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Instead a little boy showed him into the building. Upstairs, the Major found his mother, Satiye Hanım, and Zeynep’s mother, Emine Hanım, sitting on the sofa. Emine Hanım cried a little. Once she had regained her composure, she said how well his officer’s uniform suited him, God bless him. They talked about the rats for a while. One morning ten days ago the women had woken up to find the street that led to the neighborhood below so covered in dead rats that it had become impassable. Zeynep’s mother then relayed with total conviction some of the rumors that had been circulating about the plague, rumors that neither the Major nor his mother (under her son’s influence) believed in the slightest. The plague had been brought by a priest with bloodshot eyes, a black cape, and a black goatee who crept in every night from the Christian neighborhoods with a sack full of dead rats to strew across the streets and gardens of the Muslim quarters, and a plague-infested paste to smear onto fountains, walls, and doorknobs. A child from the Kadirler neighborhood who had run into him one night had discovered that the priest was a cyclops, and he’d had such a fright that he had stuttered for two days straight. Emine Hanım told her guests that if you could get yourself an amulet blessed by Sheikh Hamdullah and hold it toward the one-eyed plague demon, it would immediately retreat without taking any dead rats out of his sack.

The beautiful girl the Major’s mother had told him about was not there. Like a child fed up with the grown-ups’ talk, the Major gazed out of the window at the dark blue sea, the last few houses along the edges of Arkaz, and the sparse groves of olive trees. He was so nervous that he felt parched with thirst, like a patient in some hospital in the desert.

His mother somehow sensed his thirst. “If you go downstairs, Beşir will give you water,” she told him.

The Major climbed down the stairs to the graveled yard and entered the unlit kitchen adjoining the barn.

Just as he had begun to think he would never find the water jug and its ladle in that darkness, a gas lamp briefly flickered to life before quickly going out again. In that single breath of light, a woman, a shadow, whispered in Mingherian, “Akva nukaru!”—“The water’s over here!”

But it was Beşir who lifted the wooden lid off the water jug and ladled water out for the Major. The Major drank the water (which tasted of dust) and returned upstairs, and it was only then, when he noticed the strange expression on his mother’s face, that he realized that the girl he had seen in the kitchen must have been Zeynep. Shortly after that, he began to think that she was rather beautiful. Zeynep did not come upstairs to sit with him.

This is all that Princess Pakize’s letters tell us of the two lovers’ first encounter. We believe this version to be true. The story that the couple had a long conversation in Mingherian that day was a myth later introduced and encouraged by the Major himself. These inventions were also popularized by official histories, school textbooks, and the ultranationalist right-wing press of the 1930s, influenced at the time by the policies of Hitler and Mussolini. But in truth, in 1901 the Mingherian language was not sufficiently developed to allow for the complicated, profound utterances the couple was later rumored to have exchanged, such as “We could have met much sooner!” or “Let us rename everything in the language of our childhood!”

It must also be noted that in 1901, an Ottoman officer from the provinces of the Empire who wanted to impress a girl was much likelier to speak to her not in their local language, but in Turkish, the language under which he had made a name for himself. The same was true of Zeynep too. The two words she had spoken in Mingherian (akva nukaru) had not been planned, and had come out of her mouth unbidden. Akva (meaning “water”) is the oldest and most beautiful of all Mingherian words, and has spread—starting of course with Latin—from Mingherian to all the languages of southern Europe.

CHAPTER 24

As in every part of the Ottoman Empire, in Mingheria too court cases involving foreign citizens were dealt with by the island’s consulates. A financial dispute between Monsieur Marcel, French citizen and owner of the island’s Medit bookstore, and a British citizen (the consul Monsieur George), had been handled by the French consulate, as the plaintiff in the case in question was Marcel Effendi. Cases involving both foreigners and Ottoman citizens were tried in the Ottoman courts, but consuls were allowed to attend as translators and intervene as needed. The only cases in which the Governor Pasha could legitimately interfere and exert his influence to ensure the most appropriate outcome were disputes between Muslims over debt, property, and minor incidents of bodily harm, but he enjoyed wielding what power he did have, and would always readily share his views with the judge.

Cases involving charges of murder or abduction and elopement against subjects of the Ottoman Empire tended to be more complicated and inevitably attracted the attention of the Istanbul press, as a result of which they were usually moved to the courts of the imperial capital by order of Abdul Hamid himself, who was always eager to exercise direct control over all matters. Three years ago the trial of the bandit Nadir, charged with kidnapping a Greek girl and murdering two people in the process, had attracted a great deal of attention outside the island thanks not only to the efforts of the local consuls but of the foreign ambassadors in Istanbul too. The case had conveniently served as evidence for those who argued that the Ottoman Empire may have introduced a whole host of reforms on paper but that, in practice, it persisted in its old despotic ways. Eventually, and before the Governor could interfere in the verdict, the bandit had been taken to Istanbul, there to be quietly and discreetly hanged in the gloomy prison wing of the Selimiye Barracks. Another case that had caught Istanbul’s attention the previous year and been moved to the courts there was that of the insolent, recalcitrant Ramos Terzakis, who had been caught—thanks to a tip-off from the archaeologist Selim Sahir—trying to smuggle out a sculpture of Venus, and who had used forged documents to claim he was a consular employee when he was, in actuality, an Ottoman citizen. (In the end Abdul Hamid had not only pardoned the smuggler, but also rewarded him with gold and a medal of the Order of Mecidiye, Third Class, as was his wont with former enemies turned informants whom he thought he could recruit to his service.)

But although Bonkowski Pasha’s death had been widely reported in the Istanbul papers, Abdul Hamid had not sent any orders for the trial to be held in Der-i Saadet. The Governor Pasha assumed this must be because of quarantine regulations, and a concern that the plague might spread to military vessels. Having thus surmised that what the Sultan wanted was for the perpetrators to be quietly punished and for the whole matter to be forgotten as soon as possible, the Governor summoned the President of the Court to his offices and informed him that it was the Sultan’s command that the court should proceed to trial without waiting for the Investigative Committee’s report and immediately sentence the three defendants to death.

That same afternoon, an armored vehicle sent from the garrison transferred Ramiz and his two associates to the holding cell in the basement of the State Hall. After being kept in that dark, fetid room for two hours, the prisoners were then led to the courtroom. Despite the torture he had endured during his interrogation, Ramiz had never admitted to the crime he was accused of (a rare occurrence), and his proud, dignified comportment in court was received by the presiding judge—who had arrived on the island from Istanbul two months ago—both with respect and with a measure of irritation. Unlike most people, tall, green-eyed, good-looking Ramiz had not been turned ugly by the torture he had been subjected to.

The charges had been drummed up with reference to the files compiled over many years by spies and detectives employed by the Department of Scrutinia to record Ramiz’s crimes against the Governor and the Ottoman Empire. Ramiz’s ties to the exasperated villagers involved in the Pilgrim Ship Affair, his confrontations with the gendarmerie, and his support for the marauder Memo, responsible for countless raids upon the island’s Greek villages (and whom the Governor himself also secretly sponsored), were all cited in the case files as evidence that Ramiz’s nature and disposition pointed to his having arranged for the assassination of Bonkowski Pasha, with the fact that his whereabouts at the time of the killing were accounted for being no indication of his innocence. According to the indictment, Ramiz’s men had been lying in wait for the famous Royal Chemist in and around the neighborhoods where the island’s religious sects were based and where consecrated prayer sheets were most commonly to be found. Ramiz’s motive for organizing the assassination was to undermine the quarantine and precipitate unrest upon the island. This would give the Western powers an excuse to intervene in Mingheria too, as they had already done in Crete, and tear the island away from Ottoman rule. Ramiz—who supported the island’s highway bandits in their raids on Greek villages for precisely the opposite reason—did not even deign to respond to these accusations. When he was asked if he had any final words for the court, he said:

“None of these falsehoods nor the torture I have been put through have anything to do with politics. I am being framed for this crime because of a woman. This is a matter of love and jealousy.”

“He must have been talking about Zeynep!” said Princess Pakize when her husband relayed Ramiz’s words to her. “Was the Major there?”

Prince Consort Nuri told her that the Major had been present at the deliberations over the verdict, but had not been seen at all during the trial itself. It was especially the Princess who was interested in the Major’s infatuation with Zeynep. But Ramiz’s eloquence had surprised them both, for he had mostly been described to them as little more than a bully and a boorish thug.

The Princess and Prince Consort sat in their quarters discussing the latest developments in the search for Bonkowski Pasha’s killer. Under pressure from the Governor, the officers of the Investigative Committee were concentrating their efforts on Ramiz’s entourage, the disciples of the Terkapçılar and Halifiye sects, and the merchants who were known to frequent these lodges, but so far they had not uncovered any conclusive evidence.

The Doctor and Prince Consort’s view was that the Governor’s political preconceptions were preventing him from considering other possibilities, and that he lacked any interest in facts and details—that his method, in other words, was also wrong. By the Governor’s logic of political inquest it could indeed just as easily be concluded that the man behind Bonkowski Pasha’s murder must be the Greek consul Leonidis, who wanted the outbreak to keep spreading! Or perhaps it could have been a different consul, acting on the general assumption that people like Ramiz would ultimately get the blame.

Emulating the characters of her uncle’s beloved detective novels, Princess Pakize devoted much of her time during this period to puzzling with her husband over the mystery of Bonkowski Pasha’s murder. But sometimes she would let her anger toward her uncle get the better of her, her emotions clouding her judgment in a way that Sherlock Holmes would certainly have frowned upon, and leading her to the sudden and impulsive conclusion that the assassination must have been carried out under orders from her wicked uncle Abdul Hamid. Once she even let slip to her husband that she found his refusal to accept the truth of her uncle’s involvement in the assassination, and his willingness instead to run around the island investigating on the Sultan’s behalf, to be both foolish and demeaning.

“I must confess it amazes me that you are unable to see how this is evidently all his doing, and that he is now merely shifting the blame onto others, just as he did after the assassination of Mithat Pasha!” she said. “You really are naïve.”

Feeling, for the first time in their marriage, hurt and heartbroken by something his wife had said, Doctor Nuri hurried out of the room. Whenever he was lost in his thoughts, he liked to walk aimlessly around the city, lending his ear to the mysterious silence of its streets and wanting to see for himself the symptoms of the disease, the signs of the spreading outbreak, and the kinds of remedies people were coming up with. It was clear now even from the way the trees rustled in the breeze that everyone had begun to feel afraid. Some homes appeared to have their front doors shut and sealed, but a glance at their second-floor windows would reveal that there were still people inside. There was a heavy air, almost a kind of aura, weighing over the streets now, under which the spread of the disease seemed to coalesce with the actions of the killer. Some people had piled their pots and pans, their travel trunks, and their earthenware out in their yards, and in another garden Doctor Nuri saw a harried father and son rushing to complete some kind of carpentry work. Perhaps they were making preparations in case the outbreak worsened, and planned to barricade their home from the inside. As he surveyed this world of ordinary objects, of well sweeps, doorknobs, locks, gas lamps, and kilims laid out under the sun, Doctor Nuri hoped that he might understand something about the disease and the epidemic that no one else had noticed before, but that was, in fact, perfectly obvious once you knew it was there.

He would have liked to explain to the Governor Pasha the remarkable similarity between solving a murder and stopping an epidemic. But when he visited the Pasha in his office again that evening, all he could do was question him on what he considered to be the most unconscionable aspect of that day’s trial.

“Your Excellency, is this person really the killer? Or might he perhaps have ‘confessed’ under duress?”

“The telegram sent by the palace directly to your esteemed self and the royal directives that I have received can leave no doubt in either of our minds that His Royal Highness the Sultan wishes above all else for the killer to be identified without delay!” said the Governor Pasha. “That is why they have sent you here, of course. If a murder is committed in a province of the Empire and matters get so out of hand that the authorities in Istanbul and the Sultan feel the need to intervene, there is no longer anything the local governor can do. In the olden days, if I had come out and said I was looking for the killer but hadn’t found him yet, my words would have been taken as a declaration of inadequacy and a sign that I had lost my grip over the province, and I would have been relieved of my duties posthaste. Some of those old sultans might even have interpreted such an admission as a nefarious plot to challenge their authority and collude with the enemy, and have me beheaded for it!”