Реймонд Хаури: Empire of Lies

With the last rak’at finished, the horde of men rose to their feet and moved to collect their footwear. All around him, the hall reverberated with portent, the shuffling noise amplified by the heat. Kamal caught the eye of his partner, Taymoor Erkun Agha, who had arrived earlier and had been a few rows closer to the pulpit. By the time the slow wave of worshippers reached the main doors, Taymoor had caught up with Kamal.

“That was painful,” Taymoor said. “This new imam—the man’s a human sleeping pill.”

“Another late night?” Kamal asked, instantly regretting it.

Taymoor recoiled slightly with mock indignation. “Not here, brother. Where’s your respect?”

Kamal gave him a slight roll of the eyes. “Spare me.”

“All I can say is, thank God for text messaging. How did our parents ever manage to hook up with anyone without it?”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t,” Kamal replied.

“That’s just sad.”

“But thanks for the inspiring imagery.”

Taymoor’s boasts about his nocturnal pursuits had become tiresome to Kamal. He’d suffered them ever since the beginning of their partnership within the Hafiye, a partnership that began three years ago, when they were both fresh out of the military academy. But now, with the two young agents’ newly growing notoriety within the service, the boasts had got worse. Both men were unmarried, despite being thirty years old, naturally blessed with handsome physiques that had been further enhanced by years of hard training, and, as officers of the state, highly eligible—a fact that Taymoor was certainly exploiting to the fullest, oblivious to the more conservative, repressive tide that the new sultan had ushered in. Kamal couldn’t conceive of him ever entering into a marriage contract, which was probably a blessing for the aspiring brides of the city. As for Kamal, marriage was something he did aspire to, but it wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

The one woman he wanted above all others was the one he could never have.

Taymoor gave him a slap on the shoulder and ushered him out. “Come on. Our legions of admirers are waiting.”

In the large vestibule, the two agents retrieved their boots and their börk headgear—tall tubes of white felt that rose at the front before folding back like a sleeve to below the neck. Even though it was the day of communal prayer and rest, the formal proceedings that were to follow the prayer meant Kamal and his partner had to be in uniform: baggy shalvar trousers, a long-sleeved tunic, and a short-sleeved kaftan with elaborate frogging all the way up the chest, all of it in ominous blacks and grays. On the right collar of the kaftan was the emblem of the Hafiye: three interlocked crescents, each with a small, five-pointed star cradled between its sharp tips. The left collar displayed rank—in Kamal and Taymoor’s case, chaouch komiser, or sergeant inspector—which was confirmed in tattoos on the right arm and leg of each agent, a tradition that dated back several centuries, to the earliest days of the janissaries, when it was both a symbol of brotherhood as well as an aide to identifying corpses after battle. The two men weren’t likely to be caught up in battle anytime soon, but the war they were engaged in, a war of suicide bombers and car bombs, did carry a real risk of putting their tattoos to use.

They also wore wide belts that held holsters for their standard-issue Galip automatic handguns and loops that housed their khanjar daggers.

The two men followed the crowd out to the vast rectangular courtyard fronting the mosque. Two floors of semicircular vaulted arcades lined all four sides of the monumental space, which had managed to retain its original name of cour d’honneur in common parlance, even though Ottoman Turkish had, after three hundred years of foreign rule, long since replaced French as the city’s main language.

The vast compound’s original name, Les Invalides, was of course long gone. Its renaming had posed a dilemma for Mehmed IV, the sultan whose army had conquered the French capital in the summer of 1100. [2] 1100 in the Islamic hijri calendar, or AD 1689. Besides the magnificent domed chapel at Les Invalides, Paris also boasted the sublime cathedral of Notre-Dame. Mehmed couldn’t put his name to both. In his infinite wisdom, he decided to bestow his name on the former, which became the Mehmediyye—as had Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome after the Papal States had fallen and the pope had been beheaded, but that was acceptable since they were in different cities. Notre-Dame, on the other hand, would have to settle for basking in the splendor of the sultan’s nickname: the conqueror. Shorn of its stained glass windows and other Christian iconography, dressed in domes, and flanked by minarets, it had become the Fatih Mosque.

The sun, close to its zenith, wasn’t sparing any corner of the courtyard from its merciless pounding. Its ferocity blasted Kamal and Taymoor the instant they stepped outside. Their uniforms, though of the linen and cotton summer variant, were still way too heavy for the conditions. With sweat running down the length of his spine, Kamal would have much preferred to be in his lighter, off-duty attire, but today he wasn’t there as a civilian. He and Taymoor were being fêted. Which didn’t sit all that comfortably with Kamal. They’d worked hard, to be sure. They’d put in the hours and the legwork. They’d been focused. But they’d also had a lucky break. A break that, admittedly, had saved many lives.

Of that, Kamal was very proud.

The courtyard was heaving with people. Kamal took in the scene, one he’d witnessed many times before. It was an impressive setting. The viewing areas were laid out on either side of the length of the courtyard. Along the east arcade were eight public grandstands, stepped but devoid of any seating. Facing them along the opposite side were two official tribunes. Those did have seating and rose more steeply, which was useful given the more substantial turbans and headgear most of those seated there would be wearing. As guests of honor, Kamal and Taymoor would watch from there, along with their superiors from the Hafiye and a number of state officials. At the far end of the courtyard, facing the Seine, two of the mosque complex’s six minarets rose proudly, the tallest landmarks in the sprawling city.

In one corner, Kamal spotted the state television crew filming the proceedings. Armed ceremonial guards stood by the pillars around the arcade. As with all public spaces in the empire, the grandstands and the tribunes had separate male and female sections. On both sides of the huge courtyard, attendees would be corraled in segregated areas.

Kamal and Taymoor made their way to their designated area through a stream of congratulations and pats on the back from officers of the Hafiye.

“ Tebrikler, mulasim komiser, ” one of the officers congratulated Kamal. “The youngest in the department, eh? Just don’t let the expectations become too much of a burden on you.” He squeezed Kamal’s shoulder a bit too tightly.

Kamal responded to the backhanded praise with a curt nod and moved on. He had already heard the murmurs: promotions to lieutenant inspector for both partners were in the offing. Still, Kamal couldn’t find the peace of mind to savor the moment. He kept glancing across the courtyard, scanning the faces in the women’s public stands, looking for her.

It was almost impossible to distinguish individual faces, of course—the head scarves and veils, some less opaque than others, were intended to block that kind of scrutiny. Still, once or twice, his eyes fell on a figure that, for the briefest of instants, he thought might be her. But then something about the body language, the height, an almost imperceptible detail told him he was mistaken.