at the end of the campaign, clapped their hands. Nobody knew that the ferman was false. The true decree, the katil ferman, which the messenger kept sewn into his jacket, would be revealed to Ali only at the last moment before his death.
All this was over. Hurshid Pasha walked slowly to the entrance of his tent. Dusk was falling. The February wind whistled in a thousand languages across the plain darkened by winter and war. It is February in all the infinite lands of the empire, he groaned to himself. Why should he think there might be a fragment of March somewhere, or even a scrap of April? A little March for the empire’s chosen sons, he thought. But it was February for everyone.
This was nearly the last of the imperial territories. Two months before, traveling towards this country to take command of the troops after the defeat of Bugrahan, he had noticed that the farther he went from the center and approached the frontier, the minarets were lower, as if they were plants stunted by the increasingly harsh climate. He had been saddened to see those pitiful stumps in the wintry expanse. A little farther, and they no doubt disappeared entirely. There the European plains began, under the sign of the cross. He had never once passed beyond the state borders and had no desire to do so. Some people said that the soil there was saline, and nothing grew but deadly nightshade. Others described it as paradise.
I’m not in my right mind. Why am I doing this, he thought, and shook himself. Why am I doing nothing? He raised his head with a jerk, as if to shake off the sleep creeping over him, and clapped his hands. His adjutants, who stood waiting at a small distance and whom he had not noticed until then, rushed towards him. He motioned his arm as he did before issuing an important order, and began to speak in a voice that to him seemed to come from his temples.
A few moments later, clamorous voices filled Hurshid Pasha’s tent. Pashas, battalion commanders, clerics, adjutants, and liaison officers of all kinds ceaselessly came and went, carrying orders, commendations, or reprimands, which they hastened to communicate in exaggerated form to every corner of the vast military camp. Soon the entire besieging army had been informed of the end of the war. News-criers on horseback stopped in front of tents and shouted, “Great news, great news! Ali Pasha has been beheaded. The war is over!”
The whole field buzzed. The wind, which had not died down all day, diminished the human voices, the clatter of horses’ hooves, and the clanging of the pots cooking halva for the army, to a dull hum.
At the entrance to Hurshid Pasha’s tent, dressed in an official gown with a shaggy cloak thrown over it, appeared the field courier, Tundj Hata. Their eyes met calmly for a moment. The pasha’s gaze seemed to say, so you’ve come? The courier stood there, his face yellow and his beard freshly hennaed, as it usually was before important missions. The henna emphasized even more shockingly the sallowness of his skin.
“So you’re ready?” the pasha asked.
“I’m ready,” Tundj Hata replied.
Behind his back stood two assistants with bare arms. They held in their hands various strange panniers and pails that no doubt contained the honey and the chunks of ice and salt necessary for the transport and preservation of the head on its long journey.
“Wait outside for my order,” said Hurshid Pasha.
The courier bowed. As he went out, their eyes met again. The light of triumph shone in the pasha’s eyes. For the past week, Tundj Hata had been wandering about the camp. The very sight of this man, with his awkward limp and muddy face that ended in a short graying beard, had set Hurshid Pasha’s stomach churning. But everyone knew that Tundj Hata wouldn’t look like this for long; as soon as the order for a head came from the capital, he would collect himself and dye his beard with henna. With the severed head in his pannier, he would leap onto a horse and race through winter and darkness over rough roads or off the highway entirely in order to reach the city as soon as possible. The thought that it could be his own cold head had made Hurshid Pasha shiver, as if he could already feel the handfuls of snow the courier’s assistants would carefully pack around it. He had never before been so on edge. He’d lost his temper over everything and nothing. When one of his adjutants had brought him his lunch a few days before, he had thrown the honey-flavored dish in the man’s face, screaming, “You dog, who told you I wanted honey? The sight of it makes me sick.” And indeed recently he could not bear the sight of honey or salt or ice, and least of all the sight of Tundj Hata, whom he would surely have gotten rid of, if the courier had not been one of those officials who, despite having no particular rank in the state hierarchy, are inviolable and eternal, like the pillars of government buildings.
The pasha sometimes thought that the courier sensed his aversion. He noticed in Tundj Hata’s eyes a glint of contained derision, like the play of light at the bottom of a well, as if his eyes were saying, one day I might have your head under my arm, but you’ll never have mine. The thought of this truth had nagged at the pasha’s mind. More and more often, he remembered a neighbor’s cat that, many years ago when he was a boy, had stolen a fish head from the family kitchen as the women shouted and bustled. It seemed to Hurshid Pasha that, in just the same way, Tundj Hata was merely waiting for the moment when, amid the tumult of war, he would seize a head, his own or Ali Pasha’s, and gallop with it towards the capital city.
But now all these worries were over. The blade of destiny had harvested its crop, and it was there on the table, this white cabbage from the gardens of hell. The joy that had so far only trickled through in drops now flooded Hurshid Pasha’s entire being. His lethargy vanished. I defeated this old man, he said to himself. I am the one left on this earth.
Voices around him, some faint and others raucous, discussed the best time to set off with the head. Some people said that Tundj Hata should waste no time and leave at once, because the journey was very long. Others shook their beards doubtfully. It would be better to send the head late at night when the world was asleep, to avoid anything unexpected. Two years ago, the couriers transporting the head of the pasha of the sea, Admiral Kara Kiliç, had been attacked. Now in front of them was the head of the empire’s most famous vizier and there was every reason for the sultan’s enemies to seize it. In fact, Hurshid Pasha’s secret wish was that Tundj Hata would lose the head on the road. This was the only chance of the courier losing his own head in turn. But Hurshid Pasha knew that such a thing would never happen. He remembered well the kitchen women striking the thieving cat with their pokers and ladles, but the cat had refused to surrender its trophy. Even if Tundj Hata’s hands were cut off, he would carry that head to the Traitor’s Niche.
Hurshid Pasha listened to their arguments for a while. He knew that if the head were lost, a government commission would find out why, to the last detail.
“The head will leave at night,” he said calmly. “When the world is asleep.”
Elation now poured over him in torrents. The storm passed, and infinite rainbows of glory arched above his head. I have been left alive, he almost cried out loud with a flippant laugh.
He heard the sounds of life around him. Tundj Hata had been summoned to the tent again to be informed of the hour of departure, and his assistants were taking charge of the head. As the pasha’s scribe drafted the accompanying report to be handed in to the relevant office, they discussed Tundj Hata’s route. Someone pointed out on a map the places where fresh snow could always be found. Somebody suggested “honey from Morea.” Someone else noted that in this wintry weather there would be no need to change the ice at all. Then someone asked, “What about the body?”
Everybody turned around in surprise. After an initial bewilderment, the question gradually took shape in their minds. Indeed, what would they do with the body? Hmm, Hurshid Pasha said to himself. Until then, Ali Pasha had been nothing but a head to him. He had totally forgotten the menial body that had carried this head for eighty years.
“The body,”
