He had fallen in love with a Gosde, which in Turkish meant 'one who has caught the eye', and the eye in question was that of Sultan Ibrahim, the 18th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the Padishah himself.
Not that he could rival the Sultan for the love of a harem girl; for who could dare challenge the Sultan, the Ghazi of this world, who had Allah's might and the Prophet's miracles as his companions, in whose name the hutbe was read in Mecca and Medina, who held Byzantium and whose fleet ruled the seas of Europe and India.
Besides, Jaja was a black eunuch with a pug nose and a fat, pear-shaped body.
His rank in the administration of the harem was that of Mussahib, a member of a small group of black eunuchs whose main duties were to liaise between the Sultan and the Sultan's mother, the Valide Sultan, the acknowledged mistress of the harem. As such, he was also at the beck and call of the Chief Black Eunuch, the Kizlar Agha, the master of the women and often the real power behind the throne.
Of his childhood, he remembered one day more than any other; a sunny day, a clearing in the jungle surrounded by thatched huts, and himself a boy of ten or eleven (nobody counted the years in Africa), playing with other boys at a game of hunting, with painted face and a wooden spear. It was while he was trying to hide behind one of the huts, that he suddenly came face to face with an Arab slavetrader putting a torch to the hut. He hardly had time to gulp with..