I Don't Want My Kid to be Sultan

Part Three of a Three-part series on my Topkapi Palace journey into the Ottoman Empire

Layer 3: Motherhood and mosques

Our palace-wandering day ended with the harsh truth and stark reality of being on the A-list of women with the Sultan. After dropping the rest of our group off, my Main Squeeze and I went to a mosque with our guide to round out our day.

Shoes off, head covered, I learned about millennia of faith and heritage and a nation of people that started with Abraham and continued in the lineage of Ishmael. I learned of Mecca, praying five times a day, and how the 3,500 mosques in Istanbul are not only places of prayer and worship but civic centers, schools, libraries, soup kitchens, libraries, and places communities come together. They are compounds with so much more than a Call to Prayer, and, although that is part of it, that is a bedrock of modern culture for this land. Even though 20% of the country is active in their faith, in this land where 98%+ of residents observe Islam, everyone joins at noon on Fridays to stop, pause, pray and observe.

After leaving the mosque we then went to what I mistakenly viewed as Mt. Vernon. In my mind the gorgeous gardens we strolled through were like our nation’s president’s getaway where is he now laid in state. Entering this room with coffin after coffin labeled “sultan,” I imagined it was like having Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy all buried side-by-side. I was sadly and disturbingly wrong, my friends.

Remember in Part One of this series when I told you being an A-list favorite concubine in the palace wasn’t all romance and reading? How getting pregnant moved you up in the social strata but how it might be, in my modern western woman’s world view the worst thing ever—remember that? What we saw in the gardens and what I saw entombed in this room, were row-after-row of sultan’s children. Not lovingly buried here after long, full lives of family BBQs, love and laughter, but laid to rest after being murdered by family members jockeying for power, wanting to inch closer to or remain settled on the throne.

When a sultan died, our tour guide told us, the first kid to find him became ruler. That kid then had all his older and same-generation relatives killed, choked with a silk cord, so there would be nobody to threaten or usurp his authority. His dad’s concubines and wives were all disposed of, and only his mom remained as a relative, advisor, friend or person in power, second only to him himself.

That is why, Dear Ones, I decided during dinner that I will not support or encourage either of my boys to ever be sultan. I'm hereby encouraging them to take a pass on that power. The cost is too gross and too great, and for what? A decade or maybe three of concubines and power? Killing off those around you so your name could be greater?

But the power struggle is real, and it continues today in politics and work places and family dynamics and anywhere people jockey for position and power, pushing others aside, spinning tales and using beautiful silk-wrapped cords to strangle out others’ hopes or ideals or projects or position. It happens in boardrooms and bedrooms and at family dinner tables daily. Ugh. And these rows of dead sultan children remind me how much I dislike that and made me wonder if there is a workplace for me in the future, or if there is one on earth anywhere, where that does not happen. It made me think that this is just part of the human condition—systematic sibling rivalry that shows itself in every aspect of life. I’m sickened by it, and a bit more so sickened by my resignation to it, acceptance of it, and part it in.

So, friends, I will never fight for my sons to become Sultan. (Nick, Kim, Ben, Carrianna, Tyler, Joel, Sydney, Allie, and all the more-distant cousins—you’re welcome.) As a mom I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to put them against one another, and couldn’t imagine the horror of my sultan being killed and then knowing that my children are not far behind. (Not to mention I’d lose my access to the swimming pool, library, and most likely life.)

Oh, friends. It was a day of power, wandering, sweeping views, calls to prayer, and reflection on workplace, family, and blessing. I end it marveled by history, wonder, and the One who parts the sea.

Maybe those graves aren’t filled with kids, and maybe the staff wasn’t real. But, friends, maybe it was. And that would be burning bush-level amazeballs mind-blowing cool.