It seemed to me the author got away from any reality after Chota died. I felt like I fell into a Harry Potter and the Sorcerer book.
pg. 358 He's a beast," said the Chief White Enuch. "A regal beast." More astonished than annoyed at this breach of manners, the Chief White Enuch said, "Enough folly. Make your farewells. The French emissary is going to dissect him.' "It's the Sultan's wish."
pg. 359 Miserable, mournful, he reached the residence and there he delivered the elephant's body to the ambassador like a sacrificial lamb to the butcher.
Then the Chief White Enuch takes Jahan to the hamon of sorrows, to help him forget. Jahan is preplexed.
pg. 361 Jahan blinked, remembering the name from a moment in time so distant it might have been from a life not his own. "We go there and we forget. Everything. Do you understand? Perplexed as he was, Jahan said he did.
Come on....how could Jahan not remember the place he lost his virginity? I mean it's not like he is drugged.
pg. 361 The Chief White Enuch knocked three times with his ring, waited, then tapped twice with bare hands. "Hyacinth?" said a voice behind the door. "Hyacinth!" repeated the Chief White Enuch.
For one stunned moment Jahan couldn't breathe. He had an awful suspicion the eunuch knew the nickname his mother had given him as a boy. Unnnerved, he had no desire to go inside with this man, but the gate had already opened.
362. They were greeted inside by the shortest woman Jahan had ever come across. She laughed. "Never seen a dwarf? Or never seen a woman?
Then it all gets even stranger, when the woman looks like Mihrimah, they start popping opium, everyone leaves the room and the woman and Jahan start to get intimate and she says,
pg 364 "Call me Mihrimah," she said breathing heavily.
Jahan throws her off of him, she bumps her head and Zainab says, "She's dead," "You've killed the eunuch's mistress."
From here it gets even crazier! Jahan goes to Davud's for protection, then stops at the French Ambassador's to pay one last tribute to Chota before leaving Istanbul. Monsieur Breves gives him Chota's tusk. Jahan goes to Mihrimah Mosque and buries the tusk and gives him a headstone near a Judas tree. Then sees a goatherder and asks him to tend to Chota's tomb telling him it was a saint, named Chota Baba.
pg. 373 Slowly Jahan stood up, "I must go. Keep an ey on this grave. Make sure no one disrespects him. You are the guardian of the shrine of Chota Baba.
Instead of going in the direction Davud told him to, he sidetracks and comes to the inn he and Davud got robbed, learns that Davud is the one who actually took his drawings, journal and things and chopped them up.
Now he goes back to the city, breaks into Davud's, finds the letter Sinan had written to him when he was in the dungeon, and realizes Sinan had come to visit him after all. He finds the scrolls of the designs and sees the changes. Davud catches Jahan, and he realizes Davud and the Chief White Eunuch are accomplices. Jahan learns some hard truths here.
"Master loved you like a son." "I love him like a father. A father in the wrong. A great architect. But a coward. Never uttered a word against cruelty. Or injustice. Even when you were rotting in the dungeon he did not move a finger to!" "Have mercy. What could he have done? It was not in his power." "He could have said to the Sultan, let go of my apprentice my Lord, or else I'm not building for you." "Have you lost your mind? He'd have been put to death." "It'd been a decent end," Davud countered. "Instead he wrote you miserable letters."
"All he wanted to do was build. One project after another. But who will pray in those mosques? Will they be unwell or hungry? Didn't matter. Every year, work, work. Where do the resources come from? Another war. Another slaughter. Did he mind? He didn't care for anything else." "That's not true!" "Every colossal mosque we built was raised thanks to the revenues from another conquest. On their way to the battleground the army would raze villages to the ground, kill more of my people. Our master never cared for these sorrows. He refused to see that, without bloodshed elsewhere, there would be no money, and without money there would be no building in the capital."
"There are two kinds of men, this I have learned. Those who covet happiness. Those who seek justice. You long for a happy life, whereas I long for adalet. We shan't agree.
Jahan gets beaten up and thrown into some dark dungeon and is saved by none other than.... the gypsies! He gets free and goes to see Hesna Khatun searching for truth. Well he got it.
pg. 400 "You used Davud but he got out of control. He would not listen to you any more." Pulling her cat closer, she sat still as a stone. "Why did you do it? For riches? For mightiness? Who bribed you? Was it the Italians? Did they want to stop my master?" "Oh shut up . . . What nonsense," Hesna Khatum said. "You want to know the truth? Hear me out.
This was a Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise moment, straight out of the movie, A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson says, "You want the truth?
Col. Jessup: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to.
Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I WANT THE TRUTH!
Col. Jessup: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
[pauses]
Col. Jessup: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a *damn* what you think you are entitled to!
"You think I could have done it without the consent of your Princess?" "You are lying. Mihrimah is dead. She can't defend herself,' Jahan said. "How dare you blame her? I thought you loved her." "I loved her more than anyone. More than anything. That's why I did as she told me and never asked why." "Liar!" "We believe in what we choose to believe," she rasped. "Why would Mihrimah wish to weaken my master?" "She had nothing against your master. Lots against her own father." "Sultan Suleiman?"
pg. 401 "She was devastated. Torn between her love for her father and her hatred for him. She loathed him. She adored him. My confused child. "Mihrimah was richer than the treasury. None stronger than her. But her heart was broken.
"Mihrimah knew she could never triumph over her father, and she had no intention of doing so. All she wanted was to make things more difficult for him. The mosque your master was building was going to immortalize Sultan Suleiman and show his grandeur to posterity. We decided to slow you down. It was a little revenge." "And you needed an apprentice to be your pawn," said Jahan. "We considered each of you. Nikola was timid. Yusuf we couldn't approach; like a clam, he wouldn't open up. You, we kept aside. Davud was the best. Angry, ambitious."
This is where I feel no matter how the Princess felt unloved, she had no right to put the men's lives in danger who were working on those buildings. Her revenge, cost others their lives.
pg. 402 Jahan said, "Did she ever love me?" "Why do you ask such a stupid thing?" "I need to know if that, too was a lie. For years I felt guilty if I desired another woman."
"She liked you, like a pet, like a gown. Like the lokum she tasted. But you'd get bored if you ate it every day. Nay, she never loved you." "Fool," she whispered. "My beautiful fool. That's what she called you. That's why she adored you so. But would you call that love?"
And to end the calamity of horrors:
pg. 403 'How old are you dada? you must be way over a hundred. Is it true you were damned with eternal life?" Hesna Khatun was about to laugh when a dry cough stopped her midway. "I . . . wasn't the only one." "What do you mean? Jahan asked in panic. But even as the words left him he knew the answer. "Think, which artisan, which man of great ambitions wouldn't want to live for as long as I have?" Jahan shook his head. "If you are referring to my master, he was an exemplary man. Nothing to do with a with like you." "At what age did he die?" Her cackle turned into a cough.
Before she could catch her breath, Jahan snatched the stuffed animal from her hands and hurled it into the fire. Cardamom's fur was set ablaze, the gems glowing amid the flames. "Don't," she screamed too late, her voice splintered. "Let the dead rest in peace, dada." As she watched the burning cat, Hesna Khatun's chin quivered with fury. She said, "May you suffer from my scourge, Architect." "May you beg God the Almighty, down on your knees, to be taken, for it is enough . . . it is too much. May He hear you pleading . . . may He see your agony and pity you, oh, poor apprentice of Sinan, but still . . . still may He not let you die."
Phew! Just in time for Halloween, we are given this magnificent scary, demonic, ghastly truth.
And like in all fairytales.... Jahan lives happily ever after, with a wife, a son he loved as if he were his own, named him Sinan Joseph Mutamid. Jahan was nominated by the palace as Chief Royal Architect for the Illuminated Tomb -Rauza-i Munavvara, better known as the Taj Mahal.
If I have to take away anything from this story, I would say it's that all people have reasons for doing what they do. Their reasons may be justifiable to their own thinking, but in all honesty, is it out of pure selfishness, greed or need for power? Jahan was a hero, many times over, he was naive, innocent to a fault, loyal, caring and a wonderful animal trainer/friend for Chota, along with being a brilliant master architect. But I have to agree with the Princess, when she called him . . . "My beautiful fool."
