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caliphate

THE LAST CALIPH

Ataturk dissolved seven centuries
of the Sultanate and the British
cloaked-and-daggered the aging Sultan
by sea to San Remo and exile.
Ataturk made the Sultan’s middle aged
cousin, Abdülmecid II, Caliph.
He seemed to carry his descent, as it were,
from the Prophet as lightly as a Pope
from the Saviour. He liked the pomp
and the public circumstance of the role
so much Ataturk sent him packing too.

Classical composer, husband of four wives,
painter, lepidopterist, gardener,
a Victor Hugo fan and of Montaigne’s
Essays – especially perhaps ‘By
Divers Means Men Come To A Like End’ –
he went into exile on The Orient
Express en famille and lived in Paris
and Nice. ‘He may be seen strolling with a mien
of great dignity along the beach,’
wrote a foreign correspondent, ‘attired
in swimming trunks only, carrying
a large parasol.’ He died in his bed
in his house on Boulevard Suchet
as Paris was freed from the Nazis –
his beard, of which he was proud, still resplendent.
He was buried in Medina – Madinat
Al-Nabi, City of the Prophet –
as, officially, the last of the line.
It could have been worse. His seems to have been
a charmed, perhaps even charming, life –
with an enviable retirement, due,
in large part, to Ataturk’s shrewdness.

What would either of them have made of
caliphate proclamations from the deserts
of Syria and Iraq; stage-managed
beheadings broadcast worldwide; Semtex strapped
to the gut and the heart?

 

 

 

SAUDADE

'Saudade', Almeida Junior, 1899
'Saudade', Almeida Junior, 1899


 

We sheltered in the lee of the lighthouse

at what was once the end of the world,

the caliphate, for half a millennium.

Lovers still, we watched the squall move eastwards,

obscure the Sagres promontory –

whose fort’s white walls hold the Navigator’s

stone anemometer: shaped like a compass rose,

big as a bull ring, grooved like a millstone.

His caravels outflanked Islam, rounded,

at last, Cape Bojador and made the Slave Coast.

Below us, hunched in crannies on the cliffs,

their rods like jibs, their lines like skeins, anglers –

descendants of Phoenicians, Romans, Saracens

– waited stoically for bass or bream to rise.


 

The rain lifted. A container ship passed.

Drake, Nelson, and Browning passed: ‘Nobly, nobly,

Cape St Vincent to the North-west died away

…how can I help England?’ In Ireland,

the black rot was already in the fields –

the coffin ships all ready in the roads.


 

Later, drinking wine the colour of sea grass,

in O Retiro do Pescador, we

watched our black bream split, salted, sizzled, served

with sprouts. Ah, home thoughts! And Mrs. Browning:

‘…a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

“Guess now who holds thee?”  “Death, I said.”‘ We

smiled, as lovers do, and gossiped, as

lovers do, about our fellow diners

sotto voce: aging Caucasians

and a young Chinese couple with a child.

Somewhere, a radio played fado softly.

‘”Death”, I said. “Not death, but love.”‘