Jenny White: The Abyssinian Proof

“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 Abdullah. “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.

“Get my horse ready,” he told Abdullah gruffly. “I’ll ride over to the ministry now.”

A clerk ushered Kamil into the reception hall of the Ministry of Justice. Nizam Pasha was sitting cross-legged on a raised divan, flanked by his advisors. At his feet sat three scribes, bowed over their writing desks. An army of clerks and other officials stood to attention along both sides of the enormous, gilded room. Kamil stepped forward and waited for permission to speak.

“Begin,” the minister commanded, his eyes implacable beneath a large white turban. He wore a black robe with frogged buttons, its wide sleeves lined with magenta silk.

Nizam Pasha listened expressionlessly to Kamil’s report. When Kamil described Marko’s suicide, the minister’s face registered surprise. “That’s unfortunate. We could have obtained a great deal of useful information from him if you hadn’t decided to play the hero.”

“I apologize, Minister.” Kamil imagined Marko in the hands of the ministry’s torturers and understood the boy’s decision. “From now on, I’ll devote myself to the thefts.”

“Now is not soon enough,” the minister said, drawing out his words. “The entire situation is out of hand. Yesterday the Greek Orthodox Patriarch suggested that the government is involved in the thefts. Unbelievable.” His voice rose. “He actually accuses us of ransacking their churches to pay for the wars. And now the Jews are starting to complain that their places of worship are being looted as well. They’ve lost sight of the fact that mosques are being stripped too. The minorities have tasted blood in the provinces and now they’re rioting in the capital. These thefts pour oil on the fire.”

Kamil had seen the Muslim refugees from the Balkans. There were too many for the mosque hospitals and soup kitchens to take care of, and they sat begging in doorways and on street corners across the capital, their eyes angry or simply blank. They bore the scars of massacres, neighbor killing neighbor without mercy. European countries were quietly supporting Christian populations that wished for independence from the empire, fanning the flames of nationalist movements that devoured everything in their way, friend and foe alike. Istanbul was a tinderbox of enraged Muslim refugees who had lost everything and angry minorities who were afraid of losing as much.

“It’s not enough that the Europeans are taking our provinces and emptying our treasury.” The minister leaned forward angrily. “They’re stealing our culture too. There’s a long pipe sucking the treasures of the empire into Europe, and I want you to find it and shut it down. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Minister. I’m…”

“I give you one week, Magistrate,” Nizam Pasha interrupted. “Seven days. If you haven’t broken this antiquities ring by then, you’re dismissed from the court. But if you do manage it,” he paused for several long moments, as if trying to decide whether he should go on or not, “I can’t promise anything, but, who knows, there might be an opening on the Appellate Court.”