Hamid was not himself when he left Reshid, a fit of madness possessed him. Outside Murad's apartment, he brushed aside the eunuch guards using the power of this title, and forced his way inside.

"Murad!" He looked about the room, which was cast in darkness, the shutters closed, curtains drawn, the air sticky and smelling of sweat mixed with eucalyptus and mint.

Something cold and hard moved in his eyes. He crossed the floor and tore open the curtains to the balcony.Outside, a strong wind howled and thick, water laden clouds filtered the mid-day light into a blue grey hue which landed in a pool at his feet. The double door windows were locked and barred just as Peresto had said they would be, to save Murad from jumping.

On the chimney he found a candle, which he lit and swept through the air. All furniture had been removed except for a daybed loaded with cushions at the centre of the blood red carpet. Even the gilded mirrors and the paintings were gone from the walls. In the dusty light, he made out a tray with untouched food on the floor by the door.

"Murad!" As he quickly searched the room, his eye snagged on the pointed toes of green, velvet slippers hidden under the drapes of a window. When brusquely brushed aside, he found Murad's thin body melting into the wooden panel, knees and shoulders drawn up into a ball, his eyes shut tight.

"Go away. Please don't hurt me."

Hamid swallowed hard, an icy draft went through his heart. He had expected to find Murad in a bad state, but not like this, reduced to a cowering, fearful shell of a man.

"You think I don't know why are you here?" Murad looked up, defiant. "You want to drive me away. Our uncle is dead and now you've come to take my throne."

Hamid blinked, his breath catching in his throat. Murad's face looked older than he remembered, creased and tired, like the light had gone out of it. But also younger, it was the eyes that were open wide and innocent like a child's, with the flame of candlelight inside them.

For a moment when seeing him, he had felt pity, but now, the bitter rage that had driven him here, re-surged. The dignity of the office: Sovereign of the Sublime House of Osman, Master of Kings, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Commander of the Faithful, Successor of the Prophet of the lord of the Universe. Murad was none of that. He was not invested with the sword of Osman, so how could he be infused with God's grace or transformed into God's Shadow on Earth?

Murad snivelled and crawled away from him. "Go away, leave me alone. It's all collapsing - "

"Quiet!" Hamid's bark made Murad stop and contract into a ball, dimly rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands over his ears. He snivelled sentences that hardly made sense. Something about ghouls and ghosts that had taken up permanent residence with him. They wouldn't leave him alone. He saw them everywhere, Abdulaziz rattling his sword with blood flowing from his slit wrists, the young concubine cursing him: I curse your mother's vagina, may the black birds eat your eyeballs, my shit on you, son-of-a-cocksucker. And the baby crying crimson tears, his softly rounded belly pierced by a bayonet.

It was unbearable. Hamid grabbed Murad by the shoulders and shook him violently to quiet him, but Murad whimpered even louder, and clung to Hamid with sweaty hands.

It was hard to breathe, impossible to move. Hamid's compressed lips contained the words he wanted to say: I wish you dead; you deserve your demons; you deserve to die. Or were his lips compressed by the effort to fight back his own ghosts, who turned up out of nowhere, disappeared and reappeared? He looked at Murad, but instead of seeing a man he saw fragments of their forefathers, each clutching in their hands the white silk cords with which they had strangled their brothers, doing God's bidding to preserve the empire.

"You too hound me," Murad said, wringing his bony hands. A heap on the floor, he had stopped crying, the hollow face unshaven, dry saliva around the cracked lips and dark pools under the eyes.

Hamid exhaled, breath along with despair and horror, and slid to his knees next to him.

"I see your hands close around my neck, your dagger turn in my back," Murad whispered, retreating away from Hamid, into the curtains. "I feel the poison you put in my food festering in my gut. The old Valide kept a wax doll of me. Did you know? The gipsies made it with a strand of my hair sewn to its chest. The old witch put needles through its head and heart, she furnished the doll with rats and snakes, and burnt candles and incense as she conjured spirits and demons to kill me. The day I came for our uncle, she kicked and fought as good as any man."

"I was there, by your side," Hamid said.

Murad shot him a confused look, then his gaze returned to the troubled memory of that night.

"When the old witch saw me, she hurled the doll in the fire; it was devoured in a rush of flame. And her laughter - it was Satan himself laughing through her. If I close my eyes, I can feel the flames blister my feet and legs, I can smell my flesh roast. The old witch cursed my reign." With the back of his hand, Murad dried the silent tears that trickled down his cheeks.

Hamid shivered and barely heard his own muffled response. Who was he to say with certainty that it had not happened that way, with so much going on the night when Abdulaziz was deposed? Curses chanted at night, second-sight, amulets, ghosts, it was so very hard to simply disregard it all. So very hard.

It might have been the wind outside that produced a sudden clatter. Whatever it was, it made Murad retreat into a corner and watch in horrid perplexity. "It's the Valide," he whimpered, staring wildly at Hamid. "The old witch has sent you. That's why you have come here, to kill me."

Fear seized Hamid, he reached out with a restraining hand, but too late. With a shrill scream Murad leapt at him and, somehow, landed on his back, and knocked him off balance. The floor slid under his feet, he tumbled down with Murad on top of him, windmilling his arms and clawing at his face. "I will not let you take my throne," Murad cried. "I won't let it happen! I will kill you, I will not rest until you are dead."

Hamid gasped for air, his vision blurring as he realised, through bursts of light inside the head, Murad was choking him with the full weight of his arm.

Suddenly, Murad released his grip, thrashing about wildly as if fighting some unseen enemy. Hamid seized the opportunity, grabbing Murad by the hair and yanking his head back, locking his legs around Murad's body. They tumbled around until Hamid pinned him to the floor in a headlock. "God damn you, I will kill you," he cried, but only raspy sounds came out of his battered throat. Tears ran down his cheeks. Beneath him, Murad's eyes were like large, dark pools, and his face glistened with sweat and blood from his bleeding nose.

Hamid let go of him and stepped away, his chest heaving with exertion and emotion. With a racing heart, he stumbled out of the room, past the Valide who had stopped in the doorway, too dumbfounded or too frightened to enter. She grabbed his sleeve, but he brushed her off and fled.

As if pulled by an invisible force, he wandered through long harem corridors where he had hardly set foot since his circumcision. He passed women who, going about their daily tasks, quickly looked away and covered their faces. They were not his father's, but Murad's women, for the rest, nothing seemed changed. He ignored them, retracing in his mind a long forgotten path which brought him deeper into the harem.

In a large hallway, among tall, white marble pillars, children played hide and seek under the watchful eyes of their kalfa, just as he had done as a child with Murad and his other siblings and cousins. The ghostly shape of a boy galloped past him on a white hobby horse, and faded, like wisps of smoke, among the pillars. Lost in memories and driven by a demonic force, he continued through corridors and halls, until he found himself by a door in an abandoned part of the harem.

It opened on silent hinges, inviting him inside. More than anything else, he associated the harem with this room, where his mother had died in solitude. He inhaled the musty odour of disuse and listened to the eerie silence, broken only by the whisper of his own breath and the distant sounds of the harem beyond the walls.

In the corner of the room stood his mother's gilded bed, imported from Vienna. He let his fingers brush against the wall, trailed them through the hanging tassels of the lampshade, feeling the delicate brush against his skin, he let his hand slide under the soft covers that had so often served as his refuge when he was a boy, and across the red velvet cushions under which his mother would hide purses with silver coins to make him laugh. I wonder what you might find under those cushions, my Lion. The sound of her breathless voice sent a shiver down his spine.

Briefly, his eyes fluttered closed, his brow furrowed as he allowed the memory to wash over him. He turned one cushion, then another, brought it to his face and inhaled a faint scent of hyacinth. Years had passed. Enough time for him to grow into another person than that little boy.

And yet, he was the same. The room recaptured him, and he felt an unexpected sense of guilt. He had wanted to cut Tirimujgan out of his life while she, even in death, continued to bestow him with so much love and hope. His jaw clenched, and the muscles in his face tightened.

Crushing the cushion in his arms, the corners of his mouth quivered, a barely perceptible tremor: "You should have let me go."

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Author's note

The turban was a distinctive and essential part of Ottoman headgear for men throughout the empire's history. The style, size, and color of the turban varied depending on the wearer's social status, occupation, and religious affiliation. For example, sultans and high-ranking officials often wore elaborate turbans adorned with precious stones and embroidery, while scholars and religious leaders typically donned simpler, white turbans.

The colour of the turban could also indicate a person's role or position; for instance, green turbans were reserved for those claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad, called sayyids.  The colour green has a special significance in Islam, as it is associated with Paradise and is believed to have been the Prophet Muhammad's favourite colour.