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“But things have changed now. After the reforms of the Tanzimat era, it is no longer communities but individual citizens who are held responsible for their actions. That is why the Sultan sent me here.”

“On a matter as significant as this, it should be the state that decides who is responsible for what,” the Governor replied. “Otherwise the Christian minorities that control some of the smaller matters upon this island, and its commercial activities too, shall no doubt seek to take advantage. In any event, we have apprehended the killer, and he has confessed unequivocally to his crime.”

“This is not how the Sultan wishes for Bonkowski Pasha’s killer to be caught.”

“You speak as if you had some special understanding of what His Supreme Highness wants and how he wants it.”

“I do,” said the Doctor and Prince Consort. “His Serene Highness wishes for us to find Bonkowski Pasha’s true killer just like Sherlock Holmes would—that is, by examining the details of the murder and building a case based on evidence, not on beatings and torture.”

“Who is Sherlock Holmes?”

“He is a British detective who collects evidence first, then goes home and unravels the mystery by using logic to analyze all the clues. Sultan Abdul Hamid wants us to solve this murder like Europeans would, finding the killer by following the clues that will lead us to him.”

“Our sultan may recognize the accomplishments of the British, but he takes no pleasure in them. You should consider that in your logic too.”

We will note here, in a tantalizing nod to our readers, that there was an element of the prophetic in these final words from the Governor that evening.

CHAPTER 25

But what did Abdul Hamid mean by the phrase “like Sherlock Holmes”? Doctor Nuri had first heard the expression shortly before his marriage, and directly from the Sultan himself. For our story to be more readily understood, we shall remind ourselves now of a fact about Sultan Abdul Hamid known by all historians specializing in the history of the Ottoman Empire during the second half of the nineteenth century: Abdul Hamid, the last great Ottoman sultan, was a fan of murder mysteries. Wary of ever leaving the confines of the Yıldız Palace, Abdul Hamid subscribed to the world’s principal newspapers and magazines and sought to keep up with new books and ideas. The clerks of the Translation Bureau he’d had set up in the palace translated political treatises for the Sultan’s perusal, as well as any newspaper articles and books on the latest developments in science, technology, engineering, and medicine. Most recently, for instance, they had translated three books from French: a volume on the Russian military, a life of Julius Caesar, and a study of infectious diseases. But most of the time, the clerks of the Translation Bureau were busy translating detective novels.

Sometimes the Sultan would discover a new writer (Eugène Bertol-Graivil, Edgar Allan Poe, or Maurice Leblanc, for example) and wish to read all of his other books too; or perhaps his ambassador to Paris, Münir Pasha (whose duties also included, as he later revealed in his memoirs, purchasing underwear for the Sultan from the Bon Marché department store), would notify him of a new book by one of the authors the Sultan already knew and loved (such as Émile Gaboriau or Ponson du Terrail), so that the palace’s translators could get to work the moment the book in question—swiftly dispatched by express post—arrived in Istanbul. Princess Pakize’s older sister and frequent correspondent Princess Hatice was by then already engaged to be married, and her future husband, a palace clerk, had sometimes worked on these rushed translations too, all in a bid to ensure the novel the Sultan wished to read that evening would be ready in time. The Sultan also had English translators at his disposal. When an article on Abdul Hamid had appeared in the Strand Magazine (calling him, among other things, the Bloody Sultan and a tyrant), the translator who had rendered it into Turkish had, in a moment of intuition, also translated the Sherlock Holmes story (“The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”) that had been printed on the other side of the same page, and having read and enjoyed the story, the Sultan had begun following its author Arthur Conan Doyle too.

When the palace’s own translators could not turn things around quickly enough, professional translators would be brought in, their services secured through any one of Istanbul’s famous booksellers. So it was that during those years many Young Turks, revolutionaries, liberals, and journalists inadvertently translated novels for Abdul Hamid, a man they despised. Opponents of the Sultan, who claimed he was a tyrant capable only of banning things and locking people up, and French-speaking Greek and Armenian medical students, who called him the Bloody Sultan, ended up serving as his translators, and although some might have had an inkling of the truth, most of them thought they were merely working for the Armenian bookseller Karabet. Sometimes Abdul Hamid would also commission unabridged translations of classic novels like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo for someone to read out to him in the evenings, and if he deemed any of their contents inappropriate, he would take it upon himself to censor the whole book or some of its pages. These translations were reissued after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, billed as “translations commissioned by Abdul Hamid,” and missing the sections he had censored.

The publication in France of the world’s first murder mysteries and detective novels, their growing popularity in England, and their spread across the world through translations into foreign languages coincided with the period of Abdul Hamid II’s rule, so that it would not be inaccurate to describe the Sultan’s collection of five hundred translated volumes, currently held at the University of Istanbul, as a little library of the early years of crime fiction.

More than a hundred years later, at a time when the Turkish Republic’s ruling politicians were naming hospitals after Abdul Hamid and extolling his virtues as an autocratic but also a patriotic and pious leader beloved by the masses, historians were able to study the collection of novels amassed by the Sultan they idolized and thus determine his specific taste in crime fiction. The last great Ottoman sultan, who was to rule for thirty-three years, did not appreciate melodramatic coincidences in his detective novels (such as in Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris), nor did he enjoy tawdry romances that interfered with the plot and relegated logic to the background (such as in the works of Xavier de Montépin). The stories that pleased him most were those where the clever detective, working in harmony with the state and the police, would carefully read through every report he received, then use his superior intellect to identify the culprit and solve the puzzle.

Abdul Hamid would not read these novels himself. A palace clerk, usually a seasoned courtier who had gained the Sultan’s confidence and was known to possess a pleasant speaking voice, would sit at night behind a folding screen near the Sultan’s bed and read the books to him. For a time, the chosen reader was the Master of the Royal Wardrobe, whose chief role was to dress the Sultan, and later the task was assigned to reliably loyal palace pashas. When he was tired Abdul Hamid would call out, “That will do,” then promptly fall asleep. Or sometimes the trusty palace reader would infer from a lengthy silence that His Highness the Sultan, pillar of the world, had dozed off, and so he would tiptoe out from behind the folding screen and leave. Every time a novel was finished, the clerk would write “Read” on the last page, just like that Chinese emperor who stamped landscape paintings he liked with a red seal. For like all people prone to paranoia and rancor, Abdul Hamid had a prodigious memory, and once, when a clerk had accidentally started reading him a novel the Sultan had already heard seven years before, Abdul Hamid had first banished him from the palace, and later exiled him to Damascus.

Doctor Nuri Bey already knew most of these stories when he went to meet the Sultan for the first time at the Yıldız Palace. As he waited to be seen, he heard once again from Princess Pakize’s sister Princess Hatice’s husband-to-be that—just as Doctor Nuri had presumed—Professor Nicolle and Professor Chantemesse, the two Frenchmen who taught at the Imperial School of Medicine, and Professor Bonkowski had all three spoken highly of him in the past, that it was on these grounds that Doctor Nuri had been authorized, with His Supreme Highness’s approval, to enter the harem and examine the former sultan Murad V’s elderly wife (who was afflicted by a stubbornly persistent ailment), and that, following his encounter with Princess Pakize there, and after a thorough vetting of his background, it was not only agreed that he should be permitted to marry the Princess, but that the match should be actively encouraged. The Sultan had personally requested lengthy reports at every stage of this process, and had been impressed by what he had heard of Doctor Nuri’s expertise in microbiology and laboratory practices.

As he received Doctor Nuri at the palace on the day set for his audience with the Sultan, Princess Hatice’s husband-to-be carefully explained that contrary to popular credence, His Supreme Highness very rarely accepted visitors, that even grand viziers, field marshals, and the most distinguished foreign ambassadors could be kept waiting for hours outside his door, and that the doctor should regard the time afforded him today as a great honor. Even so, Doctor Nuri was made to wait inside a room in the palace for half a day. At one point he was told that he would be accompanied to the Imperial Guesthouse, for the Sultan would not be able to receive him until the next day after all, and in the meantime it would be more expedient for Doctor Nuri to spend the night at the palace. Doctor Nuri’s mind was mostly preoccupied with thoughts of Princess Pakize and the prospect of marrying a sultan’s daughter, but at the same time he was also thinking that he could be arrested at any moment, like so many young doctors before him who’d been summoned to the Yıldız Palace for an audience with the Sultan and kept waiting. Indeed nobody—not his mother, his relatives, or any of his doctor friends—would have been surprised if, having turned up at the palace with dreams of marrying the former sultan’s daughter, Doctor Nuri had ended up being taken captive and put into prison instead.

But later a palace clerk showed up and informed the doctor that His Supreme Highness would see him now. Doctor Nuri followed the hunchbacked clerk up a lightly sloping path to a single-story structure on the palace grounds. There was a crowd of aides, clerks, and eunuchs assembled inside. But the only other person present in the room where he met Sultan Abdul Hamid was the palace’s Chief Secretary, Tahsin Pasha.

The young doctor found that looking at the Sultan for too long was tiring and even a little frightening. A substantial portion of his mind had now been taken over by the single refrain that he was “here, now, in the exalted presence of the great and all-conquering sultan Abdul Hamid,” and he could not really think of much else. Having bowed all the way to the floor in obeisance, he kissed the Sultan’s small, warm, bony hand. The room, fitted with thick curtains and carpets the color of dark naphtha, was only dimly lit. When the Sultan spoke, Doctor Nuri listened without thinking of anything else, except to remind himself he must make sure he didn’t do anything wrong.

Abdul Hamid was very glad that both his brother’s consort and granddaughter had recovered, and even gladder that this had been achieved through the knowledge and resources of the Imperial Bacteriology Institute in Nişantaşı, but he was especially pleased that her illness had proven “conducive” to an altogether-different, happier occurrence. It was a speech that Princess Pakize would later often ask her husband to repeat. For according to the Princess, these remarks proved that by arranging for the third of his older brother Murad V’s captive daughters to be married too, Abdul Hamid had cleared his conscience—which showed just how little guilt he must have felt to begin with for having kept them all imprisoned inside a tiny palace for twenty-five years.

Once he had satisfied himself that everything was in order with the three sisters’ bridal trousseaus (then on display at the palace) and all of the other wedding preparations, the Sultan had turned to the topic he was most interested in, and began to ask Doctor Nuri a series of searching questions on the workings of the Quarantine Authority in the Hejaz. Having devoted five years of his life to this very subject, Doctor Nuri responded with a candid account of his experiences. Abdul Hamid had assumed a demeanor designed to encourage sincerity. The Sultan’s expression was placid, and he looked tired, but his interest and attention were undivided. Doctor Nuri’s nervousness had subsided; his heart was still beating fast, but he was no longer afraid. He began instinctively to tell the Sultan about the misdeeds of the captains of the British ships that brought pilgrims from India. Unable to stop himself, he then described in unsparing detail the difficulties the Quarantine Authority had had to deal with in trying to bury those who had died from cholera, and pointed out that the dormitories the Sharif of Mecca and his clan offered for the pilgrims’ use were rife with disease. It briefly crossed Doctor Nuri’s mind that having previously considered Abdul Hamid to be the principal cause of all these evils, he was now appealing to the same man as if he were the only person in the world who could possibly rectify them, but just as he was about to mention two more problems that needed urgently to be solved, the Sultan interrupted him.

“I have oft been apprised of your impeccable conduct and qualities,” said the Sultan and pillar of the world. It was as if all of the horrors that had just been described to him only mattered insofar as they provided the Sultan with a reason to commend the young doctor. “Now tell me all the knowledge you possess on microbes.”

The doctor replied that “every disease comes from microbes.” As he knew how much money the Sultan was spending on all the quarantine and cholera experts he had brought to Istanbul, and how proud he was of his Imperial Bacteriology Institute in Nişantaşı, Doctor Nuri made sure to speak of that institution as one of the world’s leading scientific laboratories, second only to the one in Paris. The Sultan responded with a satisfied half smile. Doctor Nuri added that the Empire’s doctors and medical students had “learned so much” from Professors Chantemesse and Nicolle, the two French doctors who taught there. Finally, knowing that three days ago the Sultan had been read a book (translated from French) on infectious diseases, that he had asked for some passages to be read out to him over and over again, and that he had always been interested in the sciences and in all the latest scientific and medical discoveries, he said: “Your Highness, the secret to defeating diseases like cholera, yellow fever, and leprosy lies, of course, in microbes and bacteria. However, the science of bacteriology”—Doctor Nuri pronounced that last word exactly as he thought a Frenchman would—“is no longer sufficient in fighting outbreaks, and the British have now also invented something called epidemiology, a new and vital science of infectious disease.”