-based on the life of
the 17. century ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV-

I could accept being anybody.
I could accept being anything.

But myself.

I shouldered the state for years.

I’ve borne the past.
I’ve borne the future.
I cannot bear myself.
If fate exists,
why is there conscience?
My God,
I wish I could dissolve
in your infinity!
Only in your infinity could mine dissolve.

How crowded
is this solititude!
Go! Leave me alone!
Take all victories! I simply don’t care!

Take all gifts, treasures, and thrones!

Take fame and glory! Take all history!

Take the whole world! The stars and heaven!

Just give me my hawk!

Give me my father’s arms, my son’s first steps!

Oh God, here are so many I don’t want
and nobody that I do.
Except her.
Come,

you’ve been serving me for two years.

You are the only soul I see;

you cannot hear or speak to me.

And there’s no pen or paper here.

Nor can you read the things I write in the air.

Which land are you from?

What’s your name?
Your tongue?
Your faith?
Yet it’s as if you hear and understand all I say.
Even my silences.

My son’s fourteen today.
I miss him
just as I miss my father
on the thirtieth anniversary of his murder.

And like everybody
my son, too, is far from me. Sultan,
he’s a prisoner in his palace
as I am here.
They say I know a lot.
I do. True. Without understanding
anything.

I want to go hunting! I want to go hunting! How many

doors are there? How many locks? Guards? Guns?

How many obstacles must I overcome? Huh?

I wish they would kill me! I want to go hunting!

Is nature still there outside?

Are there still trees, birds, insects, deer?

Does my composer Itri still write songs?

Or has all this ceased to exist? Huh?

Are there only the throne, the treasure and the wars left?

I want to go hunting!

Come on, be of some use, woman: Strangle me!

This bow has no string, haven’t you any?

Are your hands too small for my throat?

Come on, take me out hunting!

I don’t care how many doors, locks or guards there are!

Free me from the limits of my body! Take me out for a hunt!

Let my hawk take me there where dead birds go!

Strangle me -as they strangled my father

when I was seven

with my consent!

Be my hawk!