第 61 页

During the days of the “Mingherian Revolution,” only half of the State Hall’s permanent and salaried staff were turning up for work. Some were no longer leaving their homes; some had fled to their villages; and some had died. Most of the clerks who were still reporting to the former State Hall and new Ministerial Headquarters were only doing so for the free lunch, and to make sure their salaries were not snapped up by someone else. The State Hall’s long list of tasks was therefore being handled almost entirely by a handful of middle and high ranked officials who had originally come from Istanbul and were motivated by a strong sense of responsibility. When they saw the signs on the walls on their way to work the next morning, these Ottoman bureaucrats were dismayed to realize that if what the posters said was true, they would effectively be expected to choose between the government in Istanbul and the new Mingherian state. They all knew by now that Istanbul had removed Governor Sami Pasha from his post, but that the new governor dispatched by Abdul Hamid had since been killed.

Had there been a revolt of this sort in any Ottoman city or island where a young Sami Pasha might be serving as a mayor or a local chief or a middle-ranked bureaucrat, and had he been forced—as was the case now—to make a choice between the island and Istanbul, he would of course have chosen Istanbul. Whatever their excuse, he too would have regarded any government official who did not do the same as a “traitor.” So he could easily understand why some of the island’s bureaucrats—such as the Chief of Charitable Trusts Nizami Bey (who had just got married, and whose wife was back in Istanbul) or Deputy Treasurer Abdullah Bey (who had never quite warmed up to the island, and didn’t like it here)—wished to return immediately to Istanbul. As for those officials like the Chief Scrutineer (whose wife was from a wealthy family from the island) and the Municipal Codebreaker Mehmet Fazıl Bey whom Sami Pasha assumed would be unsure about what to do, he had put them in the committee charged with drafting the constitution specifically so that their staying on the island might help set an example to others.

The clerks who were of Greek origins, or who had been born and always lived on the island, had no serious objections to the declaration of freedom and independence, and enjoyed the excuse to forget about the plague and quarantine for a few minutes to talk and laugh with each other about the new positions and titles (minister, director, etc.) they had suddenly been given, if only on paper. Would Istanbul retaliate? Would they still be able to draw their salaries? What new titles would there be on the signed land deeds they were going to be gifted? What about the salaries Sami Pasha had promised them?

The clerks who were loyal to Istanbul and the Ottoman state, on the other hand, were disinclined to make any jokes, did not take their new titles seriously, and hardly thought about money at all, and even though they considered the situation to be rather delicate, they kept their misgivings to themselves. Sami Pasha knew every single one of these loyal, disconcerted clerks, and could see in their eyes and in their dour, dejected demeanor the terror they felt at the prospect of whatever punishment Abdul Hamid might one day mete out, and the fear that they might never see their wives and children or be able to go home again.

“The state of Mingheria is judicious and compassionate,” he’d told them, smiling as he spoke. “We have no intention of keeping anyone here against their will, or of holding anyone hostage. We have summoned only a few of you here, so please do pass this message on to your colleagues. We are ready to help anyone who does not wish to be involved with the revolutionary government, and even those who prefer to leave and return to Istanbul. The Mingherian state is a friend of the Ottoman Empire. Everything will be fine, as soon as we no longer have this plague to deal with.”

His manner had been amicable, as if he were discussing a mere bureaucratic hitch.

“If this goes on for much longer, we’ll be betraying the motherland, the Sultan, and Islam itself,” said Rahmetullah Effendi, the Mayor of Teselli.

“These are groundless suppositions!” said Sami Pasha. He hardly knew this man and had only invited him at the Commander’s ill-advised suggestion, which he now realized he should never have heeded. For he had hoped this would be a meeting where expressions like “treason” and “What will His Supreme Highness think!” would never be used. “Ultimately, I’m not from this island either …,” said Sami Pasha uncertainly. “But there is no need for you to worry. If we were to harm you in any way, they would use that as an excuse to try and invade the island.”

“The island already belongs to the Ottoman Empire and to our sultan, so it would be wrong to call that an invasion!” said Rahmetullah Effendi.

“If we let you and the others who’ve chosen Istanbul go back, they’ll have you spying against us.”

“Your Excellency, there are fifteen to twenty people dying every day. As long as this outbreak continues, no one would even think to invade the island. So there would not be any need for spies either.”

“Those who continue to fulfill their duties shall soon be paid any overdue salaries accrued under the previous regime and receive their new salaries too. Those who resign from their posts in fear of betraying the Ottoman Empire shall receive their old, accumulated salaries only after the others have all been paid.”

If anyone was thinking, “Is this the time to be talking about salaries?” they kept their thoughts to themselves. An ashy light was coming through the window, and the green of the pine trees had turned lead gray. With no calls to prayer and no church bells ringing, the clouds above the city hung heavier, and both the blue of the sky and people’s resolve seemed to have wilted.

Some commentators have rightly remarked that by the end of these prolonged discussions, Sami Pasha had not only managed to sow division in the ranks of the Ottoman contingent who were in favor of returning to Istanbul immediately, but had also secured—by succeeding in keeping them on the island—the support of a powerful faction who had no choice but to take his side against the Greeks. These people, all of whom spoke Turkish in their homes, had decided the best thing to do was to keep a low profile until the plague was gone and Ottoman soldiers and warships could finally come to their rescue. That evening, Sami Pasha had Mayor Rahmetullah Effendi, Chief of Charitable Trusts Nizami Bey, and Deputy Treasurer Abdullah Bey—the angriest and most vocal of the Ottoman clerks who wished to return to Istanbul—picked up from their homes by a team of gendarmes and Quarantine Regiment soldiers and sent to the Maiden’s Tower. With each passing day, the little quarantine island with its charming white building would become more like a prison where the Mingherian state could lock up mostly Turkish-speaking Ottoman citizens (there were only two Greek speakers there) who remained loyal to Abdul Hamid.

That night, as the boat with its loyal Ottoman bureaucrats on board sailed silently from the bay toward the Maiden’s Tower, Sami Pasha stepped onto the balcony of his office in the Ministerial Headquarters. It was the first time he had come out here since Friday afternoon, the day of the revolution. As frogs croaked and cicadas chirped on the banks of the Arkaz Creek and in the hidden nooks of the city, he stood there and tried to hear the soft splash of the rowboat carrying the Ottoman clerks away.

CHAPTER 56

The happiest couple on the island during this time was undoubtedly President Kâmil and his young wife Zeynep. As they were treating the Major’s wound, Doctor Tassos had taken one look at Zeynep and announced that she was pregnant, transforming the newlyweds’ lives.

Zeynep had been feeling like a prisoner at the garrison guesthouse, where she didn’t even get to see her mother. Ramiz and his men were in jail now, so there was nothing to fear from them. Besides, the garrison guesthouse was not an appropriate home for the head of state, nor was it a suitable base from which he could attend to his duties. They decided they would return to the Splendid Palace.

As soon as they were back at the hotel, the Commander wore his military uniform, put on the epaulettes and collar patches that showed he was a pasha (and which had been readied for him in just two days), and went to visit his mother. The photographs taken that day of the Commander’s mother in her headscarf, weeping as her son bent down to kiss her hand, are familiar to every Mingherian, endlessly reproduced in schoolbooks, on banknotes, and on lottery tickets, and a staple of the Mother’s Day celebrations that have become increasingly popular on the island since the 1950s. The copy of Mizancı Murat’s volume on the French Revolution and liberty (written in “old Turkish” using the Arabic script) currently displayed in the museum in Major Kâmil’s childhood home is another important artifact, and the subject of many visiting schoolchildren’s homework assignments.

The Major allocated the first floor of the Hotel Splendid to the Quarantine Regiment, while the second floor would house his own office (smaller than Sami Pasha’s, as it was effectively a large hotel room) and that of his deputy, Chief Scrutineer Mazhar, whom Chief Minister Sami Pasha had sent along with a clerk, and whom we can now also call the Chief Secretary of the President of the Republic. The Major and Zeynep had also rearranged their private quarters upstairs and already decided where they were going to put the baby’s crib.

To ensure all these rooms were furnished to the highest standards, the state requisitioned all the furniture from the wealthy Greek Mavroyenis family’s magnificent four-story mansion (complete with viewing turret) overlooking today’s Flizvos beach, an act which has since been widely criticized. To the Greek community, this incident was a sign that when it came to mistreating Christians, the new regime was no better than the Ottomans.

The Major (whom we cannot after all call President of the Republic every time) had already made up his mind that his child was going to be a boy, and sent word to the archaeologist Selim Sahir requesting a list of old Mingherian boys’ names. He was convinced that his son was going to be a very special person. The first words the child heard and spoke would of course have to be in Mingherian. Accordingly, he had been trying to spend more time alone with Zeynep so that they could talk to each other in Mingherian, but this was not easy to do amid the abundance of day-to-day duties the president of a new state inevitably faced.

Husband and wife both knew that they owed their intimacy and their enduring happiness amidst the calamities unfolding around them to the seclusion they enjoyed in their living quarters on the top floor of the Splendid Palace. Sometimes they would open one of the windows as they held each other, and listen to the motionless, unstirring, death-soaked silence of the city. Sometimes they would gaze through a cloud of black smoke rising from a burning house and across the bay at the sick, the suspected cases, and the hapless, idling figures assembled in the Castle’s isolation courtyard.

They had also invented a sexual game they would play in bed together: they would fix their eyes upon some spot on the other’s naked body (though not their most private regions), touch the belly button, the nipple, the ear, the finger, or the shoulder they had focused on, and find a fruit, an object, a bird, or some other animal to compare it to. They could both see how this game had helped them grow more comfortable with nakedness, with sexual intimacy, and with each other. When they brought their eyes and noses close to some spot on the other’s skin, they would notice the mosquito bites and insect stings, the scratches, the bruises, the moles, and strange spots on there too. As they were constantly being stung by mosquitoes, their necks and legs were covered in red welts. Sometimes these rashes and lumps they found on each other’s bodies would make them uneasy. “What’s this!” a horrified Zeynep had exclaimed one day when she had found a small swelling somewhere between the Major’s armpit and his back. But to their relief, they were able to conclude from its good-natured itching and from the pore at its center that it was only a mosquito bite rather than a potential plague bubo.

In the two months he had spent on the island, the Major had seen firsthand how the fear of death could rise like a demon and come between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. Back when he was still guarding Doctor Nuri, he had become furious with a married couple he had seen in Theodoropoulos Hospital who could not look after their children anymore because they had both caught the plague at the same time. In a house near the sea in the Kadirler neighborhood, they had found a boy with an enormous bubo on his neck, but only when his father had fallen sick too and could no longer muster the strength to argue with the Quarantine Regiment had they finally been able to wrest the child away from his family and take him to the hospital. Whenever any member of a family developed a plague bubo, all the others would naturally pay much-closer attention to any redness, insect bites, and lumps they might find on their own bodies. In those moments, the Major would see in their faces the signs of that loneliness which made the thought of death so intolerable.

The day they moved from the garrison back to the Splendid Palace, he was running his hand over the bandage around his wound when he felt a hardness near his right armpit. Making sure Zeynep didn’t see him, he took out a handheld mirror to check, and saw a fairly large red welt. But unlike with plague victims’ buboes, it didn’t hurt when he touched it—only itched a little. Nor was the President feeling any of the fatigue, fever, or other symptoms he had observed in plague patients with developing buboes. That said, he had occasionally been coughing for the past two days. In some cases, the disease had been known to start with a cough.

If he were to catch the plague, would he recognize the signs straightaway, and would he be able to accept what they meant? More than anything else, Major Kâmil hated cowards.

Ever since the young Ottoman officer Kâmil had become president and commander, he had noticed that his deepest and most private thoughts and emotions, and even his dreams, had all begun to change. This was not a painful shift, but it did surprise him. He was more “idealistic” now, more unselfish, and more determined than ever before to dedicate his life to the island, to his son, and to the people of Mingheria. Every time these feelings took hold of him, he understood the joy of being a better person.

After his unexpected rise to the position of President-Commander of Mingheria, the Major had also begun to feel that he had been destined for this. Could it really be just a coincidence that he was now the President of a whole nation, of the beloved island of his birth and childhood, when just three days ago he had been but a low-ranked army officer (though admittedly one who’d been awarded a medal after the war with Greece)? At the military academy in Harbiye, the Major had always thought he was fortunate that none of the other Mingherian students had grades as good as his. But he realized now that there had been no coincidence there either, and wanted everyone else to see that too. When his son grew up, he would learn about what kind of person his father had been in his youth and student days.