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Sheikh Hamdullah’s sermon was still going on when the consuls, the journalists, and other guests who had been invited to Sami Pasha’s balcony ceremony began to arrive. People were keeping their distance from one another, preferring to exchange greetings from afar. As usual the consuls had gathered in their own separate group. Journalists and various other curious invitees were milling about along the edges of the room, where they began waiting patiently for this meeting Sami Pasha had insisted on, and which they probably thought was largely pointless, to begin and end as soon as possible, and hopefully without too much incident.

CHAPTER 50

We shall begin this chapter with a question historians of Mingheria have so often asked: When he wore his officer’s uniform that morning, why did the Major choose to pin to his chest the medal he had been awarded after the war with Greece four years ago, and his Third-Class Order of Mecidiye badge, when he was about to embark on what would turn out to be such a historic challenge to the authority of the Ottoman state? Let us now resolve this conundrum which has baffled the island’s historians for all these years: neither the Major nor Sami Pasha had any inkling yet of the significance and the ultimate outcome of the events that would take place that day. They had heard that the new governor had been snuck out of quarantine in the Maiden’s Tower, and they were furious at Ramiz. The Major had a feeling that his beloved wife’s former fiancé might attack the State Hall, disrupting the quarantine effort and the public assembly Sami Pasha had so meticulously organized. Understandably, he thought that his Ottoman-issue medals and his military uniform might act as deterrents.

In their room at the Splendid Palace that morning, Zeynep told her husband that as well as his medal and badge, she was finding his whole manner that day to be somewhat alarming.

“Don’t worry, we will survive this,” said the Major. “And believe me, there will be salvation for the people of this island too! I’m taking this with me,” he added, showing her his Nagant revolver, but Zeynep seemed to take no interest in it. It was as if she were less worried about possible scraps and gunfights than about some other more spiritual, metaphysical menace.

According to Sami Pasha’s orders, once Sheikh Hamdullah had been put in the carriage and a soldier had waved a white flag to signal this to the State Hall and the Hotel Splendid, the armored landau would set off for the State Hall through the city’s steep and sloping backstreets, avoiding the main road. Sami Pasha expected the armed fugitive Ramiz to make trouble at the first opportunity, and was concerned that he might intercept the carriage and get in with his brother, causing havoc on the way or perhaps even attempting to escape with the sheikh. But if the landau went past the Splendid Palace and picked up the Major on its way, Sheikh Hamdullah would understand how serious the matter was and behave accordingly.

When he saw the white flag waving, the Major went to his wife and put his arms around her. Zeynep told her husband that she was afraid Ramiz would try to harm him, and that he must be careful. They embraced again.

The Major slowly made his way down the stairway of the empty hotel. Four armed soldiers from the Quarantine Regiment had been stationed in the lobby in case Ramiz should attack. The Major glanced at his reflection in a large mirror with a gilded frame and listened to one of his soldiers reporting on a dispute between two Muslim families in Çite that was having negative repercussions on quarantine too, so that by the time he stepped outside, the armored landau was already approaching the hotel. There was another carriage behind it, full of guards.

When the tired, sweat-drenched horses pulling the armored landau stopped in front of the hotel, the Major saw that Nimetullah Effendi, the dervish with the felt hat who was Sheikh Hamdullah’s most trusted deputy, was also sitting in the carriage. We shall take this opportunity to inform our readers that despite his modest and unassuming appearance—or perhaps because of it—Nimetullah Effendi would come to play a crucial role in the history of the island.

Sheikh Hamdullah had not been aware that the Commander of the Quarantine Regiment was going to join him in the landau. His feelings toward the Major, who had taken his stepbrother’s fiancée, and whose Quarantine Regiment had bullied the residents of his lodge and sprayed Lysol everywhere, were understandably less than positive. But when he saw him proudly standing in his officer’s uniform with his medals and his gun, the sheikh smiled as if he were meeting a fan or a new disciple.

“I had heard you were a hero,” he said. “But I did not know you were so young. That medal really suits you!”

The Major settled in across from the sheikh and Nimetullah Effendi, then leaned forward and humbly thanked the sheikh.

“His Holiness the Sheikh gave a wonderful sermon!” said Nimetullah Effendi. “Everyone cried, and felt reassured, and they wouldn’t let him go until they had all kissed his hand.” There was an interval of silence, after which Nimetullah Effendi added: “Thanks to the sheikh’s sermon, the congregation has understood the great importance of observing quarantine rules.”

Our attentive readers will know that this was not true. But the Major had not heard the sermon himself.

As Coachman Zekeriya slowly and steadily drove the carriage through empty alleyways and sloping streets toward Hamidiye Square, they passed by a garden, where they were startled to see a gathering of people who had come for a condolence visit, a boy eating grapes on the floor, and his little brother crying next to him. The Major sensed that this was the perfect moment to say what he had decided to say to the sheikh during this short seven-or eight-minute carriage ride.

“Your Excellency, the whole island holds you in such regard that if you had given the doctors and quarantine officials your full support from the start, there would not have been so many deaths, nor so much sorrow and suffering.”

“We are servants of Allah and of his Prophet. We must do as Allah commands. We cannot just ‘leave it to the doctors’ and turn away from our religion, our beliefs, and our past.”

“We are all servants of Allah,” said the Major. “But are the beliefs and history of a nation more important than the life and future of its people?”

“There is no life or future for a people without a religion, beliefs, and a history of their own. What exactly do we mean by ‘the nation’ on this island anyway?”

“Anyone who is from the island. The natives of this province.”

As the carriage crossed the Hamidiye Bridge, its wheels started making a different sound, and as if on cue, everyone fell silent and looked out of the windows. To the right were the Castle’s pale pink walls and the blue of the port, and to the left were rows of pine trees and palm trees and the Old Bridge.

Shortly afterward, they saw the gendarmes Sami Pasha had stationed—if somewhat sparsely—along Hamidiye Avenue. Despite all the posters that had been put up, the announcements printed in newspapers issued especially for the occasion, and the municipal officials’ exhortations, the city’s main boulevard was not conspicuously busier than usual. “They’ll come!” said Nimetullah Effendi, realizing that everyone was thinking the same thing. “The congregation is only just leaving the mosque.” He stuck his head out of the window and looked behind. But he did not see any people arriving for the event, only the carriage carrying the guards who were following the armored landau. People had become accustomed to the sight of Quarantine Regiment soldiers and gendarmes standing outside the Telegraph Office. But stringent security measures had also been put in place in the State Hall Square, where there was now a small crowd composed of travel agency clerks, shopkeepers, and some municipal employees whom Sami Pasha had told to attend. Sami Pasha, who had cracked a window open to survey the scene below, had hoped that they might stand in the middle of the square, but most people were waiting in the shade of the almond and palm trees that lined its edges.

All eyes were upon the armored carriage as it entered the square and approached the entrance to the State Hall. By the time the visibly sweating horses had come to a stop, a crowd of guards, gendarmes, and clerks had already gathered around the carriage. It was a while before the sheikh managed to step off (using a mounting block the doormen had deftly placed before him), slip away from his numerous well-wishers, and walk in through the State Hall door.

“I must perform my ablutions!” said the sheikh to Nimetullah Effendi and his felt hat as soon as they were in the shade inside.

There was a European-style lavatory at the foot of the main staircase, complete with running water and designed specifically with Western guests (and particularly consuls) in mind. Some historians have posited that the rather long time the sheikh spent in this toilet (we estimate ten minutes) would end up altering the course of Mingherian history, a theory which has generated all manner of inaccurate and sensational interpretations of this incident.

We shall put these unabashedly political exaggerations to rest here by providing our own explanation: the only reason the sheikh went into this “ablution room” and spent so much time in there was simple curiosity. For when the new State Hall had been inaugurated seven years before, every newspaper, starting from the Arkata Times, had written at length about how European, how new and modern, the building’s offices, guesthouse, and balconies looked, and there had been a great deal of talk too among the island’s more educated Muslim population, particularly in the context of broader conversations around westernization and the growing wealth of the Christian community, about the quintessentially European character of its toilet bowls purchased from the Stohos shop in Thessaloniki.

CHAPTER 51

While Sheikh Hamdullah was busy in the lavatory, Major Kâmil climbed up the State Hall’s wide staircase, coated in pinkish-white Mingherian stone and known to everyone on the island. He felt the usual mixture of pride and embarrassment he experienced whenever he wandered around with his medals and badges pinned to his military uniform, and tried not to draw too much attention to himself. But in that place and in that moment, this was impossible to do. As he walked up the steps, he could feel the janitors’ and the clerks’ and everyone else’s nervous, apprehensive eyes upon him and did his best to avoid their gazes by studying the quarantine posters (some of which were two months old) affixed to the walls as if it were the first time he had ever seen them.

He arrived at the Main Meeting Hall. This room tended to be dimly lit, as it had been even during the Quarantine Committee’s meetings, and most of its curtains were usually drawn shut, so when he walked in that day to find it bathed in the most brilliant light, the Major wondered for a moment whether he had come to the right place. He saw that Doctor Nuri was talking to Monsieur Andon (whom the Major couldn’t stand) in a patch of sunlight beside the balcony, so he walked toward the green door of the Epidemiology Room.

When he tried to open the door, he found that it was locked; he was just about to head back to the balcony when he heard a noise from behind the door, and the sound of someone talking. Perhaps there was a clerk still in there, marking deaths on the map. Locking the door seemed a sensible precaution, and whoever was inside would probably come back out soon.

The Major joined Quarantine Master Nikos and the elderly Quarantine Committee delegate Doctor Tassos, who were talking about another raft of rat corpses in the gardens and backstreets of Kofunya and Eyoklima. Most of these rats appeared to have died recently, and others had been found coughing up blood. That morning, the brawny, strapping son of the old Greek Mavroyenis family had been taken to the hospital in a state of delirium, and the family’s much-frequented haberdashery store hadn’t even opened.

As he listened to their conversation, the Major—like everyone else in the meeting hall and on the balcony—was also watching the people beginning to arrive from Hamidiye Avenue to the State Hall Square. A group of about fifty to sixty had now assembled in the middle of the square, where they were waiting for the balcony speech to begin. But it was clear now that no matter how long they waited, the vast crowds of hundreds and hundreds of people that the Pasha had been dreaming of were never going to turn up.

The Major approached a clerk he had often seen with Sami Pasha and in the Pasha’s office and asked him to unlock the door of the Outbreak Room.

“Nusret Effendi has the key,” said the clerk, who had a brushlike mustache. “You will find him in the Pasha’s office,” he added, glancing at the door that led from the meeting hall to that office.

Just then, that same door opened up, and Sami Pasha, the registry clerk, and Nusret Effendi all walked out into the meeting hall. Their demeanor was calm and resolute.

In that moment the Major also noticed some activity by the main entrance at the opposite end of the meeting hall and realized that Sheikh Hamdullah must have come up the stairs and into the room. Just as the Major and the clerk with the brushlike mustache arrived to stand outside the Epidemiology Room, a hard, insistent knocking began from the other side of the door. The knocking soon sped up and took a fiercer turn.

As if he had been waiting for this to happen, Nusret stepped away from Sami Pasha and went to open the door. But it was rattling so much from all the banging that the caretaker couldn’t even get the key in the lock.

“Do not open that door!” cried the French consul (whose exclamation would, predictably, go down in history). It seemed everyone was expecting some sort of ambush.

The guests assembled in the meeting hall and on the balcony had begun to feel uneasy. When the Major saw two of the guards who had accompanied the sheikh moving forward with their rifles at the ready, he stepped away from the door and took cover on the ledge of one of the meeting hall’s tall windows.

By this point everyone in the Main Meeting Hall had realized that some kind of trap had been set. The perpetrators of the would-be attack were caught inside the Epidemiology Room, whose door was stuck. People were trying to figure out what exactly was going on, and the nature of the attempted raid. Was it all Sami Pasha’s work? Governors of far-flung Ottoman territories would often lay these kinds of traps as a way of frightening Christian minorities and other perennially dissatisfied troublemakers into submission. But Mingheria was a proper province of the Ottoman Empire, and there were journalists here watching everything unfold.

As Sami Pasha’s guards encircled the Epidemiology Room, some of the guests slipped outside or onto the balcony. They could hear noises coming from inside the Epidemiology Room. Those who knew his voice heard Ramiz shouting, “Open the door!” Was there a scuffle or an altercation of some sort going on inside?