“Uncle Malik spoke about you,” Saba said softly. “He always told me you were a person I could trust. He said we would have a special relationship. I felt I knew you even before we met.”
She had let her slippers fall to the ground. The tips of her toes were red with henna. Kamil’s heart contracted at the brutal contradiction between her tiny feet, so like the chubby feet of his nieces, and their flushed tips.
“He told me to go to you if I ever needed anything,” she continued. She put her face close to his. “Why do you think he said that?” she asked curiously, like a small child confident he would have the answer.
“I don’t know. He never spoke to me about his family, but last night he came to see me and told me something similar. He seemed worried about you and thought I’d be able to help.” He spread his hands and said more formally than he meant to, “I’m available, of course, should your family need assistance, Saba Hanoum. But I’m also investigating a crime. I can’t promise to help someone who’s guilty.”
Kamil saw the disappointment on Saba’s face and felt ashamed.
“Of course not,” she answered, pulling the charshaf briskly back over her shoulders. There was an undertone of anger in her voice.
“He also gave me a letter for you. He said I should give it to you if anything happened to him. I think he knew he was in danger.”
Saba sat up. “A letter?”
“I don’t have it with me. I’ll bring it next time.”
“But it might be important,” she insisted. “May I come to get it now?”
Kamil was shocked that Saba had suggested she accompany him to his home. Perhaps she had some notion that she was honoring Malik’s wishes by befriending Kamil.
“I’m sorry, Saba Hanoum. I won’t be home until much later. I’ll bring it tomorrow, if you like. We can talk more then. Perhaps you can give me some idea where to search for the Proof of God. Maybe there’ll be something in Malik’s letter.” He considered asking her permission to open the letter, but remembered his promise to deliver it, presumably unopened. “And if you find any information at all about the missing policeman, send a messenger to my home no matter what time of day or night.” He told her his address.
Saba stood before him as if willing him to change his mind. Then she gave a sad smile and said, “Tomorrow, then. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He bowed. “Thank you for the tea.” Smiling, he added, “You haven’t told me your second wish.”
Saba stepped close and inclined her head so it was almost resting on his chest. Finally, she said in a soft voice, “Another time.” She looked up and searched his face. By her expression, Kamil decided, she couldn’t find what she was looking for there.
“I’ll see what I can find out about the tunnel.” She stepped back and then was gone.
As Kamil mounted the stairs to Charshamba, he noticed Saba, wrapped in her charshaf, standing by a fig tree in the gardens below, watching him.
17
As Kamil rode through Fatih toward the Galata Bridge, he wondered why, after two nights with little or no sleep, he felt so energetic. Colors assaulted him from the drab streets, from women’s patterned trousers, their bright sweaters and head-scarves, as they sat on doorsteps and pavements knitting and talking. Laundry stretched between the houses above his head snapped like spinnakers. He thought he heard whispers from behind the latticed windows, a susurration of speech like receding waves. It was disturbing and exhilarating. Ahead, red-and blue-painted ships, boats, and ferries traced criss-crossing wakes across the broad triangle of water where the Golden Horn joined the Bosphorus and emptied into the Sea of Marmara.
He crossed the bridge at Karaköy, then turned onto the shore road. Here, the buildings were substantial, made of stone: the stock exchange, banks, the customs house, the armory, Foundouklou Mosque with its enormous green leather curtains at the door and an ornate public fountain. To his right, the Bosphorus was a deep turquoise, the color of the rarest Iznik bowls. Light chased across the surface like children at play. Kamil almost felt happy despite the tragic events of the day.
Ismail Hodja’s white beard was neatly trimmed and his robe and white turban were spotless. Kamil looked down with distress at his own cuffs, discolored with blood and grime from his unpleasant task in the hamam. But the distress lifted again and Kamil felt buoyed, his mood a cork bobbing easily to the surface. He was disturbed by this feeling, unmoored. He wished to be sad. Anything else was disrespectful to his friend.
The Sufi sheikh led Kamil into his study. While Kamil filled Ismail Hodja in on the events of the previous two days, the sheikh’s driver, Jemal, brought them glasses of tea on a tray so dainty it was almost lost in his large hands. Kamil had always wondered about Ismail Hodja’s aversion to servants. He lived in a house farther up the Bosphorus and during the day came to these rooms in a dervish lodge high on a hill over Beshiktash to work and meet with his disciples. In neither place had Kamil seen a large staff, although the rooms were always tidy. Most people of his class had several dozen servants. Instead, Jemal seemed to take care of everything. It wouldn’t be a matter of money, Ismail Hodja came from a wealthy family. Kamil supposed he simply preferred to live alone.
Ismail Hodja sat beside Kamil on the low divan. He leaned forward and looked at him thoughtfully.
“You don’t look well, Kamil.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your face is flushed and there’s an unusual brilliance about your eyes. Do you have a fever?” he asked with concern.
Kamil wondered whether he should tell him about the hallucinations in the mosque, but he felt too weary to add yet another story to the day. In any case, he felt certain these effects were due to Courtidis’s balm and planned to ask the surgeon about them. The experience was interesting and not entirely unpleasant, but it wasn’t something he wished to discuss with Ismail Hodja. The feeling would pass. He was puzzled, though, by the duration of the balm’s effects. He had thought earlier that they had worn off, and was surprised to find himself again affected. He wondered briefly about the lady’s navels Saba had given him, but dismissed the idea.
“I’m just tired, but thank you for asking. I was wondering if you knew anything about a sect called the Melisites.”
“They’ve been around for four hundred years or so. The sect was founded right after the Conquest. How did you know about it? Not many people do,” Ismail Hodja asked curiously.
Four hundred years was a remarkably long period of time compared to a man’s lifespan. Malik would have had something wise to say about that, Kamil thought, remembering their conversations. He felt a tide of sadness rising in him and welcomed it.
“Do wings have any special significance for the Melisites?” he asked.
Ismail Hodja rose and went to one of the shelves in his study. He pulled one manuscript or book out after another, flipping through, then replacing it. Finally, he took down a slim, leather-covered volume. He cleared the tea glasses away and placed the book on the table before Kamil, open at a page with an engraving of a seated woman holding a girl child suckling from her right breast. Powerful wings rose from her back. In her left hand, she held an elaborate cross on a stave. Next to her a bearded man dressed in a simple robe bowed down and presented her with a small jeweled book or box.
“This book is about a sect of Jewish Abyssinians. They revere a holy woman who is always depicted with wings.”
Kamil noticed a symbol of a crescent and disk above the woman’s head that was the same as the engraving on Malik and Balkis’s rings. But they weren’t Jews. He told Ismail Hodja about the rings and the blood-stained columns before the prayer hall.