第 68 页

“Is there something going on? Are these His Royal Highness’s men? Show me the Sultan’s seal, or a signed edict.”

As the experienced clerk respectfully and repeatedly assured him that they had indeed come under official orders, that he would be much safer in the place they were about to take him to, and that they would explain everything in greater detail once they got there, two soldiers from the Quarantine Regiment took hold of the sheikh’s arms, at which point the sheikh asked to be allowed to bring some of his books and belongings with him. He gathered his two favorite, irreplaceable nightgowns, some shirts and underclothes, the medicinal preparations he mostly bought from Nikiforos’s pharmacy, and a few books on Hurufism that he had inherited from his grandfathers, who had been sheikhs in Istanbul. He also suggested that his deputy Nimetullah with the felt hat should come with him, but this request was denied.

The nearest door in the lodge’s back garden had been quietly propped open, and just as planned, the Chief Minister’s coachman, Zekeriya, was waiting behind it with the armored landau. As soon as the compliant sheikh stepped into the carriage, he recognized the smell of its leather seats, and realized that he had been in this landau before.

Recently, before going to sleep at night, the sheikh had been consulting Ibn Zerhani’s writings on the causes of the plague and how to protect from it. Over the last few days, he had read Ibn Zerhani’s translation of Obscuri Libri and pored over several key passages from his Exegesis. The sheikh’s brain was teeming with Hurufi secrets, which ascribed new meanings to every word, every number, and most of all, of course, to every letter of the alphabet. When you read as many of these books as he had, your mind would do what the sheikh’s was doing now, and begin of its own accord to find clues and words embedded in every corner of the universe.

It was a calm summer evening, with no wind in the air. The endless chirping of the crickets and the light pouring out from the numberless stars into the dark and deep blue sky enhanced the sheikh’s state of Hurufi intoxication. Life and meaning, signs and objects, darkness and absence, made up the universe of clues. Light and Soul, Loneliness and Beauty, Strength and Illusion, composed the poetry of the heart. And so the union of Love and God followed a trail of ink winding through the stars, the branches, the scent of flowers, the sound of birds (owls and crows), and the scuttling march of the hedgehogs in the plague-struck night. As the swaying landau slowly made its way through the street by the now nearly vacated Kadiri lodge and the grounds of the Rifai lodge, the sheikh saw two sentries standing guard in the night with torches in hand and was struck by what he interpreted as a sign of the new government’s proficiency.

If the new government was as powerful as it seemed to be, he would probably be confined to some other location upon the island. Though of course that wouldn’t really work, as all of his disciples, his fans, and his many well-wishers would eventually find out where he was and flock to his door once more. But if the island was still under Ottoman control, or if these scoundrels who’d kidnapped him without even a word of explanation were actually the Empire’s men, the sheikh assumed he would be taken somewhere very far from Mingheria, exiled to Arabia or Siirt or some other distant land beyond reach. Whenever sect leaders became too much of a burden, or caused too many headaches, or seemed too eager to exercise their own political influence, it was a time-honored Ottoman tradition to separate them from their congregations and banish them to places it took six months to travel to. In his youth, Sheikh Hamdullah had witnessed some of the sheikhs who’d drawn the ire of governor pashas and Istanbul bureaucrats and been exiled from their homes and lodges having to teach Koran lessons in remote provincial towns so that they could make ends meet. Sometimes it was pride that led these sheikhs, whose only crime was their faith, to make those mistakes that angered Istanbul. Or perhaps they would go a step too far in their attempts to prove to their acolytes just how powerful they were. Sheikh Hamdullah had been very careful, especially under Sami Pasha’s rule, to avoid this kind of thing happening to him, though ultimately he had not succeeded.

The carriage crossed a street overlooking the tents and cots crammed in the Hamidiye Hospital’s back garden. Then it veered to the left, climbed another slope, passed biscuit maker Zofiri’s bakery, and turned into Hamidiye Avenue at the corner where the barber Panagiotis had his shop. The streets were totally dark and completely empty. On his way to his exile, the sheikh saw the city he had lived in for seventeen years as an abandoned, forgotten, and starkly desolate place. The starlight bathed the Castle and the pale pink stone houses in a strange and singular hue. Wherever it was that they were taking him now, he knew he would miss this light. He kept picturing a cold, miserable eastern city without any trees or even any windows, somewhere he’d never been before, like Erzurum or Van. If the sheikh was banished to a place like that, out of reach of any railways, nobody would be able to follow him there, especially not with plague and quarantine still to contend with. Nimetullah Effendi with the felt hat would no doubt find some people to fire up and send off to retrieve the sheikh, but when he inevitably encountered traitors at every step of the way, he too would learn how cowardly human beings could become in defeat.

As the landau drove down Hamidiye Avenue and across the bridge, the sheikh thought it must be taking him to the old State Hall. But when it reached the square outside the former State Hall and current Ministerial Headquarters, the carriage weaved its way through the soldiers and policemen stationed there and continued to Hrisopolitissa Square, past the Theodoropoulos Hospital, and on toward Flizvos bay. On the way to the coast, the sheikh breathed in the smell of kelp and sea, floating in through the carriage’s half-open window.

The best thing about living in this city and on this island was that even on the worst days and in the direst of times, there was always a view of the sea and a trace of its scent somewhere nearby to lift the soul and make life seem worth living again. Already the sheikh was dreading the prospect of being sent away from these warm, gentle, mild climes to some snow-covered or drought-ridden place where he would have to wait for the money his disciples sent to him in the post, and live among people so poor that they had to shelter in caves. He would have to introduce himself to a whole new community and a whole new tribe who had no idea of his reputation as an eminent sheikh, and he would be forced to perform Koran recitations and deliver sermons to try and make a living. As the armored landau advanced along the coast, Sheikh Hamdullah kept imagining that soon a boat would come to pick him up and row him out to sea to hand him over to the waiting Mahmudiye, and so his years of exile would begin, perhaps with a little mistreatment at the hands of the Ottoman soldiers aboard the warship. As the landau climbed down a steep, hard slope, he listened to the metallic clink of the horses’ shoes on the ground and fell into a curious stupor of fantasy and regret: oh, how he wished he could stay here …

Yet after it had climbed down to the shore, the carriage didn’t stop at Pebble Cove either, but continued northward. The sheikh was glad that none of Abdul Hamid’s boats had appeared to take him from the island and off to exile. A strange chill came from the forest, and afterward he heard a rustling sound and the wail-like singing of a bird. To the right of the landau was the swash of low waves against the coast, the cliffs, and the sandy beaches. Sheikh Hamdullah concluded that there was nobody around and no movement at all here, and that even the smugglers’ boats must have stopped their activities.

Contrary to his fearful suppositions, nobody was going to send the sheikh to some godforsaken corner of the Ottoman Empire. Sami Pasha had located the owner and the chef of the Constanz Hotel northeast of Arkaz and had them ready this old villa nobody really knew about for the sheikh’s “exile.” The Pasha and Consul George used to meet up and have lunch there sometimes when the Hotel Regard à l’Ouest was closed for the season, or when they wanted a change.

Though it had just been cleared of squatters and plague sufferers, the creaking, rattling, rickety old building was still infested with djinns and fairies, but Sheikh Hamdullah did not feel at all uneasy. He was so relieved to be staying on the island that he performed his ablutions in his little room and started praying right away, his eyes clouding with tears as he thanked Allah again and again for heeding his humble servant’s prayers and keeping him in Mingheria. For he was sure that it would not be long before he would be able to return to his own beloved bed back home in the lodge.

CHAPTER 62

Commander Kâmil did not leave the Ministerial Headquarters until the raid on Sheikh Hamdullah’s lodge had been concluded. When messengers later brought the news that the sheikh had been successfully captured and was now being detained at the Constanz Hotel, the Commander and his retinue of guards went out into the night and walked back to the Hotel Splendid. As he strode through the desolate streets, climbing down sloping roads and listening to his own footsteps, the Commander was troubled and upset to notice once again just how abandoned the city looked.

Nearly half a day had passed after he had stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him upon discovering that Zeynep had gone to visit her mother and been outside without his permission, and he had not seen his wife since. He told himself this was because he could not let his mind be “poisoned with worries about the plague” just when his political endeavors were enabling him to put his long-held ideals into practice. But he had also been avoiding their living quarters because he knew that if he returned to find that his wife had indeed caught the plague, that moment of realization would be more than he could bear. Besides, he had been dispatching clerks throughout the day with various messages for his wife. If Zeynep really did have the plague, its early symptoms and headaches would have grown bad enough over the course of the day that they would have become impossible to hide, and surely the clerks would have said something by now.

The Commander was therefore optimistic when he walked into the hotel at midnight. But as he climbed up the staircase, his confidence dwindled. He thought of the red swelling on Zeynep’s silky skin. What would it look like now? He resolved not to ask his wife anything about it.

Sami Pasha had stationed a guard at their door, though it was not clear for what purpose. When the Commander turned his key in the lock and went inside, the room was dark, and he could not see his wife. If everything was fine, Zeynep would be asleep by now. But in the dim light coming through the window, the Commander could tell that his wife was not in bed.

He picked up a nearby candle, his hands shaking as he lit it, and when he held up the small brass candlestick, he spotted the pearly comb that had gone missing, then noticed his wife sitting close by, a few steps away from the window.

“Zeynep,” he called out.

When his wife didn’t reply, Commander Kâmil began to feel anxious, but he still held back. The candlestick in his hand was drawing arabesques with the shadows in the room. He walked up to his wife, and now that her face was properly illuminated, he noticed that she looked pale and forlorn.

“We’ve taken Sheikh Hamdullah from the lodge and hidden him somewhere outside the city …,” he said, his tone almost apologetic.

But he could see that his wife was not interested. Was she annoyed that he’d complained and slammed the door as he’d left, and that he’d disappeared for so long? Or was she scared because she had been all alone just as she began to realize she might be falling sick?

Zeynep started to cry, her tears like those of a fretful child with a deep and private grievance she can’t quite articulate. Commander Kâmil tried to comfort her, hugging her, stroking her, holding her in his arms, and whispering tenderly in her ear.

They lay in bed without changing into their bedclothes. The Commander assumed the position he’d learned over the course of their brief married life, and which they both enjoyed: he hugged her from behind, resting his lips against the nape of her neck and wrapping his arms tightly around her belly, right where the baby was. They had spent many nights asleep in this manner.

The Commander touched Zeynep’s body, her stomach, her arms, but did not let his hands go near the place on her groin where he suspected she might have developed a plague bubo. The most important thing was that his wife did not have a temperature. But neither did she seem to want to make love like she usually did. The Commander didn’t want to either.

Zeynep started crying again. The Commander couldn’t bring himself to ask her why. He kept holding her, saying nothing. But didn’t his silence effectively signify his acceptance that something terrible was happening?

Wanting desperately to fall asleep, they fell asleep. Much later, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, they heard shouting from the docks. But they had both been having such strange and terrifying dreams that they assumed the screaming must be part of the inferno inside their minds.

As the noise faded, the Commander thought he might die of sorrow. After years of toil, of running from one city to the next and fighting on one battlefront after the other, his happiness had lasted just two and a half months. Oh, God! Was this it? If his wife really was sick, that would mean the end of everything. Not only would his wife and their unborn child die, he would probably die too. That might even mean the Mingherian nation itself was finished! There were people shouting again, but the scenes going through the Commander’s mind were so fateful and so fearsome that he could not arrange any of those outside sounds into a coherent thought, and soon fell asleep again. Or perhaps he convinced himself that he was sleeping.

When his wife began to shiver in his arms, he woke up. He had seen and heard of the violent shaking that would start when patients first developed a fever. He hugged his wife with all the strength he had, as if holding her tighter might stop her from shaking so much. This made it harder for them both to hide the fact of Zeynep’s illness from each other.

Through the haze of his thoughts, he also managed to find a moment to feel angry with his wife; it seemed incredible that she should have left her room and the hotel to visit her mother when there had been no real need to do so.

“You have sacrificed all the happiness we’ve shared, our son’s life, our country’s future—all for the sake of a little outing!” he wanted to tell her. But he also realized that if he did say that, they would end up arguing before the doctors even arrived. More important, instead of concerning himself with past mistakes, he must now decide what to do next. Yet the problem before him was so monstrous that the Commander didn’t even know what to think.