Inspired by true events, 'The Blue Hour' is a story of political intrigue and doomed love set in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire during the summer of 1876. All Prince Hamid and the Belgian glove-maker, Flora Cordier, want is to pursue their for...
There seemed to be no centre to Flora's feelings; little questions without answers all tangled together into a messy yarn. If only she had accepted William's proposal straight away, maybe things would be different. Not to seem overly eager, she had asked for time to think, even though her mind was made up and the note lay prepared on the dresser upstairs. She would visit him this evening, she had decided. But why wait? Perhaps she should just close the shop and take a cab straight away.
Two men entered the shop, habitués who dropped in almost daily for a brief chat and a glass of sherry. Flora left Mme Giraud to greet them from behind the counter. Enclosed in a sort of translucent tunnel, their voices reached her only faintly.
The men, like all her customers, represented some of the complexities of Ottoman society. Salim Shalmaneser was an Ottoman real-estate tycoon from Beirut. He was Maronite. Francois Alléon was French, but second generation to run the family business out of Constantinople, and Catholic. When they first met, she had thought Salim was Muslim, but Maronites, he told her, were Christians. As were the Protestants, the Orthodox, the Armenians, Assyrian, Monophysites of Syria and Egypt, Bogomils of Bulgaria, and others. It was mind boggling. She had no idea the world was so diverse.
During her first year in Constantinople, Salim explained the empire to her. In Pera, Christians were in majority, but the empire was Muslim. Even among the Muslim there were varieties, Sunni, Shiite, Sufi. Then there were the Jews and the Gipsies and countless nomadic tribes, both Christian and Muslim. The Ottomans had conquered vast lands, but never demanded conversions to their faith. They had not insisted on their language. They had not demanded other people to be or live like them. In the conquered lands, they organised people in millets according to faith. The millets ran their own affairs, as long as they paid taxes and kept the peace. In conflicts involving Muslims, Islamic law based on the Quran prevailed.
As if that was not enough diversity, there were countless languages, almost as many calendars, costumes and traditions. Salim gifted her with an Ottoman almanack. It was written in Turkish, Arabic, Bulgarian, French, Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew, each with a different date because here, Salim explained, everyone recorded time in their own way.
And each organised their weeks according to their own tradition: on Fridays Muslim closed their shops to pray, on Saturdays Jews visited the synagogues, on Sundays most Christians went to church, on Thursdays the Ottoman which was modelled on the French bureaucracy closed French style. Delighted, she hung the calendar on the wall behind the counter. The more she learnt about the empire, the more she started to pay attention to details, and the more she saw, the more fascinating her new world became.
Salim and Francois, engrossed in their usual debate about the empire's fate, barely noticed Flora's distant expression. The impending collapse, a topic that had been discussed over a century, seemed to permeate every conversation in Constantinople. Everyone disagreed on the facts, on the source of the problem, the solutions, and on the impact of it all on business. Yet, despite the countless predictions and disagreements, life in the city continued, with the end always looming but never quite arriving. The end was near and inevitable, yet distant and dreamy, a slippery slope leading nowhere. And as such, a limitless source of argument.
Flora listened absentmindedly while her fingers brushed over the soft walnut of the counter. It soothed her. She had selected the planks herself, the scars and scratches, she knew them by heart. Her life comprised pain and suffering, but also the satisfaction of having built something from nothing. Now, she would marry William, she reminded herself. A girl like her could not dream of more.
She exhaled, then inhaled sharply. Through the display window, she saw a woman cross the street, under the pink umbrella, soft blond curls bounced off her shoulders: William's sister, Jane, arm in arm with another woman, a stranger. Flora felt something in her expression change, and the direction of her thoughts shifted. Suddenly, her shop felt very cramped, making it hard to breathe. Even through the display window, she sensed Jane's quiet disapproval. She felt it in her bones. Jane didn't like her.
At the counter, Salim and Francois ordered sherry. Anoush poured. In a daze, Flora smiled. Her distracted mind drifted back to Jane. William wanted to marry her, how was that her fault?
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I think that the embedded Ottoman calendar perfectly showcases the diversity of the empire. The calendar is from 1911 but I image Flora's calendar would have looked much the same.
The empire used the lunar-based Islamic calendar (Hijri calendar) for religious purposes and the solar-based Rumi calendar for civil and fiscal purposes. The Rumi calendar was a modified version of the Julian calendar, with months and days corresponding closely to the Gregorian calendar. It was introduced by Hamid's father, Sultan Abdülmecid I in 1839 as part of modernising reforms.
