The Abyssinian Proof: A Kamil Pasha Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels) Page 21

  Kamil felt certain that by sharing Malik’s secret with Ismail Hodja, he wouldn’t be revealing anything the old scholar didn’t already know.

  “Malik said he had found something called the Proof of God.”

  “He found it?” The empty tea glass dropped from Ismail Hodja’s hand. He stared at Kamil in amazement.

  “Malik didn’t tell me much, just that it’s somehow central to the Melisites.” Kamil began to reevaluate his assessment of the reliquary. If it elicited this much of a reaction from the ordinarily unflappable Ismail Hodja, it might be as important as Malik had said.

  “I think he was killed for it. I wish I had listened to him,” Kamil said bitterly, balling his fists. “Last night he told me that he was in danger and I didn’t do anything about it. If I had asked him to spend the night, he’d still be alive.”

  “You can’t protect someone by locking them up, Kamil. You know that. The minute he walked out of your door in the morning, he would still have been a target.”

  Kamil took a deep breath, “I know.”

  “The Proof of God disappeared after the Conquest. I didn’t realize the Melisites were involved.” Ismail Hodja pulled at his beard and thought for a while. “It makes sense. If this is indeed the authentic Proof of God, it would be important enough for a sect to have formed to protect it, especially after the fall of Byzantium.”

  “What is it?”

  “A relic stolen from Jerusalem by Christian Crusaders early in the twelfth century. They claimed to be protecting pilgrims in what they called their Holy Land, but in fact spent their time digging secretly under the Dome of the Rock. They claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant. Reports at the time describe a casket, but we’re fairly certain it wasn’t the Ark—that had already disappeared from Jerusalem long before the birth of the Prophet Jesus. It’s said that King Solomon’s son Menelik took the Ark back with him to Abyssinia, where it remains to this day in a temple at Aksum.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I believe that armies have crept across the earth stealing objects they think are powerful. Whatever it was that the Crusaders found allowed them to become wealthy and strong. They called themselves Templars. They raised an army and carved out their own little fortified kingdoms all over this region. It was shameful. These men acting in the name of Christianity sacked some of the greatest Christian cities of the time. When they were finished, there was almost nothing left of Byzantium. I suppose the Turks can thank the Templars for weakening Constantinople over the centuries. When Mehmet the Conqueror finally plucked the apple, the city was almost bankrupt. The Templars took their treasures to Acre and then to Antioch, staying one step ahead of our armies. In Antioch, they entrusted their treasure to a young man, Philip of Stark, who was to take it to Aksum in Abyssinia. You can see how desperate they must have been to give the casket to a boy of sixteen. He arrived there in 1291, by their reckoning.”

  “How did it get from Aksum to Istanbul?”

  “The Abyssinian king thought that the Templars were trying to steal the Ark of the Covenant, their Ark, which I think is quite likely. In 1306, when the situation became too dangerous, Philip took the treasure to France, to their main temple in Paris. He was accompanied by Sophia, his daughter by a local woman. She must have been around thirteen.”

  Ismail Hodja drank some tea and continued. “The poor young man escaped from the river only to drown in the sea. On the same boat with Philip and his daughter was an Abyssinian mission to the Christian pope. It’s believed that they warned the Pope that the Templars were planning to overthrow him.” Ismail Hodja shook his head and clicked his tongue in disapproval. “These were all supposedly religious men, yet they were scheming against each other. It’s remarkable that the Christians have thrived for so long.”

  “Luck,” Kamil offered.

  “Guns,” Ismail Hodja corrected him. “And convenient ethics. Just a few months later, the Pope convinced the French king and other European heads of state to hunt down the Templars and confiscate their wealth, like a sow devouring its own brood.”

  “What happened to Philip and his daughter?” Kamil asked, now thoroughly drawn into the story.

  “Philip was arrested and executed by burning in a public square. Sophia and her treasure turned up here in Constantinople. The Byzantine church wasn’t on friendly terms with the Roman pope, so it was a natural destination. The Byzantine emperor put the Proof of God under the the protection of the statesman Theodore Metochites. He was probably grateful to acquire such a powerful, sacred object, since almost all of their relics had been stolen by the Crusaders and taken to Europe. In sacred terms, the city was naked.”

  “There’s an image of Theodore on the reliquary. Malik said the reliquary gives the Proof of God provenance.”

  “Ah, even God must prove his authenticity,” Ismail Hodja remarked with a halfhearted smile.

  “How have you learned all this?” Kamil asked in amazement.

  “Muslim scholars kept track of the relic. It had been stolen from one of our holiest sites and they hoped to get it back. Every generation has its choniclers. The Templars used the object to advertise their own importance, so for a while it was easy to follow. The chronicles were collected in the library at al-Azhar University in Cairo. I had the honor of contributing a brief account of the Proof’s sojourn in Byzantium.”

  “How did the Proof get in the hands of the Habesh?”

  “Sophia was half Abyssinian, remember? She married Theodore’s son.”

  “So Sophia’s descendants kept the Proof of God and built their sect around it.”

  “We don’t know for sure. The Metochites family was given custody in perpetuity, but the Proof was actually kept in the vault of the Hagia Sophia cathedral. The chronicles end there. No one knows what happened to it during the Conquest. Some believe it was taken out of Constantinople, perhaps to Venice. Over the years, many have tried to find it. It’s extraordinary to hear news of it again.”

  Kamil was stunned and humbled to realize that generations of scholars had tracked and written about the crushed reliquary he had so cavalierly dismissed as worthless.

  “Malik told me it was lost after the Conquest during a fight between his ancestor, the caretaker of the Church of Chora, and someone he called a false prophet.”

  It felt odd that he, Kamil, was contributing some small part to the tale of the Proof’s odyssey. It occurred to him that he might be adding to history that would be written down and preserved in the library of al-Azhar. It was thrilling, but he felt guilty, as though he were feasting on Malik’s death.

  “What else did he say, may he rest in peace?” Ismail Hodja’s excitement bled through his measured tone.

  “The Melisites thought the reliquary was still somewhere in the Church of Chora, so they kept one of their members there as caretaker, even after it became a mosque. What’s odd is that they never admitted to the members of their sect that it was missing. The congregation still thinks it’s in a room in their prayer hall.”

  “Secrets are the lifeblood of sects. The Melisites must have been very secretive indeed. I’m surprised word didn’t circulate that they claimed to be guarding the Proof.”

  “The prayer hall isn’t very impressive. It would be hard to believe an object of worldwide importance was being kept there.”

  “And you say Malik found it in the Kariye Mosque? Did he say where he found it?”

  “No. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in one of those tunnels or cisterns that seem to honeycomb all those old churches.”

  “Perhaps,” Ismail Hodja said thoughtfully. “But that would be like hiding a grain of sand beneath a dune. Whoever hid it four hundred years ago wanted it to be found, but not by the wrong people.”

  “And probably a little sooner.”

  “Did he say what was in the reliquary?”

  “A document written in Aramaic.”

  Ismail Hodja closed his eyes and laid his hand across his beard. He was silen
t for a long while. “It must be the real thing,” he said at last. “There’s no other explanation.” He looked at Kamil, eyes shining with delight. “Until now, this has been nothing more than an interesting tale with no ending. Now a new chapter is being written. You cannot imagine how important this document is, Kamil. I would do anything to read it. I’m one of the few people in the empire who can read the old languages.”

  “What does Aramaic look like?”

  Ismail Hodja took a leather box from a cabinet and opened it. He handed Kamil a piece of parchment covered with angular writing. “It’s a copy, so don’t worry about handling it.”

  Kamil studied it. “It looks a little like Arabic, but I can’t make out anything.”

  “It’s a distant ancestor of the Arabic alphabet. Few people today can read it.”

  “Malik was training his niece to read it. She’s the next priestess.”

  “That would make sense. He was preparing her to lead under these new circumstances. Whoever possesses the Proof will be immensely powerful. She must understand it to wield it properly.”

  “Because it works miracles?” Kamil couldn’t keep the skepticism from his voice.

  “No. I don’t believe that. But they say it proves the existence of Allah for all religions and all doubters.”

  “Even me?”

  Ismail Hodja smiled. “Even you, my son.”

  “Well, now I’m even more anxious to get hold of it.” Kamil laughed, his mood suddenly exuberant. He reined in his voice, worried about such inappropriate behavior when he should be mourning.

  “All of our great religions flourish from the same trunk, a single vast tree inhabited by the spirit of Allah. Nevertheless every branch and leaf believes itself distinct.”

  “And we’re busy killing each other to prove it.” Kamil imagined an enormous oak tossing violently.

  “Not everyone, thanks be to Allah. I’ve read your friend Malik’s writings. He was truly a scholar and a friend of peace. He called for an ecumenical council that issued joint decisions, ecumenical fat-was, about what he called shared truths. Some of the religious scholars agreed, or at least respected him for trying. Others, as you can imagine, weren’t happy with the notion of sharing their authority.”

  “Unhappy enough to wish him harm?” And destroy something they thought might undermine their authority. But Malik had told no one outside his family about it, besides Kamil.

  “I don’t think so,” Ismail Hodja guessed. “As long as he just wrote tracts, he was harmless. But with the actual Proof in his hands, he would be much more of a threat. People might have left their own religions to follow him, like a prophet. It’s happened before. Very dangerous, indeed. The reliquary was stolen, you say?”

  He wondered whether it would betray Malik’s confidence to tell Ismail Hodja the rest. Malik was dead, he reminded himself, and there was nothing to fear from the scholar.

  “The reliquary that was stolen was empty. The actual Proof was in a lead liner that Malik had taken out.”

  “So the Proof itself wasn’t stolen?”

  Kamil wondered at the excitement in the sheikh’s voice. “What is it exactly?” Kamil asked.

  “They say a prophecy of some kind. If only I could read it,” Ismail Hodja added wistfully. “So close.” He sought Kamil’s eye. “If you find it, may I have the honor of seeing it?”

  “I don’t know, hodjam,” Kamil said reluctantly. “I promised Malik I would keep its existence secret and, if I locate it, to give it to Saba.”

  Ismail Hodja nodded, unable to hide his disappointment. “I understand. That’s admirable of you, Kamil. Perhaps Saba will allow me a glimpse.”

  “Of course, since you already know about it, it wouldn’t be breaking a confidence.”

  “No matter. What will you do now?”

  Kamil thought for a moment. “If you know about the Proof of God, then others must know about it too.”

  “Tantalizingly small fragments of copies made by the Chora monks have turned up in Europe. Some scholars know of these.”

  “Scholars aren’t usually thieves.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Ismail Hodja gave a self-deprecating smile. “But it’s certain they like to talk.”

  “How much do you think European dealers would pay for something like this?”

  Kamil saw a range of emotions chase across the old scholar’s face: thoughtfulness, a stunned realization, concern.

  He laid his long fingers on Kamil’s arm. “It’s not the dealers you should worry about. There are groups whose hunger for the Proof of God goes back hundreds of years, just like the Melisites. People who believe the Proof is the Ark of the Covenant or a rich treasure, or any number of ignorant legends. If their members heard it had been found, they’d stop at nothing to get it. They’d never sell it. It would simply disappear.”

  IN THE PHAETON on the way home, Kamil considered the remarkable story of the Proof of God. He reminded himself that, fascinating though it was, it might be nothing more than a story. His real concern was the plague of thefts that were endangering the tenuous peace in the streets of the empire and the deadline Nizam Pasha had given him. The riot in front of the Aya Sofya and the melee by the Kariye Mosque showed there could be worse to come. If the Proof of God helped him break the case, it was worth pursuing. If not, he would have to seek out more promising avenues. He had only five more days.

  He lit a cigarette. His mind felt sharp as a diamond, but multifaceted, as if on the stage of his thoughts, several plays were being acted out simultaneously.

  When he pulled up in his circular drive, he remained in the phaeton, staring at his house. The light of the lamps breathed in and out. A great sadness came to sit in his chest, crushing his breath. Sadness for Malik. For his father. For his mother, whose spirit he still caught out of the corner of his eye, in her bedroom, which was now his study, in the garden. He used to imagine her gentle voice in his head, but now he couldn’t remember what she sounded like. He sorrowed for a loss greater than he could explain.

  He looked down and saw Yakup’s concerned face.

  Yakup held up the lamp. “Bey?”

  Kamil climbed out of the phaeton, but found his sense of balance was distorted. He reluctantly accepted Yakup’s arm to get into the house, then staggered up the stairs to his bedroom. He disrobed and fell from the long succession of waking hours into sleep.

  18

  THE BLACKNESS WAS so thick he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or not. The leaden weight of his hands and tongue was gone. He was naked. He could feel the air caressing his skin, then a breath or a hand—he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was nothing. A dream. He dozed, then woke again. The darkness over him seemed thicker and his body had begun to glow in a slow, molten way, though it emitted no light. He felt it expand, first his chest and thighs, then his organ. His tongue swelled and thrust from his mouth. His back arched. His hands reached up to push against the blackness riding him and cupped two breasts, their nipples lying in his palms like pebbles. Kamil’s eyes tore open. He bucked, but the center of his body was no longer his. She had taken possession even of his voice, hoarse and strangled with lust until he brayed and lost consciousness. He remembered the nacreous gleam of a woman’s back stained by a long smudge like a feather.

  When he woke again, it was still dark. He got up to light a lamp. His sheets were wet. He touched them and sniffed his fingers. Too viscous to be sweat: an erotic dream. His mind cast back to his first memory of such helpless deliverance as a small boy, when he was little more than six or seven years old. His mother had taken him along to the hamam as she always did. But for the first time his childish eyes had registered the naked women stretched out on the bellystone, soaping and scrubbing each other’s breasts and backs, applying aghda to depilate the area between their thighs. A blazing line of lust and desire had unfurled itself from that moment to the present.

  He went to the washstand, filled the bowl with cold water, and cleansed himself, feeling strange
ly violated. In his dream, someone had used him like a tool, a vessel to be broken after use. Yet he wanted it again. He wanted her very badly, whoever she was. He shuddered. He had heard of incubi, male demons who sat on a woman’s chest while she slept and engaged in intercourse with her. If he believed in that sort of thing, he would suspect he had just been visited by a female incubus. It must be the Balat Balm, he decided.

  He dressed and went downstairs. Instinctively, he checked his orchids. They seemed to watch him with bemusement, craning their long necks. He stepped outside into the back garden, carefully closing the door behind him so there would be no drafts. The pebbles on the path had been raked after Malik’s departure and not been disturbed. What had he expected to find? Footprints?

  By the time he went back inside, Yakup had lit the oil lamps. The windows were black wells into which the light fell, echoing faintly in their depths. Everything seemed slightly off kilter.

  KAMIL STARED OUT of his office window, seeing nothing, his eyes focused inward. He had four days to break up the antiquity smuggling, and what had he accomplished so far? His friend and two, possibly three, policemen were dead. He knew that Amida had stolen the reliquary and was somehow involved, along with the thug Remzi and a brutal smuggling gang based in Charshamba, but Kamil had no proof of anything and now Remzi was gone. The marks found on bodies dumped in Fatih perhaps indicated a war between rival gangs. The mysterious Kubalou pulled strings somewhere in the background. Yet everyone Kamil met seemed obsessed by the battered reliquary they believed contained the Proof of God. Despite Ismail Hodja’s enthusiasm, Kamil thought it unlikely that the Proof of God proved anything at all, but someone had been willing to kill Malik for it. To Kamil, that proved the ungodliness of man, nothing more.

  He glanced at the files on his desk. In the past three days, a valuable, ancient Torah had been stolen, this time from the Ahrida Synagogue. This case was like a dog with ten tails. He had always liked the challenge of puzzles, the calm, exacting inevitability of logic winning over circumstance. What was the matter with him now?