Old Janissary
WILLIAM IAN PAGENT
I deserved a better death.
That is all I can think of after being shot, anything else fell flat before the transparency that I will soon arrive at death’s door.
Me, a proud and loyal son of Constantinople. I am of the Janissary Corps, the pride of the Ottoman Empire; I have served my people and vanquished their enemies. I have done everything in my power to be a patriot; to die in the streets like a vagrant is manifestly perverse.
A tragedy has befallen my city, one I was unable to stop; now I lie on the cobblestone, facing a sky with no sunlight. All I have is the one phrase:
I deserved a better death.
The revelation came to me as painfully as the shot that had pierced my chest. Mail and gore spewed across the streets before I had even dropped. The shot had torn through my armour and left my lung a gelatinous mush. Blood now filled from my throat up to my lips, draining down my cheek like a flowing river that no dam could hold.
It’s rather curious. Here I lie upon the land. Discarded in the filth-ridden streets of Constantinople and yet I am to die by drowning.
A Janissary should not die like this, my mind continues. By the mercy of Jibril, did I not deserve a better death?!?
That phrase. It repeats and repeats like an eternal pendulum swinging back and forth inside my head. It prevents me from feeling the faintest sense of peace before my death. This personal zeitgeist burns at my conscience with a deep rage, spreading outwards like a searing fire, choking any other thoughts housed inside. There simply is no room for anything else. I can do nothing but contemplate the injustice of what has become of the Janissary.
We had gathered at the base of the Hagia Sophia and marched for the great doors of the Sultan Mahmûd’s palace. The Janissary had come together to stop him from dishonouring the Ottoman Empire like his elder cousin, Sultan Salim, had done before.
We didn’t even see them. Not before they started pelting us with their guns; gifts from the Prussians bequeathed by Mahmûd’s treacherous friendships.
Those new soldiers, those ‘Asâkir-i Mansûre-i Muhammediye’, they shame us. They have no respect for warfare. They fought without honour behind guns and cannonades like the Europeans. Like cowards.
In that regard, they suit Mahmûd well and his doctrines of ‘modernisation’. He believes the future of the Ottoman Empire will come from the industrial revolutions of Europe and China, but he spits at the millennia of tradition he descended from. From my father to my grandfather, to five generations of pious men before them. It was the Janissary, my eushayra, who brought the Ottoman Empire victory, not the rifles and soulless machine guns. Us!
We defeated the Byzantine Empire.
We held the line against the Crusaders.
We curbed the Serbian revolts.
We earned our place at the table.
We deserve respect.
We deserve a better death!
And yet, Great Mahmûd Han bin Abdülhamid, the petulant child, deems to know better. He claims that the Janissary have no place within this ‘brand new world’ of his. It’s a world that would make Allah weep.
It was my grandfather who told me that the Janissary lost their way when they began using muskets. He used to place me on his lap before the great doors, astounding me with tales of Ottoman virtue, and the promise of a grand future beyond the great doors, so long as we remained adherents of Allah. I feel the shadow of those great doors as they close in around me now, drawing closer, eclipsing me in a shroud that obscures any sight of the future my grandfather promised me.
The shame my grandfather would have felt to witness this European decadence infiltrate the Ottoman Empire would have held the retribution of a thousand jihads.
Like locusts upon the crop, they’ve stolen our virtue, he’d have said
My ancestors weep from heaven, as would I, if I had the strength. I’d drown myself in tears if I wasn’t already drowning in my own blood.
Has Allah forsaken me? Has he deemed the generations of service my family has given to his people insufficient?
No, you fool, now you’re not just feeble bodied, you’re feeble minded.
A dog comes to my side to lick the blood spilling from my splintered mask, like it were Allah’s response.
The answer mocks me.
I want to slam my fist against the ground, make that dog whelp and flee, show it that I still live. I am not a carcass for it to feed upon. Not yet.
But all I can manage is a shaky pathetic fist.
I have to get up.
My eyes dart to find something – anything to bring me back to my feet. If I die now, the Janissary die with me. If that happens, then the Ottoman Empire inherits Mahmûd’s world.
The one thing. The one thing that divided us from Europe was our piety; our incorruptible resolution to maintain tenants Jibril dictated to Muhammad centuries ago. To be undone now…
Allah, I need more. I need something beyond flesh, beyond European guns. I need what you gave the Prophet Muhammad to sunder the apostates of Mecca. I must protect my home.
While I cannot see it, I know my weapon lies just beyond my side. I reach out until my cold fingers find purchase. I grab the curved hilt of my kilij. What was once a proud sabre that linked me to my Seljuk ancestors was now shattered beyond repair, ripped apart by those guns. Yet a sliver of metal remained attached to the hilt. Naught but the length of a woman’s hand, but it could still find the heart of my enemies.
This shall be the instrument of my jihad, I proclaim to myself.
I feel a warm wind blowing from the east, carrying with it the light of dawn, and the promise of a new day and life begun afresh. I will cherish the promise of the wind, and I will seize this new day, for while death’s fingers constrict around me, it has not claimed me yet.
For a curious moment, it is as if the wind itself lifts my body from the cobblestone and back to my feet. I feel lighter, as if I am a puppet gently being tugged by string, with my feet never truly touching the ground. And there it is, standing before me are the great doors, the crack of dawn just barely visible shining through the slit.
I look back to where I had once lay, it seems I am still there. My armour lies bored with holes, my mask is shattered, and the dog has once again resumed licking my blood from wounds. My body lies on the ground, yet I am standing before it with my kilij firmly gripped in my hand.
CLICK
The dog was not the only thing watching my body. I face the great doors once again and find one of Mahmûd’s new riflemen looking back at me. Despite his cerulean tunic marking him as one of the Sultan’s elite soldiers, he has the face of a boy. Still, his uniform and fancy Prussian rifle projected the authority that had been sapped from the Janissary.
I stare the boy down as he stares at me. His eyes widen. His mouth agape.
He tries to maintain my gaze, but I watch his eyes dart to my corpse, lying as a mangled mess of gore still exhuming blood from its wounds. His eyes are plastered in horror, he sees my own body lying on the ground, and yet I am also standing before him like a ghūl risen from the grave.
He does not know what I am, and in truth, I don’t know either. I feel hollow, adrift; the wind feels as if it could lift me up and carry me to sea. What he sees is something godless, something beyond his capacity to reason with. The rifleman cannot speak to what he sees, all he can do is desperately cling to his rifle like a baby clings to his mother’s hand.
I wonder what I would see if I looked into this rifleman’s eyes. What would I see reflecting back at me?
A cold northernly wind brushed past our tunics; his pristine and modern; mine broken and near ancient.
The rifleman takes his shot.
He fires thrice with his revolving rifle, and the shots hit their mark. Yet I do not fall; nor do I bleed. I see the horror in the boy’s eyes. He mutters a prayer to himself, begging for a quick death. I could fell him, butcher him the same way his comrades butchered the Janissary. Yet I cannot help but pity him. He’s just a boy who found himself in the service of a traitorous Sultan. To that regard, he may as well be by kin.
Can I blame this boy for the orders bequeathed upon him?
A greater man, such as my grandfather, would have spat at Sultan Mahmûd’s face had he been given the same orders as this boy, he would rather death than the dishonour of erasing such a prised part of Ottoman culture.
But this rifleman is not my grandfather, he is just a boy.
I look him in the eye and see the tears swelling as he betrays himself to fear. He doesn’t even resist as I pry the revolving rifle from his hands, his fingers merely shake as he mimes the grip he once had over the weapon.
The rifleman closes his eyes and awaits death, wincing in dread. The wind turns north, picking up an Anatolian warmth; when the boy opens his eyes, he finds he is alone, his life is spared. His weapon I will destroy, but my jihad was never meant for him, it was for Mahmûd alone. Perhaps I will come to regret letting the boy live, age may not wisen him.
Beyond the threshold of the great doors lies the future. Mine and the rest of the Ottoman Empire.
As I place my hands on these mountainous doors, I expect to endure a straining labour to move them. But now that I stand on epoch between life and death, I find there is more power in my hands in this singular moment. For perhaps the last time, the Janissary will determine who will lead the Ottomans.
What will its destiny be? Lost in squandered potential as it takes on the façade of the West? Or will it be renewed to its halcyon age, when men and women of virtue could challenge the Byzantium with our pious valour alone?
As close to heresy as the thought may be, I wonder if I now see things from Allah’s perspective. The ability to change the fate of a creed with one simple action.
I command the doors open and they obey without resistance.
You will be avenged, eushayra.
The sultan and his guards are alerted at once to my presence, my arrival warps the foundation of the palace. Instead of the crack of dawn piercing through the great doors, my shadow slips through like a great snake, choking the light from the palace. The air is cold, and their fear is betrayed by the condensation of the court’s breath.
Muzzle flares light up the palace as the gunpowder of their rifles swirl around me, catching me in a symphony. I am a Romani fire dancer to these riflemen, and the crackling of their gunshots are the tempo to which I dance. With a fluidity formerly impossible to me, I move untouched, flying through the bullets as my kilij makes splinters of the rifles’ wooden frames.
The lives of my Janissary eushayra cleave to my soul like rot on a corpse. I am a tawhid for their will. I point my kilij at the Sultan. Marking him for divine judgement.
“My business is with the Lord of Constantinople,” I declare. “Allah will not have me until the Janissary are avenged.”
And so, the wind swings to south, carrying the cold northerly through the palace, the Sultan’s sentence is final.
