The sultan liked to contemplate his virtues—perhaps because there were few others who remembered them—and to feel pride in them. But at the moment there was an unconscious thought buzzing like a fly in the back of his head, making him uneasy, and undermining his sense of self-satisfaction. What was it? He went back over everything that had passed through his mind, and when he remembered thinking about fathers and children, suddenly it came to him: What had happened to those who’d eaten ice cream? There’d been no sounds of distress, so it seemed everything was fine. He felt a sense of relief. Once again he curled up on the armchairs. The shutters had been closed from outside, and this gave him a sense of security. He was a skilled carpenter and wished he could have brought his tools from the palace. He used to make closets, desks, and bookcases that contained secret drawers and safes that no one could open, he would have had no trouble closing those gigantic shutters from inside. Those who had deposed him had promised his life would be spared, but could he trust those liars? Perhaps the reason they’d brought him as far as Thessaloniki was their fear of the public reaction if he was killed in Istanbul. No one would rise up over a sultan being killed in an isolated mansion in Thessaloniki—especially if it was kept secret—even those who heard about it would pass it off as gossip. The more he thought about it, the more this ominous logic took hold in his mind. Would it not have been easier to house him in Çirağan Palace, so close to his own palace, by the glistening waters of the Bosphorus? Hadn’t he kept his older brother Murad, whom he had deposed, in that palace for so many years? Murad had been forbidden to leave the palace, and he himself would have been willing to accept that condition. In any event, he hadn’t left his own palace for years. What could have been wiser than to have a magnificent and elegant prison built for himself during that time of turmoil and assassinations? He could have lived in Çirağan Palace in the same manner. But instead they’d bundled him and his family onto a special train to Thessaloniki. This city also belonged to him, to his dynasty. But of course, it wasn’t Istanbul.

  As Sultan Hamid thought about this, his imperial paranoia once again raised its head. He no longer had any doubt that he’d been brought there to be killed. At any moment they were going to enter the room and put a silk cord around his neck. He trembled with fear and his mouth had dried out. He got up, felt for the bottle he’d placed next to the armchairs, took a few sips of mineral water, then lit his lighter and looked around the room. He went to the door and listened, but he heard nothing. Would they kill him before they killed his family? He went to the window to listen. There were faint sounds of soldiers walking and talking. These must have been the sentries patrolling the garden, but what if they weren’t? With his heart pounding, he thought of the door, any danger he faced would come through the door. He dragged one of the armchairs toward the door. He needed two hands to do this, so he extinguished the lighter. In the dark, taking care not to make any noise, he managed to drag the heavy armchair and push it against the door. Then he dragged the second armchair and pushed it against the other one.

  He was out of breath, he would have liked some tincture but he didn’t have his medicine bag, he had nothing, not even the Atkinson cologne he always kept within reach. All he had was the yellow bag his daughter had brought out of the palace at the last minute. She’d handed it to him and said, “Father, this is your water bag,” though she hadn’t known what it contained. In fact what it contained was much more valuable than water, though none of it was of any use to him now. The gold, rubies, and gemstones, the dazzling diamonds from India and Africa, could not help him now. It was a miracle that the poor girl had managed to save this bag from the bandits who had invaded his palace.

  When his daughter handed him the yellow bag he’d wanted to kiss her on the forehead, but such a display of affection in the presence of strangers would not have been appropriate. They might have wanted to see what was in the bag—God forbid. Despite the haste with which they were expelled from the palace, he’d managed to put together a small fortune to support his family. At the last moment he’d taken another bag full of gold, jewelry, and cash, but as he was getting into the carriage, one of his men had taken the bag as if to help him and then disappeared. This incident had hurt the sultan deeply, and also proved that he’d been right to suspect he was surrounded by traitors, that what they called his imperial paranoia was in fact founded in reality. No one found it strange that the water bag was locked. Everyone knew that because of his fear of being poisoned, the sultan drank water from sealed bottles that came from a locked bag, he would never drink from an open bottle. In foreign newspapers he frequently encountered mention of imperial paranoia, and he’d even heard it whispered in the palace, but this didn’t anger him. If they’d just said paranoia they would have been wrong, but imperial paranoia was correct. In this age, what could be more natural than an emperor fearing for his life? The French newspapers called it paranoϊa impériale. Look at that, he thought, paranoϊa impériale. In fact he would have liked to ask each of them: Have any of your grandfathers been killed while they were on the throne, did your brother lose his mind, did you survive being assassinated by a bomb because you were a minute late getting into your carriage, do you receive daily reports of planned assassinations, did they cut your uncle’s wrists to make it look as if he’d committed suicide? These are the realities of my life. Just look around and see what happens to kings and shahs. They shot the Russian tsar Alexander. What kind of paranoϊa impériale is it if it always turns out to be true? In this age, no monarch can keep his head on his shoulders.

  This was why he left those magical palaces on the shores of the Bosphorus, where the water changed color from moment to moment, from blue to green, from purple to lavender, where shearwaters swept past and seagulls perched on the columns by the quay, and built himself a kind of high-walled prison on a hill. He collected all kinds of animals and rare plants, had ponds, mansions, and even an opera house constructed, had Italian artists on the palace staff, and lived for many years without leaving the palace grounds except for the short trip to the mosque for Friday prayers; he appointed one of his most trusted men to run the coffeehouse at which he was the only customer, but he was still never at ease. Just in case, he sipped his coffee from two separate cups, only drank water from sealed bottles, he once even pulled out his own aching tooth to avoid letting anyone touch his mouth, and brought in doctors from Europe to check his own doctors’ conclusions. He kept track of the changes in Istanbul and other cities of the empire by studying photographs. He rode pedal boats in his ponds, spent time with the peacocks, parrots, goldfinches, and gazelles in his park, with his wives, most of whom hailed from the Caucasus, and his children, and conducted world politics as if he were playing chess.

  This was how he had survived coup attempts, assassination attempts, and bloody uprisings. He also had a network of spies who reported regularly from every corner of an empire that stretched from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf and from the Caucasus to Africa.

  Yes, yes, they’d brought him and his family to Thessaloniki in order to kill them discreetly. He was now certain of this. Opposition to his reign was strong in Thessaloniki, it was swarming with dissident officers, and anarchist ideas had been spreading since the French Revolution. Hadn’t the Movement Army that had deposed him come from Thessaloniki? What a twist of luck; the rebels had left this city for Istanbul, where they’d settled, and they’d sent him off to this city that smelled of revolution. What a strange fate this was. Even the city’s name was inauspicious. What did Alexander the Great’s unfortunate sister have to do with the Ottoman Empire? If only they’d changed the name centuries ago when they conquered the city, but during his time in power it had never occurred to him to do so. The princess after whom the city had been named, Philip’s daughter, had become queen but then had been killed like her two sisters. She was an unfortunate child who lost her mother at an early age and remained under the control of her stepmother. He remembered the history books he’d read in the palace library, and began to think that he and poor Thessalonica shared a common destiny. She was born on the day her father, Philip of Macedonia, defeated Thessaly, so he’d named her Victory over Thessaly. Had Thessaly not belonged to him until recently? It was all so similar, and Thessaloniki smelled of death, and its history would now include the murder of an Ottoman emperor.

  He listened to what was happening outside, afraid to even breathe. There was no one outside the door to his room. It seemed that everyone had withdrawn to different rooms. The poor princes and princesses were lying on the bare floorboards. There was no sound.

  Then a miracle occurred. First he heard a melody being played timidly on an out-of-tune piano, then a young, bright, crystalline voice began to sing an aria. It was his daughter Ayşe Sultan, singing her favorite aria from La Traviata so her father could hear, her voice was like a silk shawl fluttering in that dark and isolated mansion.

  Discover the new, discover the new day…

  As he was to learn the following day, when she found the piano that had been left upstairs temporarily, she decided to play it as a way to say, Father dear, I’m with you, there’s nothing to worry about.

  The sultan couldn’t hold back his tears as he listened to this aria being sung in such strange circumstances, and for a brief time the imperial paranoia lifted like a Bosphorus fog dissipating as the sun rose. Weary from the journey, he drifted into a restless sleep to his daughter’s lullaby.

  Night is the mother of delusion—The former sultan’s confusion—Sheikh Zafir—Queen Victoria—Sherlock Efendi—Diamond earrings—A silk cord around the neck

  HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long he’d slept. He woke with a deep sense of disorientation, and almost at once heard a loud noise. As he felt his head hit the wood, he wondered if he was dead. He remembered how the soft, white-bearded Greek Orthodox patriarch, whom he invited to the palace occasionally because he enjoyed his conversation, said that people don’t realize it when they die, it’s only after their funeral, when they try to stand and hit their heads on the coffin, that they realize they’re dead. If the patriarch was right, he’d just hit his head on the coffin. However, thank God, he was a Muslim, indeed he was the Caliph of Islam, the successor of the Messenger of God, he could not be buried in a coffin, he would be buried in a shroud, and part of that shroud would be opened so his skin would touch the earth.

  As he stood up slowly in the dark room, he remembered his sheikh. When he was young he joined the Shazeli sect, and one day the saintly Sheikh Zafir had said to him, “Look, Hamid, my boy, everyone’s destiny is written. Everything is written here.” When Sheikh Zafir said this he put his hand on the young disciple’s forehead. “However, my boy, you weren’t born with one destiny like everyone else, you were born with three destinies. Three destinies were written on your forehead, I don’t know which one is valid. You will either rot in prison, become an emperor, or be killed. It seems to me as if you will experience all three of these, very few people in the world experience this.”

  Hamid looked at his sheikh and said, “Of course I will accept my destiny, what choice do I have, but one of the possibilities seems very remote to me.”

  “Which one, my boy?” asked the sheikh.

  “The sultanate,” he replied. “The other two, that is, prison or being killed, seem quite likely, this was the fate of many of my ancestors, but unfortunately the sultanate seems remote, I’m ninth in line for the throne. There’s no throne in my destiny, that’s why I’ve decided to go into commerce; I’ll buy sheep and raise them, sell wool, milk, buy and sell stocks and bonds, grow wheat. I’ll spend very little of the allowance I get from the palace every three months, I’ll save money and invest it.”

  The sheikh said, “I know, my son. God will dictate what happens, you can’t know whether or not you’ll ascend to the throne.”

  Things didn’t happen the way he thought they would, he ascended to the glorious Ottoman throne, and for thirty-three years ruled an empire that stretched over three continents.

  It seemed it was now time for his third destiny. How many thousands of times during his thirty-three years of rule had he woken in panic, his sheets soaked through with cold sweat. His entire life he had suffered in anticipation of this cruel destiny that had been written on his forehead, he had done his utmost to escape it, but now it had finally caught up to him in this strange, dark room. Nothing helped, not camphor baths, nor hot plasters, nor senna tea, nor elixirs prepared by private Jewish doctors, nor the leaches that reminded him of his opponents. Death arrived with the executioners who carried silk cords in their rough, hairy hands. The only privilege granted to the Ottoman family, which had ruled for six hundred years and had given many of its rulers and princes to the executioners, was to not be beheaded by a sharp ax, because dynastic blood could not be spilled, or to be hung with a coarse rope, but to be strangled with a silk cord. But no matter what a person was strangled with, the result was the same. Indeed those dishonorable executioners could even have used their bare hands. All his life, he’d wondered how those of his ancestors who had been strangled with a silk cord had felt in their last moments. His ancestor Young Osman, who hadn’t realized how close the throne was to the grave, had been overthrown in a day and strangled in the dungeons of Yediküle…How could the caliph of the earth, the shadow of God, the representative of the Prophet, the ruler of three continents, at whose face no one could gaze, who only the noblest could approach on their hands and knees to kiss the hem of his robe, so suddenly be handed over to the coarse, ruthless executioners? It was said that before he was executed, his unfortunate ancestor had been subjected to an unspeakable evil that would tarnish the Ottoman dynasty forever, but, God forbid, this could not possibly be true. It couldn’t be true.

  Something strange was happening to him, even with the silk cord around his neck he could speak and hear his own voice. Was this a miracle? What could it be but the intercession of the two masters of the world, to one of whom he was the successor, the beautifully named Muhammed, who left behind a scent of roses that made everyone faint?

  He struggled and moaned. “Look!” he exclaimed once again. “Even if you are executioners, you’re still my children, my servants, you swore to serve the Ottoman dynasty, God above can see what you’re doing now. He’s saying that these unbelievers deserve to go to hell, they’re killing my caliph. Listen, my children, they’ve taken me, they’ve betrayed me, do not be fooled by them, let me tell you the truth: When Kaiser Wilhelm, who visited me twice and had the magnificent German fountain built in front of Topkapı Palace, was accused of stealing Queen Victoria’s jewels just because he was my friend, I objected to this and vouched for him. I said that this crime could only have been committed by Tsar Alexander, or Emperor Napoleon, to whom my uncle was so close. Even though I risked angering the great powers, God knows that I did not stray from the path of righteousness. I ordered my thousands of spies across the world to work on solving this mystery, and even offered ten bags of Ottoman gold to Sherlock Efendi, who was clever enough to herd them all like a flock of sheep.

  “You might think it was his assistant Doctor Watson who facilitated my contact with the famous detective. But no, I swear it wasn’t. I contacted Holmes’s creator Conan Doyle. I invited the author to Istanbul and explained what I wanted, and when he promised to help me I awarded him the Order of the Mecidiye and his wife, who revealed too much décolletage, the Order of Compassion. These English are clever, the cleverest people in the world, I’ve never trusted them. When I was young my uncle Sultan Aziz, may he rest in peace, brought me to London. In London they greeted my uncle with great fanfare. Queen Victoria showed him unparalleled respect and bestowed the Order of the Garter on him, but then they asked my brother Murad to overthrow him. Because they made my brother a Mason. My uncle wasn’t useful to them, but my brother was a Mason and he was close to them. He even had the English anthem played at his coronation, can you imagine that, as if this were England. But then my brother lost his mind, he used to stare at the walls and laugh and mutter nonsense, and he was useless to the English. As my sheikh had foreseen, the throne was left to me, no one else wanted it, and since that day they’ve been after me, for thirty-three years they’ve done everything they could to get rid of me. Look, I’m telling you the real story, listen to me. The detective Sherlock Efendi, the cleverest of the clever English, discovered clues concerning the stolen diamond. My late father, Sultan Mecid, sent Queen Victoria a brooch inlaid with precious stones. The queen, though, removed the stones from the brooch and had diamond earrings made. The palace jeweler, a corrupt and immoral man, replaced the diamonds with counterfeits. Then, when he tried to sell them in Prussia he was caught. This is how Kaiser Wilhelm’s name became associated with the crime. The poor man had done nothing wrong. In any event, the Germans are honorable people. If Victoria had opened her eyes, if she’d had her spies watching the palace staff, none of this would have happened. I wasn’t that naïve, I was always aware of everything that was going on in my palace, but still, in the end I was caught by surprise. So, my sheikh, it seems there’s no escaping destiny. Everything you said came to pass: I ruled, I was imprisoned, and now I am to die at the hands of these brutes.”