Chapter 62: Bureaucratic Resistance

Chapter 62: Chapter 62: Bureaucratic Resistance

I

Constantinople, Galata — 20 April 1916

Samuel Aboab brought the first replies from the provinces to the Financial Office in a single tray, and he laid them out in three rows upon the long table.

"Of forty towns, nine governors have acknowledged the circular, and fourteen have said nothing," he said. "Seventeen have asked questions, and six of those questions are not the same as the others."

Zeynep drew the first row toward her and read the letters through.

"The governor of Konya asks whether the witness’s book must bear a duty stamp," she said. "The governor of Sivas asks whether the circular is a law or an invitation."

"It is an invitation with the Minister’s seal upon it, Han?m, and I do not know what a governor does with that." Samuel turned a page. "Three towns ask who will pay the students of the Darülfünun while they are in the province."

Ayaan, who had come in from the yard with ink upon his cuffs, listened with his arms folded.

"Every question is a reasonable one, and each of them was left open by the memorandum," he said. "I think the circular has begun to travel, and the road is longer than we imagined."

Zeynep wrote the six questions upon a clean sheet and set it before him.

"Then we shall answer them one at a time, and begin with the stamp," she said.

II

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 27 April 1916

Hakk? Bey received Ayaan in the room with the large map, and he did not rise from his desk.

"The copies that went to the governors on the tenth were a courtesy of my Ministry, and nothing more," he said. "The order to the Provincial Councils left my desk the same day, and it has not yet left the Correspondence Bureau of the Interior."

"Why does it wait there?" asked Ayaan.

"Because an order that goes to the Provincial Councils must carry the seal of the Interior as well as the seal of Commerce, and the Bureau has not yet decided that it is in proper form." Hakk? Bey drew a sheet from a drawer. "The Minister of the Interior has not said no, and he has not said yes, and a clerk is not required to say either."

"Who holds the Bureau?"

"A man named Tevfik Efendi, who has served thirty-one years and has never been late with a document." The director sighed. "He is not corrupt, Ayaan Efendi, and he cannot be hurried, and I would advise you not to try either."

Ayaan took a moment to answer, and his voice was even.

"I do not wish to hurry him, only to learn what he requires," he said. "May I ask the Ministry to arrange a call?"

"I have arranged it for the tenth of May, at ten, and he has agreed to see you alone."

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 May 1916

Zeynep unrolled a long strip of paper across the study table and weighted its ends with two inkwells.

She had drawn eleven small boxes upon it, joined by lines, and written a name or an office in each.

"This is the path of a circular from the Minister’s desk to a provincial governor, as far as Server Bey and Agop Efendi could tell me," she said. "Each box is a desk, and each desk has an average of nine days."

"Nine days for eleven desks is ninety-nine days," said Ayaan.

"It is one hundred and twelve, if the Registry and the Correspondence Bureau are counted twice, as I am told they must be." She touched the sixth box. "We have spent twenty-three days already, and we are held at the sixth."

Cevdet, who had been reading in the corner, laid down his book and came to the table.

"You are reading a bureau as a merchant reads a road, Han?m, and I think it is a good method," he said. "I would add only that a bureau has no master, and so every clerk is a master of his own desk."

"What does he want, Cevdet Efendi?"

"Almost always he wants nothing that he can name, and he will tell you what he wants if you ask him how the matter should be done." Cevdet folded his hands. "The clerks who have been thirty years at a desk have never been asked by a merchant how a document should be written."

IV

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 10 May 1916

Tevfik Efendi was a small, upright man with a white moustache and a spotless collar, and he did not offer Ayaan a chair until the third minute.

His desk was bare except for one folder, a seal, and a pen laid exactly parallel to the edge of the blotter.

"I have the order of the Ministry of Commerce, in which it is said that the governors are ’requested to recognise’ the code of the guilds," he said. "It is a request in form and a command in effect, and the Sublime Porte does not write in that manner."

"How should it be written, Tevfik Efendi?" asked Ayaan.

The clerk blinked, for it was a question that no one had put to him in some years.

"It should say ’the governors are invited to examine and to favour,’ and it should be addressed to the Provincial Councils and not to the governors alone," he said. "I would also require a list of the guilds by name, with the number of their charter from the Registry, as the circular speaks of guilds that I cannot find."

"I can bring the list by Monday, and the House will write the corrected wording in a clean hand."

"The House is not a part of this matter, Ayaan Efendi, but I confess that your question is the correct one." Tevfik Efendi touched the pen and set it back to its place. "If the amended text reaches my desk by the sixteenth, I shall examine it within three days."

Ayaan thanked him, and he walked out into the corridor with the sense that he had been taught something that no one had intended to teach.

V

Constantinople, Galata — 24 May 1916

Hasan’s letter from Konya ran to three pages and was read aloud by Samuel Aboab in the front room of the Financial Office.

"The governor will not allow the code until the receipts are stamped with the duty stamp of the Finance Department," he said. "The stamp costs a quarter of a kuru?, and a receipt for ten kuru? would then cost more than a thirtieth of its value."

"It would also destroy the practice that the guild wishes to teach," said Zeynep. "A woman will not ask for a receipt if the receipt costs her more than the grain."

She sent for R?za Bey, who arrived within the hour with his ledger under his arm and his dry voice unchanged.

"The stamp duty law was written for deeds and contracts, and I have never seen it applied to a shop receipt," he said. "The governor of Konya has read the statute with great care and with no common sense."

"Can the Inspectorate write that a guild receipt under fifty kuru? is exempt?" asked Ayaan.

"It cannot write it, but I can propose it to my director, and he can sign an instruction to the provincial treasurers." R?za Bey opened his ledger. "It will take eleven days, and in the meantime I shall write privately to the Konya treasurer that the governor’s reading is not shared by the Inspectorate."

"We are grateful, R?za Bey," said Zeynep.

"Do not be grateful, madame, but keep the book open, as you promised," said the inspector, and he wrote the date in the margin.

VI

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 9 June 1916

The committee room of the Ministry of Commerce held nine men, and one of them was a stout accountant of the Treasury named Lütfi Bey.

He stood at the end of the table with a paper in his hand and spoke in a voice that carried to the corners of the room.

"The circular allows the guilds to keep nine parts in ten of every fine, and I ask what law gives the guilds the right to collect money in the name of the state," he said. "A fine is a revenue, and revenue belongs to the Treasury."

Nuri Bey of Ayd?n leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

"The fines in Constantinople totalled three hundred and twelve liras in the first nine months, and the stamps and the foundry bench cost two hundred and ninety," said Ayaan. "The balance was spent upon the witness’s book and the printed cards, and it is written in the guild notice."

"That is a fact, and I do not dispute it, but a fact is not a law."

"Then I would ask the Treasury what it would pay the witness, and what it would pay the student, and whether it would print the cards," said Ayaan quietly. "The guilds have paid for all of it, and a tenth of the fines now goes to the town treasury as the circular requires."

Lütfi Bey looked at his paper and then at Hakk? Bey.

"A tenth of nothing is nothing, and a tenth of something is a revenue that the Treasury did not have," said Nuri Bey. "I propose that the committee note the figures and pass the question to the Minister."

The committee agreed, and Lütfi Bey sat down with a long breath.

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 21 June 1916

Mustafa came to the house in the cool of the evening with a small wooden horse for Mehmed, who was five years old and had outgrown the first one.

When the boy had carried the horse into the garden, Mustafa sat with Zeynep and Ayaan upon the stair.

"I have heard that you have been walking up and down the corridors of the Sublime Porte for two months," he said. "I would tell you what I learned of such corridors in forty years."

"We would be glad to hear it, Baba," said Zeynep.

"A clerk who says no to you has told you the date when he will say yes, if you ask him in the right manner." Mustafa watched the boy at the end of the garden. "He is waiting for a form that he can sign without fear, and your work is to give him that form."

"Tevfik Efendi asked for three amendments, and we gave him all of them," said Ayaan.

"Then he will pass the circular, and he will tell his own friends that the House of Hassan writes a clean document." The old man smiled. "That is worth more than a decree, my son, for a clerk’s friends are the next clerks."

Mehmed returned with the horse upon his shoulder and demanded to know whether it could carry a letter.

"It may carry a letter to Konya," said Mustafa. "But the letter must have a seal."

VIII

Constantinople, Galata — 3 July 1916

The Interior Ministry’s seal reached the circular on the twenty-seventh of June, and the amended text went out to the provincial councils on the first of July.

Samuel Aboab brought the first replies in a single tray, and this time there were only two rows.

"Thirty-one towns have acknowledged it, and eight have asked for the Darülfünun students," he said. "Konya has received the exemption from the Finance Department, and the governor has written that he is satisfied."

Zeynep laid the strip of eleven boxes upon the long table and drew a pencil line through the sixth and seventh.

"It took eighty-two days from the Minister’s desk to the councils, and we were held seventy-eight of them in the Correspondence Bureau," she said. "I think that is better than the hundred and twelve that we feared."

Ayaan read the new text of the circular, with the changes that Tevfik Efendi had required, and found that the sense was the same and the wording more courteous.

"A form that a clerk can sign without fear is a form that a province can keep," he said. "I shall remember it when the next proposal is written."

Cevdet, who had come up the stair with the afternoon gazettes, glanced at the strip and smiled.

"Allah is patient with those who write carefully, and the Ministry of the Interior is patient with those who ask," he said.

Zeynep took the small ledger of the Financial Office from the shelf and wrote the quarter’s line beneath the entry of October.

The sixth quarter of the office: Order to the councils held eighty-two days. Thirty-one towns acknowledged. No favour asked, none given.