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Half an hour later, Chief Minister Sami Pasha turned up with a retinue of clerks and guards at Princess Pakize and the Prince Consort’s door. He entered their quarters alone, and looked genuinely disconsolate as he told the Prince Consort, who’d stood up to greet him, that the Commander would have to be buried after midnight without even his own mother being present. The Pasha seemed to be speaking especially to Princess Pakize, who was listening from the other end of the room.

“Whatever we have done, we have done it to save the lives of the Sultan’s subjects!” said Sami Pasha. “Unfortunately, we cannot claim to have achieved any success in this endeavor. But I am pleased to report our humble victory in bringing another matter His Highness the Sultan had tasked you with to a comprehensive and satisfactory conclusion. We have identified Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant Doctor Ilias’s killers. It is all in here—the Sherlock Holmes way, and the Turkish way!” said Sami Pasha, putting down a file full of documents.

“I have brought in more guards to protect the main entrance. It is a pity they keep running away … I would not be surprised if the rebel prisoners were to try and attack this building, but they will not get their way. Lock your door twice and bolt it shut. Remember, you are here as our honored guests under the protection of the state. Perhaps we could move you to a different location.”

“Why would you do that, Pasha?”

“So they wouldn’t know where you are …,” replied Chief Minister Sami Pasha. “Perhaps the danger is not so great, though you should still stay inside. I will station guards at your door too,” he said as he walked out of the room.

That was the last time Princess Pakize and Doctor Nuri ever saw Sami Pasha. It would turn out to be the unhappiest and most frightening night they had spent on the island. They were shaken by Zeynep’s death and by the Major’s impending funeral, and like everyone else around them, they had begun to understand that they might die too. There was probably nowhere on the island better equipped with traps and poison to protect against rats than the Ministerial Headquarters, yet even Doctor Nuri, who had attended so many international plague and quarantine conferences, had now begun to fear, just as people used to do in the old days, that the plague could be spreading through the very air they breathed, with no need for rats or fleas. Now there was the added risk of being murdered by insurgents and prison fugitives.

They had a few walnuts and some freshly salted fish left. They ate this with a little bit of bread from the garrison. There was now even less bread available in the city than before, meaning that those who had been subsisting on these loaves must be gradually approaching starvation. Before going to sleep, they pushed a small cupboard up against the door. Princess Pakize’s letters provide a compelling account of the atmosphere on the island that night, of her feelings, of the mildewy smell drifting in from the port and the deep blue sea, and of the light from the few solitary torches that still burned here and there across the city. When she describes how she and her husband held each other in terror as they lay in bed, and how they couldn’t sleep from straining their ears for every sound from the city and every wave in the sea, readers can understand what it must have felt like to be wide awake and crying through the night in fear of the plague.

Shortly after midnight, they heard gunshots from the square and from the main entrance of the building. Some of the shots sounded like they had been fired very close by, and the noise echoed around the square. Feeling agitated, they got out of bed, but walked around the room in a crouch, and made sure not to go near the window.

That night’s battle between the insurgents and Sami Pasha’s security forces lasted until the morning. Chief Minister Sami Pasha bravely stood his ground until the last moment. Seven of the rebel “hooligans” and two of the Pasha’s guards died. Sami Pasha escaped from the back entrance with two of his men, and the former State Hall fell into the rebels’ hands.

The shooting stopped in the morning and the battle seemed to end, then briefly picked up again before coming to a definitive stop. After an interval of absolute silence, Doctor Nuri and Princess Pakize heard people running across the square, footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of someone talking. But nobody came to their door. They sat and waited, unable to muster the courage to open the door and check if the guard was still there.

When Doctor Nuri eventually got dressed and stepped out of the room, he saw that there was a different guard outside. The new guard clumsily pointed his gun at them, so they closed the door again and bolted it shut from the inside. They went to the window to see if they could figure out what was happening outside.

An hour later, there was a knock on the door. The visitors were two secretaries Doctor Nuri recognized, some clerks, and an old man dressed like a dervish.

They took Doctor and Prince Consort Nuri to a large office on the same floor. This was the same room our readers have come to know since the start of this book as Sami Pasha’s office. Nearly every day since he had first come to the island precisely ninety-eight days ago, Doctor Nuri had gone to examine the map inside the Outbreak Room right next to this office. Sami Pasha had always come with him. But this time there was someone else sitting at the Pasha’s desk. Doctor Nuri recognized the man now standing up from Sami Pasha’s chair immediately. It was Regent Nimetullah Effendi with the felt hat, though he wasn’t wearing his hat now. Once the usual pleasantries had been exchanged, the Regent said: “There has been a battle, the government has fallen, and Sami Pasha has run away. I have humbly taken over the position of Chief Minister. But most of the old ministers remain in place. They will retain their duties. His Holiness the Sheikh has returned to the lodge, peacefully and without ceremony. Everyone agrees that quarantine must be lifted!”

Doctor Nuri understood then that Sheikh Hamdullah had used a group of fugitives from the isolation facility, as well as a motley group of sect devotees, holy men, and quarantine-averse shopkeepers, to drive away the handful of guards that had remained loyal to Sami Pasha, and effectively put himself in charge. Sami Pasha must have managed to flee after the battle, but it was only a matter of time before he was caught. A new de facto government had been formed.

Mosque and church services would resume, church bells and calls to prayer would be heard once more, and the obligation to wash corpses in lime would be lifted. Nimetullah Effendi also noted that the practice of washing corpses in mosques before burial would immediately be reinstated. These were clearly the most urgent matters at hand.

“But, Your Excellency, if you do this there will be so many dead bodies that you will struggle to find enough people to wash them,” said Doctor Nuri. “Things will get even worse than they already are!”

The new Chief Minister did not even bother to respond. By now the widespread view among those in favor of ending quarantine was that the measures were of no use anyway, as the number of deaths only kept increasing. The idea that the disease had been brought by quarantine officials in the first place also remained as popular as ever.

Chief Minister Nimetullah Effendi reminded Doctor Nuri that since quarantine had been abolished, he was now released from his duties and free to go. If he wished, he could visit the hospitals and see if he could find a way to help the sick. But any soldiers, doctors, and government officials who had misused their influence and authority would face the consequences of their actions. Nimetullah Effendi then proceeded to explain with tactful care that Doctor Nuri and his wife the former sultan’s daughter were still officially guests of the Mingherian government and could always count on the protection of its guards. As Doctor Nuri was about to leave the room, the Regent asked about Sami Pasha’s possible whereabouts, but Doctor Nuri replied that he had no idea.

On his return to the guesthouse, Doctor Nuri brought Princess Pakize up to date on all that had happened, noting that Nimetullah Effendi was the Chief Minister now, but that they would not be treated badly.

Not long after this, feeling too restless to sit still and wanting to see what was going on with his own eyes, Doctor Nuri thought he would venture outside, but found that he was stopped at the door. Doctor Nuri understood that the new government did not even want him treating patients in the city’s hospitals. Husband and wife had already suspected in some corner of their minds that they would probably be confined to the guesthouse. Now, what had always been a fact of life for Princess Pakize would be the norm for the Prince Consort too.

For the next sixteen days, neither of them left the room. We have therefore based our account of the felt-hatted dervish Nimetullah’s tenure as Chief Minister during this period—which some historians have termed the Sheikh Hamdullah Era—on sources beyond Princess Pakize’s letters.

The most characteristic feature of the Sheikh Hamdullah Era was that, despite the plague, mosques and churches as well as lodges and monasteries were once again open to worshippers. Even the decision to allow shops, restaurants, and barbers, as well as flea markets and junk dealers, to resume trading did not cause as much damage as the lifting of the ban on mosque and church attendance did. In the eyes of the more ill-informed and indifferent segments of the population, the fact that the government had opened up these places of worship was yet another persuasive argument in support of the view that quarantine was pointless. The decision gave further strength to that pious, fatalistic, defeatist outlook that saw no alternative but to take refuge in Allah. Widely regarded as the source of all cholera outbreaks in Mediterranean cities over the course of the previous half century, most of the island’s wickerworkers, kilim weavers, junk dealers, and fruit vendors were Greek shopkeepers who supported quarantine measures. These people were not convinced by Sheikh Hamdullah allowing commercial activities to resume and still wouldn’t open their shops. Larger stores and the majority of the city’s best-known restaurants also kept their doors shut, as did hotel restaurants and “clubhouses.”

The barbershops and diners that did resume their activities were mostly based in smaller backstreets and more distant neighborhoods. Unbeknownst to quarantine officials, these businesses had been surreptitiously breaking quarantine all along, handing out their wares to their usual customers directly from their storerooms, or arranging in advance to open their hidden back doors at a certain time every day and conducting much of their trade during those intervals. More than half of the tradesmen and apprentices working in these kinds of small diners and grocery stores would catch the plague and die before Sheikh Hamdullah’s rule was over.

Yet very few people took any notice of this appalling tragedy. Nobody suggested putting precautions in place to stop the apprentices from dying because nobody could really see what was going on anymore. With the abolition of quarantine, the clerks who had kept a tally of the dead in the cemeteries, those who’d been counting hearses, and most important the officials who had then recorded all of this information with color-coded marks on the streets and buildings shown on the big epidemiology map in the Outbreak Room, had all been relieved of their duties. In other words, there was nobody on the island who knew how many people had died on any given day. Those in power probably did not wish to know.

Felt-hatted Nimetullah Effendi became aware of the inconceivable rise in the number of deaths within the first ten days of his reign, and the overwhelming, alarming incompatibility between His Holiness Sheikh Hamdullah’s demands and the reality of what was happening around him seemed to leave him altogether paralyzed. Banning cemeteries from disinfecting corpses with lime, and enforcing His Holiness the Sheikh’s express wishes that people should wash their dead in mosque mortuaries instead, urging them to follow the appropriate rituals and recite all the required prayers, had caused the spread of the disease to accelerate, as had all the people frequenting the newly reopened shops, the resumption of a number of Koran classes, and the return of former inmates of the isolation facility to the city and their homes.

Despite the lifting of quarantine measures, the streets had not filled up. There might be the odd sect member roaming around who did not believe in the need for quarantine and did not take the outbreak seriously, and there were still a few villagers left who were brave enough to come down to Arkaz to try and sell their produce. But as Princess Pakize noted, the sounds of carriage bells and wheels and the clatter of their horses’ hooves were still rarely heard even now that restrictions had been removed. Although quarantine was over, although the church bells were ringing again and calls to prayer had resumed, the deathly hush covering the port, the bay, and the whole of the city had not faded. Instead, the calls to prayer and the tolling of the church bells had been transformed in the stillness and silence of the city into omens that reminded everyone of the terrifying prospect of death.

The only success registered during the Sheikh Hamdullah Era was that, with the city on the verge of famine, the government was able to hand out six thousand loaves of fresh, warm bread every day. This was made possible by the confiscation of the flour that had been stored in the garrison’s depots. The loaves were baked in the garrison’s kitchens, then transported in the municipality’s carriages and distributed to the public from neighborhood squares.

The government in Istanbul had sent these sacks of flour, beans, and other provisions as a precautionary measure in case there was a revolt against the garrison in the wake of the Pilgrim Ship Mutiny, or if the garrison was besieged or blockaded by foreign armies (as had effectively happened), and in theory they were not supposed to be used under any other circumstances. For years the sheikh had been visiting the garrison under one pretext or another, befriending the Arab soldiers who supported the Halifiye sect and knew about his lodge, and thus getting the chance to practice his Arabic and talk in the language of the Holy Koran, and it was through his conversations with these men that he had managed to discover where that secret trove of food and flour had been hidden.

CHAPTER 67

The other defining feature of the Sheikh Hamdullah Era was its use of trials, executions, and imprisonments in what was, to all intents and purposes, a campaign of “state terror.” The terror was of course political, but there was a personal element to it too.

After an initial exchange of gunfire, Sami Pasha had realized that he was the main target of the raid, and sometime after midnight, he had fled the Ministerial Headquarters and gone to hide in Marika’s home (they made love), before leaving this well-known location too after a couple of hours and letting his men guide him through the backstreets and out of the city. Deputy Mazhar’s spies and informants were all on the former governor’s side, and the new sectarian government—which only seemed to know how to give out bread for free—might never have been able to find the old governor.