A keen mind who draws cards in her pavilion at Kâğıthane, speaks six languages and beats pashas at chess. In a single night she makes Batak with Aybars; later she becomes mistress of the Has Oda and Aybars's wife.
- Home
- The Paper Palace in the Kâğıthane valley, its windows covered with paper
- Pursuits
- Drawing cards; six languages, four books of reckoning, chess
- Inventions
- The bid, Partners Batak, the "follow suit" rule
- Faces on her cards
- The queens are herself, the jacks Doğan, the kings Aybars
- In the palace
- The Has Oda and the Batak wing
- Spouse
- Sultan Aybars
Whoever hides their card at a table hides their word as well.
Who She Is
No one quite knows where Nilüfer came from. Some say she is the last princess of a sultanate in the east; others, the only daughter of a rich paper merchant. She never answers such questions herself; she smiles. Those in the city who know her speak of her mind before her beauty. She speaks six languages and has never lost at chess to any pasha. Rumour has it she once beat even Sina Hoca; asked about it, the master blushes.
Her cards are a legend in the city: decks of thick paper, their backs worked with emerald and gold arabesques, their court figures drawn by her own hand. Yet she despises the games played with these cards: they rest either on chance or, worse still, on money. "I drew faces for them, I gave them souls. And they count money with them."
Her Path in the Story
When she hears the news of the Kahvehane, she sends Aybars a challenge in purple ink: "Let us see which speaks more: your stones, or my papers?"
On that night at the Paper Palace, the game is written anew. Aybars says that what is missing is a promise; Hasan Efendi finds the bid, Doğan finds trump, and Mustafa finds the name. But most of the rules are Nilüfer's: the duty to follow suit, the requirement to play trump when you cannot, and, at the end of the night, the partners game. She chooses Aybars as her first partner. She bids seven; on the last trick she plays the ace of spades, and Aybars lays down the only trump he holds in support. The promise is kept.
In the morning she says, "I lost," because she wants to learn Aybars's game. "A year is too little," says Aybars. "Then a lifetime," says Nilüfer.
In the caravan bound for the Black Winter, when the whispering silences everyone, it is she who brings out the cards: "Right here. Right in this cold." And when the tables no longer fit in the square, it is she who says, "Open the gate — spill out into the square."
In the Palace
The Has Oda is her hall: paper lanterns, velvet curtains, poems in purple ink. Its rules are hers too: the ladies' word is heard first; and everyone who sits down for the first time, however badly they lose, receives a card from Nilüfer's own hand at the end. On every table of the Batak wing stands a paper bird.
When you see a queen in a Batak deck, that face is hers.
