The Abyssinian Proof

15

The imam put down his lamp in the entryway, out of the rain, hefted the enormous key into the lock, and used both hands to turn it. Several times he had sent a petition to the Ministry of Pious Foundations requesting a modern door with a more manageable key, but he had never received a response. He supposed the ministry had more important things to worry about than the pockets of an elderly imam being ripped by the weight of a Byzantine key.

He took up his lamp and stepped across the stone threshold into the corridor that ran along the front of the Kariye Mosque. Directly before him was the archway leading to the prayer room. Starlight sifted through its windows, illuminating faint trails of dust in the air. He turned to the right and walked down the corridor toward the stairway that led up into the minaret, from which he would call the faithful to their first morning prayer. Mosaics gleamed in the arches above him, reflecting the lamplight.

He looked up and came face to face with an enormous mosaic of Jesus, whose eyes seemed to follow him as he walked. When the mosaics were revealed, the sultan’s heathen architects had been so enthralled, they had insisted on restoring them, over his objections and entirely heedless of the Muslim prohibition against the representation of the human form. The corridor, they claimed, was so dark that the restored images would disturb no one if they kept their eyes piously to the ground.

The imam was relieved that the reconstruction was limited to the public areas and not the smaller room that he used to entertain his friends in private, and where he kept the chalices, plates, reliquaries, and other objects he had found over the years secreted in the former church or its grounds. At the back of the mosque, behind the caretaker’s house, amid the ruins of a large building, the ground yielded interesting objects every spring, pushed upward by the frozen earth from where Byzantine hands had buried them on the night of the Conquest.

The caretaker should have swept the hall the night before, the imam noted, but the tile floor still looked dirty. There was also a stench in the air, perhaps a dead pigeon that had not been cleared away. Carelessness, thought the imam. When a man inherited his right to a job, why should he care to do it well? All in all, though, he had few complaints about Malik, except for a disquieting feeling that his caretaker was more learned than he. Still, the imam could recite all of the Quran in Arabic. Since this was the language Allah spoke through an angel to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it was much more important than any other languages the old caretaker might have acquired. The imam sometimes wondered where Malik could have gained so much learning since he came to the mosque as a young man to replace his father. It was true that Malik had always been curious. Right after his arrival, while exploring the Byzantine ruins behind the mosque, he had fallen into an abandoned cistern and broken his leg. His friend Omar had pulled him out, but the leg had healed badly.

A large bundle blocked the entrance to the minaret stairway. The imam, fearing he was late for his ezan, pushed at it with his foot. When it didn’t budge, he leaned over and pulled at the black cloth. He fell backward, landing hard on the floor, the cloth still in his hand. The stench was overpowering.

The lamplight fell on Malik’s ghastly, bloodied face. His robe had been slashed open and his body sown with innumerable cuts.

The imam felt his heart pause with fear. He took a breath, then tried to calm himself by whispering a prayer, but his eyes roved the dark corners of the mosque and his ears strained to hear whether or not the person who did this was still there. He tried to shake Malik’s cloak from his hand, but the cloth was swollen with blood and stuck to the imam’s arm, as if some vital essence of the caretaker was holding fast to him in a final desperate plea. With a shout of alarm, the imam struggled to his feet and ran outside into the driving rain. From the minaret of a neighboring mosque, the call “Allahu akbar, Allah is great” drifted over the imam as he woke the neighborhood with his cries.

Squalls of rain flung themselves against Kamil’s bedroom window as if someone were throwing handfuls of pebbles. He massaged his forehead against the pain that had settled inside his skull. Ever since his father’s death, he had been plagued by headaches. Sleep was impossible, so he rose and slipped on his dressing gown. The predawn call to prayer was muted by the weather, but the plaintive cry worked its way into the house and followed Kamil down the stairs. He could hear the chink of glasses and china in the dining room.

Yakup appeared with a glass of tea on a tray.

“Just tea. I’m having breakfast with a friend this morning,” Kamil told him. Not under the plane tree, he thought, peering out of the window at the rain. He looked forward to seeing Malik and to continuing their conversation, but he’d wait for dawn before setting off.

He took the previous day’s newspaper, which he hadn’t had a chance to read, and carried his tea into the winter garden. Yakup lit the lamps. Kamil relaxed into a chair and looked up at the wet, black panes. The newspaper dropped from his hand.

“Bey, bey.”

Kamil awoke with a start, wincing with pain as he moved his head. Yakup stood above him, his face imperturbable, as always.

“What is it?”

“The police chief of Fatih, Omar Loutfi, is here.”

“What time is it?” Kamil squinted. He could just make out the shapes of the rosebushes in the garden.

“Five thirty,” Yakup replied.

Kamil pushed through the door into the house.

Omar was streaming water onto the carpet of the receiving room. “Malik is dead, Allah protect us. He’s been murdered. The imam found him in the mosque when he went to call the first ezan.”

“What?” Kamil was stunned, remembering Malik’s furtive visit the previous night. He pressed his palms against his forehead. Malik had as much as told him he was afraid for his life, and what had Kamil done? Nothing. He had sent him off to his death with a handshake.

Kamil pulled on the raincape Yakup held out to him and headed for the front door.

Omar grabbed his arm and said, “There’s one more thing. Remzi has escaped.”

Kamil halted and turned on Omar. “How could that happen?”

“Someone must have bribed the guards. Believe me,” he added grimly, “when I find out which one, I’ll rip out his liver.”

The ashen-faced imam held Kamil’s bridle as he and Omar dismounted. The rain had turned into a light mist that crept along the ground and clung to hollows. Residents peered out of their windows at the commotion and a crowd of men had begun to gather in the square. The imam began a steady stream of low-pitched commentary as they made their way to the mosque.

Kamil squeezed the string of amber beads in his pocket, aligning himself with the fingertips of his father and grandfather, who had ticked off each bead with a prayer, one of the ninety-nine names of God, or, like him, with a string of thoughts. This morning, he gripped the beads in his fist. He should have pressed Malik about who he thought might come after him. Men who would use the Proof of God to incite hatred among religions, Malik had said. That didn’t sound like Amida.

A policeman stood guard by the door and saluted when he saw Omar. Following the imam’s lamp, they stepped across the threshold of the mosque. There was a fetid smell, not of decay but of excrement. He took a linen handkerchief out of his pocket and held it across his nose. The imam extended a silver rosewater sprinkler, but Kamil waved it off.

“The windows don’t open, you see,” the imam explained. “I would have moved the body outside, but I didn’t want the neighbors to see it.”

“It’s better this way,” Kamil assured him. “I can learn more if the body isn’t touched. Nothing should be moved.”

“No, Magistrate bey. Nothing’s been touched.” He grimaced.

Omar had gone ahead. Kamil could see him standing like a statue in a pool of lamplight at the far end of the corridor.

“Wait here,” Kamil told the imam, and joined Omar by the ruined body of their friend.

Although he was wet through and the thick walls trapped the cold, Kamil’s face was covered in a sheen of sweat. He knew his distress was not just a result of his headache.

Omar’s face was grim. He glanced at Kamil, then looked again more closely. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine,” Kamil answered through gritted teeth. He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath and forced himself to look at the scene slowly and methodically.

Malik’s turban had fallen to the side and his wispy hair was matted with blood. His mouth was a rictus of pain. His robe was splayed open and revealed his chest, raw with cuts that were already thick with flies. Judging by his frame, Kamil thought he must once have been a large man, but age had withered him. His feet were bound together with rope.

They each grasped the body and turned it. Malik’s hands were bound behind his back.

“Do you have a surgeon assigned to the Fatih police?”

“That’s Fehmi. I’ll send one of my men to get him.” He thought for a moment. “Fehmi might be gone. In that case, they’ll bring in Courtidis. Damn.” He was unshaven and his face sagged with sorrow and fatigue.

“What’s the problem with Courtidis?”

“Let’s go outside.” They stepped into the square and Kamil waited while Omar instructed one of his men.

When Omar returned, he led Kamil into the small mosque garden. They stood in a dry area protected by the wall, smoking. “Courtidis is another one of those people who have sudden, unexplained wealth.” Omar narrowed his eyes. “I hate people like that. It makes me want to know everything about them down to the direction they piss in.” He threw his cigarette to the ground. “He’s a Greek, lives near the Crooked Gate. I get tired of hearing what a great guy he is, how he treats the poor, even if they can’t pay.”

“That sounds admirable.”

“Why would anyone do that? And if he’s giving it away for free, where’s he getting his money from?”

“You know and you’re about to tell me.”

“He’s a small-time drug dealer, that’s where. Makes the stuff at home and sells it all over Fatih. Dishes it out like halvah. Not enough to bother about, but I like to keep people like him on a long rope, so I can reel him in if I need to.” He made a sweeping motion, ending with his fist before Kamil’s nose.

“That’s an unusual combination,” Kamil laughed weakly, “a philanthropic, drug-dealing surgeon.”

“Let’s not take the charity thing too far. He gets something out of it. Think of all the grateful mothers with nubile daughters.”

“Not everyone thinks like you,” Kamil teased, glad that Omar seemed to have regained some of his equanimity.

“The world would be better off if they did.”

“I take it that none of those mothers has managed to marry off a daughter to him yet.”

“He’s besotted by Saba. You can understand why. But he doesn’t have a chance. She’s much too proud to take up with a bastard like him. I mean that in the best sense of the word. He doesn’t know who his father is. When he was five, his mother tried to walk out on his stepfather and he bludgeoned her to death. The stepfather married again and the new wife decided she didn’t want someone else’s spawn, so they shipped him off to the monastery out on Heybeli. And suddenly he reappears as a surgeon. How is that possible, I ask you? Something stinks. I don’t think he really is a surgeon,” Omar grumbled. “And besides, an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“People take charge of their own fates. For all we know, the darkness this man saw as a child might have spurred him to climb towards the light. I’m sure the monks on Heybeli helped him.”

“You mean they enlightened him?” Omar joked.

“I mean they educated him.”

“As I said before, Kamil, you’re a saint.”

“Well, whether he’s a real surgeon or not, we have to take what we can get. Where can we bring Malik?” Kamil couldn’t get himself to say the word body.

“There’s a hamam just down the street.”

“Have your men take the body there. We’ll need some hot water.”

“Already arranged,” Omar said in a rough voice and turned away. “Ready?”

Kamil nodded and followed Omar back inside. His head still ached, but the cigarette had helped.

Two policemen lifted the body onto a stretcher. They covered it with a sheet, then carried it outside. One of the men was retching, a dry, barking sound.

Kamil looked around. The stench emanated from a sticky puddle where Malik’s body had lain.

The imam bustled in breathlessly, then retreated to stand by the open door. “I did another inventory of the mosque’s valuables,” he reported. “A silver candleholder is missing. That’s all.”

Kamil scanned the corridor, then pointed to a candleholder glinting in a dark corner. “There.”

Omar picked it up. It’s blunt end was slick with blood. “Looks like they used it to bludgeon him.”

“It might have been just one man,” Kamil countered. “Maybe the same man the baker’s apprentice saw during the first robbery. He didn’t find what he was looking for the last time and came back.”

“True, but if it was one man, he’d have to be young and strong. Malik, may Allah accept him into paradise, was old, but he had steel in his arms.”

They went outside and followed the policemen carrying Malik’s body.

“I suppose that lily-ass Amida will become caretaker now. That’s the way it is with that family. Malik’s father was caretaker before him. My own father knew him. They probably sat together in the coffeehouse just like me and Malik. It must have been almost time for old Malik to retire,” he shook his head in disbelief, “but I wish he had left that way and not this.”

He leaned closer to Kamil. “All last week Malik looked worn out, like he wasn’t sleeping.” He thumped his chest. “Something was wrong. I felt it here.”

“He might have been worried about the stolen reliquary,” Kamil ventured.

Omar thought for a moment. “He claimed it wasn’t valuable, but there must have been something important. Otherwise he wouldn’t have badgered me to write you. And why you?”

“Maybe because he knew me.”

“Maybe.” Omar didn’t sound convinced.

“That’s his house, isn’t it?”

They stopped before the half-buried remains of a massive brick arch. Behind the ruin was a narrow two-story building with an overhanging second floor. The men carrying Malik’s body disappeared around a corner.

“Let’s take a look,” Kamil suggested.

“Why not? There’s no hurry now, is there?” Omar added bitterly. He pushed open one of the tall iron double doors.

They paused in the entryway to let their eyes adjust to the gloom. The house felt abandoned. Kamil wondered idly how houses knew when their owners were gone. He opened the door to the ground floor and felt his way through the hall into a large, central room. It was dark and something crunched underfoot.

Omar leaned out to open the shutters.

The light fell on a scene of destruction. The room in which they were standing appeared to be the sitting room. It was furnished only with a chair, lying on its side, a glass-fronted cabinet now empty, its contents scattered across the threadbare carpet, and a low, old-fashioned settee, its horsehair innards protruding like weeds through slashes in the upholstery.

“Allah protect us,” Omar exclaimed.

A mattress had been dragged into the sitting room and disemboweled there. It had been slashed and turned inside out, brown clots of wool and straw stuffing strewn everywhere. Like its owner, Kamil thought.

In the adjoining room, a small chest of clothes had been emptied onto the floor. The kitchen was a graveyard of broken crockery.

Without a word, Kamil turned to the stairs, Omar following. The upstairs rooms had also been systematically violated, the furniture smashed.

“Look at this,” Omar called from an adjoining room.

Kamil stood stunned just inside the door. The walls were lined with shelves, all empty. The floor was a blizzard of pages that lapped at his feet. Malik had used the room not as a bedroom, but as a library, and someone had ripped out every page of every book and thrown them on the floor. Splayed spines hovered in the drifts of paper like birds massacred in flight.

“Crazy. This is the work of a crazy person,” Omar exclaimed, taking up handfuls of paper and throwing them back down. “Do you know how long it must have taken to rip out all these pages?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

Kamil looked around and thought. “Whatever they were looking for,” he said slowly, “must be something that can be hidden inside a book.”

He was thinking about the pages of Aramaic text that Malik said had been inside the reliquary. He wanted to tell Omar, but remembered Malik’s desperate desire that this remain secret even from his own sect. Kamil shifted uncomfortably under the burden of other people’s secrets. It was against his nature and his principles to sit on information in an investigation. And yet, he wasn’t sure what was at stake here.

“I remember from when I was as a soldier,” Omar mused, examining one of the spines, “people use to hide their jewelry in books, thinking soldiers don’t read. Carved out the middle of a book so it looked gnawed by rats and then put their stuff inside.”

Kamil didn’t ask Omar which war-there were enough to choose from-nor did he ask how the soldier Omar knew where people hid their jewelry.

“Nothing was taken from the mosque,” Kamil said, “so robbery doesn’t seem a likely motive. Unless the killer was looking for something specific and didn’t find it. Or found it here. You’d better post a guard at the door. I wonder why they killed him in the mosque.”

Omar waded through the drift of paper. “They wanted something from Malik, otherwise why the multiple cuts? It’s a filthy way to kill someone. It takes a lot of time and a strong constitution. There are easier ways.”

“Maybe the reliquary wasn’t what the thief thought it was and he was trying to persuade Malik to tell him where to find what he wanted.”

“The wrong box?” Omar scoffed. “You don’t do this sort of thing over a wrong box. You have to be powerfully motivated, if nothing else just to stand the smell. Death doesn’t have to be dirty, Kamil, believe me. I was in the war. For this type of death, you need more than just a missing box. You need hate, revenge, greed, something that doubles the size of your liver.” He kicked at the papers, then stomped out of the room.

Omar was right, Kamil thought. Amida’s liver wasn’t strong enough for this. Who had he sold the reliquary to?

They emerged from the dark house. The sudden change from dark to light intensified Kamil’s headache, and he stood blinking on the stoop, taking shallow breaths. When he focused his eyes, he found Omar looking at him curiously, but the soft-eyed man said nothing.

When they returned to the lane, they could hear raised voices coming from the direction of the mosque. Knots of men were gathered on either side of the small plaza and there was a rumble of angry muttering. Kamil could see the dark shapes of women listening at their windows behind curtains and wooden lattices.

“Looks like there might be trouble.”

“I’ll take this side of the square,” Kamil offered. “We can separate the groups.”

Omar squinted at the scene. “I know all these men. I think it’d be better if I just talked to them.”

Kamil hesitated.

“Crowds are like children,” Omar explained. “You have to distract them. But having an outsider involved won’t help. Let me handle this my way.”

“Agreed. I’ll go see about the autopsy.”

“That’s the hamam.” Omar pointed to a dun-colored dome studded with circular glass windows that was just visible down a narrow lane.

Suddenly one of the men in the square shouted, “You Christian son of an ass. How dare you push me.” Kamil couldn’t see who it was, but the crowd began to swirl inward.

Omar strode into the square, took out his baton, and smacked it on the side of the fountain beside the mosque. The crack caught the crowd’s attention and it paused for a moment, a hydra-headed creature intent on destruction but nonetheless curious.

Omar took this moment to raise his voice, “If you want to know who killed Malik…”

He waited as the crowd disengaged and people turned toward him expectantly.

Omar drew out the tension until someone called out impatiently, “Well, who the hell did it?”

Omar lowered his voice so the men had to move closer to hear him. The groups mingled as the men pressed forward. “I’m pleased to think that Lame Malik was my friend, and I know he was a friend to many of you, Christian and Muslim alike. He was a learned man.” He paused. “We all respect learned men, no matter what their religion.” There were mutters of agreement. “We want to punish whoever did this.” Shouts of approval.

“So who did it?”

“Well,” Omar answered slowly, “we need your help to find that out, don’t we?”

A few of the men laughed, realizing they had been cleverly strung along. Others groaned.

“Did any of you see anyone last night who didn’t belong in the area? How about you, Gyorgio?”

“I was sound asleep in the coffeehouse.”

“Because his wife kicked him out of the house,” a man called out from the crowd. The men laughed.

Kamil could only admire Omar’s defusing of the tension. Now he circulated among the men, asking questions. Kamil turned and walked down the lane leading to the hamam. The rain had stopped and the mist cleared, but the air was still dark, as if a stain had fallen on the world.

A man in his late twenties sat on the low wall before the hamam, his horse tethered beside him. When he saw Kamil, he jumped up and strode toward him.

“Are you the magistrate?” he called out. His gray trousers were frayed at the cuffs and his jacket was missing several buttons. His black curls were cut tight under a fez that badly needed to be cleaned and pressed. A carefully trimmed mustache ended in a curl at either side of his lips.

“Yes.”

The man broke into a smile showing a row of alarmingly large teeth. “Constantine Courtidis, surgeon, at your service. Call me Constantine.”

So this was the shady drug dealer, Kamil thought. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this friendly, enthusiastic young man. He found himself simultaneously drawn to Courtidis and repelled by him. Judge on the evidence, Kamil reminded himself.

“Thank you for coming. I take it the surgeon assigned to the Fatih police couldn’t come?”

“That’s Pericles Fehmi. He’s taken his family to the coast. He’s an old man now, and even healers need time to heal. I’m the next best thing. Never take a vacation. Tried it once and couldn’t handle it. Too hard on, beg your pardon, my behind. All that sitting and staring at trees and squinting at the sun. Not for me.”

“There’s been a murder,” Kamil interjected abruptly. “We’d like you to tell us what you can about how the man died.” The surgeon’s levity seemed sacrilegious, given the circumstances.

Courtidis rubbed his hands with what to Kamil looked strangely like glee.

“Let’s get started then. I love a puzzle.” He picked up his leather bag and turned toward the hamam entrance. “In here, right?”

As they made their way single file along the outside corridor that hid the entrance of the bathhouse from public view, Courtidis kept up a nonstop monologue.

“You saved me from the usual routine, you know. Pregnancies, hemorrhoids, fevers, diarrhea. Last week this couple came to me because they’d been married a year and she hadn’t conceived yet. The bride complained about pain during, beg your pardon, you know, intercourse. You’re not going to believe this, but when I examined her-with her husband present, of course-she was a virgin.” He stopped, turned, and blocked Kamil’s path. “Can you even guess what was going on?” He smiled happily up at Kamil.

Kamil grit his teeth. “No, I can’t.”

“They had been, beg your pardon, fucking in the urethra.” Courtidis whinnied a laugh.

“Urethra?”

“Where she, beg your pardon, pees.”

Kamil found himself laughing. “No wonder she complained about pain.” Despite himself, he began to warm to the prattling surgeon. A man must be forgiven his childhood, he thought. Omar was sometimes too harsh in his assessment of his fellow man, seeing evil everywhere. It was a policeman’s weakness.

They had come to the central room of the hamam, where the men had deposited Malik’s body on the central platform, the bellystone, and covered it with a tattered sheet. A cauldron of hot water steamed nearby on the floor. The warm, buzzing smell of offal bloomed into the room from the direction of the body.

Kamil nodded at the ranking policeman. “Take your men and wait outside, but stay within earshot.” The men made quickly for the door, unable to hide their relief.

Courtidis strode up to the body and slid the cloth off, throwing it into the corner.

“His name is…was Malik,” Kamil explained. “Caretaker of Kariye Mosque.” Until a few hours ago, this had been a scholar with pupils and a library in his home. A man with secrets. A friend. The caretaker’s hands were still tied behind his back and he lay awkwardly at an angle. Grief and fury made him turn Kamil head away. It felt as though iron bands were compressing his head.

The surgeon stared wordlessly at the body, hands dangling by his sides. He looked shocked.

“Did you know him?” Kamil asked.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Who killed him?”

“We don’t know. Can you tell us how he died?”

Courtidis walked over and squatted before one of the low marble basins. He turned on both spigots, releasing ropes of cold and hot water. When the basin was full, he plunged his head into the water and kept it there until Kamil thought he was trying to drown himself. Finally, he pulled his head out, drenching his jacket and the floor about him. He continued to squat there, holding his head in his hands.

Kamil handed him a towel.

“Thank you,” Courtidis said. “For every death, a baptism.”

“You must have known him well. Bashiniz sagholsun.”

The surgeon toweled his hair dry and took off his jacket. He let it fall onto a marble bench, then sat down next to it, his eyes fixed on Malik’s body.

“You know, Magistrate, I didn’t really know him that well, but I know that he was a great and generous man.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t have a lot of opportunities when I was a child,” he said finally in a strained voice. “My mother and father had passed away and I had no one to give me direction, to help a young whippersnapper with more balls than brains get off the street. I was like one of those mangy mutts that lie in the sun and then hang around the butcher’s door. You know what they say, if you could get a skill by watching, then every dog would be a butcher. I’d do anything for a free scrap. And, beg your pardon, I mean anything.”

He got up and stood over Malik’s body, a haunted look on his face.

“This man gave me a life. He just handed it to me. It’s as if the butcher had opened his shop door and said, ‘Come in, eat all you want.’ I thank God I was smart enough to reach out and grab the opportunity.” There was a strained smile. “Or desperate enough.”

Courtidis reached out and gently caressed Malik’s forehead. He slid his hand over Malik’s eyes to shut them, and told him softly, “Your eyes are in my heart.”

Kamil stood quietly nearby, careful not to interrupt the surgeon’s requiem.

Courtidis shook himself and began to examine the body. He looked at it carefully from head to foot, at first touching nothing, at times bending so close that his nose almost touched Malik’s robe. Finally, he opened his bag and took out a thin sharp blade. He reached behind the body and cut the rope tying Malik’s wrists. The arms fell stiffly apart. Courtidis pulled the arms forward and settled the body on its back. He pulled the gold ring from Malik’s finger, rinsed it in the basin, and observed it for a few moments before handing it to Kamil.

Kamil saw that the surgeon’s face was wet with tears. He wrapped the ring in his handkerchief and slipped it into his pocket.

“First he fed me,” Courtidis continued. “Then he paid me to sweep the mosque. Then he showed me the magnificent illuminated manuscripts he has. Have you ever seen them? He let a simple child with dirty hands hold his masterpieces. It was like training a wild bird to come closer and closer until it eats the grain right from the palm of your hand. Because then, you know what he did? He taught me to read and write.”

As he spoke, Courtidis pulled the blood-soaked wool away from the body, then cut and removed the undergarments. Malik’s body on the bellystone was blue-white and shadowed, like a hard-boiled egg released from its shell.

The sight of the birdlike bones of the old man’s chest, the wiry gray hairs around his sagging nipples filled Kamil with pity and grief. By the time Kamil had seen his dying father, he had been wrapped in a quilt that padded his fragile, broken body. Now, in the thin-skinned, pathetic presence of death, Kamil was reminded that even fathers are frail and that this was something most sons never acknowledged. He averted his eyes from the white worm of Malik’s shriveled but clearly uncircumcised organ.

Every Muslim must be circumcised. The story of the Melisites and their reliquary became more real. Christians masquerading as Muslims for hundreds of years. They must have had a reason. The Proof of God?

“So you know,” Courtidis said, continuing to wash the body. “Otherwise you would have been exclaiming from here to Baghdad, ‘What’s this? He’s not a Muslim!’”

Pink water pooled on the marble.

“How did you know?” Kamil asked him.

“I didn’t, but it makes sense from what I know about his family. He was Habesh. They pray like Muslims, they say they’re Muslims, but they have their own rites.” He stopped, momentarily overcome by grief. “He was the finest human being I have ever met.” He looked up at Kamil suddenly. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? You know there are people who would call this blasphemy and make trouble. Let Malik keep his dignity.”

“If I need to share this information with the police in order to find his murderer, I will do that. But otherwise I don’t see why any of it should become known.”

“Thank you.”

After he had cleaned away the blood, Courtidis bent over and repeated his close inspection of the body.

“Look at these.” He swept his hand across a battlefield of cuts and punctures between Malik’s groin and chest. He gently inserted a probe into the middle of one of the cuts, then moved it sideways. He did the same to another. “The wounds all have the same strange pattern. They’re flat, deep in the middle and shallow at the ends.” He pointed to Malik’s stomach. “One pierced the intestines. That’s where the smell comes from and, of course, from the usual, beg your pardon, evacuation.” He probed around Malik’s chest. “Another one pierced his lungs. But here’s the strangest thing of all. Do you see these pairs of puncture marks? It’s as if something with two sharp teeth bit his chest all over.”

Admiring his professionalism, Kamil observed that focusing on the puzzle of piecing together the cause of death seemed to have calmed the young surgeon.

“Yes, I can see that,” Kamil said. “What do you think it could be?” Kamil steeled himself to look closely at the wounds. The thought of Malik’s prolonged agony nauseated him.

“The puncture marks occur at the same places as the other wounds. I’d say the weapon had an odd-shaped blade and two sharp protrusions. But I haven’t got a clue what it could be.”

Kamil thought about this. “Perhaps some kind of knife used in a particular profession. Skinning animals, maybe?” He thought of Mustafa the Tanner.

“Help me turn him on his side.”

The surgeon grasped Malik’s hips and Kamil his right shoulder. Together they tilted the body forward so its back was visible.

Much of the blood had been soaked up by Malik’s heavy robe, which now lay on the table. Kamil looked at the blood-soaked wool. Malik’s silver brooch was gone. He wondered whether robbery had been a motive after all. It seemed a lot of effort to kill someone in this brutal manner for a small piece of jewelry.

“Would you soak this in hot water?” Courtidis asked Kamil, handing him the sponge.

Kamil held Malik’s shoulder while Courtidis swept the sponge back and forth across the back. When the blood was gone, they both leaned over, speechless.

“The lost angel,” Courtidis said softly. “You have fallen to earth and been destroyed.”

On Malik’s back was tattooed a pair of wings that stretched from his shoulder blades to below his waist. The powerful wings were folded shut. Every deep blue feather was detailed. Over time, the ink had begun to bleed and blur the outlines, giving the feathers the appearance of having been ruffled, disarranged.

“Do you know what they mean?” Kamil asked.

“A tolerance for pain. That would have taken hours with a sharp needle.”

Kamil ran his fingers down the span of wings. “The detail is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He had seen tattoos on the arms of sailors and prisoners, and on the faces and hands of tribal women from Hakkari and the Sinai. But those were crude tracings compared to the wings on the dead man’s back. They looked so real he expected them to unfurl and take flight at any moment.

“I had a Habesh patient once-with a bad cough that eventually killed him-the man had a tattoo of this quality on his chest. Not wings, though. The face of Jesus. So real, I expected Jesus to open his mouth and bite my hand. I didn’t see his back.”

“Do you know where he had his tattoo done?”

“The Sunken Village midwives were famous for their tattooing. There’s only one left now who knows how to do it, a water buffalo named Gudit. Secret ingredients in the ink, she told me.”

They laid Malik on his back again. Courtidis dipped a hamam bowl into the cauldron of hot water, soaped his hands, and rinsed them, leaving a red scum in the bowl. “I think Malik was alive for a while after they did this. They’re shallow cuts, most of them, painful, but not immediately life-threatening. He was killed by a blow to the head. Look here.” He showed him an area of matted hair speckled by fragments of bone.

“The murderer used a candlestick from the mosque.”

“Bastard. Who would do this to a harmless old man? Why?”

“We’ll do our best to find out. He was my friend too.” As Kamil said it, the truth of it came to rest painfully in his chest.

Courtidis walked to the corner, retrieved the sheet, and flung it in the air so it came to rest slowly over Malik’s broken body like a wing. “When you find the devil, “he said viciously, “saw off his tail with a blunt sword. And, beg your pardon, I don’t mean the hind one.”

Kamil emerged from the hamam and was surprised to find it was still day, that the sun was shining and that people were going about their business as normal. It seemed incomprehensible. His head throbbed. Propping himself against a ruined wall, he reached into his pocket for his beads, but instead his hand encountered the pocket watch. It was twelve o’clock.

Time. Things in their place. He sighed and fished out a clean handkerchief to wipe his face and hands. He had washed them in the hamam, but in the daylight he saw there were still flecks of Malik’s blood beneath his nails. Courtidis joined him, rummaged in his bag, and took out two cigarettes. He offered one to Kamil, then lit them both with the same match.

Kamil inhaled deeply. The acrid smoke scorched the back of his throat. Perhaps patients in this part of town didn’t pay well.

“You look pale, Magistrate, if you want my professional opinion.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Headache?”

“How did you know?”

Courtidis flashed his equine smile. “Two things cannot be hidden-love and a headache. The area around your eyes is tense and you look like you’re balancing a water jug on your head.”

Kamil managed a weak smile, then took refuge in his cigarette. The tobacco was much stronger than the Egyptian cigarettes he usually smoked.

Courtidis rummaged in his bag again. He clicked open a tin case and plucked out a small brown ball. He extended it to Kamil. “Chew that.”

“What is it?” Kamil sniffed it. It was sticky and had a sharp, unpleasant smell.

“Trust me. It’ll cure your headache.”

“No, thanks.”

“Works every time. Myrrh, cedar agaric, aloe, a pinch of charred tobacco, marjoram, and a few other things. Can’t tell you everything. Proprietary information, like Gudit’s ink. I call it Balat Balm. It’s very popular, if you’ll excuse me beating my own drum.”

Kamil thought about it, remembering Omar’s suspicion that Courtidis was a drug dealer, then popped the ball in his mouth and chewed. What was the difference between medicine and drugs when one was ill?

“It tastes like vinegar.”

“The ingredients are dissolved in vinegar, then mixed with honey so they stick together. Go home and get some sleep. I guarantee you’ll feel better tomorrow. If you still have problems, I live by the Crooked Gate. Ask anyone. You’re welcome to visit. Even if you’re not ill.”

As though embarrassed, he added, “You know, Malik made it possible for me to study and become a surgeon. It pains me not to be able to help him.” He examined his cigarette. “I promised myself a long time ago that I would always be there for his family. He has a niece, Saba.” He crushed the cigarette in his fingers and flung it to the ground. “This will break her.”

He shook Kamil’s hand awkwardly, showed his teeth in a halfhearted smile, and disappeared around the corner.

Kamil leaned against the wall, thinking about Courtidis and Malik. It fit with what he knew of the old scholar that he would see the most potential in those who had fallen the farthest. Courtidis, Omar had said, was infatuated with Saba. Kamil could understand that; she was beautiful. But the young man’s bond to Saba and her family was much deeper than that. Kamil found he was relieved that Saba had such a devoted protector.

He walked through the ruins toward the Kariye Mosque, where he found the square now oddly deserted. The mosque door was open and he went inside. Someone had cleaned up the blood and the hall smelled of vinegar. He followed the light into the main room, lit by three high windows and carpeted for prayer. Kamil squatted in a corner and looked up at the marble revetments. At the back of the room, the marble was the gray and white of mist and bones. The patterns looked like women, he thought, one bowing, the other lifting her dress. One woman emerging from another, white, the red of clotted blood, white. A woman giving birth, the pubic bone rising sharply to either side of the head of a child emerging from the womb. What was it Malik had said? Mother of God, Container of the Uncontainable. Muslims did not believe that Jesus was God, of course, simply a prophet like others before him. Disturbed by the images in the veins of marble, Kamil fled through the corridor and out into the square. His headache was gone, but he was seeing visions.