The Winter Thief

64

Omar’s adopted son, Avi, followed him down the narrow streets, stepping carefully so as not to jostle the basket he carried on his back. Avi had insisted on carrying it, even though Omar and his wife, Mimoza, had been reluctant to burden the boy. They had given in when Avi knelt in front of the basket, slipped his arms backward through the straps, and swung it up onto his back like a seasoned professional. Omar and Mimoza had exchanged a glance. They had forgotten that before he joined their family the previous year, Avi had made a living on the street. He was a bit taller now and well fed, although still skinny. He carried the basket as if it were filled with air instead of tins of food, Mimoza’s spinach börek, and two sealed clay jugs of water.

Omar stopped in front of Bekiraga Prison, careful not to step in the foul puddles on the pavement, lifted the iron knocker, and let it fall. A grill opened and a guard peered out. Omar identified himself and the gate swung open.

The warden came running down the path toward them, arms outstretched. “Omar, my dear friend.”

“Abdulkadir, you pimp, you get younger every year. Tell me your secret.”

The warden chuckled. “Come to my office.”

When they reached the whitewashed one-room house set inside a miniature garden, Omar told Avi to set the basket down near the door. “This is Avi,” he told the warden, “my son.”

“Ah, ah,” the warden cooed, “Allah be praised.” He coughed violently and spit into the dusty geraniums at the side of the house.

Omar rummaged inside the basket and pulled out a clay container sealed with wax. “My wife made up an ointment for your cough. She knows about herbal remedies. Let me see, what were her instructions?” He passed a beefy hand over his mustache. “I don’t remember.”

“I remember,” Avi said in a shy voice.

Omar and the warden grinned at each other, then at the boy. “Out with it then,” Omar said, not disguising his pride.

“You rub it on your chest at night before you go to sleep and put a warm, wet towel on it. She also said to smear some below your nostrils.”

Omar gave the clay pot to the warden, who peeled off the wax, sniffed it, and recoiled. “Allah protect us, if I smeared this on a prisoner, he’d confess immediately.” They laughed.

“She also sent this.” Omar gave him a paper-wrapped packet of fragrant börek, still warm from the oven.

“Bless her hands. You’re the luckiest man in the world, brother. It’s a wonder you’re not fatter than you are.”

Omar patted his not insubstantial paunch. “Shall we try them?”

The warden looked horrified. “You mean you want to eat some of my precious börek?” he cried out. “You’d tear the last scraps of food from the hands of a man dying of hunger?”

Avi looked confused and stepped behind the basket.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Omar said. They played this game every time he came. “If you let me see the prisoner, I’ll let you have all the börek.” He winked at Avi.

“You drive a hard bargain, but since you’re an old friend, why not?” He called one of the guards over. “You’ll see, I’ve moved him to one of our best cells, as you requested. That was a terrible trick to play on a man of such quality, ordering him to be put next to the cesspool. I didn’t think that was right. I hope you give me credit me for that. If I had known he was a friend of yours, I would have put him in a different wing right off.”

Omar said nothing. He was furious at the way Kamil had been treated. A small satchel of coins inside the packet of börek ensured that Kamil was comfortable. Omar knew that was the way the jail worked, but he found it hard to keep up the light banter when he wanted to stuff the avaricious warden’s mouth with coins until he choked or released Kamil from this hellhole. He knew that Yorg Pasha was working assiduously behind the scenes to get Kamil out.

Omar followed the guard down the path, Avi trotting behind them with the basket.

“Come back afterward and we’ll have tea,” the warden called out.

Kamil’s manservant, Yakup, had paid a large bribe to move him to a well-ventilated cell in a different wing and over the past two days had brought him supplies and meals, but without Omar’s intervention with the warden, he wasn’t sure what kind of treatment Kamil would receive in the prison. The warden might have been emboldened by the vizier’s signature on the warrant to play cat to Kamil’s mouse, despite Yakup’s bribe, but Omar had a well-earned reputation for retribution if he was crossed. Omar was certain that the corrupt, luxury-loving warden would never wager his hide.

The guard turned the key and the door creaked open. Kamil looked up from the book he was reading by the faint light from a high window. The air was damp and smelled of mold, but the cell was in the part of the prison farthest from the cesspool. Kamil sat in a cushioned chair, a thick-piled carpet beneath his feet. A mangal brazier heated the cell but did nothing against the cold draft from the window, which had no glass. Kamil was wrapped in a fur cape, a rug draped across his lap, and wore his kalpak. Yakup had shaved him that morning, so the only difference in Kamil’s appearance was the hard edge about his jaw and the black circles under his eyes.

“What news, Omar?” Kamil gestured to a pile of quilts stacked on the floor that he unrolled at night to use as a bed, the only other place to sit in the small room, no more than five paces across.

Avi set the basket down and squatted beside the door, shivering now that he was no longer exerting himself. Kamil took the soft rug from his lap and handed it to Omar, with a glance at Avi. Omar wrapped the boy in it. Then he took the containers out of the basket and stacked them on a low shelf next to some other covered pots. “I know you have food,” Omar explained, “but the wife insisted.” Placing his bulk between Kamil and the shelf, he lifted one of the lids of the containers Yakup had brought. Just as he feared, the food had been barely touched.

Omar sat down on the pile of quilts, sagging uncomfortably into the soft bundle. “I’d ask what you’re reading, but it would be way above my head, so don’t tell me.”

Kamil’s smile was forced. “Any news?”

“Your brother-in-law’s back home. The house is full of Yorg Pasha’s men, so I suppose it’ll be fine.” He looked unconvinced.

Kamil flung the book to the floor. “In Allah’s name, what is this pestilence, and why has it infected my life, my work, and my family?”

“What can you do? You spit downward, it lands in your beard; you spit upward, it hits your mustache.”

“That’s very fatalistic of you, Omar,” Kamil commented, unamused. “Surely you have a better idea.”

Omar showed a sharklike expanse of tobacco-stained teeth. “I swear to you Vahid will regret he was ever born.”

When Omar had gone, Kamil picked up his book, volume two of H. G. Reichenbach’s Xenia Orchidacea: Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Orchideen. Kamil’s German was rudimentary, but each orchid also was introduced by a description in Latin, the common language by which science ordered the chaotic munificence of life. The effort to understand the text made the time pass and gave Kamil the feeling that although his body was imprisoned, his mind was not. “Sepala oblonga akuta,” he read, “intus pallide orchracea, extus flavida maculis quibusdam…” He shut the book and dropped it to the floor.

There was no point to trying to forget that he was in prison. For the worst crimes, someone of his status would be executed or exiled, but never locked up in a stinking hole like this. It had certainly opened Kamil’s mind to what it meant when criminals were sentenced to prison. Perhaps the judge should allow them the choice of execution, he thought sardonically. The vizier was shaming him by punishing him with the lowest criminals. Kamil understood his motive, but he also sensed Vahid’s hand behind this penance.

Kamil began to cough, a harsh, wet rasp that worried him. He had asked the warden to put glass in the window, but this request had been refused despite another large bribe. Yakup had fashioned a thick curtain that Kamil could draw at night, but the guard had torn it down and made off with it, claiming it was against regulations. More likely, he wanted to steal the woolen cloth. Bribes, Kamil had learned, did not automatically lead to services.