nobles their lives. Notaras, one week after the city fell, was killed for unknown reasons; Sphrantzes, on the other hand, fled to Mistra, the last outpost of the Empire.

  ‘Let’s go back to the Genoese boat. According to its skipper, Captain Zorzi Doria, the Byzantine passengers disembarked at Chios and Crete. From there they scattered to the Morea, Corfu and assorted Italian towns. The emperor and his relatives, with Loukas Notaras’s daughter and sister, first went to Venice. There they transferred the fortune that had been accumulating in the Notaras family accounts to the emperor’s relatives.

  ‘Constantine never set foot after this on the soil of either Venice or Genoa. He lived the rest of his life hiding in Italian towns under his mother’s last name, Dragas. He married a noble widow from Ravenna and gave his mother’s name, Helena, to his newborn daughter. He concealed his true identity from everybody. Even his wife knew him only as an elderly Byzantine prince. The emperor’s previous marriages were short-lived owing to his wives’ early deaths from disease. Those two unfortunate empresses were both Italian. Constantine lived for twenty-two more years, suppressing his deep depression, and dying at seventy-one. He always knew that he would never return to Constantinople but he was never resigned to it. In fact, he compiled a ‘revenge list’. Europe, by deserting her in her hour of need, had badly betrayed the Byzantium that had always guarded the former’s flanks from the Asian barbarians. I’m in no position to pass along detailed information about the list, but I can tell you two interesting tales.

  ‘Nicholas V, the Pope who was the target of so many Byzantine curses, died suddenly at the age of fifty-eight. It was a shock: he had always been quite healthy and free of serious illness. It was said that the cause of death was ‘gout’ in order to hide the fact that he was poisoned. Second, Sultan Mehmet II died in 1481 when he was only forty-nine. How interesting, isn’t it, that history records the same causes of death – gout or poison – for him as for the Pope. According to the East it was the Christians who poisoned Mehmet; according to the West it was his son Beyazit II. Personally, I think these two names were at the top of the revenge list.

  ‘Constantine never met Sphrantzes again. Maybe he wanted to avoid taking a risk. His confidant died in 1477 at a monastery in Corfu. The three nobles who were the emperor’s companions on the boat never left his service. When Constantine died in 1475 he entrusted his secret fortune and his throne-in-exile to their hands. They founded a secret society named Nomophylax (Nomo), which means Guardians of the Law. Over time they doubled the inherited fortune and carried out the assignments on the list one by one.

  ‘Constantine’s only grandson, Massimo d’Urbino, was an ambitious merchant. There was hardly a port in the East that he hadn’t visited. He married a Greek woman from Smyrna and settled in Istanbul in 1503. When his only daughter, Irene, married a pasha’s son and converted to Islam under a new name, Emine, the Byzantine Empire-in-exile was conveyed to the Ottomans. One of Nomo’s jobs has always been to select an emperor from the family tree of the lady Emine, for Constantine wanted only his ‘elected’ grandchildren to deal with the contents of that list. No one is assigned to carry out any of these tasks unless he has been chosen emperor and thus ‘elected’.

  ‘Nomo has been at work for the last 533 years; in all this time the Byzantine throne-in-exile has never been empty. The first act of the new emperor is to take an oath of secrecy – he may not share his secret even with his wife. The punishment for treason is … death!’

  Askaris paused to gauge my reaction. Perhaps my face wore the expression of an actor bored with his script. He asked my permission to open the package I’d brought. I was a bit skeptical as he took a pair of tweezers from his pocket.
But when he touched a certain point on the map’s border, the metal frame parted at the bottom. He half-closed his eyes and seemed to be silently praying; it was clear that he would react to nothing I said or did. Then with his tweezers he deftly pulled a piece of paper from between the map and the metal frame. Was there a half-portrait on it? The picture revealed a long-faced, bearded man in a helmet blazoned with the double eagle. It was His Majesty, looking like he was waiting for the perfect motive to dress somebody down. Askaris now dug into the purple pouch that lay on the table and pulled out another map. Using the same method again, he extracted a sheet of paper from it and placed it under the first one. The portrait was now complete down to the ornamented belt. And the way his majesty held out his hands, it looked like he was pleading for help.

  Askaris and his two assistants suddenly rose and stood at attention with their eyes cast down. Askaris said, ‘Most respected sir, this is an engraving of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine Dragas Palaeologus XI … and you, sir, are his last descendant, which is to say, you are the current Byzantine emperor-in-exile, Constantine Palaeologus XV …’

  I felt nailed to the table by my elbows. I did not let Mr Owl Eyes repeat his sentence, so as not to increase the chill in the air. Every cell in my body was flashing a message to my brain. Was my head going to pound and the sore on my tongue suddenly explode? Surely I was the victim of an elaborate mistake. I told the trio standing in front of me like a squad of bodyguards to sit down.

  ‘I wonder, one, what kind of proof you have for these outlandish statements. And two, if you’re not Turkish, how is it you can speak my language so perfectly?’ I said.

  Askaris leaned enthusiastically forward, then took a purple album from the leather bag. He moved closer. On the pages he ritualistically turned over were engravings or photographs of eleven people, from d’Urbino to me. I forgot the resumés he recited to me as soon as he turned the page; my only reward for this session was to learn that our family had moved to Trabzon in the eighteenth century. The more Mr Owl Eyes spoke, the smaller were my chances of catching his mistakes. I made a quick situation analysis: when the modern law requiring families to have last names was passed, my grandfather made the most suitable choice for us – ASIL, that is to say, NOBLE. My namesake excepted, all the names given to my grandfathers had been the Islamic equivalents of those of the Byzantine emperors: Yahya/John, Mikail/Michael, Ishak/Isaac, Rumi/Romanus. I was about to inject a little humor into the situation by observing that this systematic approach hadn’t left out my mother – Akile/Sophia – when something at the back of my mind caught my attention. It was that when my turn came to be named after my grandfather, Yahya Asil, I was still a baby, but the announcement was postponed for thirty years. The most dramatic possibilities began to revolve in my brain like multiple-choice questions on a test.

  Mentally changing the subject I asked for information on Nomo, and Nikos Askaris’s forehead wrinkled.

  ‘The grandchildren of the three nobles who founded the organization continued the mission. Nomo’s administration was generally passed on from father to son; those without sons adopted them. Their wives believed that their husbands were simply rich investors. Always there were three people in the administration, and they never contradicted one another.

  ‘They never failed to increase the fortune they had inherited, never cut corners and never took risks. Nobody knows how many billion dollars the Nomo balance sheet is worth these days, but it’s said that they don’t invest in real estate or the stock market. Where organization members live and where they meet are secrets as well. They keep an eye on the emperors they have elected, but only meet personally with those they consider worthy. Somebody wearing a disguise passes along my orders to me. He’s probably not in direct contact with Nomo members either. The only shred of information I can offer you is that my adequate Turkish is precisely the reason why I’m here. I can’t tell you anything more. Of course you will have surmised that we don’t use our real names in the course of our missions.

  ‘We can show you a copy of the will your grandfather signed and left with Nomo. You’ll see the same signature on the bottom right corner of the map you brought. The moment you take your oath accepting the honor and obligations of the imperial crown, you will be assigned a special mission.’

  ‘Even if I believed that I was a descendant of Massimo d’Urbino, how would that prove that I’m a descendant of the last emperor?’ I said.

  ‘In fact there are proofs in the will, or at least clues that will pass as proofs. But it’s true that you’re not in a position to analyze all this. If you could manage to get in touch with Nomo, they can furnish you with all the proof you want, even DNA testing. For this reason I imagine there’s a royal test somewhere waiting for you. We are at your service, if you allow it. This is a turning point in our history, since the time has come to deal with the last item on Constantine XI’s list. When this mission is accomplished, it will mean that a very significant trial has been passed. It is then that you, together with the members of Nomo, will decide the future of the organization. This could even mean shutting it down.’

  ‘First I want to know the reason why I’m the one chosen for this grand finale, and why you’ve waited till now to make this announcement.’

  The trio visibly relaxed; obviously I’d asked the expected question. I compared Kalligas, who asked permission to answer my question, to the conflicted rabbi of art films. Maybe that red beard of his was false; I was tempted to pull it.

  ‘Byzantium was influenced by the East and could not completely give up the polytheistic beliefs of the pagan period. The power of the mysterious has always been recognized. Look. Eleven dynasties ruled the Empire, which survived for eleven centuries. There were eleven emperors in the last dynasty. And you’re the candidate for the eleventh emperor-in-exile. The symbol of Byzantium is the double-headed eagle, the numerical expression of which is eleven (11); eleven is the symbol also of leadership and unity … We lost Constantinople on May 29; you were born on the morning of May 30; no other emperor was born on such a meaningful day … Five is the number of destiny; it is the 555th anniversary of our loss of Constantinople … Three is the blessed signifier of relief, and you have just turned thirty-three …

  ‘I’ll give you a few examples drawn from your own CV. Despite family difficulties, you did not turn into a problem child. You were a hard-working, honest and popular student. You continued your success in some of the most prominent universities in the world. You’re an intellectual and art-lover who can speak five languages. You didn’t try to sneak out of your compulsory military service. You could enter the political life, if conditions were favorable, of any country whose passport you carried. You’ve got too much honor to take orders from other people, and too much pride to flirt with the girls. You go to bed with two women at a time; if you happen to come eye-to-eye with a lion it turns into a housecat. Your air of mystery is respectable. Sir, you are the emperor that Byzantium-in-exile has been awaiting for the last 555 years! Thanks to you, the soul of Constantine XI, who died unfulfilled, will find peace. We proudly address you as Your Majesty.’

  These compliments, arriving in larger and larger doses, were beginning to bore me. Still, I believed what these Nomo workers told me, and I was almost sympathetic to the organization that had trailed me even to love hotels. As a puzzle-lover myself, I was curious about the test awaiting me, and even more so about the last item in Constantine XI’s last will and testament. Maybe I’d found the project that was to pull me out of Galata again.

  ‘My grandmother always said you should think twice even if you’re just buying underwear,’ was the aphorism with which I concluded the meeting. Theo, the least ambitious and most lovable of the three, was getting my bag together. In his eyes I saw the innocence of a child confiding in his doctor. They walked me to the exit. As we traversed the courtyard Askaris, bursting with historical titbits said, ‘This hotel rose up on the foundations of the Palatium Magnum – the Great Pala
ce – which Constantine I, the Great, began building in the fourth century. In 1204 the so-called Crusaders but really the Latin Looters, first plundered, then demolished it.’

  We said our good-byes agreeing to meet again the next day at the same time. I knew that nobody was going to tell me to keep this meeting a secret.

  *

  As a child I used to think that my body might split in two because its right side was Turkish and its left was American. The archaeological excavations next door to the Four Seasons reminded me of that division, causing me to wonder if I were Byzantine above the waist and Ottoman below.

  Making my way through Sultanahmet, the weary heart of Byzantium, was I walking through a now-dead minefield planted by my forefathers? The call to prayer suddenly started up from the Ottoman mosques and I realized that I was gripping the ground more firmly with my toes and holding my shoulders high. I passed through Sirkeci on my way to the Galata Bridge.

  A disturbing stanza from Karacaoğlan came to mind:

  In the world not left to Sultan Süleyman

  These mountains one day will be uprooted

  And souls rotting for a thousand years

  By God’s will one day will be revived.

  GAMMA

  Before Istanbul was even Constantinople, the district was known as Sikodis which in Greek means ‘fig orchard’. The last three fig trees of Galata belonged to my family. They stood in the garden to the right of our apartment building. There was also an ornamental pool in the garden; my grandmother thought it looked like a tomb and for that reason we weren’t allowed to enter the garden. In summertime, when the fragrant scent of figs enveloped the whole street, she’d say, ‘The tree is crying because it can’t bear fruit.’ I would close my eyes and inhale that perfume. When I was still at high school, the meaning of mystery to me was taking in the fragrance of that fig tree and storing it up inside myself.