Chapter 17: The Ottoman Question

Chapter 17: Chapter 17: The Ottoman Question

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 14 October 1903

The newspapers came to the shop each morning, because Mehmet Hassan believed that a grocer who knew the news could guess the price of rice before the wholesalers named it.

Ayaan read all three before the first customer arrived. He read each twice, once for what it said and once for what it left out.

That week the pages were full of Macedonia. The summer rising had been put down in the mountains, villages had burned, and now the emperors of Austria and Russia had agreed on a program of reforms for the provinces that the Porte had never requested.

Foreign inspectors. Foreign officers in the gendarmerie. Foreign agents to watch the finances.

Every year the Empire is told how to govern itself, and every year it accepts, because it cannot refuse.

He had met this meeting once before, in another life, as a single line in a table of dates in a lecture hall at Ko?. The lecturer had called the Empire the sick man of Europe, and the class had written it down.

Ayaan had believed it for twenty-one years. Now he stood behind a counter in Emin?nü and watched a million small things work: the porters on the quay, the bakers before dawn, the clerks at the money-changer’s, the ferries that left each hour on the minute.

A dying man does not behave in this way. A dying man has stopped.

His father came out from the storeroom with a sack on his shoulder and found him staring at the page.

"You read the news with the face you use for a bill," said Mehmet.

"It is a bill, Baba. It is only that no one has told us the sum."

"The Empire has been told what to do by foreigners before, and it is still here." The older man set down the sack and wiped his hands. "My father said the same of the war with Russia, and his father said it of the war before that."

"And each time it was a little poorer."

Mehmet did not answer. He looked at his son for a moment, and then he went back to the storeroom, and Ayaan heard him moving sacks more slowly than before.

It is not a death. It is a list.

Every failure has a name, a cause, and a date on which it began, and a list is a thing that can be worked through.

When the shop was empty, he opened the blue book to a clean page and wrote five headings across the top. Money. Officials. Industry. Schools. Soldiers.

Under the first, he wrote what he knew. Since 1881 the creditors’ own officers had collected the salt, the tobacco, the stamps, the spirits, the silk, and the fisheries, and the bondholders took their share before the treasury saw the rest.

Under the second, he wrote that officials went unpaid for months and so took gifts. Under the third, he wrote that the treaties held the customs duty at eight in the hundred, and that no native mill could be protected against goods that entered the port almost freely.

Under the fourth, he wrote that there were too few schools and too few teachers, and under the fifth, that the rifles were German and the pay was not.

He looked at the five columns for a long time.

Beneath them he wrote a sixth heading, which he had not planned. It was a single word, and it was the only one that frightened him.

Why?

II

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 18 October 1903

Zeynep found the page open on the crate in the storeroom, and she read it standing, with her arms folded.

"You have forgotten the Sultan," she said.

"I have not forgotten him. I have left him out on purpose."

"Why?"

"Because I do not yet know where to put him." Ayaan sat on a sack of lentils. "That is the sixth heading. I wish to know why I am doing this, and I wish the answer to be one that I would still give if it cost me something."

She sat across from him and waited. It was her way, and he had learned from her as much as she had learned from him.

"Before you answer," she said, "remember that the man with the scar is in the lane. If the Sultan’s people read this page, they will not read it as a list."

"I know."

"Then why leave it on a crate?"

"Because the book is written in a script that no one else can read, and because I wish you to see it." He met her eyes. "I do not intend to keep this from you, Zeynep. Whatever I decide, I wish to decide it where you can tell me that I am wrong."

"There are men in Paris and Geneva," she said at last. "My father reads their pamphlets in secret. They say that the Sultan is the cause of every failure, and that nothing can be mended while he sits at Y?ld?z."

"I have heard it."

"Is it true?"

"Part of it is true." He chose the words with care. "He has made the Empire quiet and kept it whole, and he has done it by fear. A state that is held together by fear spends its best men on watching one another."

"Then why do you defend him?"

"I do not defend him. I defend what he sits upon."

She raised an eyebrow, and he went on more slowly.

"Consider what the dynasty is. Turk, Arab, Albanian, Kurd, Armenian, Greek, and Jew have almost nothing in common, and yet each of them owes something to the House of Osman that he owes to no one else. If that is broken, no one is freed. A door is opened, and every creditor and every neighbor walks through it."

"And the men in Paris?"

"They are clever, and they are sincere." Ayaan shook his head. "They have also never met a payroll, and revolutions are made by men who think that the difficult part is the beginning."

Zeynep was silent for a time.

"A frame that holds is not the same as a frame worth holding," she said.

"No. That is the whole of the difficulty."

"Then what is your answer?"

"That the work is to make it worth holding." He took the pencil from behind his ear. "I will be loyal to the dynasty, and I will not be loyal to its mistakes. If a minister is a fool, I will say so to those who can hear. If the Sultan is wrong, I will not praise him for it."

"That is a dangerous thing to believe in this city."

"I do not intend to say it in this city."

She smiled, briefly, and then her face became grave again.

"Write it down," she said. "A feeling will change with the weather. A rule will not."

He wrote it beneath the sixth heading, in the small script that only he could read.

Loyal to the House, because it is the last thing that binds the Empire. Loyal to competence, wherever it is found. Never loyal to a failure because it wears a crown.

Zeynep read it twice and handed back the pencil.

"Now the list has a purpose," she said. "Before this it was only a list."

III

Constantinople, Fatih — 27 October 1903

Kemal Efendi taught arithmetic at the rü?tiye near the Fatih mosque, and he kept a shelf of books at the back of his classroom that he lent to anyone who returned them.

Ayaan had borrowed from the shelf for three years. He came on Tuesdays, after the pupils had gone, and he stayed for tea.

"You are early," said the teacher, without looking up from the slates he was marking. "I have not finished with the fourth form. They have learned that a column of figures must be added from the bottom, and they believe that this is a discovery."

"Did you not teach them so?"

"I taught them. They memorized it, and then they forgot why." Kemal laid down the chalk. He was a thin man of fifty with ink on his cuffs and a kind, tired face. "Sit, my boy. What do you wish to ask?"

"What would you teach, Hoca Efendi, if the choice were yours?"

The teacher studied him for a moment.

"That is a larger question than it appears." He poured the tea himself. "I will answer it, because you are one of the few who asks."

He raised one finger.

"First, the ledger. A boy who can keep accounts will never be cheated by a steward, and he will never cheat the state by ignorance." He raised a second. "Then geography, so that he knows where the Empire ends and what lies beyond it. Then a little chemistry, a little mechanics, and one European language, spoken and not merely read."

"And what do you teach?"

"Grammar, the Koran, and the rules of penmanship." There was no bitterness in it, only fatigue. "These are good things, and I would not remove them. But they are not enough for the world that is coming."

"The Sultan has opened many schools," said Ayaan.

"He has, and it should be said." The teacher nodded. "More than any ruler before him. There are rü?tiyes in towns that had no school at all, and a medical college that trains good doctors, and a university that reopened after years of waiting."

"But?"

"But the new schools have no teachers, the teachers have no salaries, and the salaries have no treasury behind them." Kemal turned his glass slowly on the table. "I have not been paid in five months. My wife takes in sewing, and I have a nephew who sends bread."

He took a worn exercise book from the shelf behind him and opened it on the desk. It was full of columns of figures in a young, careful hand, each sum checked and marked with a small tick.

"This is Bekir, from the third form," said Kemal. "His father sells vegetables at the Unkapan? market. The boy can do in his head what the clerks of the Ministry do with a slate and an hour."

"What will become of him?"

"He will leave at fourteen and carry baskets." The teacher closed the book gently. "Unless someone finds a use for him. That is why I keep the shelf, my boy. I cannot pay my pupils, and I cannot send them anywhere, but I can see that they are not forgotten."

Ayaan said nothing. He felt the list in his memory shift, and the heading that read Schools connected itself to the heading that read Money.

The sixth question is the same as the first.

"Then the schools are not failing for want of schools," he said. "They are failing for want of coin."

"That is a clever thing to see at your age." The teacher regarded him with something between pride and sorrow. "Learn it well. When you are grown, a man who understands that will be worth more than a regiment."

Ayaan finished his tea and returned the volume that he had borrowed. When he rose to go, Kemal took his hand briefly and held it.

"Allah grant you a long life, young Hassan. This Empire is going to need it."

IV

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 4 November 1903

Hovsep Agopian walked him to the street door, as he always did, and they stopped together on the step.

Across the road stood the building where the Public Debt Administration kept its offices. The clerks who came and went through its doors wore frock coats and carried leather cases, and some of them spoke French on the pavement.

"There is the true Ministry of Finance," said Hovsep dryly. "The one in the Sublime Porte is only a room where the Sultan’s accounts are read aloud."

"The creditors collect the revenues themselves."

"They collect them honestly, I will say that. They have built railways, and they have kept the books straight." The merchant lowered his voice, although the street was loud. "But they take the first share, my boy, and the first share is the largest."

Ayaan studied the doors.

"And your own business, Efendi? Does it suffer from the treaties?"

"Suffer?" Hovsep laughed shortly. "I import Viennese ink at eight in the hundred, and I may not raise it. If I wished to make ink here, in a workshop in Eyüp, and price it fairly, a Viennese merchant could undersell me in my own warehouse."

"Because the duty is fixed."

"Because the duty is fixed by treaty, and the treaties were signed when the Empire was afraid." He shrugged his heavy shoulders. "A man who wishes to make anything in this country must first make it better than the foreigner, or he must make it cheaper than the foreigner. He cannot ask the Porte to help, because the Porte has no power to."

So the answer is not a tariff.

It is a factory so well made that no tariff is needed, and a purse deep enough to survive until it is proven.

"Then someone must make a thing that cannot be undersold," said Ayaan slowly.

"A boy who plans factories." The merchant smiled, but not unkindly. "Allah willing, someone will do it. It will not be quickly, and it will not be a boy."

They stood a moment longer in the cool air of the street. A tram bell rang somewhere to the east, and a cart of melons creaked past with its driver asleep.

They watched the clerks of the Administration file out for the noon meal, correct and unhurried, and Ayaan thought how orderly it all appeared from the street. A treasury that was ruled from outside could still be kept in perfect order, and that was the most troubling part of it.

"Efendi," said Ayaan carefully. "May I ask whether you are still loyal?"

It was an impertinent question, and he knew it as it left his mouth. The merchant’s face did not change, but his eyes went briefly to a place far away.

"My cousins lived in Urfa," said Hovsep quietly. "In the autumn of 1895, they ceased to live there. I have not spoken of it to anyone in this city, and I do not intend to begin."

"I am sorry."

"I did not tell you for sorrow. I told you because you asked, and because you are the kind of boy who should know the answer." He drew a slow breath. "I pay my taxes, and I keep my shop, and I pray that the men who come after will be wiser than the men who came before."

"So do I, Efendi."

"I believe that you do." Hovsep touched his shoulder lightly. "That is why I tell you what I tell no one."

Ayaan walked back toward Emin?nü without hurrying. He understood now that his list had a seventh heading, one that he could not write in the blue book, because it was not a failure of money or schools.

A state is not loyal to its people merely because its people are loyal to it.

He would have to remember that, in every decision of his life.

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 November 1903

Sabri Usta kept his coffee house at the corner of the lane, and on Thursdays it was full of men who had nowhere else to be.

Ayaan came in after the evening prayer to deliver a parcel of paper, and he stayed because of the soldier.

The boy sat alone at the end of the long bench, with a cup that he had been nursing for an hour. He wore the gray uniform of the infantry, with the buttons polished and one sleeve mended with thread of a different color.

He was not much older than Ayaan, perhaps seventeen. He was very thin.

"He came from Monastir," said Sabri, setting down the tray. The old man had a heavy gray mustache and a left hand that lacked two fingers, a souvenir of the war of 1877. "On leave, for three weeks. He walked from the station."

"Why did he not ride?"

"Because he had no money. His battalion has not been paid for eight months."

Ayaan looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the cup.

"Eight months," said Ayaan.

"It is not unusual." Sabri’s voice was flat, and he glanced once at the other tables before he went on. "The men in the villages around Monastir say that the soldiers have begun to sell their cartridges for bread. Nobody reports it, because nobody wishes to be the one who says so."

He set a glass of tea beside the boy without being asked.

"Eight months. And yet the boy came home with his buttons polished." "I was at Plevna, young Hassan, and I was twenty-four. We held for five months against the Russians, because we were fed and because we were led. Do you know what a man will bear for an officer who shares his bread?"

"Anything."

"Anything. And do you know what he will bear for an officer who has no bread to share?" The old man shook his head. "The same, for a time. Then he will bear nothing."

Ayaan crossed the room and sat on the bench beside the soldier. He did not speak at once.

"I am told that you come from Monastir," he said.

"Yes, Efendi."

"Is it as bad as the newspapers say?"

"It is worse, and it is quieter." The boy raised his eyes. They were brown and very tired. "The captain pays us what he can from his own purse, and he has sold his watch. The sergeant has sold his boots, and he goes about in sandals, and no one laughs."

"Have you eaten?"

"I have had tea."

Ayaan lifted a hand to Sabri, who was already carrying a plate of lentil soup and bread. He had not asked for it, and he did not argue when the boy tried to refuse.

"It is a small thing," he said. "Eat."

The boy ate slowly, with the careful dignity of a man who does not wish to appear hungry. When the plate was clean, he thanked Ayaan twice and said, in a lower voice, that he was ashamed.

"You have no reason," said Ayaan. "The shame belongs to those who have not paid you."

He had spoken louder than he intended. The nearest tables went quiet.

At the far end of the room, a tall man in a dark coat sat with a newspaper folded on his knee. The pale line of a scar showed in the lamplight, and the eyes above it were fixed on Ayaan with calm attention.

Of course.

Ayaan did not look away, and he did not lower his voice.

"A soldier who is paid is a soldier who is loyal," he said, clearly. "I wish for the Sultan’s army to be paid, that it may defend him."

"Allah grant it," said Sabri Usta, gruffly.

"Amen," said several voices at once.

The newspaper in the corner turned a page.

Ayaan finished his tea, paid for the soup, and went out into the lane. In the cold air, he stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets.

He knew the name of the war that would break that army, and he knew the year. Nine years from now, in the Balkans, it would march into a campaign with rifles from Germany and no money behind them, and it would fail.

Unless something changes.

Unless I change it.

He had said the true thing aloud, in the hearing of the one man who would carry it to the palace, and he had said it in a form that no one could call disloyal. It was exactly what he believed.

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 21 November 1903

On the last Saturday of the month, after the shutters were closed, Ayaan sat alone in the back of the shop with the blue book open on his knee.

The lamp burned low, and the smell of lentils was thick in the air. Somewhere in the lane, a late porter was whistling a tune that Ayaan did not know.

He turned to the page headed Money. Officials. Industry. Schools. Soldiers. and read it from the beginning.

Below the five columns, and below the sixth heading with its single word, there was now a long entry in his own hand. He had written it over three weeks, a line at a time, and he read it carefully, as he would read a contract.

The Empire is not dying. It is mismanaged, underpaid, and indebted, and each of these is a matter of method.

The House of Osman is the one thing that holds its peoples together. It must be kept, and it must be made worthy of being kept.

I will serve the state and the dynasty. I will not serve a minister because he is powerful, or a policy because it is old.

I will do the work in silence. If the work is done well, no one will know that it was mine.

He read it a third time. Then he looked at the single word above it, the one that had frightened him in October.

The answer was no longer a feeling. He had put it into words, and the words were plain, and he could say them without shame to Zeynep, to his father, and to the man with the scar if it ever came to that.

The Empire was the only country that he had ever had.

In his first life, he had been a student with a degree and a good deal of ambition and no way to use it. In this one, he had been given a body, a shop, a memory, and eleven years before the war that would decide everything.

It was not enough to know what was wrong. He had known that for twenty-one years of lectures and seminars.

It was enough only if he could act, and he could not act alone.

A boy of thirteen cannot reform a treasury, or build a school, or pay an army. But he can find the men who can, and the teachers who can train them, and the merchants who can fund them, and he can begin.

Hovsep, with his warehouses and his cautious hope.

Kemal Efendi, who has taught for five months without pay.

Sabri Usta, who remembers what a fed army can do.

Zeynep, who sees what I do not.

He did not write the names. He kept them where he kept everything, in the part of his mind that never forgot, and he began to arrange them in order.

The work would not be quick. It would take years, and it would require a patience that did not come naturally to a boy who knew exactly how much time he had.

A knock came at the back door, and Mehmet’s voice followed it.

"Ayaan. Your mother asks whether you intend to eat tonight, or whether the Empire has taken your supper as well."

"I am coming, Baba."

His father stood in the doorway with a lantern, and his eyes went to the book and then to his son’s face.

"You have been writing a long time."

"I have been deciding something."

"Is it a thing that I should know?"

Ayaan considered the question honestly, as he had promised he would.

"I have decided what I am for, Baba. I cannot yet tell you all that it means, but I can tell you that it is not against the Sultan, or against you, or against anyone in this lane."

Mehmet was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded once, slowly, as a man nods when he has been given a smaller answer than he feared and a larger one than he expected.

"Then it is enough for tonight," he said. "Come and eat."

Ayaan closed the book, and he blew out the lamp.

In the dark, he sat for a moment and listened to the lane. The whistling had stopped, and the street was silent, and somewhere beyond the rooftops the water of the Golden Horn moved against the quay.

A network of hands, he thought.

That is what the Empire needs, and that is what I must build.