The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [46]
Leyla hugged Anna tearfully when they left the next morning.
“I’ll see you in a few months,” Anna promised as she waved from Tariq’s big Lagonda motorcar that was to take them to the station. “Don’t forget me, Leyla.”
Every year after that a pair of first-class tickets were delivered to Missie in America to take them by train and boat to Monte Carlo, where Tariq and Leyla would meet them in the yacht and take them to Istanbul.
Tariq was right: The girls were like sisters, and there was no doubt he loved Anna as much as Leyla. The whole vast Kazahn family became her uncles, aunts, and cousins, and Missie knew that Anna was happier than she had ever been, because they had given her the stability and continuity of a family life she had never had.
Where Tariq had had one adored great-granddaughter, now he had two; where before he had taken Leyla everywhere with him, he now took Anna as well, and every morning when he said his prayers, he gave thanks for being able to repay his debt of gratitude, honor, and love to the Ivanoffs.
When Tariq was ninety years old, there was a grand birthday celebration. The luxurious yali on the Bosphorus was filled with flowers and long tables were spread with a lavish buffet. Musicians played on terraces strewn with scented rose petals amid trees strung with thousands of colored lights. The five hundred guests had been instructed to wear traditional Turkish dress, and Missie thought the yali must have looked the way it did when it was first built in the time of the Ottoman Empire, three hundred years before.
Tariq enjoyed his birthday party surrounded by his family and friends, remaining until the last guest left at four A.M. After a short rest he was up at six as usual to say his prayers and sip his first cup of the sweet, grainy coffee to which he was addicted. At six-thirty he dressed in his white naval officer’s uniform and gold-trimmed peaked cap, buckled on his sword, and strode out onto the terrace. To his surprise, seventeen-year-old Anna was already out there, leaning on the marble balustrade, gazing dreamily across the Bosphorus, golden with new morning sunlight.
When she saw him she smiled and said, “Kazahn Pasha,” which is what she always called him. “Why are you up so early? You should still be sleeping.”
Tariq laughed, ruffling her fair hair affectionately. Anna was a lovely girl, not a great beauty like Leyla, but tall and slender, with the strong Ivanoff bone structure and wonderfully expressive blue eyes. Right now they were beaming with love for him, and he knew that Misha Ivanoff would have been pleased with the way he had found to repay him.
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” he asked, leaning on the rail next to her. “After all, I am the great-grandfather and you are the child.”
She put her hand over his and said, “I couldn’t sleep. The party was the most wonderful experience of my life, Tariq Pasha. It was like a scene from a storybook. I shall never forget it.”
“Nor I, my little daughter,” he said quietly. “Look, here comes my ship, the Han-Su, named for my esteemed wife. You see, Anna, the men on my ships still expect to see their captain when they travel along the Bosphorus, even if he has been up late celebrating his ninetieth birthday.”
His jolly laugh bellowed across the water as, with her beside him, he saluted the long gray ship gliding majestically past, its sirens blasting and the flag of the mighty Kazahn Line fluttering proudly in the breeze. And then, without another word, he crumpled at her feet.
“Kazahn Pasha,” Anna screamed, cradling his beloved head in her arms. But Tariq’s blue eyes were fierce no longer and she knew he was dead.
The funeral so soon after the joyful birthday party was a somber but grand affair, just as Tariq had always planned it should be. His solid bronze coffin, emblazoned with Russian and Turkish emblems, was drawn through Istanbul