The Blue Hour

Chapter 30: Hamid

Hamid paced Reshid's study like a caged animal, back and forth, from the door to the bay windows, smoking and forever listening for Reshid to return from Stamboul. Smoking and waiting. For what? Reshid would return, and then what? He snorted and, for the hundredth time that morning, came to a halt by the latticed window.

He put his hand to the cold glass and instantly, his anxiety was drowned by a wave of excitement. He was here, alone in this house, watching the world go about its business right outside his window.

The view was magnificent. The bay windows sat at the sloping intersection of two impossibly cramped streets. As his eye swept over the sea and the rooftops, and as he watched the comings and goings of the many ships which loaded or unloaded foreign goods in the harbour, he thought of what Reshid had taught him about Galata.

When his forefather conquered Constantinople, the Genoese sea-faring, trading colony of Galata collapsed, but the Italian character of the neighbourhood, and the Italian sounding street names, remained. There were monasteries, gothic churches, a myriad of stepped alleys, and overlooking it all, on a hill about an hour's climb from the harbour, stood Galata Tower.

Indeed, the neighbourhood was the fortified, Italian, mediaeval town, Hamid had imagined, with castles and walls and houses built in stone. The Ottomans don't engage in trade, Reshid had explained in his teaching voice. They outsource the business to Europeans, and tax it, exports like imports, and it all comes through Galata harbour. Abstract lessons. Seeing it happen before his eyes, gave Reshid's words meaning.

Agitated, Hamid resumed his pacing. If only Reshid would return.

Yesterday, he had been relieved to be left alone when Reshid rushed to deliver Peresto's message to Midhat Pasha. He had been physically and morally exhausted, his mind spinning with everything he had thought and felt during the long night, unable to fix his thought on any one thing.

By the next morning, when Reshid had not yet returned, he was filled with trepidation. His anxious mind was taken up by several lines of unclear thoughts at once. Why did Reshid not return? Had he been apprehended? Or betrayed him to the Sultan? He told himself if he had, guards would have come to arrest him already. Mostly, he thought about the coup against the Sultan. Peresto assumed Midhat Pasha and Huseyin Avni were ready to act. What if they weren't? His heart sank.

There were only two possible paths: either the Sultan tracked him down before the coup and accused him of treason, or the coup happened, failed, and he was accused of treason. The third path, that the coup might succeed, was so slim it was not worth considering.

His compulsive mind imagined in graphical detail all the different ways in which he might be killed. There were also the equally terrifying thoughts that concerned the precious time he had left. What should I do, he asked himself over and over, and found no answer, because in reality there was nothing he could do other than smoke and pace the floor in Reshid's study, and wait. Like he had always waited, too scared to do anything.

A couple of times, when the front door opened and closed, he held his breath and listened.

Minutes and hours passed, the sense of urgency became unbearable. He had to do something. What?

He pressed down the door handle and to his surprise, the door yielded; it opened on silent hinges. In the palace, the doors were controlled by eunuchs. Here, he had used the strength of his own hand. One second, he was in the library, and the next, he had stepped into the hallway. There, he turned left, down the narrow stairs, tip-toeing so as not to make a noise. When he recognised the front door through which he had entered the house, he crossed the floor with faster and surer steps.