The Abyssinian Proof

34

It was dark and had begun to rain heavily by the time Kamil arrived at the Imperial Museum, a dull, leaden rain that insinuated itself into the collar of his waterproof cloak.

The museum was housed in a two-story structure built into the west slope of the hill above the Golden Horn. Hamdi Bey had already arrived, having received Kamil’s message, and had lit the lamps. The light glanced brilliantly off the turquoise and dark blue mosaic tiles that covered the walls. The tiles were partially hidden by glass-fronted cabinets, within which Greek, Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine objects were neatly laid out, categorized, and labeled.

Hamdi Bey led him to the room he used as his office. Despite being roused from his home at a moment’s notice, he looked dapper in a neat wool suit and pressed fez. His gray-streaked beard and mustache were freshly trimmed. He peered at Kamil through his spectacles.

“Hang your cloak over there. I apologize for not offering you tea. There’s no staff here at this time of night except the guards. I’ve tasted their tea, and I’m not sure I can recommend it to ordinary mortals.”

“I just wanted to make sure this is in a safe place,” Kamil said and took out a bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. He unwrapped it and placed the silver box on Hamdi Bey’s desk.

“Ah, Theodore Metochites’s reliquary.” Hamdi Bey examined it carefully. He found the latch and opened it. “Let’s see if the lid fits the kettle.”

He disappeared for several minutes. Kamil heard voices and a key turning, then heavy footsteps. Finally, the door opened and Hamdi Bey returned.

“Wait here.” A lean uniformed guard with alert eyes and a rifle stood to attention outside the office door. “We take no chances,” Hamdi Bey explained as he placed the lead container on his desk beside the reliquary.

“They’re about the same size,” Kamil noted, standing over the boxes.

“I have no doubt they were made to fit each other,” Hamdi Bey said as he slid the Proof of God into the reliquary, “like a hand in a glove.”

He clicked the reliquary shut. They stood for a moment, regarding the miracle of this convergence.

“This is an extraordinarily important object,” Hamdi Bey said solemnly. “It’s rare that a document of this importance is found intact, and of course for humanity its value is beyond price. Imagine,” he said with mounting excitement, “this could solve all dispute between religions.” He looked chagrined. “I know what you’re thinking, Kamil, but I’m not one of those devout believers. I try to live a moral life but I don’t have much time for the trappings of religion. I delegate that to Ismail Hodja.” He smiled at Kamil. “I suspect we’re much the same in that regard.”

Kamil returned his smile. “I’m afraid so. This Proof of God is an odd thing, isn’t it, regardless of whether it proves anything or not. Do you think it really was dictated by Jesus and never seen by the Prophet Muhammad?”

“Ismail Hodja is convinced of its authenticity. There is no higher authority, to my poor mind.”

“He’d never make a judgment like that if he wasn’t entirely sure.”

“And just the fact that people believe in the truth of it, which apparently has been the case for centuries, means it’s an enormously powerful force for good and for evil.” He laid his hand reverently on the reliquary. “Perhaps with this document, we can bring some peace to this world.”

Kamil thought about the difficulties he had preventing people from harming each other on his small patch of turf in Istanbul, and thought it unlikely that any document, however special, would be able to bring about that miracle, but he didn’t wish to undermine Hamdi Bey’s extraordinary dream. People like Hamdi Bey had a special way with dreams and could somehow make them become reality. Like the Imperial Museum and the Academy of Fine Arts. In the meantime, they had to keep the Proof of God safe.

“Where do you keep it?” he asked.

“In a locked room in the basement under continual armed guard. At least two men are on duty at all times-one guards the perimeter of the building, the other stays right by the door to the basement. The walls of the room are solid stone with an iron door and another at the top of the stairs. I hate to think what that room was designed for when this place was built. We’ve ordered a safe, but it’ll take at least ten more days to deliver.”

Hamdi Bey called the guard into his office, then picked up the reliquary and its contents and took it back outside, followed closely by the alert-looking guard. Kamil heard the same sequence of sounds as before, but in reverse. After a few minutes, Hamdi Bey returned without the guard.

As they walked through the museum toward the front door, Hamdi Bey told Kamil its history. In 1472 Sultan Mehmet II had built it as a pavilion for his new palace, a platform from which his pages could watch games of jirit on the field below. He had built his first palace on the ruins of the Great Palace of Byzantium, already decayed beyond repair when he took the city in 1453, but before too long he moved to this acropolis above Topkapi Gate. He laid out his second palace like a nomadic encampment, one jewel-like pavilion after another set within magnificent gardens.

Outside the front door of the museum, Hamdi Bey pointed to a cluster of ancient columns and capitals in the courtyard. “We found those when we restored the building. They say when Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror walked through the ruined halls of the Great Palace, he became so sad he recited a distich by the Persian poet Saadi: ‘The spider is the curtain-holder in the Palace of the Caesars. / The owl hoots its night call on the Towers of Aphrasiab.’”

Kamil took his leave and, after Hamdi Bey shut the door, stood for a while in the entrance alcove, pondering the calligraphy above the door. It was in the old Cufic style and he couldn’t decipher it. Behind him, the rain pattered forlornly on the paving stones. Kamil found that he couldn’t face going home to his orchids and the Gardener’s Chronicle; to an empty house. He wished Elif were waiting for him there, ready to lean her head against his chest. A small, intimate surrender.

Kamil shivered and peered out through the rain. On the hill above the museum loomed the walls of Topkapi Palace. He could just make out the tightly shut Gate of the Watchmen of the Girls, a reminder that beyond these high walls was now a city of women-the widows, sisters, and daughters of deceased sultans. Like the Byzantine palaces, Topkapi too was slowly crumbling, along with the lives of its melancholy inhabitants. Later generations of rulers and their families had built spacious new palaces and villas strung along the Bosphorus like pearls. The old came to Topkapi to die.

A bleak urgency seized Kamil. He clutched his rain cape around him, mounted his horse, and turned toward home.