Ahmet

“ He said that a word would be spoken in Valona to make Albania free. I said to Ahmet: ‘The Montenegrins hold Scutari and the seacoast even to San Giovanni, the European Powers are in Durazzo, the Serbs have Kossova and the Dibra, the Greeks are in the south. What is talk of freedom? This is not a time to talk; it is a time to fight.’ Ahmet said, ‘Before the war cry, the council of chiefs.’ Ahmet is chief of the Mati, head of the family that has ruled the Mati since the days of Scanderbeg. He was a boy of sixteen, newly come from the court of Sultan Abdul Hamid ”

“ His family has been Mohammedan since Scanderbeg died.”
“In the morning I shall go to see Ahmet. He must be a remarkable man.”
Rexh considered this statement. “He is a good man, yes. We have a saying in the mountains, Mrs. Lane. ‘Ask a thousand men, then follow your own advice.’ I think that is what Ahmet does.”
I had interviewed, without exceptional enthusiasm, each member of the Albanian Cabinet save Ahmet, the Hawk, chief of the Mati. ”

“ Has your soul been so strangled that you prefer its being dashed out of your body, to its remaining the prescribed time in bondage?"
"Yes, my son," said Hadji Ahmet. "Far away in Stamboul, with the help of God, I managed as a junkman to feed my wife and myself; but here am I, in Egypt, a stranger, alone and starving, with possibly my wife already dead of starvation, and all this through a dream."
"Alas! Alas! my father! that you at your age should be tempted to wander so far from home and friends, because of a dream. ”

“ The Sultan was one day walking in his Palace grounds accompanied by his Chief Astrologer; wishing to test his powers he caught a grasshopper, and holding his closed hand out to the astrologer asked him what it contained. Ahmet, in a pained and reproachful tone, answered the Sultan by a much-quoted proverb: "Alas! Your Majesty! the grasshopper never knows where its third leap will land it," figuratively alluding to himself and the dangerous hazard of guessing what was in the clenched hand of his Majesty. ”

“ If he were as good a sailor as he was a skilful trader, the Guidare would never meet with any mishap under Yarhud's command. All women—and young Turkish women are no exception to the general rule—permit themselves to be tempted by the sights of fabrics from the best looms of the East.
Ahmet perceived at once how much struck Amasia was with the display, and certainly, as Nedjeb had said, neither the bazaars of Odessa nor Constantinople, not even the great stores of Ludovic, the celebrated Armenian merchant, could offer a more extended choice. ”

“ One night Hadji Ahmet went to the tree, provided with spade and pick, that he had secured from an obliging neighbor. After digging a short time a heavy case was brought to view, in which he found gold, silver, and precious jewels of great value. Hadji Ahmet replaced the case and earth and returned to bed, much lamenting that it had pleased God to furnish women, more especially his wife, with a long tongue, long hair, and very short wits. Alas! he thought, if I tell my wife, I may be hung as a robber, for it is against the [Pg 41] laws of nature for a woman to keep a secret. ”

“ It goes last through the gates of Government House, and the crowd can gaze only at the gate and its solitary guard.
Picture of Ahmet in his house. He sits in a gilded Louis Seize chair, under a painted Turkish ceiling. Half a hundred rifles, museum pieces he has chosen from the long mule trains of rifles brought down to Tirana as the mountain tribes are disarmed, are stacked behind his chair. A [Pg 347] box telephone on the wall, an English grammar on the table, a Mati man lying on the threshold of the door. Ahmet saying: “Albania needs men, needs trained men. ”

“ The Hanoum, with this, immediately squatted on the ground, and began to tell Ahmet that she had gone to the bath that morning and that she was positive that she then had the ring, but every corner of the Hamam had been searched, and the ring was not to be found.
"Oh! astrologer, for the love of Allah, exert your eye to see the unseen." ”

“ The Pasha departed, and no sooner was he [Pg 57] out of earshot, than the troubled Ahmet exclaimed in a loud voice:
"Oh woman! Oh woman! what evil influence impelled you to go the wrong path, and drag others with you! When the twenty-four hours are up, you will perhaps repent! ”

“ Ahmet smiling. “Ah, but you wouldn’t have been surprised if you had known, as I did, the men who were the rebels. They were rich men. I thought, ‘Not all will be killed in the fighting; we will capture some, arrest others. Why try them and hang them? Their money will be more useful than their bodies. We will try them and fine them.’ I thought how much money they had, and decided there was enough money there to pay for electric lights for Tirana, so naturally I sent for engineers to go out as soon as the Dibra trail was clear.” ”

“ Yarhud saluted the girls and advanced some paces towards the terrace, when suddenly he stopped, as if an idea had just occurred to him, and, approaching Amasia, as she was about to quit the verandah, he said,—
"One word more—or rather let me offer a suggestion which cannot fail to be agreeable to the fiancée of the Seigneur Ahmet."
"What is the man worrying about?" exclaimed Amasia, who was somewhat impatient of the captain's persistency in intruding himself and his opinions at the villa. ”

“ In 1804 he returned to the Mediterranean as United States naval agent to the Barbary States with Barron’s fleet. On the 23rd of February 1805 he agreed with Ahmet that the United States should undertake to re-establish him in Tripoli, that the expenses of the expedition should be repaid to the United States by Ahmet, and that Eaton should be general and commander-in-chief of the land forces in Ahmet’s campaign ”

“ Van Mitten was thinking of the unexpected journey he was making, and did not cease to wonder how it had happened that he, a citizen of Holland, had been launched thus upon a tour of the Black Sea, when he ought to be resting quietly in Pera or Constantinople.
Ahmet had made up his mind to the journey, but he determined not to spare his uncle's purse whenever delay or trouble might be avoided by using it. They would travel by the quickest and shortest route. The young man was ruminating on this, as the chaise turned the point, and he could perceive the banker's villa. ”

“ I fear I am not as other men, for evidently in the night I laid this egg; and, wife mine, if the neighbors hear of this, your husband, the long-suffering Hadji Ahmet, will be bastinadoed, bowstrung, and burned to death. Ah, truly, my soul is strangled."
And without another word Hadji Ahmet, with a sack on his shoulder, went forth to gather the cast-off shoes of horse, ox, or ass, wondering if his wife would prove an excep [Pg 42] tion in this, as she had in many other ways, to other women. ”

“ Kéraban put his head out of his window.
"Are we to lose our time on account of a wretched railway company?" he cried. "Why is the gate closed?"
"No doubt a train is due," said Van Mitten quietly.
"Why is a train due, then?" retorted Kéraban.
The postillion continued to call out, without achieving any result. No one appeared either in the hut or in the garden.
"May Allah choke him!" exclaimed Kéraban. "If he does not come, I will open the gate myself!"
"Calm yourself, uncle," said Ahmet, restraining him, for Kéraban was about to descend from the chaise. ”

“ The fairy reminded him of the old woman on whom he had compassion, and said that she was the spy of the sultan, and had told him all she had seen and heard. "But," she said, "the mere knowledge of my abode by the sultan would not so trouble you. There is something else which is the cause of your grief and vexation."
"Perie Banou," said Prince Ahmed at last, "it is even so. My father doubts my fidelity to him, unless I can provide a tent large enough to shelter him, his court, and army when he goes to war, and small enough for a man to carry in his hand." ”

“ Death for herself and Murad was the best she could expect. Ahmed's own honour, the traditions of all his house, his great position would make it impossible for him to let her pass from his, a Turk's harem to a Druze lover. The thought whirled from her sick brain, leaving all confused and hopeless as before, and her tears rained fast. Ahmed smoothed her soft hair and kissed her forehead gently, as it lay against his breast.
"Go and fetch your music, and sing to me," he whispered, as her sobs ceased. "See how lovely the spring time is; it is no time for tears, but for songs and—love." ”

“ Ahmed Bey, himself, was very old, yet some of these twenty-four girls had been sacrificed to him. The others had been divided between his two sons. Ahmed was, perhaps, a truer type of the fanatical Turk than any whose victim I had yet been. His interest seemed not to be so much in the young women themselves, as in the children he wanted them to bear to his sons—children in whom the blood of the noble Armenian race might be blended with that of the savage Turk, and who might live to perpetuate and improve the blood of his family. ”

“ Laughing gayly, he left the defile of the Hill of Eternal Fire, the Hill of Pride, and walked along steadily until at the beginning of the third moon he fell in with a wise hermit—a hermit, indeed, so wise that, alone in that part of the world, perhaps in all Asia, he knew all about the defects of a horse, the reasoning of a cat, the thundering of clouds, a woman’s deeds, and a man’s future fortunes. He told Ahmed that he was on the right road, but that he would first have to cross the Valley of the Monsters and the Garden of the Enchanted Trees. ”

“ However, all that he commanded Ahmed performed by help of the genie, even things the most impossible. He brought a tent which would cover the sultan's army, and yet, folded up, lay in the hollow of a man's hand. This and many other wonderful things did Ahmed perform, till the sultan asked for a man one foot and a half in height, with a beard thirty feet long, who could carry a bar of iron weighing five hundredweight.
Such a man the genie found, and the sultan, beholding him, turned away in disgust; whereat the dwarf flew at him in a rage, and with his iron bar smote him to death. ”

“ The foliage dropped away as did the bark; and, instead of a tree stood a very old man, with long green, hair, a long green beard, green eyes, green skin. His very toe nails were green, and green was his voice—if voice can be said to have a color—as he said to Ahmed:
“Fool you may he, but I am the greater fool. For you fooled me to the Sultan’s taste with your cursed silence. See”—he pointed at the Enchanted Garden and at an opening in its wall of trees beyond which was a sun-bathed clearing—“you have broken the spell. ”

“ Ahmed was, like his father, a man of great ability, and happily for Turkey he enjoyed the complete confidence of the young sultan, who cared for nothing but the chase, whence he is called in the Ottoman histories Avji Muhammed or Muhammed the Huntsman. Before long Ahmed was called on to lead the Turkish army against Austria. ”

“ Riding off with his cavalry from Persia to Candahar, Ahmed these robbed a caravan! Upon which every body cried out to him, "Go it!" and his lucky connexion by birth with the best of the Dooraunee blood did the rest. A murder, a flight, and a robbery, or pretty nearly in the words of our English litany, "Battle, and murder, and sudden death," together with a silver spoon in his mouth at his natal hour, had made Ahmed a shah; and this Ahmed was the grandfather of our own pet Soojah. In such a genealogy there is not much for a poet-laureate to found upon, nor very much to make a saint out of. ”

“ Ahmed was conducted into her chamber, but the lovers, knowing their danger, were discreet, and contented themselves with the exchange of glances more eloquent than speech. Never was triumph of music more complete. The roses returned to the pale cheeks of the princess, and so delighted was the King that he at once requested Ahmed to select the most precious jewel in his treasury. The prince, feigning modesty, replied that he disdained jewels, and desired only an old carpet enclosed in a sandal-wood coffer, which had been handed down by the Moslems who once owned Toledo. ”

“ For two days and nights no one came near me but the slave girls. All that time I cried; I could not keep the tears from coming. That was when my eyes gave way; that is why I cannot see very well now without glasses.
[234]
On the third day Nazim, accompanied by his father, Ahmed, came to my room. Ahmed spoke with the same cruel gentleness. “What is past is gone, little one; it is time your thoughts should turn to the future. Nazim desires you. You are honored. He has punished you for your stubbornness, and he would forgive you and take you to his heart. That is as it must be. ”

“ Prince Ahmed, who had believed that the sultan his father would be satisfied with so remarkable and useful a tent as the one he had brought, and that he would not impose any new task upon him which might hazard the fairy's displeasure, was thunderstruck at this new request. After a long silence he said, "I beg of your majesty to be assured that there is nothing I would not undertake to procure which may contribute to the prolonging of your life, but I wish it might not be by the means of my wife. ”

“ Suddenly a powerful voice from a place high in the rocks above her called out, "Ahmed! Ahmed! Where art thou?" Zóra knew the voice: it was Johur's, the Nawab's Abyssinian slave, who had often helped her to climb rocks, and gather flowers of the beautiful creepers which hung over them. "Ahmed! Ahmed!"
"I am here," shouted Ahmed, who had ascended the bastion to see who called him. "What do you want with me?"
"The master wants thee; come up: he is angry that thou art not present. Take care, he is in no humour to wait." ”