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

by Jenny White

  Kamil understood this to mean that whoever was responsible for the recent spate of thefts hadn’t paid the traditional bribe to the police and was therefore unknown and unpredictable. A co-opted criminal was a predictable criminal.

  “The problem is,” Omar continued, “there are just too many places to hide. This whole area is full of cisterns and tunnels from so long ago, nobody knows where they all are. Sometimes I wonder why the whole district doesn’t just slide in. The other day, Ali over there,” he indicated with his chin the policeman who was again sitting behind his desk, “was replacing a floorboard in his house and what do you think he found when he took it up?”

  “What?”

  “A whole goddamned cistern. His house, which, by the way, is as old as ten grandmothers, was propped on top of an enormous lake. One strong fart and the whole thing would have tipped in and sunk.” Omar laughed uncontrollably, knocking against the tray and spilling his tea. Kamil laughed too, picturing the serious Ali hunched over his ledger and breaking wind. He found Omar both disturbing and refreshing.

  Omar called over to Ali, “What happened to your hole?”

  Ali looked up, confused. He was tall and gangly, with a jutting nose and hair cropped so close that his ears appeared overly large. His Adam’s apple slid up and down like a small animal trapped just beneath the surface of his neck.

  “The hole in your floor.”

  “Oh,” Ali responded, smiling broadly now. “I’ve been fishing. There are fish down there. Big ones.”

  “Well, they’ve been down there for a hundred years, fattening themselves up just for you.”

  Omar turned back to Kamil. “Now I’ve heard everything. Can you imagine fishing through a hole in your floor?” He shook his head in wonder. “But enough of this. I’m sure you didn’t come down here to have a laugh.”

  Kamil smiled. “It has done me good.” He refused an offer of more tea. “Please tell me about the theft at Kariye Mosque.”

  “The caretaker insisted I deliver the report directly to you. He’s an old friend of mine and doesn’t usually make unreasonable demands, so I figured he had a reason. Maybe the box is worth more than he’s telling me. You read his note? What did it say?”

  “Just that he wanted to see me today.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I consider him a friend, although I haven’t seen him in half a year or so.”

  “His nephew came to town around that time. I’ve seen less of Malik lately too. He’s been spending a lot of time at home, probably in his library. I swear that man doesn’t need to eat. He survives on books.”

  “Tell me about him.” Kamil was curious about Malik’s life beyond his own narrow experience of it.

  “He’s one of the Habesh, you know, the Abyssinians who live over in Sunken Village, next to Sultan Selim Mosque.”

  Kamil remembered that Malik had dark olive skin. “That’s the village inside the cistern, isn’t it?” He had heard of this eccentric settlement. “In the Charshamba district. I thought Malik lived in Balat, near the Kariye Mosque.”

  “He does, but his family’s in Sunken Village. Ever been there?”

  Kamil shook his head no.

  “It’s a huge open cistern,” Omar explained, “a hundred and fifty meters on each side and almost eight meters deep. A strange place to put a village. You’re walking along the street by the Charshamba market, and then suddenly there’s a roof at your feet. Stairs so steep, they make your nose bleed.”

  “Is the village all Habesh?”

  “As far as I know. Some of them have been there for generations, but new ones join all the time—retired and escaped slaves. Allah knows where they all come from. The village reminds them of home, I guess. Although you’d think the eunuchs wouldn’t be so eager to remember their homeland.”

  Kamil remembered the Habesh slave in his father’s household when he was growing up. Her skin had the burnished glow of early chestnuts. He had been in love with her, his young heart racing whenever she entered the room to serve coffee to his mother and her guests. It was for good reason, he thought, that Abyssinians were the most sought-after and expensive slaves; they were a beautiful people.

  “On Fridays, the village fills up. Habesh come from all over for the ceremony.”

  “What ceremony?”

  “There’s a hall where they sacrifice an animal and pray. Some kind of old Habesh custom. Then the men walk over to the Kariye Mosque and pray some more. You’d think that with praying twice on Fridays, they’d be more devout, but when they get back, there’s a feast. They play drums and the men sit around drinking raki.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  Omar grinned. “I like to drink raki and the Habesh are very hospitable. It gives me pleasure to lie inebriated eight meters below the ground in the shadow of a great mosque, letting the prayers of the faithful roll over me. It’s like practicing being drunk and holy for your coffin. Plus, they pray enough for all of us, so I don’t have to bother.”

  Kamil imagined Omar pretending to be drunk, all the while keeping a close watch on the community.

  “Why do they go all the way to the Kariye when the Sultan Selim Mosque is right there?” he asked, puzzled. The Kariye Mosque was near the city walls and, he guessed, at least a twenty-minute walk from Sunken Village.

  “They have some kind of special relationship with the Kariye. Malik is the caretaker there, but it goes back before him. The caretaker position is inherited, always a Habesh.”

  “Does Malik have a son?”

  Omar clicked his tongue. “As far as I know, he never married. A sign of great intelligence. The position’ll go to his nephew, Amida. Malik’s sister, Balkis, is the priestess.”

  “A priestess? I thought they were Muslims.”

  “So they say,” Omar replied cryptically.

  “Tell me more about the robbery at the Kariye.”

  “Well, I can tell you there are some interesting angles to this robbery. For instance, what the thief didn’t take.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he took that old, tarnished reliquary, but he didn’t take a gold chalice studded with rubies that was in the same room. There was even a box of coins, and he didn’t touch it. And the mosque has some valuable silver candleholders, although those are heavy. He must have taken the rug to wrap the reliquary in.”

  “Some thieves specialize,” Kamil reflected, “while others take anything they see. Either this was a particularly picky thief, or he was disturbed and had to leave before he could take anything else.”

  “I don’t think he was chased off. About four in the morning, an apprentice was walking by the mosque on his way to stoke the fire at a bakery, and he saw a man coming out of the mosque carrying something.”

  “A witness!” Kamil exclaimed, excited at the prospect of a real lead. “Why didn’t you write that in your report?”

  Omar looked sheepish. “To tell you the truth, Magistrate, I thought you people never read them.”

  Kamil sighed with frustration. “Well, we do. At least, I do.” That explained the skimpy police reports. It meant he would have to follow up each case individually, something that could take weeks when he had just seven days. He wished he had trained investigators on his staff, but he had to rely on the police, the gendarmes, and a roomful of lazy clerks. When this was over, he would approach the minister about training investigators for the new courts.

  “I’m glad to hear it, Magistrate, although in this case you’re probably wasting your time.”

  “Without decent reports, the whole enterprise is a waste of time,” he couldn’t help remarking. “But the fact that you have a witness is excellent news. Did you get a description of the thief?”

  “Short and stout, with curly hair that fell below his ears, wearing a wide jacket and a turban. Oh, and the boy said the man was bent over as if he was locking the door. Then he ran off with something bulky under his arm.”

  “The reliquary wr
apped in the carpet.”

  “Right. But it’s not much to go on. Short, fat, and curly haired. Could be anyone. Could be me.” He showed a row of tobacco-stained teeth beneath his mustache.

  “You’re not short.”

  “True.” Omar rubbed his balding head.

  “So the thief wasn’t disturbed. But why take just a worthless box?”

  “Exactly. You’d think he’d be tempted by the chalice. It was sitting there in full view in the storeroom.”

  Kamil clicked his tongue in disapproval.

  “There was also a spilled medicine bottle.”

  “What do you make of that?”

  “That the room wasn’t only used for storage.”

  “Let’s go there,” Kamil suggested.

  On their way out of the station, Omar stopped by the policeman Ali’s desk, leaned over, and told him in a low voice, “Go find our ear in Charshamba. I want to know if there’s any new activity. The magistrate here wants to get his hands dirty.” He turned to Kamil. “I should wear one of those necklaces the old warriors had where they strung up their enemies’ ears. I swear, having informants in the right place at the right time makes the difference between being a policeman and a donkey.”

  They stepped into Small Market Street, where a young officer was waiting with their horses. The sky had become overcast and thunder rumbled over the sunflower fields in distant Thrace. They turned down one, then another narrow lane. Kamil tried to remember their route but soon lost track. Wooden houses in various stages of decay listed into the lane on both sides, their protruding second stories almost touching overhead. Some of the houses were missing wooden slats, revealing naked laths beneath gaping holes. The houses were set within a gap-toothed landscape of ruined brick walls, many with the characteristic striped pattern, alternating brick and stone, laid by Byzantine masons. The district looked wounded, Kamil thought, still festering after four hundred years. Late-summer carnations brightened crumbling windowsills and sagging balconies.

  Except where the streets narrowed, they walked their horses side by side. Pedestrians, peddlers and their carts, and the ubiquitous cats scattered before them. As they rode, Kamil filled Omar in on the rash of thefts and the way antiquities were appearing in Europe within weeks of being stolen. “This has to be an organized ring. For such a fast delivery system, they must have very good connections.”

  Omar nodded thoughtfully. “Not the usual family business then, although you’d be surprised how clever and connected some of these people are. I’ve heard rumors, though, about a new dealer who pays so much that he’s driving the old-timers out of business. Unless they sell to him, of course. They call him Kubalou. That’s all I know.”

  Kamil’s mind began to sort new possibilities. “He’s Cuban?”

  “That’s what they say. I’ve never seen him. For that matter, I couldn’t tell a Cuban from a cantaloupe. He speaks English, does everything through middlemen so nothing leads back to him. Maybe that’s what the killings are about. As you said, a turf war, but between the dealers, not the thieves. Kubalou’s gang against the old families.”

  “It’s the extent of the operation that puzzles me. It’s on an entirely different scale from anything we’ve seen before, things disappearing all over the empire and ending up in London. We tracked some items stolen in Bursa and Edirne to Istanbul, so it looks like the smuggling routes converge here. If we could find the Kariye thief, he might lead us to the next level up in the hierarchy. It seems unlikely that one man could be behind something as elaborate as this.” He guided his horse around a cart piled with apples that was blocking the lane. “All of these antiquities should be put in the Imperial Museum for safekeeping,” he grumbled.

  “I agree. But that would have been like throwing chickens to the foxes when all the museum directors were European.”

  “Well, Hamdi Bey is head of the museum now,” Kamil responded. “And we have an antiquities law.”

  “So we have teeth but nothing to bite.”

  The road climbed upward. After a while, they passed a shade-dappled fountain and emerged into a small square that was dominated by a perfectly proportioned Byzantine church, its domes rising softly above the portico. It was now a mosque, of course, but after seeing the decay of the streets leading up to it, Kamil was touched by its survival. A teardrop-shaped ornament capped its minaret and a patchwork of tile-roofed houses unfurled behind it like a cloak.

  The classic imperial mosques built by master Ottoman architects like Sinan were more majestic by far, but to Kamil’s eye, the former churches had a sturdy charm. Some people might find his admiration for Christian architecture suspect, but he didn’t care. He had tried to believe in something beyond this world, especially after his father committed suicide the previous year. Blaming himself, Kamil had been plagued by nightmares and headaches. Ismail Hodja had encouraged him to meditate on Allah’s presence in the world and he had done so, sitting in the Nakshibendi order’s lodge high on a hill in Beshiktash, allowing the soothing poetry and prayer to penetrate him. At least the nightmares had faded. But the pretense of faith was too hard to keep up and he had sought his natural direction, as always, in science and rational thought, in the straight line of understanding rather than the straight path of Allah. Reason and routine didn’t bring solace, but they brought some measure of peace, the kind of peace that came when one ceased to struggle. That was almost the solace of faith, he thought, though it did nothing to ease his headaches.

  “That’s Kariye Mosque,” Omar explained. “The imam lives over there. We’d better let him know we’re here.”

  They dismounted before a small, whitewashed cottage. Omar raised the knocker and let it fall. After a few moments, the imam, a skinny man with a stained yellow beard and hastily wound turban, opened the door, squinting against the light.

  “This is the magistrate,” Omar announced without preamble. “He’s here about the theft.”

  The imam blinked nervously at Kamil. “It wasn’t my fault,” he stammered. “That’s the caretaker’s responsibility. Ask Malik.” He started to close the door, but Omar leaned his shoulder against it.

  Kamil noted that the imam’s teeth had rotted to brown stubs and wondered whether the old man was in pain. That would explain the medicine bottle found in the storeroom. “Hodjam,” he said, addressing him as teacher, “I’d like to take a look at the room where the theft occurred.”

  “Oh, of course.” The imam appeared relieved and smiled ingratiatingly. “Omar, you know where Malik is. Get him to unlock the door for you. I haven’t finished my prayers.”

  Nothing sweetened a man like respect, Kamil thought.

  As Kamil and Omar approached the mosque, a tall, dark-complexioned man with a white beard rounded the corner. He was wearing a white turban and a brown wool robe fastened by a silver pin of intricate design. As he approached, his broad shoulders dipped with each step and his right foot dragged slightly. Beside him walked a slight figure in an apple-green charshaf.

  Malik smiled broadly. “Kamil, my friend, it’s good to see you again. How are you?” He took hold of Kamil’s shoulders.

  “I’m well, Malik. I’m well.” Kamil was enormously pleased to see his friend.

  The woman beside Malik held her veil pinched shut beneath her nose so that it framed her eyes, which were green and held the light like liquid. They were trained curiously on Kamil.

  “This is my niece, Saba,” Malik explained. “She’s one of my best pupils. Saba, this is Kamil Pasha, magistrate of Lower Beyoglu,” Malik told her in a meaningful tone, then leaned over and said something to her that Kamil didn’t catch. There were undertones in their exchange that he found vaguely disquieting, and he had the feeling that this meeting had been prearranged.

  Saba looked up at him and stepped closer. “My uncle has told me about you, Kamil Pasha.” Her voice had the melodious resonance of a clarinet, sweet and tenacious.

  Kamil placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head in greeting.
“Selam aleikum, peace be upon you.”

  “Aleikum selam, upon you be peace, pasha. I’m glad to finally have the honor of meeting you.” Her eyes tilted slightly upward. Kamil fancied that they flashed with interest before she lowered them modestly.

  “We’d be honored if you would visit our humble home, Kamil Pasha,” she told him, then took her leave.

  They watched the tiny green figure move off down the street and disappear around the fountain.

  “A remarkable young woman,” Malik said to no one in particular.

  Kamil was tempted to take this as an invitation to ask about her, but decided it would be indiscreet.

  “My family lives over in Sunken Village,” Malik said.

  “Omar was telling me the village is mostly Habesh.”

  “There are about forty families. We make a living selling produce from our gardens.”

  “And smuggling,” Omar interjected.

  Malik looked at him reprovingly. “That’s just gossip.”

  “Come on, Malik. Everyone knows that. I hear your sister, Balkis, is quite well-off. There’s no way she got rich selling vegetables.”

  Malik frowned. “Her husband passed away and left her well cared for. Why do you always kick over rocks looking for scorpions? Sometimes a rock is just a rock and covers nothing but plain soil.”

  “The soil in this part of town is rich with manure,” Omar retorted.

  Kamil wondered at the relationship between the mild old man and the gruff police chief. They quarreled like an old married couple.

  “I’m impressed by how much you know about what goes on in this area,” he told Omar.

  “The coffeehouse,” Omar said with a grin. “Everybody knows everybody. All you need is an ear and a strong stomach. But enough socializing. If we don’t get this case solved by lunchtime, I’ll starve.”

  Kamil turned to Malik. “You asked to see me. Is it about the theft?”

  “I’m sorry to trouble you with it,” Malik answered, pressing Kamil’s hand between his own. It was an unremarkable statement, but Kamil saw the urgency in his friend’s eyes.