Ismail Kadare - Agamemnon's Daughter

That was how carriers of the evil eye used to be dealt with. But in the modernized, reformed state of today, this kind of punishment looked barbaric and out of date.

So what was the right thing to do? Should carriers of the evil eye be treated kindly, and allowed to indulge their practices to their hearts’ content, until they bring down not just men, but the very walls of our houses? People opposed to clemency for carriers of destructive glances, and those who stood more generally against any relaxation of the laws of the state, were asking these questions. As a matter of fact, do you know of a single case, they would ask, where evil has been stamped out without a firm hand? Were you thinking of obliging the carriers of the evil eye to put on those glass things invented in the land of the giaours, *those diabolical lenses they called spectacles? Or would you rather cover their eyes with a black scarf to make them look like pirates?

No, such measures would be pointless, they said. The evil eye projects its poison just as — or maybe even more — effectively through a blindfold, and obviously more powerfully through those accursed glass things, even if you blacken them with soot, as fashionable young men in the capital had recently started doing.

Such were the comments of the people who were trying to determine what measures lay in store, up to the very day — a Friday — when, at long last, the decree was issued.

Like all great edicts, its title was very short: qorrfirman, meaning, literally, blind decree. However, it was neither as harsh nor as merciful as might have been expected. It was a decision that cut both ways, leaving the opposing parties equally unsatisfied, but in a muted way, which allowed their veneration of the state and its sovereign to assert itself nonetheless — especially with respect to the sultan, who showed himself once again able to rise and to remain above the mere turmoil of human passions.

With astonishing speed — within a week of promulgation — various details emerged about the cabinet debate that had given birth to the order. As was its wont, the Köprülü clan, which stood against the faction of Sheikh ul-Islam, had come out in favor of greater clemency in the treatment of carriers of the evil eye. The Köprülüs proposed to expel them from all state-sponsored activities, or else put them under house arrest, or, for the most heinous cases, deport them and concentrate them in isolated locations, as if they were lepers. On the other side, Sheikh us-lslam and his followers supported traditional sanctions. The sultan listened to each faction and then decided not to favor either; or rather, he took both sides at once. The qorrfirman was such a canny concession to both clans that it channeled resentment of the opponents of barbaric sentences against Sheikh ul-Islam, just as it directed the fanatics’ feeling of disappointment toward the Köprülü clan. The sultan had kept himself above the squabble, and he had not just earned the admiration of both sides but also provoked a special emotion tinged with sorrow at seeing him obliged to intervene in the interminable quarreling of the clans, despite his more pressing preoccupations.

News of the order’s main provisions spread among certain circles in the city even before the text had been read out by public criers or printed in newspapers. The main thrust of the qorrfirman was as follows:

Cases of affliction by the evil eye having recently increased, and with the risk of misophthalmia (the original term, sykeqoja, *was dug out of some ancient dictionary) turning into a real scourge, the state, acting in its own interests and those of its citizens, has felt obliged to take a number of measures.

Carriers of the evil eye would no longer be sentenced to death, as they were in the past; they would only be prevented from perpetrating any more of their wicked deeds. That aim would be achieved by depriving them of the tool of their crimes — that is to say, of their evil eyes.

So the qorrfirman stated that anyone convicted of possessing maleficent ocular powers would forfeit his or her eyes.

People affected by this measure would receive compensation from the state, with a higher sum going to afflicted individuals who turned themselves in to the authorities. Disoculation (the first time the term had been used in an official document), that is to say, the forcible putting out of eyes, would be inflicted without compensation upon all persons who opposed the Blinding Order by whatever means, or tried to hide from it or to escape its application.

The call went out to all subjects of the age-old Empire to denounce either openly or anonymously any individual who possessed the power. They should put at the foot of their letters the full name and exact address or place of work of the accused. Denunciations could be made of persons of all kinds, be they ordinary citizens or civil servants, whatever their rank in the hierarchy of the state. That last sentence left many people gazing dreamily into space, as if they’d just been staring at an invisible speck on the far horizon.

Shortly after the introduction of newspapers, it became readily apparent that some kinds of government announcements were more effectively disseminated by the traditional channels of communication, namely town criers, whereas others had much more impact through the medium of print. This variation was of course related to the nature of the announcement and whether its audience was to be found primarily among the illiterate masses or among the elite.

Whether spread by ear or by eye, however, the qorrfirman aroused instant horror. But it could only be grasped fully if ear and eye worked together to transmit its meaning to the brain. Perhaps that was the reason why people who first heard it proclaimed by a town crier rushed to buy the newspaper in order to read it, while people who first learned of it in the press left their papers on cafe tables or public benches to hasten to the nearest square to await the crier’s arrival.

An old feeling, which people had perhaps forgotten about in recent years, suddenly began to seep back into the atmosphere. The feeling was fear. But this time it was no ordinary fear, like being afraid of sickness, robbery, ghosts, or death. No, what had returned was an ice-cold, impersonal, and baffling emotion called fear of the state. Bearing as it were a great emptiness in its heart, the fear of the state found its way into every recess of the mind. In the course of a few hours, days at most, hundreds of thousands of people would be caught up in its cogs and wheels. Something similar had happened six years previously, when there had been a campaign against forbidden sects (the latter had nonetheless managed to reemerge since then). An even earlier precedent came from fifteen years before, when they’d unraveled a huge plot, which at first appeared to involve only a narrow circle of high officials but which came by stages to wreak its horror on many thousands of households.

People’s natural inclination to erase collective misfortunes from memory made them forget — or believe they had forgotten — the peculiar atmosphere that arises just prior to a major outbreak of terror. Between the first hint of the threat and the first blow struck, in the time when the hope that the horror will not truly come, that evil might be thwarted and the nightmare extinguished, people are suspended in a state of paralysis, deafness, and blankness that, far from placating terror, only serves to aggravate it.

They thought they had forgotten, but as soon as the drums rolled and the criers bawled out the first words of the Blinding Order, they realized they hadn’t forgotten a thing, that it had stayed inside them all the while, carefully hidden like poison in the hollowed-out cavity of a ring. As in times past, before their minds had quite caught up with what was really going on, their mouths went dry and gave them a foretaste of what was to come.