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With the Sultan appearing to be engrossed in his explanation, and the expression on Tahsin Pasha’s face reassuring him that he was not doing anything he shouldn’t be doing, Doctor Nuri continued to talk, describing how the science of epidemiology had first been discovered forty-five years ago during an epidemic of cholera in London. During this outbreak, while every doctor was busy combing the city street by street to try and have infected homes cordoned off and the belongings of the dead incinerated, one doctor did something different: he began to mark all of the information coming out of London upon an enormous map of the city. “They soon realized by observing the disposition of the green marks made by this doctor that homes nearest to the city’s major water fountains were likelier to be infected with cholera,” Doctor Nuri explained with breathless excitement. A closer look at the map had revealed that “whereas everyone on one street seemed to have fallen ill, the beer factory workers who lived on the next street had been entirely unaffected. The doctors begin investigating why this might be, and discover that the beer factory workers do not collect their drinking water from the municipal fountain, but from the beer factory’s own supply, which is boiled clean. That is how they realize that the source of the epidemic is not, as they had previously believed, the humid, filthy air of this or that neighborhood, or the sewage system, or even people’s private water wells, but the city’s own contaminated water network, which supplies the public fountains. All of this to say, Your Highness,” the prospective groom concluded, “that an epidemiologist could uncover the mystery behind an outbreak without examining a single patient—all by sitting in his office and studying a map!”

“Just like Sherlock Holmes!” said Abdul Hamid, who never set foot outside his palace.

The Sultan had of course made this remark, which is of central importance to our story, under the influence of the detective novels he was, in those days, so fond of having read out to him. What he was referring to was the idea that even the thorniest of problems could be solved from behind a desk, off the field and from a distance, solely through the power of logic.

Just after he had spoken these words, His Royal Highness was approached by Chief Secretary Tahsin Pasha, and at the same time another clerk informed Doctor Nuri that the audience had terminated. So it was that the Sultan’s remark took on a whole new significance. Doctor Nuri exited the chamber, walking backward and improvising a series of salutations. The encounter he had just experienced would continue to affect him for a very long time.

What had Abdul Hamid meant when he’d said, “Just like Sherlock Holmes”? Busy with their wedding celebrations, Doctor Nuri and Princess Pakize had not found much time to stop and reflect upon the weight of the Sultan’s words. Perhaps the Sultan had only wished to make a quip, knowing that one of the palace clerks who translated his detective novels was engaged to marry Princess Pakize’s older sister and correspondent Hatice, and that he and the third sister’s suitor would therefore soon be brothers-in-law.

But the Doctor and Prince Consort had often thought of that phrase “like Sherlock Holmes” since he had been sent to Arkaz with the task of curbing the outbreak and finding the culprit behind the death of the Royal Chemist. He had come to the conclusion that what Abdul Hamid wanted was for his cherished Royal Chemist Bonkowski Pasha’s killer to be apprehended through the same methods Sherlock Holmes employed.

Yet Doctor Nuri often found himself having to argue with the Governor Pasha over the implications of the expression “like Sherlock Holmes,” both in general terms and in relation to the assassination of Bonkowski Pasha—that is to say not just on a conceptual level, but in its practical applications too. The crux of these arguments was that the approach the Governor Pasha had taken to the search for Bonkowski’s killer, and the “method” he had applied, were wrong. By using torture, the Pasha had managed to force a confession from one of the men he’d had arrested along with Ramiz. Having been beaten with sticks, tortured with pliers, and deprived of sleep, the suspect—by this point already half dead—had done what most people in his position would have done: confessed his guilt, accepted the fabrication that he had acted under Ramiz’s orders, and hoped that in doing so he might be pardoned by the Governor. But even if the prospect of a special pardon hadn’t been dangled before him (and in truth the Governor had no idea that the torturer had made such a promise in his name), the prisoner had by then been reduced to such a wretched state that he would have been ready to admit even to being the person walking the streets of the capital at night spreading the plague into mosque courtyards and water fountains, along the city walls, and all over doorknobs too.

Princess Pakize’s early letters to her older sister had already been replete with teasing remarks about the Governor and mocking references to his officious, affected airs, yet they had also revealed a measure of respect for his diligence and his responsible, statesmanlike manner. But soon Doctor and Prince Consort Nuri began to worry that the Governor might arbitrarily decide to execute Ramiz and his men without checking with Istanbul first, and that this would turn Sheikh Hamdullah into a sworn enemy of quarantine and Governor both.

Having grown increasingly westernized under the influence of the world’s Great Powers, by 1901 the Ottoman legal system dictated that every death sentence handed out in the Empire had to be sanctioned by the high court in Istanbul. In practice there were many exceptions made to this rule, whether due to war, rebellion, problems in communication, or a lack of time. With imperial troops constantly fighting on this or that front and busily hanging rebels as a way of suppressing separatist movements, governors across the Empire would arrange rapid, exemplary executions almost as a matter of course, and without waiting for Istanbul’s consent. Where a death sentence was likely to be rejected by the authorities in Istanbul, governors would sometimes carry out the execution anyway—in the middle of the night and without telling anyone—and put the high court in Istanbul in the position of having to approve the verdict retroactively to avoid giving the impression that the state disagreed with itself. With so many Greek, Serbian, Armenian, and Bulgarian separatists (the Arabs’ and the Kurds’ turn had yet to come), as well as anarchists and highwaymen thus put to death without Istanbul’s official approval, Abdul Hamid would placate the British and French envoys who besieged him with their talk of minorities, human rights, freedom of thought, and legal reform by saying that the cruel and unwarranted sentence had been carried out without his endorsement, and that he would be sure to immediately dismiss the Governor in question. But actually the Sultan preferred it when executions took place without his and Istanbul’s prior knowledge.

In the Empire’s more distant provinces, where Ottoman functionaries and soldiers were always outnumbered by the locals, death sentences would be carried out quietly and discreetly in some prison courtyard or in the barracks jail, with the general populace and more prominent citizens only informed after the fact. But perhaps because he felt elated and secure in the knowledge that Muslims constituted a majority on the island, Governor Sami Pasha had begun talking openly now of having three gallows erected right in the middle of the State Hall Square. Many commentators have pointed out that under these plans, the first people due to ever be hanged on the island would all be Muslims. Every time he heard that the Governor was planning to have a special balcony built from which the consuls could view the public executions, Doctor Nuri would find some excuse to bring the matter up with the Governor again and warn him that he was making a mistake.

“How curious,” the Governor might reply with a note of derision in his voice. “The whole city knows that we have caught Bonkowski Pasha’s killer. Now tell me, if we were to follow the methods of this English detective, this Sherlock Holmes, and set the culprit free, how could we expect anyone to ever take the Governor and all these quarantine regulations seriously again?”

CHAPTER 26

There were so many people out by the port that last evening before the quarantine on ships was due to begin that the shops on Istanbul Street did not shut until midnight. Some historians have argued that it was among these crowds that the first stirrings of a “Mingherian identity” began, but this is an overstatement. By Princess Pakize’s account, the dominant mood at the docks that evening was not one of “national consciousness,” but of uncertainty and trepidation. By now the island’s Greek community as well as its more educated Muslims were all profoundly aware that they were standing on the edge of some kind of catastrophe.

But there were also those whose imaginations were too weak for fear. According to Princess Pakize, who had spent twenty-one years of her life fantasizing about the world outside, these people had comparatively little talent for picturing their future and feeling joy or disappointment accordingly. As they pondered these philosophical questions, husband and wife would look out of their windows at the crowds gathered at the port. There were a great many people out in the streets leading down to the docks and to the shore, far more than just those who were preparing to leave the island. Having glimpsed the magnitude of the cataclysm they faced, people simply couldn’t bring themselves to stay at home.

“Just look at these people!” the Governor Pasha exclaimed when he next saw Doctor Nuri in his office. “I am more certain than ever now that the only thing that will bring this lot to heel is a good old-fashioned hanging!”

That evening the island was divided between those who were fleeing it, and those who were staying. Greek or Muslim, those who stayed were the true islanders. The others were deserters abandoning the battlefield for the safety of their homes.

The Governor Pasha put Doctor Nuri and his guard Major Kâmil into the armored landau, and together they set off on a tour of the city. Initially their intention was to observe, measure, and try to understand the anxious multitudes that had assembled at the port.

The most eminent among the wealthy old Greek families who lived in the Ora and Hrisopolitissa neighborhoods—the Aldonis who’d made their fortune through the stone trade, and the Mimiyannoses, who had their own village in the north of the island and frequently contributed to the running of hospitals, schools, and other philanthropic operations—had already left the island. (Their shutters were all closed.) The landau and its trail of guards wound their way down Hamidiye Avenue toward the Customhouse. There were long queues outside the offices of the shipping companies, and the dock and the streets that led to it were in a state of commotion, but there were still people sitting and reading old newspapers on crowded hotel terraces and in Western-style coffeehouses. The largest of Arkaz’s three pharmacies, the Pelagos, had closed because it couldn’t keep up with demand, and its owner Mitsos did not wish to be dragged into rows with angry customers. The Hotels Splendid and Levant were spraying antiseptic over the clean-shaven men in Western hats and the various fez-clad notables who passed through their doors. They saw the same disinfectant sprays outside the Bazaar du Île, which sold cigarettes, chocolates, and furniture imported from Smyrna on the Marseille ferry, and at the entrance of the expensive Istanbul Restaurant too. The situation in the more secluded neighborhoods was the same. Some shops hadn’t even opened, and some families had boarded up their homes and run away.

Families who had planned to shelter in their homes or repair to some isolated hideout had begun to hoard crackers, flour, chickpeas, lentils, beans, and any other supplies they could get their hands on, so the island’s grocers and grain dealers had no complaints. The Governor had been informed that some shopkeepers and bakers had taken to stockpiling goods, while others were hiking up their prices. It could not be said that there was anything unlawful yet in these price fluctuations, but the passengers aboard the landau all acknowledged the inevitability that a black market would soon begin. What had really brought a sense of impending doom upon the streets was the closing of the city’s schools. The Governor had also heard that there had been an increase in the number of Muslim children left orphaned and unsupervised by the outbreak. As Coachman Zekeriya’s landau climbed slowly up a steep slope, they heard someone playing Chopin on a piano; through the windows they caught fleeting, ephemeral glimpses of Mingherian roses in midbloom, cyclamens, and pine-and mildew-scented ivy.

In the five years he had ruled over the city, the Governor Pasha had never seen it look so forlorn. That joyful, animated mood that usually took over in spring, when the orange trees blossomed, the streets were fragrant with the delicate scent of honeysuckle, linden, and rose, when birds and insects and bees suddenly emerged and seagulls mated frantically upon the rooftops, had now been replaced with a kind of silence and unease. There was not a soul in sight on those street corners from where vagrants and loiterers normally harassed passersby, in the roadside cafés where well-dressed men sat tittering and gossiping, on the pavements where Greek housewives and servants would take children dressed in sailors’ outfits for their daily walks, or in the two European-style parks the Governor had opened, the Hamidiye Park and the Parc du Levant. As the landau crept across the city, its three passengers discussed questions ranging from how to stop black-market traders to how best to guard the city’s new isolation facility. There were orphaned and abandoned children to look after, there were burglars breaking into empty homes, the Major’s unit needed volunteers, and it was important to understand just what the French consul was so angry about. Every home had to be searched; quarantine posters that had been defaced with swear words in Turkish and Greek had to be covered up; any dead rats had to be disposed of immediately in the lot behind the State Hall; people turning up for Friday prayers and other popular services should be disinfected as they entered the mosque itself, not its courtyard; and it would be wise to have that bad-mannered spray-pump operator people kept complaining about suspended from the job.

But the greatest danger of all lay in the extremes to which people resorted that day in their desperation to get onto any one of the last few ships that would be permitted to leave the island without being quarantined first. Today we can say that the frantic actions of the frightened crowds waiting at the port that evening were entirely justified: in 1901, at a time when antibiotics had not yet been discovered, the most sensible thing anyone caught up in an outbreak of plague could do was to flee. But when combined with the travel agencies’ mercantile frenzy, this understandable impulse generated a strange kind of mood, a state of mind that could be summarized as “It’s every man for himself!”