Clenching his teeth in agony, Hamid continued crawling. His hands and knees were scorched, and too often the sharp edges of the conduits' walls scraped his hips. The tight space pressed against him as if the tunnels were narrowing as they went; he ceded to an urge to stretch his body, bumped his head and winced. Push on.
With each breath, he inhaled dampness and the grim tang of death. Panic stirred in his gut. To contain it, he pressed his lips tightly together, tasting earth and sweat. He wondered how long they had been underground, but pushed the thought away. To steel himself, he fixed his gaze in front of him, on the steady rise and fall of Jurad's body, dimly illuminated by the light from the oil lamp in his hand. In the flickering light, the corroded cast iron of the water conduit glowed orange around them.
Over time, layers of dark, grimy dirt had accumulated in the conduit, which had been built but never used, making it a perfect home for rodents and spiders. The sharp claws of the rodents scratched as they scurried out of sight. An earthy smell came from rotting leaves and puddles of stagnant water which leaked or seeped from the surrounding soil. It stank. A humid, sticky, nauseating smell.
A sharp jolt made him freeze. His nails clawed the iron.
Another tremble like a convulsion – a rattling, metallic noise, and the sound of glass breaking; the light was snuffed out. Was the earth trying to spew them out? Or had the outside world crumbled on top of them? All was still – all except his thumping heart.
"Jurad?"
Out of the darkness, Jurad's deep voice emerged: "I'm right here. The lamp broke."
"What was that?"
"The earth trembled. There could be more coming." Jurad added something in his native tongue, a curse. He spoke Turkish, French and Greek, but found it more satisfying to curse in the language of his childhood.
Onwards they crawled. It was hard to breathe. His mouth had gone dry, and he shook; an attack of panic, he knew the signs. Count, he told himself: one, two, three, four. He always counted everything, to keep his mind off things he would rather not think of, or because there was usually nothing better to do. Sixty-three steps took him across the salon to his brother's apartment, six-hundred-twenty-seven steps from one garden wall to the other. The feathers on the wing of a falcon (countless, though he kept trying), the number of fresh dates served with his morning meal (always five – a coincidence, or a kindred soul in the kitchen counted the dates he put on the plate. It felt like a secret bond between them, making Hamid feel less alone), the number of days since his mother had died (eight-thousand five-hundred and ninety-one days).
Ahead of him, he heard Jurad shuffle forward. Or was Jurad behind him? He couldn't tell anymore. In the total darkness, he had lost all sense of direction and time. He stopped and turned his head upward. The ground seemed to open beneath him and he had the sensation of falling, as if down a deep well, but only bumped against the conduit wall, gasping.
"Your Highness, you alright?"
"Call me Hamid, I told you." Jurad was not to blame. In all the years they had known each other, since they were boys, he'd never called him anything but Your Highness or My Lord, and could not imagine calling him anything else. "It's nothing," Hamid added in a more gentle tone. "Let's continue."
Whatever argument he might have evoked for embarking on this madness, he had now forgotten it. This wasn't rational, there was no good reason to justify the risk they were taking, even if it was only for one night. He clenched his teeth.
"Look, there's light! We've arrived!"
He lifted his gaze. In the soft glow, he could again make out the contours of Jurad's body. He crawled on, faster, towards what appeared to him to be a new life.
Jurad pushed aside an iron grill, heaved himself upwards, and disappeared. Following close behind, Hamid emerged from the womb of the earth and landed on a cold floor. He lay panting, humid from sweat, watching the moonlight fall through the barred windows onto a shimmering pool in the stone floor near him. He blinked and choked back laughter; next to him on the floor was Jurad, and he was black with dirt.
The conduits had brought them out into the 'wudu' of a mosque – the ablution area where visitors performed the ritual cleansing of hands, arms, face, and feet before prayers. There was a fountain, four taps and beneath them, shallow basins to wash the feet. On the wall behind the fountain, tiles with calligraphy read: O you have believed, when you rise to perform prayer, wash your faces and your forearms to the elbows and wipe over your heads and wash your feet to the ankles.
It was a modest space just inside the main entrance, and connected to the prayer area. He looked about in wonder. This was nothing like the richly decorated palace mosque he was used to. There the floors of the 'wudu' were dressed in handmade Iznik tiles, while the floor of the prayer area beneath the intricately woven prayer rugs was covered with wall-to-wall carpets, and the niche indicating the direction of Mecca crafted from marble. The pulpit from which the Imam delivered the Friday sermon was also a masterful piece of woodwork, with inlays of mother-of-pearl. Here, a few oil lamps served as the only decoration, for the rest everything was plain: the slightly domed ceiling, the walls, the windows, the pulpit and the wool prayer rugs on the floor. A door led from the 'wudu', probably to a room where women could pray.
"You're sure there's no one here," Hamid whispered.
"For a handful of gold, the watchman stays away tonight. In any case, this mosque is hardly used."
"You're nervous, I can tell."
"The moon is too bright."
They washed their hands and faces in the cold water of the fountain. Dirt stuck to their hair and clothes. Hamid struck a pose: "See, you've got nothing to worry about. Even in plain daylight, no one would know me like this."
"InshAllah, God willing," Jurad mumbled.
Hamid pushed open the large entrance door, stepped outside into the small courtyard and filled his lungs with night air. It was crisp and dangerous and enticing – it felt like inhaling a sparkling promise replete with strange, uncharted scents.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the tall grass. There was not a soul in sight. Jurad pointed into the obscurity ahead. "Up on the hill, that's Pera. Over there, the Galata tower and below it, Galata. That's the harbour, see?"
The contours of rooftops, countless church spires, one or two slender minarets, and outside the harbour, steam ships lay anchored.
"And Galata bridge. You cross over that and you're in Stamboul."
Hamid looked sideways at Jurad whose black skin melted into the night. It was a formidable achievement to escape the palace. It was also an act of treason, and treason was punishable by death. Yet when he'd proposed the bargain, Jurad had agreed to risk everything to make it happen, without asking for reason or justification.
Hamid picked at a straw of grass, threw it away, picked up his soiled kaftan and retrieved a document from the pocket, along with a dagger. The handle was encrusted with three large, emerald stones, and the cover dispersed with diamonds. He handed it to Jurad who admired it expertly, turning it this way and that, bringing it out of its sheath to feel the sharp edge with his thumb.
"The most beautiful I've ever seen." Jurad's eyes glistened in the darkness.
"It's yours."
Jurad kneeled and kissed the hem of Hamid's kaftan.
