observatory to watch the stars; like that observatory his grandfather Ahmet the First’s grandfather, Murat the Third, had built for the late Takiyuddin Efendi ninety years ago, and which later fell into ruin from neglect. Or rather, something more advanced than that: a House of Science where scholars could observe not only the stars, but the whole world, its rivers and oceans, clouds and mountains, flowers and trees and, of course, its animals, and then come together to discuss their observations at leisure and make progress in the advance of the intellect.
The sultan had listened to Hoja talk of this project which I, too, was hearing about for the first time, as if listening to an agreeable fable. As they returned to the palace in their carriages he’d asked once again, ‘How will the lion give birth, what do you say?’ Hoja had thought it over and this time answered, ‘An equal number of male and female cubs will be born.’ At home he told me there was no danger in having said this. ‘I will have that fool of a child in the palm of my hand,’ he said. ‘I am more adept than the Imperial Astrologer Huseyn Efendi!’ It shocked me to hear him use this word in speaking of the sovereign; for some reason I even took offence. In those days I was keeping myself occupied with housework out of boredom.
Later he began to use that word as if it were a magical key that would unlock every door: because they were ‘fools’ they didn’t look at the stars moving over their heads and reflect on them, because they were ‘fools’ they asked first what was the good of the thing they were about to learn, because they were ‘fools’ they were interested not in details but in summaries, because they were ‘fools’ they were all alike, and so on. Although I too had liked to criticize people this way, not many years before, when I still lived in my own country, I’d say nothing to Hoja. At the time, in any case, he was preoccupied with his fools, not with me. Apparently my folly was of another kind. In my indiscretion those days I had told him of a dream I’d had: he had gone to my country in my place, was marrying my fiancée, at the wedding no one realized that he was not me, and during the festivities which I watched from a corner dressed as a Turk, I met up with my mother and fiancée who both turned their backs on me without recognizing who I was, despite the tears which finally wakened me from the dream.
Around that time he went twice to the pasha’s mansion. I believe the pasha was not pleased to find Hoja developing a relationship with the sovereign away from his watchful eye; he’d interrogated him; he’d asked after me, he’d been investigating me, but only much later, after the pasha had been banished from Istanbul, did Hoja tell me this; he feared I might have passed my days in terror of being poisoned if I had known. Still, I could tell that the pasha was more intrigued by me than he was by Hoja; it flattered my pride that the resemblance between Hoja and myself disturbed the pasha more than it did me. In those days it was as if this resemblance were a secret Hoja would never wish to know and whose existence lent me a strange courage: sometimes I thought that by grace of this resemblance alone I would be safe as long as Hoja lived. Perhaps that is why I contradicted Hoja when he’d say the pasha, too, was one of those fools; he became irritated at that. He spurred me to a brazenness I was not accustomed to, I wanted to feel both his need for me and his shame before me: I relentlessly questioned him about the pasha, about what he said regarding the two of us, strangling Hoja in a rage the cause of which I believe was not clear even to him. Then he’d stubbornly repeat that they would get rid of the pasha too, soon the janissaries would be up to something, he sensed the presence of conspiracies within the palace. For this reason, if he were going to work on a weapon as the pasha suggested, he should build