The Abyssinian Proof: A Kamil Pasha Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels)

by Jenny White

  “He dishonored my sister.”

  Kamil was taken aback. “Why didn’t you accuse him in court?” The moment he uttered the words, he knew how futile such a gesture would have been. The Balkan provinces were in such chaos that the rule of law had ceased to be applied, and judging by the tales of refugees, rape was probably a daily occurrence, one of many unspeakable crimes committed by each side against the other.

  Marko nodded, acknowledging Kamil’s confusion. “You’re a wise man, Kamil Pasha. I understand that you’re devoted to your empire, as I am to my people. By killing the governor’s man, I cleaned his filth from a small spot of our land, the size of my palm perhaps.” He held out his hand. “You must imagine thousands upon thousands of hands, each cleansing the space before them. We will win because each man’s ambition is the same. You will lose, pasha, because your empire is driven by the greed of a few men.”

  “That’s not so, Marko,” Kamil responded heatedly. “The empire’s system of laws…”

  Suddenly Marko pulled Kamil’s revolver from his shirt, held it to his own temple, and fired.

  Kamil jumped up from the chair and staggered backward. The door slammed open and Captain Arif rushed in, followed by a dozen heavily armed soldiers. Marko lay on his side, the basket of food on the floor next to him spattered with blood.

  “Search the room,” Kamil told the captain.

  He picked the book out of the basket, where it had miraculously remained untouched. English poems by John Donne. Kamil opened it at the marker and read, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful.”

  “No other weapons,” Captain Arif announced, holding out Kamil’s revolver.

  Kamil took the gun and slid it into its holster. He steadied himself for a moment against the chair, then dropped the book into his pocket and walked out.

  KAMIL MOUNTED HIS horse and let it wander at will through the sleeping lanes of the Old City. After a while, the sky began to bleed light. In the distance, Kamil could make out the dome and minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet, and those of its Byzantine sister, the Aya Sofya. The dawn call to prayer hovered in the air, snaking like mist from every corner of the city. Long shadows prostrated themselves before the orange light of the rising sun. This early in the morning, Karaköy Square was nearly empty. He passed two fishermen squatting by basins in which fish feebly circled. Trapped and tired, Kamil thought, feeling compassion for a fellow creature in similar straits.

  Restless and unable to shake the image of the boy’s face—his look of surprise at the moment of death—Kamil dismounted. He wanted to walk the rest of the way to his office, so he left his horse at a stable behind the square.

  He bought a simit from a man balancing a tray of the circular breads on his head, then began the steep climb up High Kaldirim Road, a broad stairway lined with shops, most of which were still shuttered. Finding he had no appetite, Kamil offered the rest of his simit to a bony street dog. The dog sniffed it suspiciously, then took it with a delicate snap of its teeth before rushing off.

  Kamil’s yellow kid boots navigated the uneven steps. His mother had commissioned them from a master bootmaker in Aleppo. Despite the delicate leather and intricate tooling, the boots were almost indestructible, tanned by a secret method passed from father to son that made the leather impervious to knife and water. Their wearer was further protected by talismanic symbols carved inside the shaft. Ill with a wasting disease, his mother had whispered to him, “So that Allah might lighten your step and guard your path,” while the bootmaker’s assistant took elaborate measurements of his feet. She didn’t live to see the boots finished, but he felt her love in them. It was this, rather than the talismanic charms, he believed, that gave the boots their singular effect.

  The baker Ibo leaned out of his shop, hands and forearms white with flour. He motioned a glass of tea at Kamil. “Do good and receive kindness. Come and rest a moment, Magistrate Bey.”

  “Another time, Ibo.” Kamil was in no mood for idle chatter.

  He reached into his pocket for his string of beads. As he walked, he drew them over his right hand, his thumb and forefinger smoothing each bead along its way, reading the inflections worn into the amber by his father and grandfather, and finding peace in that continual text. Marko’s face receded and Kamil settled into the calm apprehensiveness that allowed him to wander among the facts, gather them up, sort them.

  The Christian icon was different, he thought, from the other stolen objects. It was too well known to be sold or even displayed openly. That required a special kind of buyer.

  By now he was almost at the top of the road of stairs, where it entered the Grande Rue de Pera.

  “Bey, bey.”

  Kamil was startled from his reverie by a tug on his jacket. He swung around, irritated to see that it was a street urchin. The boy stepped back but held his ground. Enormous eyes in a pale, fine-boned face focused expectantly on Kamil. A threadbare sweater and wide, much-patched trousers hung on the boy’s slim body, held in place by a ragged sash. His bare feet were brown, although whether from the sun or the dirt of the streets was unclear.

  The boy stuttered, “Bey, I…” He lowered his eyes and began to back away.

  If the boy were a pickpocket, he would have been long gone by now. Kamil reached into his pocket for a coin.

  When the boy saw the kurush in Kamil’s outstretched hand, his cheeks flushed red and he shook his head vehemently.

  “Well, what do you want, my son?” Kamil asked.

  The boy seemed to regain some of his courage. He reached into his sash, drew out an object, and handed it wordlessly to Kamil. It was a quill pen. Kamil took it, puzzled.

  “Thank you,” he said, turning it over in his hand. It was a simple, common pen like those used in his office. He examined the boy’s face. He looked familiar, but Kamil couldn’t place him. Perhaps one of the apprentices at the hamam baths he went to every week, or the boy at the coffeehouse who refilled his tea and refreshed the tobacco in his narghile? They were all about the same age, eight or nine, and lean as street cats.

  The boy was still looking at Kamil expectantly.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Avi, bey. I am Avi. I brought you a message from Amalia Teyze,” he blurted out. “You told me that if I learned to use this,” he indicated the pen, “I should come back and see you.”

  “Of course,” Kamil exclaimed. This was the young boy sent last year by the Jewish midwife of Middle Village to give him a message about a murder case. He had been so impressed by the boy’s refusal to accept payment—because, the boy had insisted, he was only doing his duty—that Kamil had given him the first object within reach, a pen from his desk. He remembered Avi as the child with hungry eyes, taking in everything in the room. Someone eager to know things.

  “Well, Avi. Of course, I remember you.” Kamil wondered what the boy expected of him. Despite the early hour, a small crowd had begun to form around them.

  “Why don’t we walk a bit together.” Kamil resumed his climb, the boy keeping pace beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, Kamil could see Avi trying to keep a serious demeanor, but his joy kept breaking through. It both amused Kamil and touched him.

  “And did you learn to use the pen?” Kamil asked.

  Avi stopped and turned to him with a wide grin.

  “Yes, bey. Amalia Teyze taught me letters.”

  Kamil was surprised. He had thought the midwife illiterate, like so many of the empire’s subjects. “And what can you write?”

  They began to walk again.

  “My name,” Avi said excitedly. “I can write my name.”

  “Is that so?” Kamil noted noncommittally. He found himself inexplicably disappointed that Avi hadn’t learned more than just his name, but reminded himself that this was more than most people could do.

  They stopped at a patisserie and he bought Avi a yeast bun stuffed with goat’s cheese. The well-heeled patrons stared disapprovingly as the boy placed
the bun on his palm and swiftly devoured it, using his other hand to shield it. Kamil wondered why the boy ate so quickly and furtively, as if someone might steal the bun from his hands, and realized he must be very hungry. But surely the midwife cooked for the boy? She had seemed a kind and efficient woman. He took a closer look at the boy’s ragged clothing, his grimy face and bare feet. When Avi had come to his office the previous year, his clothing had shown signs of attention from a loving hand. Kamil remembered a colorful sweater and patched but clean trousers. Something must have happened. Had the boy run away? He would give Avi some tea and something more to eat at the courthouse, then sit him down and find out what this was all about. He bought some meat-filled pastries and cheese börek, and then they resumed their walk down the Grande Rue de Pera.

  When they reached the entrance to the courthouse, Avi stepped back into the street and, crossing his arms, began to shiver, his eyes shifting between the enormous, imposing door at the top of the stairs, Kamil’s face, and the ground.

  “What is it?”

  “I really can write,” Avi said softly. “But I’m not anybody.”

  Kamil stooped down and told him, “Well, come in and show me what you’ve learned.” He walked up the stairs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avi trailing behind, awestruck.

  Kamil greeted the burly doorkeeper. “Good morning, Ibrahim.”

  “Günaydin, pasha.” Ibrahim held open the door and bowed low as Kamil passed through.

  Kamil suddenly heard a commotion and turned. The doorkeeper had lifted Avi by his sweater like a mother cat lifting her kitten and was hoisting him out of the door.

  “Ibrahim, let him go,” Kamil called out. “He’s here to see me.”

  Ibrahim shrugged and dropped the boy, who scuttled to Kamil’s side. Kamil saw that he was crying but trying to hide it. They walked a short way over the tiled floor, past the small room behind the doorkeeper’s station, in which a teakettle was steaming over a brazier. Ibrahim followed with a lamp. At the end of the corridor, the door to the courtroom, still locked at this hour, loomed in the half light. It was a massive double door, carved with swags of gilded roses, as if justice were a pleasure garden. Beyond was a horseshoe-shaped room that always reminded Kamil of a theater, with magistrates and solicitors striding across the stage beneath the box that held the presiding judge. The audience would sit behind a waist-high partition, fidgeting and rumbling as if bored by the play.

  They entered the suite of rooms that made up the magistrate’s offices and waited while Ibrahim lit the lamps. The outer office was still empty of scribes at this hour. During the day, all manner of the empire’s subjects sat, patiently waiting to pour their story into the ear of a scribe, who would then translate it into the stilted, self-aggrandizing language of bureaucracy in the form of a petition. At the back were two doors to smaller rooms in which Kamil’s legal assistants met with solicitors and their clients. A heavy gilded door, mercifully without a garden motif, opened onto Kamil’s private office.

  The light picked out Abdullah, Kamil’s head clerk, snoring on a divan in the outer office. The soles of his feet showed brownish yellow through holes in his socks.

  “Abdullah,” Kamil called testily. “Get up.”

  The clerk woke, startled, and rolled to his feet. “You’re here early, Magistrate.” Seeing Avi, he said, “How did this street dog get in here?”

  “He’s here to see me.”

  Abdullah shrugged. “I’ll get the tea, in that case,” he said and, shoving his feet into leather slippers, shuffled toward the corridor.

  “Bring two glasses and two plates,” Kamil called after him. He invited Avi into his office and pulled over a chair. When Avi didn’t move, Kamil realized he was unfamiliar with chairs and the high tables that accompanied them, alien European contraptions. Kamil fetched a small portable writing desk and placed it on the carpet. Avi folded himself into a sitting position before it.

  While they waited, Kamil handed Avi his pen, showed him where the ink was, then placed a piece of paper before him. He moved the lamp nearer as the light from the window was still only a pale wash.

  Avi touched the white paper reverently. “I can write on something less good, bey.”

  “If you want to be a scribe, this is what scribes write on.” Nonetheless, he was impressed by the boy’s frugality and modesty. He noticed that the boy’s hands were blistered.

  “What happened to your hands?” he asked.

  “An accident, bey.” Avi tucked his hands under the desk.

  “Someone should take a look at them.”

  The boy stubbornly shook his head.

  “Can you write?”

  “Yes, bey,” Avi responded eagerly.

  Kamil stopped, unsure what to tell the boy to write and unwilling to give him a task that he couldn’t do and thus shame him.

  “Write the alphabet.” Thinking this would buy him some time, Kamil sat at his desk and began to go over his notes on the thefts.

  “I’m finished, bey.”

  Startled, Kamil walked over to see what the boy had done, prepared for a page of ink blots and scratches. Instead, he found a neat line of letters.

  “Why don’t you write your name at the top?”

  He watched as Avi confidently took the pen, dipped it in ink, and wrote, “Avi of Middle Village,” the coiled Arabic letters sweeping right to left across the page.

  “Write my name.”

  Avi wrote, “Kamil Pasha.”

  “Beyoglu Municipality.”

  The boy wrote.

  “Remarkable.” Kamil took a closer look at him. “How old are you?”

  “I’m nine.”

  Kamil made a decision. “If you’d like to apprentice with the court, Avi, I’ll arrange it.”

  Avi nodded shyly, eyes gleaming. An orphan raised by the village midwife. Kamil pitied the boy. His own mother had died after a long illness, and his father had passed away the previous year.

  Abdullah came through the door carrying a tray. He put it down on the table and bowed his way out of the room. Kamil opened the package of pastries and placed a meat pastry and a piece of börek on each plate, holding some aside for Abdullah and Ibrahim. He sat at the table before his own plate and watched as Avi climbed onto a chair to eat. The boy added so much sugar to his tea that the spoon almost stood up by itself.

  “What would Amalia Teyze say about your working here?” Kamil asked him.

  Avi became very still, clasped his hands in his lap, and refused to meet Kamil’s eye. Finally, he said in a small voice, “I know she’d want me to do this.”

  It was obvious that Avi was hiding something, but Kamil decided not to press the matter now. From what he remembered of Amalia, it seemed unlikely that Avi would have had reason to run away. Perhaps she was ill and couldn’t take care of the boy anymore and he was embarrassed to say so. Either way, an apprenticeship would be the best solution. He’d send someone to check on the midwife.

  Kamil got up and pulled the cord on the wall beside his desk to summon Abdullah. The head clerk came into the room and waited just inside the door, pointedly ignoring the boy, who had slid from his chair and stood behind the magistrate.

  “Abdullah, this is Avi of Middle Village.” Kamil pulled the boy forward. “I’m putting him in your care. I’d like him trained as a scribe.” He showed him the paper in his hand. “You can see that he already knows his letters. Let him learn the trade with the other apprentices and send someone to confirm this arrangement with his guardian, the midwife Amalia. And get him cleaned up.”

  “But, Magistrate,” Abdullah sputtered. “Look at him. He’s a street urchin. He can’t apprentice here.” He peered at the boy. “Avi. That’s a Jewish name. They can’t even speak Turkish properly, much less write it.”

  Kamil raised his eyes to look directly at his head clerk and said in an icy voice, “The Jews are physicians and scholars and the padishah himself employs them. Who are you to claim otherwise?” He glared at Abdulla
h. “You can conquer from the back of a horse, but you can’t rule from the back of a horse. For that you need learned men.” He pointed his chin at Avi. “And they start out like this, as young boys with promise.”

  “Yes, Magistrate,” Abdullah answered with what Kamil was certain was feigned meekness. The clerk grabbed Avi’s arm and led him out.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and Abdullah stepped in again. He waited just inside the door, hands clasped before his belly, shoulders slumped.

  “What is it now?” Kamil snapped.

  Abdullah straightened. “Magistrate, a letter from the Ministry of Justice has arrived.”

  “Fine. Let me have it.”

  Abdullah bustled importantly to Kamil’s desk and placed a letter before him, then retreated to wait by the door.

  Kamil broke the seal. Minister of Justice Nizam Pasha desired that he come to the ministry immediately. The minister would want to hear his report on this morning’s raid, Kamil knew. Word of the arrests would have spread by now.

  Kamil had never understood the origin of the minister’s seeming dislike of him. He assumed it was because Nizam Pasha had been educated in the religious schools of the old empire, while Kamil represented the new generation of bureaucrats—young, educated abroad, fluent in every language but religion. The minister was in his sixties and still dressed in the old-fashioned robes of the kadi courts instead of trousers, frockcoat, and the jaunty pressed-felt fez that was the mark of the modern man. Kamil had never seen any evidence of corruption, though, and for that he respected the minister.

  He set the letter aside and pulled out his pocket watch, another gift from his mother. It was only eight o’clock. The minister kept early hours. Kamil respected that as well, although he wondered why the minister had assumed he would be at the court at this hour when the offices didn’t officially open until ten. Kamil had a sudden unpleasant thought. Did Nizam Pasha assume Kamil wouldn’t be here, and thus when he failed to appear, could accuse him of not answering the minister’s summons? Kamil decided he had no evidence for such a supposition, but the idea soured his mood.