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“Will Friday prayers and public sermons from the more popular preachers also be banned?” said the Russian consul Mihailov.

“We do have the authority to ban them, but we shall not do so for the time being,” said the Governor. “In any case, what doctor, what pretext, could possibly stop a worshipper who comes to the mosque by himself, performs his ablutions, and says his prayers without touching or bothering anyone else?”

“Those dirty old carpets must be a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases,” someone pointed out in a tone half scornful and half aggrieved.

“The Greek Orthodox community could suspend Sunday Mass,” said its leader, Bishop Constantinos Effendi. “Our flock would understand.”

Churches had been somewhat quieter since the outbreak had started. In mosques, however, there appeared to be more people than usual, and funeral services in particular had been attracting large crowds.

“If the disease is all the way over by the Stone Jetty in the huts where the migrants from Crete live, why should the quilt maker in my neighborhood of Eyoklima have to shut up shop?” asked the French consul Monsieur Andon.

“Because you’re right by the garrison!” someone replied, but nobody else said anything further on the matter.

During the proceedings of the quarantine meeting, the consuls relied on clerks to bring them regular updates on their business activities in the city and on the progress of the disease. Consequently everything the committee delegates discussed that morning immediately found its way to the local tradesmen and from there spread to the rest of the city, embellished with misunderstandings, resentments, and unsubstantiated rumors, and seasoned with all sorts of accusations and reminiscences.

Much of the debate that day concerned the claim that there had been many more deaths than reported, but that people—and particularly the poor, Muslims, and migrants from Crete—were hiding their dead for fear that the quarantine officers would turn up, board their homes shut, and confiscate or perhaps even set fire to the stock in their shops.

“Muslims are very particular about their dead and—as you have all observed—will not compromise when it comes to funerals,” said the Governor in response to these allegations. “It is simply inconceivable that the people of this island should skulk about in the middle of the night to bury their loved ones without bothering to wash their corpses first, or giving them a proper funeral service, or saying the right prayers.”

“Perhaps his Excellency the Governor should ready his armored landau so that I might take him right now to the Old Stone Jetty near the Army Middle School!” said the French consul.

“It has indeed come to our attention,” replied the Governor, “that you were in the area last night together with the Greek vice-consul Leonidis. But there are no locals there, only immigrants.”

“Tell us, did you spot the Cretian roaming around at night holding a basket full of dead rats and spreading the plague around?” said the British consul Monsieur George, who was known for never letting the opportunity for a joke slip by. (Unusually, he was actually British, and a genuine consul.)

“There are so many people who believe in that sort of thing that even I am tempted to start believing it.”

“We knew about the plague-spreading devil, but we did not know he was from Crete!”

“In the olden days,” said Doctor Nuri, “when the plague struck in Florence or in Marseille and the local prince, the governor, or the state were not equipped to cope with the situation, the citizens themselves, from the youngest to the eldest, would take matters into their own hands and go from door to door to track the outbreak. There are heroes like that on this island too, people who are ready to make sacrifices not just to save their own lives, but to save the whole city.”

“People like Doctor Alexandros from Thessaloniki, you mean?”

“It’s true that we might have people here willing to risk their lives for the good of the island. But no one is going to volunteer when there is so much hostility in the air.”

“No matter what the Governor might say, these days you will be hard-pressed to find a Muslim ready to sacrifice himself for a Christian, or a Christian for a Muslim. Let those who have brought this division upon us reflect on what they have done.”

“Muslim youths could volunteer in Muslim neighborhoods, and Greek youths in Greek neighborhoods,” the British consul responded.

“The alternative is to do what the British are now doing in India, and successfully too.”

“I must say this is the first I’ve ever heard of the British making any kind of progress against the plague in India.”

“Where no one volunteers or understands why they need to volunteer …”

“… the army will make them volunteer!”

“Not quite,” said Doctor Nuri, smiling at Russian consul Mihailov. “When that’s the case, you forget about volunteers and send soldiers door to door instead.”

There was a brief silence. “The Arab soldiers we have would not be able to set foot inside any home here,” said the Russian consul.

In the aftermath of the Pilgrim Ship Affair, Abdul Hamid had relieved the island’s four army divisions and their respective commanders of their duties and sent them off to serve in other parts of the Empire, replacing them with two divisions from the Fifth Army stationed in Damascus and composed of Arab soldiers who did not speak any Turkish. Their commander was under strict orders to remain uninvolved in the island’s political and quarantine matters and to concentrate on chasing after the Greek guerrillas in the mountains.

“Let us not be so pessimistic!” said the Governor Pasha. “There is no need for soldiers to physically enter every home and mansion that is being checked. All that will be required of them is to guard the streets and break up any fights. Though we will equip them with gunpowder and ammunition too!”

“What if these soldiers who speak nothing but Arabic should accidentally end up shooting at the people again?” said the French consul.

“His Royal Highness the Sultan has sent Major Kâmil all the way from Istanbul to ensure that the volunteer Quarantine Army recruited from within the province of Mingheria itself shall adhere to the high standards of the state’s military establishment,” said the Governor, gesturing toward the Major. “And now this brave young officer is here among us!”

Major Kâmil, who was sitting with the clerks and soldiers in a row of chairs lined up against the wall, quickly stood up and greeted the Quarantine Committee, his face flushed with embarrassment. (He thought for a moment of how his rank was lower than his age warranted.) By the time he’d sat back down, he had become commander of the special division that was to be assembled to enforce quarantine in the province of Mingheria. Given the urgency of the matter, it was also decided that recruitment for this division should begin immediately.

“The government in Istanbul has already allocated funds to cover the volunteer army’s wages,” said the Governor, telling another lie.

“You know we will never see that money!” the British consul Monsieur George bravely replied. In some ways his observation put into words what everyone at the meeting was collectively feeling. For although nobody would say it openly, they all sensed that the authorities in Istanbul, and sadly the Sultan too, were putting their own interests above those of the island. Faced with these stirrings of despondency and insecurity, the Governor Pasha reached for something to say that might help overcome them. “We must remember that it is our whole island’s moral duty to try and prevent those who will soon be boarding company liners and unscheduled ferries to flee Mingheria from taking this disease with them to Istanbul, to the Ottoman Empire, and indeed to the whole of Europe too,” he said.

Even as he spoke the words, the Governor could almost hear the silent objections from those assembled around the table. Their misgivings had secretly found their way into his own heart too. The primary function of these Istanbul-mandated quarantine protocols was clearly to safeguard the state from disease, not Mingherians.

This veiled anger toward Istanbul was now being projected onto the Governor Pasha. But despite the consuls’ and the doctors’ insistence, even that second meeting of the Quarantine Committee did not prove enough to place a strict quarantine cordon around the Muslim neighborhoods and the most infected streets where all the migrants from Crete lived. As the delegates of the Quarantine Committee had intuited, the reason for this was that the Governor, having already thrown Sheikh Hamdullah’s brother Ramiz into jail, now feared the sheikh’s anger and the possibility that the holy man might try to sabotage quarantine efforts.

Another measure Istanbul had suggested was that houses that were too contaminated for normal disinfection to work should be burned to the ground. To make a fair assessment of the amount of compensation owed to people whose homes and possessions were thus destroyed, the Governor was to nominate a committee of seven composed of community leaders and Mingherian treasury officials. This committee’s decisions on the compensation owed for each home would be nonnegotiable.

“Of course this all assumes there’s enough money left in the coffers to pay those wretched souls who’ll lose their homes!” said the German consul.

“I would be amazed if a government too timid to even enforce a quarantine cordon could ever be bold enough to burn down a Muslim mansion,” added the French consul.

“As our dearly departed Bonkowski Pasha’s assistant, Doctor Ilias, explained to us yesterday morning: the Sultan is well aware that the only thing that defeated the outbreaks of cholera in Üsküdar and Edirne seven years ago was to burn to the ground those entirely contaminated neighborhoods that the outbreaks originated in.”

“You did say that it is our sultan’s preference to burn infected locations, and that His Supreme Highness had personally expressed this view to Bonkowski Pasha!” said Doctor Nikos, looking at Doctor Ilias.

“That is not what I said!” Doctor Ilias replied.

“You did, and now you are denying it. What are you afraid of?”

“It is not a question of courage, but of balance,” said Doctor Nuri, coming to Doctor Ilias’s rescue. “To stop the disease in villages around Bombay it may be sufficient today to incinerate scraps, refuse pits, and infected homes. But just ten kilometers to the west, in the large tenements at the center of Bombay where the epidemic is at its fiercest, the only way to thwart the outbreak is to cordon the whole street and neighborhood.”

Doctor Nuri paused for a moment, studying the delegates’ expressions to see what effect his words had wrought, then resumed: “Every measure is relative to its context. The practice of burning the belongings of the dead and any other contaminated items is still common in Arabia and in the Hejaz, and now in China and India too. Burning down grimy, impoverished neighborhoods during outbreaks of cholera has been regarded in some cases as a chance to clear docks and city centers of loiterers, vagrants, and petty criminals, and an opportunity to engage in a little urban planning—opening up new, modern areas within cities, and creating public parks to benefit the health of all citizens.”

“We will not stand for that here!” said the Governor.

“But this epidemic might not be like those little outbreaks of cholera we’ve had in the past that simply disappeared of their own accord by the time the summer was over,” said Quarantine Master Nikos.

“Your Excellency, why do you think the situation in India has escalated into open conflict between the British and the native population? Is it really true that the locals there have been slaughtering British officers and doctors on the streets?”

“Sadly the intransigence of British colonial officers is to blame. They send mounted troops to look for the sick among ignorant village folk who know nothing of microbes and plagues, and all this with an unfortunate disregard for religious sensibilities regarding female modesty. They split families up, isolate those suspected of carrying the microbe, and send the sick off to the hospital without even deigning to explain where these people are being taken, and what for. So the locals have begun to suspect hospitals of poisoning people, that the plague is an excuse to cut and carve their bodies open.”

“But we must of course remember that the natives, in their ignorance and atavism and their hostility toward the British, will sabotage anything,” said the Quarantine Master. “Haven’t you heard the kinds of things they’ve been saying over there? ‘The mosque is our hospital!’”

“Do you condone such remarks?” said the Russian consul Mihailov. “Should doctors abandon the tenets of medical science when they are dealing with a benighted populace that rejects science?”

“At one stage the Indians were so livid that they would kill any Europeans or white men they saw on the street, whether or not they were doctors. So the British decided to loosen quarantine measures. This subdued the unrest, but caused the plague to spread faster. Eventually the British, wary of causing further turmoil, began to reason along the following lines: if the locals are going to resist quarantine measures, we might as well sit back and do nothing at all until they come to us themselves to ask for help … But this approach favored the outbreak of plague in Calcutta, for example.”

“If I may please say a few words,” said the leader of the Greek Orthodox community and bishop of the Church of Hagia Triada, Constantinos Effendi. His Excellency the Bishop had not spoken much over the past two days, and now everybody gave him their full and respectful attention. The bishop proceeded to deliver a speech he had prepared in advance. “Gentlemen, our Mingheria is not India! This comparison is misguided. The good people of our island, be they Orthodox or Muslim, are enlightened and civilized, and in this time of crisis they shall remain disciplined and adhere to the rules that our sultan has dictated and that the Governor Pasha is striving so valiantly to execute.”

“Hear, hear!”

“When you hesitate to follow recommended medical procedures out of fear the fanatics will object and violence will ensue, that is when disaster is bound to strike,” the bishop continued. “The Greek community is fleeing the island; the epidemic has frightened us. You will even hear some claim: ‘This story about an epidemic was concocted to drive as many Greeks as possible away from the island and reduce us to a minority here so that we cannot demand independence.’”

“Gentlemen, our island is neither an Ottoman colony nor anybody else’s dominion,” said the Governor Pasha. “The people of Mingheria, more than half of whom are Muslims anyway, are an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and whether they are Christians or Muslims, they shall remain loyal to the end to their beloved sultan.”

But the debate on whether or not Mingheria was “like India” continued for a time as if the Governor hadn’t spoken at all, and Doctor Nuri intervened to point out that when Bombay was in the throes of the plague three years ago, a full third of its nearly one million inhabitants abandoned the city to seek refuge elsewhere.