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The new governor did not argue with Quarantine Master Nikos or the soldiers who were brutally soaking his cabin in Lysol. His deputy, Hadi, later admitted in his extraordinarily candid memoirs, From the Islands to the Motherland, that Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha’s only thought amid the chaos and the flurry of disinfection activity going on around him was how to get his luggage and trunks unloaded onto the rowboat without any items going astray. As far as he was concerned—and as he had been wrongly informed in a telegram from the palace—the old governor Sami Pasha had left the island and was already on his way to Aleppo.

The volunteers—three Greek doctors of Mingherian ancestry, two young Muslim doctors who had just graduated from the Imperial School of Medicine and had been forced to go on Istanbul’s orders, and a few other inquisitive, adventure-loving souls—clambered down the Sühandan’s rope ladder and onto Foreman Seyit’s bobbing, swaying rowboat. They had spent most of their journey in a state of boisterous companionship, as if they were going on holiday rather than to battle a gruesome disease, but before they had even stepped off the Sühandan, the smell of Lysol and the brusqueness of the Quarantine Regiment had silenced and cowed them. (Two of the three young Greek volunteer doctors and one of the Muslim doctors on that rowboat would die of the plague within a month.)

Once he had made sure his suitcases and trunks had all been unloaded, the new governor also got in. When he realized that Foreman Seyit was directing his oarsmen not toward the docks, but in the opposite direction, toward the islet with the Maiden’s Tower, Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha stood up from his seat to object: if it really was necessary to quarantine the Sühandan’s passengers, could this not be done by the Customhouse in the port, or somewhere else in the city? Quarantine Master Nikos Bey frightened him with a reminder that Arkaz was “dangerous” right now. Some commentators have claimed that the new governor only agreed to get on the rowboat because he assumed he would be taken to the city, and had he known that he was going to be locked up in the Maiden’s Tower for five days during such a historic moment, he would have first cleared the matter with Istanbul by telegram. Some see the whole incident as part of a scheme concocted by Britain and the West, or perhaps even by the Greeks. Others may be right in their observation that the new governor—who had served many years before as the Mayor of the Mingherian town of Zardost—was probably a little too afraid of the plague.

These fanciful interpretations are of dubious value in helping us conjure a more vivid impression of the day’s events. But what we can be sure of is that many people (including those who had no intention of attending) were now waiting expectantly for Sheikh Hamdullah’s Friday sermon and for the meeting set to take place afterward on the State Hall balcony.

CHAPTER 48

For centuries, Friday sermons in Mingheria’s Pious Saim Pasha and Blind Mehmet Pasha Mosques had always been delivered by resident preachers approved by Istanbul. But in special, historic circumstances, the leaders of the island’s major lodges would also be allowed to preach at the New Mosque, and when times were difficult, people would turn out in large numbers to hear these famous sheikhs talk. Dispensing all sorts of advice to their audience, and translating Arabic prayers into simple, day-to-day language, some of these sheikhs told such affecting parables, and could be so adept at frightening their congregation or moving them to tears, that they would be invited to preach in Istanbul’s biggest and best-known mosques, and thus enter the pantheon of famous Mingherians.

Sheikh Hamdullah had only ever given two sermons in the mosques of Arkaz, both many years ago. He had covered familiar topics like faith, how to resist the temptations of the flesh, and the traps laid out by the devil. He had not addressed or even alluded to events on the island. In other words, the sheikh’s previous sermons had been strictly academic, and as they had not spoken to the Muslim population’s everyday fears and tribulations, they had not left much of a mark. Although the sheikh’s renown on the island had increased in the twelve years that had since gone by, his reluctance to become involved in any affairs of the pulpit which required approval from the Department of Charitable Trusts and from Istanbul meant that he had never delivered a sermon again. There was therefore much curiosity now—not just among the island’s pious Muslim community, but among its consuls and the heads of its Christian congregations too—regarding the sermon he was set to give on the subject of the plague.

Sami Pasha had arranged to have the sheikh followed in secret. He was worried that after the sermon, the sheikh might find some pretext to avoid the meeting at the State Hall, and that his absence could transform the whole event into a protest against quarantine—the opposite of what was intended.

That Thursday’s angriest and most determined protagonist was Ramiz. After a telegram from Istanbul had set him free, Ramiz had gone north to the villages of Çifteler and Nebiler. We will not indulge here in any protracted account of his confrontations with people fleeing the plague in Arkaz, and of how he extorted money from Pharmacist Nikiforos’s eldest son. But Marika had been right to warn Sami Pasha: a week ago, Ramiz and his new gang of seven henchmen he had recruited from Çifteler and Nebiler had slipped back into Arkaz. The men were armed with knives and hunting rifles (supposedly to shoot rats with). Meanwhile, Ramiz had been going around telling people that the Great Powers would only withdraw their ships and lift the blockade once the new governor was installed in his seat and took charge of the garrison and the Arab divisions stationed therein.

As there weren’t enough coffins anymore, most bodies were now being buried without. Some of the dead had no one to perform the proper burial rites for them—either because their whole families had died too, or because they’d fled the city—and with Majid and Hadid no longer involved in these matters, and the villagers and Cretian troublemakers who had been recruited in their stead soon abandoning their posts too, this had become a significant issue. At the same time, with the number of municipal employees too afraid to come to work increasing every day, it had become harder for Sami Pasha’s men to be able to track Ramiz’s whereabouts in the city.

On Thursday night, Ramiz secretly sailed to the Maiden’s Tower in the rowboat owned by Lazar Effendi—the foreman who operated under French consul Andon Hampuri’s protection. Ramiz was accompanied by ten armed men, three of whom had joined his entourage in Arkaz. Ramiz and his men stepped quietly onto the Maiden’s Tower’s makeshift jetty. Here, they were attacked by two furious dogs who took their guard duties over the rocky island more seriously than most, until eventually some sentries showed up. The raiders displayed their rifles, and after announcing that they had come with Sami Pasha and Doctor Nikos’s blessing to protect against a group of guerrillas who planned to kidnap the new governor that night, they relieved the sentries of their weapons and tied them up.

Persuading the new governor Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha proved a little more difficult. As his deputy would entertainingly recount in his memoirs From the Islands to the Motherland, the new governor had reacted to Ramiz and his men like a crown prince hiding away in his harem in fear of the daredevil rebels who had come to install him on the Ottoman throne. (Murad V had been similarly alarmed when the organizers of the coup that was to overthrow his predecessor, Abdülaziz, had arrived to retrieve him a day earlier than he had expected them to.) For a while, Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha refused to let Ramiz into the room where he was being quarantined. Already he thought it inappropriate that he should be detained in the Maiden’s Tower under so-called quarantine regulations, and in this state of heightened mistrust, he could sense there was some kind of plot at work. He took out his Nagant revolver and loaded it with bullets.

It was already past midnight when—having finally understood that Ramiz and his gang had taken control of the Maiden’s Tower, that nobody from the city was coming to the rescue, and that he was, in other words, Ramiz’s captive—the new governor stepped out of his room holding his Nagant. Ramiz declared that, as the one true governor, Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha had every right to carry that revolver, and after making all sorts of other earnest proclamations, he led Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha to the large room at the entrance of the Maiden’s Tower. Upon Ramiz’s instruction, the new governor’s deputy, Hadi Bey, and his clerk, both of whom had followed Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha from Istanbul, as well as the volunteers and everyone else who had arrived on the ship were also brought to this spacious hall. After journeying all the way from Istanbul to battle the outbreak on the island, the Sühandan’s impatient volunteers were rather displeased about the senseless quarantine they had been subjected to, and just as most of them had begun to think that they must have been brought here in the middle of the night so that they could finally be ferried from the Maiden’s Tower to the city itself, Ramiz had all the gas lamps in the room turned on, and once he had made sure that everyone had looked around and seen one another, he bowed before the new governor Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha and kissed his hand as if he were swearing allegiance to a new sultan who had hastily been placed on the throne. Ramiz then announced that, in accordance with his Royal Highness the Sultan’s orders, he and his men recognized Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha’s sole authority as Mingheria’s new governor, and that they would escort him to the Governor’s Office the next day.

Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha’s deputy, Hadi, makes it clear in his memoirs that the Pasha did not believe a word these hoodlums were saying but pretended to go along with their plan so as not to anger the bandit Ramiz. The Pasha’s real intention was to escape at the first opportunity and locate Sami Pasha (who, as he had just found out, was still on the island) so that they could assess the situation together.

Ramiz, on the other hand, was buoyed by the success of his nighttime foray into the Maiden’s Tower. At daybreak on Friday morning, the new governor and his retinue were ferried to the island in the foreman’s rowboat and entered the city through the Old Stone Jetty. As they looked toward the unfailingly romantic, mysterious silhouette of the Maiden’s Tower and saw Foreman Lazar’s boat slowly approaching the city, the Greek fishermen who had sailed out at dawn glumly concluded that it must be carrying bodies for burial. The outbreak was not slowing, quarantine measures were not working, and perfectly healthy people were catching the disease in the same places where they were being holed up for quarantine purposes.

After dropping off its numerous passengers at the Old Stone Jetty, the rowboat returned quietly to its usual place in front of the Customhouse. Sami Pasha’s spies had already spotted the boat, but by the time they got to the Old Stone Jetty, Ramiz and the new governor’s men had already entered Vavla. Had they needed to, they could have easily overpowered Sami Pasha’s spies, his night watchmen, and any other guards that might try to stand in their way. But nobody saw them or tried to stop them as they vanished into the neighborhood’s alleyways.

CHAPTER 49

Sheikh Hamdullah spent his Thursday evening surrounded by the same books and pamphlets his grandfather and great-grandfather used to consult during outbreaks of plague in Istanbul. These texts sought to unravel the mysteries of the plague through the interpretation of omens, the predictive powers of the Abjad numeral system, and the mystical attributes of the alphabet as codified in the Lettrist Sufi doctrine of Hurufism. The outbreak of plague that had struck Istanbul ninety years ago had been such an appalling ordeal that the most pious Muslims had turned away from the world and placed all their remaining hopes on cryptic signs, talismans, and consecrated prayer sheets. Given their interest in this kind of esoteric knowledge and in the secret properties of the alphabet, Sheikh Hamdullah’s forefathers had found some consolation in these ancient writings. They had even composed verses and texts of their own, replete with allusions and double meanings. But in this new age when all everyone talked about were microbes and Lysol, Sheikh Hamdullah could see that these old pamphlets would be of no use at all. There was no advice in there about how to quarantine, nor any kind of cure.

After midday prayers on Friday were over and the time came for him to deliver his sermon, Sheikh Hamdullah realized the moment he stepped onto the pulpit that the teeming, disconsolate crowd before him had no interest in his own doctrinal quandaries or in the sophistications of complex religious precepts, and that all they wanted was to mourn and weep and tearfully call upon Allah for consolation. The sheikh had climbed twelve steps to reach the pulpit, and now he felt like he was standing far above the restless, anxious, frightened worshippers gathered below him. Usually when he talked to his disciples and to those who came to him with their problems, eager to unburden themselves, the sheikh liked to be able to look into their eyes from up close. That nearness was what allowed him to forget his own self and meld with the self of the person sitting before him. But even all the way up on that pulpit, the sheikh could sense that what his audience wanted most from him was not advice but a new mood and a new frame of mind they could embrace. He also intuitively understood that they expected him to provide some kind of remedy against fear and death. He had not realized any of this back at the lodge. Whether he told them that everything would happen as it was fated to, or claimed that the Holy Koran itself prescribed quarantine measures, it would not make any difference to these people now. The tense, apprehensive worshippers in the mosque were not in a composed-enough state to grasp that kind of distinction. They paid the sheikh most attention when he mentioned the Almighty and spoke of how great and how merciful he was, and every time the name of Allah was spoken, their faces lit up with the spark of epiphany and consolation. The sheikh quickly realized that rather than reasoning about quarantine and fate, he would do better to simply lead the congregation in prayer.

“Rabbanaa wa laa tuhammilnaa maa laa taaqata lanaa bih!” he proclaimed, following his instincts. This was a verse from the Baqarah surah. As the sheikh explained in simple Turkish, it translated to “O Lord, do not burden us with more than we have the strength to endure!” He then shared some spontaneous reflections on the notion of endurance: “The only way to endure is to seek refuge in Allah,” he began. Since everything happened according to his will anyway, there could be no other solace for believers than to turn to Allah. He spoke in the confident manner of a man having the final word on a particular subject and clearing the matter up in everyone’s minds. Sure enough, the crowd came to the conclusion that there must be some profound message enshrined in his words, though they remained as exhausted and preoccupied as ever.