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As he thought back to these scenes from his childhood, the Major also kept an eye on the Princess—who was, in that moment, clinging to her husband while bravely negotiating the ladder that led from the Aziziye to the awaiting rowing boat—and wondered whether the crowds, the dust, and the ruckus on the docks might unsettle her. No doubt there would also be packs of impertinent kids clowning about in the hopes that some European tourist or wealthy Arab alighting that day might toss them a coin. They too could trouble the Princess. But as their rowing boat neared the shore, the Major saw that the docks were in unusually perfect order and realized that a special welcome must have been prepared for the former sultan’s daughter.

The Governor Pasha hadn’t left the island once in three years, but thanks to the newspapers he read and to friends lucky enough to travel back and forth from the island, he was still able to learn, if a little belatedly, all the gossip from Istanbul, what foolish act had dented which pasha’s reputation, which wily maneuver had earned this or that minister Abdul Hamid’s approval, which of His Serene Highness’s daughters was next in line to be married and whose son was to be picked out for her, what fresh neuroses Abdul Hamid had recently developed, and who had been appointed to which foreign embassy. He had therefore heard, and indeed read about in official announcements published in the newspapers, that a month ago Abdul Hamid had arranged for three low-ranking and unexceptional grooms to marry the daughters of the former sultan Murad V, Abdul Hamid’s “unhinged” older brother whom the Sultan had for years been keeping imprisoned inside a tiny palace in the Çırağan complex. The Governor Pasha had also overheard that the doctor who had been wedded to Murad V’s youngest daughter was apparently a gifted quarantine expert.

Governor Sami Pasha had wanted his welcome ceremony to be worthy of the first royal princess in history to have ever left Istanbul and had therefore asked the Commander of the island’s military garrison to bring his brass band to the port. Most of the aging officers stationed on the island of Mingheria couldn’t even read and write properly. After the infamous episode of the “Pilgrim Ship Mutiny,” which had resulted from a mishandled quarantine operation, Abdul Hamid had sent to the island two battalions of infantrymen from Damascus who did not speak any Turkish. Two years ago a young army captain who had been banished to the island for some disciplinary misdemeanor had set up a brass band out of boredom, similar to the army band in Istanbul if much more modest in its ambitions, and though he had since been pardoned and returned to Istanbul, last year the Governor Pasha, busy preparing for the celebrations to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sultan’s accession to the throne, had ruled that the band should continue its activities under the supervision of the teacher Andreas, who taught music at the Greek High School.

So it was that as Princess Pakize and her husband stepped onto the island of Mingheria, they were greeted first by the notes of the “Mecidiye March,” which had been composed in honor of the Sultan’s father, and then by the “Hamidiye March,” created to mark the reign of Abdul Hamid himself. The fear of disease had been weighing on people’s spirits, but the music proved to be a tonic. The idlers and busybodies and porters who had come down to the docks to see the arriving ship, the coachmen, shopkeepers, merchants, and telegraph operators who were watching the ceremony from afar, and the people leaning out of their windows and balconies, all felt momentarily heartened. In the gardens and terraces of the hotels that lined the port and the hill above it, European visitors, foreign adventurers, and wealthy islanders looked up from their cups of tea and wondered what this music was supposed to be. Then a third march began to play. This jolly melody was the “Naval March,” composed at a young age by music and piano prodigy His Highness Prince Burhanettin, who was Abdul Hamid’s favorite among his eight sons, and whom the Sultan always wanted by his side.

After many calm and peaceful decades, both the province of Mingheria and its capital, Arkaz, had been beleaguered over the past two years by a series of violent clashes, murders, and various misfortunes, and the latest rumors of plague had only served to heighten the general sense of malaise. When he looked at the crowds of Christians and Muslims who had come out to hear the marches and saw the tender, earnest expressions on their faces, Governor Sami Pasha’s conclusion was an optimistic one: people could see that political tensions on the island were being manipulated to escalate a war between Christians and Muslims, as had been the case in some of the Ottoman Empire’s other Mediterranean islands, but they had no desire for such a conflict and hoped that the Governor and the institutions of the state might step in to bring the situation on the island back under control.

Governor Sami Pasha received Doctor and Prince Consort Nuri at the dock and introduced himself. He had been unsure how to address the former sultan’s daughter without arousing her uncle Abdul Hamid’s suspicions, so he had decided it would be best to observe how her husband behaved, and adjust accordingly.

Marrying an Ottoman princess had quickly taught Doctor Nuri how to manage this kind of institutional pageantry and the torrents of flattery and sycophancy that came with it. As they stepped off the rowing boat swaying gently in the water, he was not too surprised to hear marches being played, despite there being no such tradition, and neither did he dwell for too long on the Governor Pasha’s prolonged congratulations on his marriage. A crowd had soon gathered around them, speaking Greek, French, Turkish, Arabic, and Mingherian. The Governor had readied for their use the armored landau he had previously set aside for Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant and had even assigned them a newly assembled troop of experienced bodyguards. These menacing, mustachioed guards were a rather conspicuous presence, and as the landau left the port and rode up the Pier Road, its passengers saw hat-and fez-clad bystanders peering curiously as they passed by. It was a known and self-evident fact that in the provincial territories of the Ottoman Empire, and with the sole exception of Smyrna, Thessaloniki, and Beirut, any person seen walking around a given city—no matter how developed it may be—with a hat and wearing a shirt and tie was bound to be a Christian. This truth, which Doctor Nuri had learned through experience, his wife had grasped just then in a moment of sudden intuition. They both also realized that on this island Muslims were to be found not on the boulevards or in and around the hotels but somewhere else, somewhere in the background. Already Doctor Nuri could picture the city wrestling with disease, a stage for scenes of cataclysmic devastation, but for the time being, these visions would remain a secret he carried inside.

Through the window of the armored landau husband and wife surveyed the European-style buildings and the hotels, diners, travel agencies, and department stores along Istanbul Street. The shops on the eastern side of the street included a draper, a clothier, a shoemaker, a haberdasher, a bookshop (the Medit, the only bookseller in Mingheria, stocking books in Greek, French, and Turkish), and stores selling tableware, furniture, and textiles imported from Thessaloniki and Smyrna. To protect their windows from the glare of the sun, shopkeepers had rolled out their striped awnings as far as they would go. The city’s gardens, lush with palm, pine, lemon, and linden trees, surprised the visitors with their size and with their panoply of plants and flowers. The fragrant scent of blue, pink, and purple roses was intoxicating. They could feel the lure of the narrow stepped lanes that twisted their way uphill between rocks and boulders, or down to the creek and into the city’s hiddenmost corners; they were charmed by the odd mosque with a solitary minaret, by the occasional little church, by ivy-wrapped stone houses with wooden oriels, Venetian-era buildings with Gothic windows, and redbrick arches from the Byzantine period. The sight of sleepy old men and contented cats sitting in doorways and standing at windows watching life go by filled Princess Pakize and her husband with the sensation that this was a realm infinitely more familiar than what they had pictured China to be like. But there was also a fairy-tale quality to the world around them, kindled by the stillness on the streets, the smallness of everything they saw, and their dread of the plague.

The Governor Pasha had hastily arranged for the guest wing of the State Hall to be readied for the visitors. He showed the newlyweds in, informing them that he had also prepared another residence elsewhere should this one not be to their liking. But the proximity of this place to the offices of the Governor and of the state gave them a sense of comfort.

Built in 1894 with funds personally allocated and released by Abdul Hamid, and at a time when the Sultan was engaged in the bloody suppression of guerrilla attacks and uprisings among the Empire’s Armenian populations, the State Hall of Mingheria was an impressive two-story building with columns, arches, bay windows, and balconies. All who strolled past it—be they wealthy, hat-clad Greek gentlemen out shopping in the city center, unemployed idlers who’d taken to loitering on Hamidiye Avenue and around the docks after the Mingherian marble quarries had shut down for good, or villagers who’d come to Arkaz—were equally awed by its neoclassical grandeur. As they looked upon its graceful, heavily embroidered and ornamented façade, at the vast balcony perfectly placed to address the crowds below, and at the white steps and columns at its entrance, they would also come away with a sense that the crumbling Ottoman Empire was still a force to be reckoned with, and an appreciation of its sincere attempts to appear at once Muslim and modern. Governor Sami Pasha, whose own residence and offices were housed in another wing of this same building, was glad to see the former sultan’s daughter and her husband settled in its guest quarters.

Formed of two adjoining rooms, and smelling pleasantly—as Princess Pakize immediately noticed—of “rosewater soap and wood,” the guest residence also contained a writing desk overlooking the Castle, the port, and the beautiful vistas and gardens of the city, which reminded the Princess of the promise she had made to her older sister Hatice after the many joyful and momentous events that had occurred during her last days in Istanbul, and the envelopes, the elegant letter paper, and the tasteful silver writing set that Hatice had given her so that she could keep that promise. “My darling Pakize, you are bound for China, for faraway lands and fairy-tale realms; who knows what wonders you will find there! Promise me you will write to me about everything you see and hear?” Hatice had said to her beloved sister, presenting her with the writing set while they said their farewells. “You will see that I have left you two reams of paper so that you can write to your heart’s content. And you must make sure to write to your Hatice every day!” So Princess Pakize had promised to write to her cherished sister about everything she saw, heard, and felt during her travels. Then they had embraced each other, and wept.

CHAPTER 11

Meanwhile, in a storeroom two floors below the window behind the writing desk at which the Princess now sat composing her letters, Bonkowski Pasha’s corpse was laid out beneath a mound of ice from the kitchens. Municipal officers had first tried to take the body to Theodoropoulos Hospital, but the hospital had turned out to be full of plague patients, and so, under new orders from the Governor, they had brought the murdered Chief Inspector’s corpse back to the State Hall for safekeeping. The Governor was planning a grand funeral to intimidate those responsible for the murder and to appease the island’s dissident factions, Sultan Abdul Hamid, and the palace bureaucrats.

The Governor had gone to Hrisopolitissa Square as soon as he had heard about the killing, and the sight of Bonkowski Pasha’s bloodied and butchered corpse and disfigured face had so affected him that he had begun arresting people the moment he’d returned to the State Hall. In the two days that had passed until the Doctor and Prince Consort’s arrival, the Governor Pasha had arrested nearly twenty suspects from three different local factions.

Before the Quarantine Committee was due to convene, and at the Sultan’s orders, the Governor called a meeting in his office to confer on these matters with Chief Scrutineer Mazhar Effendi and Prince Consort Nuri.

“I am of the opinion that there is a conspiracy behind this murder,” the Governor began, “and it will not be possible to quell this outbreak until we have also found out the truth about Bonkowski Pasha’s death and discovered and apprehended those responsible for ordering and carrying out the killing. His Serene Highness shares this view, which is why he has called upon you to work on both fronts. Indeed the consuls here would make a fool of you if you were to disregard the political element altogether.”

“Half our job at the Quarantine Authority in the Hejaz was political.”

“Then we understand each other,” said the Governor. “Even that which may appear at first to have nothing at all to do with politics may reveal beneath the surface all manner of plots and nefarious intentions. Allow me to digress, if you will, on a rather delicate matter which happened to land on my desk the very day that I came to this island and took this office five years ago. In those days every team of oarsmen and porters serving the ships that approach Mingheria operated under the supervision of a specific foreign shipping company. The Lloyd Company, for example, would work only with the foreman Aleko (known for his handlebar mustache); the Pantaleon Company favored Kozma Effendi’s rowers and porters; and both companies only ever assigned jobs to these men. The Thomas Cook Company, among the biggest of all, is represented here by one of the island’s famous Greek families, the Theodoropouloses. They would only work with boatman Stefan Effendi and his team.

“As well as acting as agents for these travel and shipping companies, each of these wealthy Greeks also served as vice-consul for several powerful foreign states. The Messageries Maritimes representative, a Cypriot Greek named Andon Hampuri, was also the consul for France and remains so to this day. The agent for the Lloyd ferries, a Cretian Greek named Monsieur Frangouli, also acts as consul for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany; and the representative for Fraissinet ferries is Monsieur Takela, the vice-consul for Italy. Naturally they all insist on being addressed by the loftier title of Consul, and back then they would shun the foreman of the Muslim boat crews, Seyit, whom they deemed ignorant and vulgar, and find all kinds of excuses to avoid giving him and his men any jobs. The task of unloading those ships that came to port, whether they sailed under the Ottoman flag or otherwise, should have been shared equally among all boatmen and porters. But the Muslim boatmen were given fewer jobs than the others and found it so difficult to get by that they would sometimes be forced to sell their boats. When I intervened in defense of the Muslim porters, the consuls started sending letters to His Serene Highness and to the palace to try and discredit me. ‘When the state begins to make distinctions between its subjects based on religion, and to favor one religion over another, that is when the Empire falls apart,’ they wrote in their newspapers. Would you agree with that statement?”