The Ruby Bird — Billie Atamer

The Ruby Bird is based on a true story. Its life began hundreds of years ago when the maharaja of India gave a ruby-and-emerald broach to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent as a gift for his third wife at an elegant marriage ceremony at his Topkapi Palace. For years, it lay in a jeweled box, untouched. When his new seventh bride found it, she immediately ran to the sultan and pinned it on his turban. Several years later, the sultan passed away, and the palace became a museum, and his statue, garbed in his royal robes and turban, was displayed as a tribute to the glorious years of the Ottoman Empire. A trusted night watchman, who had been with the museum for thirty years, stole the ruby bird from the turban and sold it in the black-market bazaar for a handsome price, then disappeared.