“Um,” he said, still holding his plate and hesitating as the trio of smiling women swarmed around him. “Don’t I need to give the plate back?”
They urged him forward. Hasim gestured to him from up ahead to come and see a stall selling clockwork toys made from, apparently, recycled metal. To Francis, they looked shiny and new, he never would’ve known the metal parts had been used before.
There was still so much more to see, and they passed by beautiful items: fine clothes and carpets, oil lamps, decorative plates, walls upon walls of blue glass eyes, so many that they looked like a peacock’s tail. Hasim explained that it was the evil eye, a charm that protected the holder. Francis had finished his samples of Turkish Delight by then, only to find his plate refilled with sticky dates and fig tarts from another sweet stall.
Francis couldn’t possibly eat any more, but he didn’t want to appear rude. He tried a date, then managed to pass the plate off to the ladies who were more than happy to finish the sweets. Francis caught up to Hasim while they were distracted and asked him quietly, “Do you often travel together?”
“Hm?” Hasim glanced back at the trio of women, then smiled at Francis. “They have my money,” he said, then strolled off.
That didn’t quite answer the question. Despite not wishing to pry, Francis couldn’t help himself from asking, “Are you…married? To any of them? Or to someone else?”
Hasim visibly hesitated, giving Francis side eye while he paused and pretended to look at a stall selling gold trimmed slippers.
“You are married,” Francis said, his heart already sinking.
“Yes, but we have…an understanding,” Hasim replied, not quite meeting Francis’s eye. “It was arranged by our families. We…care for one another, we have children, but we are not in love. We both…love other people.”
“Oh,” Francis said, unsure how to digest this new information.
“Come,” Hasim urged, clearly not wanting Francis to dwell. “This way, my favourite.”
Francis assumed he meant favourite shop in the Bazaar, but he also wondered if there was a world in which he might be Hasim’s favourite.
How would it work?
Francis had too many questions and no words to voice them, but he let Hasim lead him to a new shop off a side street, tucked away behind walls of blue and white glass ornaments and giant evil eye pendants.
There, Francis was shown the glass blowers of The Grand Bazaar, and had the honour of watching them work, stoking the kilns and moulding hot blobs of molten glass on long poles into intricate vases. Some of them blew into the poles to shape the glass, and some used a more unusual contraption connected to pipes on the wall.
“Is that old or new?” Francis asked Hasim, pointing to the pipes.
“More new,” Hasim said. “It is a, uh, coming from the wind tunnels. They can choose wind powered, or themselves to blow the glass.”
Francis nodded, thinking of those marvellous wind capturing towers in the city. It made him think of the solar energy powering the trams, and of Granny.
When Hasim asked Francis which glass vase he wanted as a gift, he thought of Granny’s face if he went home and presented her with a vase and nothing else. He should really try to drum up something better than that.
Driven by the new knowledge that Hasim was married, and this…whatever this was between them may not last all that long, Francis decided to press him on the matter of solar energy once more.
“Hasim, may I make a request?” he asked. “I would verymuch like to see how the sun is made into energy. Is there a way I can see it?”
Hasim looked somewhat surprised. “Now?”
“Yes, ideally,” Francis replied, forcing himself to be blunt. “I’m unsure how much more time I’ll have to myself.” God only knew how Archie was fairing in the contest for the king’s affections. “I can’t say for certain if I’ll be free tomorrow, or the day after that.”
Francis hated to see the crestfallen look on Hasim’s handsome face, but to his credit the other man acquiesced without a fuss. After insisting Francis pick a gift of blown glass first, so Francis chose a blue eye pendant bigger than his hand to hang on the wall at home.
Granny would probably clock him with it if he didn’t produce something more worthwhile from this little trip.
They quickly made their way out of the Bazaar, escaping out of a side street and spilling out into the sunshine. Francis covered his face with the veil once more. The sun, the source of his problems in summer, and apparently the solution to unlimited energy, if Hasim was to be believed.
They picked up a tram, the two of them riding in one car, and the trio of women attendants, all carrying little bags of gifts from the Bazaar, riding in another, chatting among themselves.
Francis still had a lot of questions. Were any of these women Hasim’s lovers? Friends? Aides? And what about the male belly dancer, or any of the men in the bath house?
Was Francis being petty and jealous imagining that Hasim had this many lovers? Yes, he was, because he felt lost and hurt, and unsure how to right it.
Not only lovers—he assumed—and a wife, Hasim also had children. Which was fine, Francis thought, but it was a lot to take in. He wished he’d kept quiet and not asked anything, and he wouldn’t have ruined his own bliss.
