In the past year, Hamid and his older brother Murad had made a habit of flying their hawks on Tuesday mornings. They had been drifting apart and flying the hawks was one activity they enjoyed without tension. Tuesday came around, and Murad sent his Master-of-the-Chambers to announce his departure to the falconry. With tremendous effort, Hamid rose from his bed, bathed in the hammam, then asked Jurad's replacement, whatever his name was, to prepare his clothes.

The eunuch performed Jurad's tasks as if he'd always been there. He brought the silver pitcher with cool water for Hamid to wash his hands before morning prayer, made sure he got his coffee just the way he liked it, with a spoon full of sugar, and directed the eunuchs who served him breakfast – only a little yoghurt with honey, no cheese.

Hamid stood before the mirror in his private salon while two Agha, eunuch servants, dressed him in a sleeveless, gold embroidered jacket over a blue shirt, wide white pants, red leggings, and his leather falcon glove. He felt a familiar heaviness settle in his chest. The opulent room, the rich fabrics adorning his body, the silence that seemed to envelope the whole world, it all felt suffocating.

During the years of isolation in the 'cage', falconry had been a common activity with Murad. It alleviated the solitude and the boredom which was driving them mad. During those years, Hamid had become restless and emotional, moody and forgetful, and he started talking to himself. At times he hallucinated, seeing flashing lights and bizarre visions like processions of dogs or a divan changing form. Sometimes he heard singing voices, or felt the whole room in motion. To calm his distressed mind, he would count the steps to the cabinet-making workshop in the garden, where the touch of soft wood under his fingers, and the exacting concentration on intricate details, soothed him. Murad suffered too, but sought refuge in raki and champagne.

The hardship of their forced isolation brought them together, but it also festered resentment, each mutely blaming the other for their frustration and suffering. Watching their hawks take off with a sharp swoop of their wings, and graze the wide sky, lifted some of the pressure. The distraction and the fresh air cleared the cobwebs from their minds.

Four years he spent in the 'cage' before Peresto persuaded Sultan Abdulaziz to grant Hamid leniency. Murad was not so fortunate. He was the son of a less capable mother and subject to the Valide's personal dislike. So their paths diverged. Hamid did not have permission to leave the palace, but he was given access to books, attended concerts and other festivities in the harem, and resumed his lessons with Reshid, the one the harem ladies called 'the lame teacher' because of his limp. The books and the intellectually stimulating conversations became a waterhole which brought him back to life, and he clung to them.

"You've abandoned me," Murad had said. "But what do I care? You can have your lessons. I'm a practical, visceral man. A man of ideas, and soon enough, I'll be Sultan."

Hamid had angrily rebuffed the accusation. He didn't want to admit that, deep inside, he'd been relieved to escape Murad's company, or that in Murad's weak-chinned face he recognised their father. Medjid had died of depression and addiction and, resenting the likeness, Hamid could no longer endure Murad's company. To prove Murad wrong and to clear his conscience, he'd suggested they should spend time together – fly their birds on Tuesdays.

Now, with meticulous attention, an Agha brushed Hamid's jacket, another his gilded slippers. His clothes were already impeccable, brushed and re-brushed, the act was meaningless, but it was an ordained part of the dressing ceremony. Hamid paid them no attention. His gaze floated.

This would be the first time he'd stepped outside his apartment since his escape. Upon his return to the palace, he had taken to bed for days, unwell. Peresto had been alarmed, worried that his recklessness and subsequent apathy were signs of his father's melancholic disposition. To the harem, Peresto announced Hamid was ill.

The doctor came to examine him, opened his mouth, checked his eyes, measured his pulse. A fever, he declared, provoked by the shock of Jurad's disappearance. The Valide passed by with her entourage of mystics and gipsies to put her blue handprint on the doors of the heirs to the throne. The month of May, Hamid had thought as he listened to their voodoo invocations. The paint dripped onto the floor.

The eunuchs fussed over him, odalisques brought his favourite food. His kadins brought the children to cheer him up, but he sent them away. For two days, Bidar Kadin who was five months pregnant, stayed by his bedside until his silence drove even her away. And when Murad asked to see him, he'd turned him down. Too tired, he said.

So Murad sent him a note: salamtak, get well soon. In the cramped scribbles he could sense his brother's anxiety. Hamid felt guilty and ashamed. The Valide often had her gipsies make baleful dolls linked to Murad's spirit, and cursed them. There would be a blue handprint on his door too, with a malicious spell. Hamid felt guilty towards Peresto as well, for leaving her to clean up the aftermath of his adventure. And to Bidar Kadin and the children - Mehmed soon to become a man, and little Zekive - he was failing them too. With a shudder, a horrific vision of his darling Ulviye washed over him, burnt alive in the arms of her mother who desperately tried to choke the flames. In October it would be a year since the accident. He pushed away the memory, and the thought of Nazikeda Kadin, the mother who had never recovered from her loss.

Five days he'd stayed on the divan in his room, unmoving, when Murad sent him a present next, a box of embroidered handkerchiefs, and another note: will you be well tomorrow? Holding the box, he'd gazed at a small painting on the wall for many hours – it was of a blackbird strung up by the feet, the head pointing heavy towards the floor, its lifeless form suspended in captivity. A cruel, yet strangely serene image of death, which he had painted as a young man, shortly after he moved out of the harem.

He crumbled the note, and fixing his gaze on the dates on the silver plate, whispered, "One, two, three, four, five." He thought of nothing, but in his body, he sensed a familiar dread. He was back to being the heir, Abdul Hamid, stuck in a place where today was the same as yesterday, and the day before that. There were markers of time in the palace, the ticking and chiming of European style clocks, there was the arrival of meals three times a day, the call to prayer five times a day, sunrise and sunset. But the next day, the cycle started again and in substance, nothing changed. He felt trapped in eternity, in an endless spiral from which there was no escape, like a throat swallowing him whole.

Mostly, he wondered if he had dreamt that night outside. It felt like a separate story about someone else, in a world where every second and every breath was enthralling and unique. The unrestrained student called Hamid was an identity he had unwittingly stumbled across on the square with the softa. No one had doubted it or regarded him with suspicion. The deception had not been premeditated, he hadn't lied, he had not invented or denied anything. On the contrary, he'd had no choice in the matter. When he'd emerged from the conduit, a drawer opened with intense feelings and thoughts he did not recognise as his, and he could do nothing but follow them. An image of Flora's face flashed up in his mind, but he immediately suppressed it. Nothing good would come from thinking of her.

He stroked his scraped fingers which were still healing, and pressed down slowly to feel the pain of his blistered feet. The pain was real. It was always there, he thought, no matter what he did. A familiar panic mounted and he struggled against an urge to escape before it was too late. Too late for what?

He felt cowardly and ashamed to think this way. That he should want another life, free from the crushing weight of history, of the weight of God. Especially when Peresto had returned to check on him. She'd sat in a chair by his bedside and spoken in a calm and clear voice of her meeting with the Valide, who had accepted Jurad's disappearance with surprising ease; all traces of Hamid's escape had been blotted out. He never escaped the harem, Jurad was not dead, but alive and free, back in his native land somewhere in Africa. Jurad's things had been burnt in a kitchen oven, his name erased.

"I have decided on his replacement," she'd said.

He knew he should be grateful. He'd closed his eyes to shut out the image of Jurad's head in the dust. He thought of Jurad's knife floating in the air. One, two, three, four, he'd counted the pearls in Peresto's hair.

Now dressed for the outdoors, Hamid stumbled down the stairs, and out into the garden where Murad waited for him by the falconry. Murad's expression shifted from relief to anguish to spite on seeing him. "Oh, there you are. So you are feeling better," he said.

"Yes," Hamid said and looked to the sky, momentarily blocked by an unease he sensed on the rare occasions when he and his brother were left alone, as if it was somehow unnatural. It was midday, and the sun had broken through the clouds, blurring the sea and the sky into a brilliant light which stung the eyes. Murad's bird was already flying east, along the coast.

"You've started without me," he said.

"I didn't think you'd come." Murad waved his empty glass. An Agha filled it up with champagne. He emptied it in one go and requested another. Murad's unshaved face told Hamid he was in a binge, and he fought the urge to leave.

"The Valide cursed me, you know," Murad slurred.

"It's just superstition, it isn't real. She probably cursed me too."

Murad turned away, his lips twitching.

The falconer brought forth Hamid's goshawk. Her huge taloned feet grasped the perch. Hamid reached out an arm and the bird stepped gracefully onto the thick leather glove which reached his elbow, her shape long and hunched. A bell around her ankle jingled. When he removed the protective, black hood, the bird moved nervously on his wrist, startled perhaps by the sudden light or by their voices. With his free arm, he reached into a bucket for food, the dead bodies of mice and squirrels, which he served her. She swallowed them whole. He whistled and the bird leapt into the air.

Murad put down his glass – they exchanged a smile and craned their heads. There were times, not many, when Hamid was glad to be a member of the Osman dynasty. As the hawk turned and sailed along the coast towards the Sea of Marmara, it struck him this might be one of them. The grey bird was a rare breed worthy of an Ottoman prince, brought to him from the Arabian Peninsula as a gift from Peresto.

During the long years in the "cage," he had domesticated her, while she had moulded him into her image. A crossbreeding of sorts. She was everything he had ever wanted to be: self-possessed, strong, wild. To tame her, he'd had to learn to wait and watch like a hawk. Watch for the slightest change in her posture, to read the state of her mind. He felt what she felt, saw what she saw; he'd learnt to lose himself in her.

He blinked. With the sun on his face, the sound of rustling leaves, chirping birds and water flowing in the fountain, he felt almost as free as the bird far out at sea.

A question from Murad jolted him out of his reverie. "What happened?" He pointed to Hamid's fingers.

"Ah that." For an instant, he felt the urge to tell Murad about that strange night and about Flora, but swallowed the words. "It's nothing," he mumbled.

Murad's mind had already moved on. "You really think he's gone back to his native lands?"

"Native lands," Hamid asked. In an instant, his soul shrivelled and he waved his hand in a helpless gesture.

"Your Master of the Chambers, Jurad. It is said he escaped the palace to return to his family."

"Oh." Hamid squinted into the sun. "I hope so."

"You do?" And when Hamid did not respond, "You didn't want him to leave before." And again, "I don't believe it."

"What don't you believe?" Hamid mumbled.

Murad shook his head and made a stride toward Hamid. He looked so unstable Hamid thought he might collapse. "You know what I think? I think his body will be washed up on the shore of the Bosphorus one day."

Hamid froze. In his horror he could see Murad believed his own words – he now noticed the dark rings under his eyes, and his face was blotchy from fear and alcohol. Murad's accusation and the memory of Jurad's dead eyes struck like a sudden blow from behind, and he felt as if he might faint.

"What are you saying, Murad," he whispered when he had recovered.

Murad sniggered. "Don't worry, I don't believe those rumours."

"Rumours?"

"I know you don't have it in you," Murad said.

Before Hamid could form an answer, Jurad's replacement arrived with a message from Peresto. Reshid was expecting him for his lesson. Relieved to escape, Hamid turned his back to Murad. The falconer would retrieve his bird.

To calm himself, he said he wanted to change into his black suit before his lesson. Trailing a few steps behind, Jurad's replacement accompanied him back to his private apartment. Clothes were removed, fresh ones brought in. Jurad's replacement had a thin and angular face. He was smaller and probably younger than Jurad, but it was hard to tell as eunuchs tended to look younger than their age.

"What's your name," he asked.

"They call me Hifsi, my Lord."

"You report to Peresto?"

Hifsi kept his eyes glued on his feet. "Yes, my Lord."

Well, at least Hifsi was truthful.

Lifting his gaze, Hifsi extended an open palm with Jurad's prayer beads.

"Where did you get these," Hamid asked.

"I have a friend in the kitchen where they burnt Jurad's belongings."

"Your friend raked them out of the ashes, did he?"

"Well, sort of, my Lord. I thought you might want to keep them." Hifsi allowed the beads to flow into Hamid's open palm.

A painful twitch came to Hamid's lips. "Did you know him?"

"Not well, my Lord."

Hamid's gaze no longer trained on Hifsi's face, or on the beads, but on a gilded leaf on the wall behind him. There was a silence before he continued.

"Where do you come from?"

"I was raised in the palace, my Lord."

"No, I mean before."

Hifsi shrugged. "Forgive me, my Lord, I was taken young."

Hamid closed his fingers around the prayer beads, then quickly returned them to Hifsi.

"Throw them away," he said.

"But, my Lord..."

"Throw them away and don't ever mention Jurad's name again [I'd suggest a line space here, to bring out the impact of this moment, and show the change of scene.] ."

Murad did not appear for dinner. It wasn't the first time and, as usual, Hamid felt guilty. After his lesson with Reshid, he had wandered aimlessly from one salon to another, through the garden, past the carpentry workshop to the falconry, back through the salons to the hammam, carefully avoiding his brother. The afternoon had crawled by and, little by little, as he resumed his habits, the memories of that night faded.

He decided not to wait for Murad, but in the middle of his lonely meal he sent Hifsi to inquire. The eunuch returned with a message from Murad's Master of the Chambers: Murad was indisposed. Hamid frowned momentarily, and went on eating. He knew what this was and how it would end, and it irritated him. It had to stop, he should simply ignore him.

But having finished his meal, he went by Murad's apartment. Inside the door, he stood, passing his hands repeatedly over his hair, and counted to calm his thoughts. Murad lay on the divan, a silk blanket pulled up to his chest, leaving his thin neck bare. His right arm was flung across his eyes. With draperies drawn, the room was dark and stuffy like a bandit's den, and stank of alcohol and tobacco. 

Murad's short beard, like a shadow on his face, was unkempt and dirty. Hamid had seen him at moments like this before, when he was still and quiet, after the storm had subsided. Traces of the binge were scattered around the floor – empty bottles of raki, trays with half-eaten food. There would be no use talking to him now, not in this state. Tomorrow this would be forgotten.

Disgusted, with a darkness settling around his heart, he leaned over Murad and smelt his sour breath. "Damn you. May the jinns take you." He sat on the divan, smoothed back the hair on Murad's forehead – hair which was black like his own, but now pressed into thin, sweaty strains.

Murad must have sensed Hamid's presence because his arm moved away from his eyes and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. He moaned and grimaced, uncovering a line of even teeth. With his eyes still shut, he found Hamid's fingers and squeezed them. "Don't ever leave me," he mumbled.

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Author's note

Artists of the Ottoman era designed bird palaces, like the one in the embedded image, to provide birds with a sanctuary. The bird palaces  were placed on mosques, houses, libraries, and tombs. They were not only beautiful to look at, but also reflected the belief that those who built them would be blessed for their benevolent actions.