Nights of Plague: A Novel

by Orhan Pamuk, Ekin Oklap

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

From the the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective story, part historical epic—a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire.

It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria—the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire—located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives—brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria—the island revolts. 

To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island—an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs. 

As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island’s governor and local administration and the people’s refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves. 

Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.

Release date: October 4, 2022

Publisher: Knopf

Print pages: 686

Sample

 

CHAPTER 1

In the year 1901, if a steamer with black coal-smoke pouring from its chimney were to sail south from Istanbul for four days until it passed the island of Rhodes, then continue south through dangerous, stormy waters toward Alexandria for another half day, its passengers would eventually come to see in the distance the delicate towers of Arkaz Castle upon the island of Mingheria. Due to Mingheria’s location on the route between Istanbul and Alexandria, the Castle’s enigmatic shadow and silhouette were gazed upon in awe and fascination by many a passing traveler. As soon as this magnificent image—which Homer described in the Iliad as “an emerald built of pink stone”—appeared on the horizon, ship captains of a finer spiritual disposition would invite their passengers on deck so that they could savor the views, and artists on their way to the East would avidly paint the romantic vista, adding black storm clouds for effect.

But few of these ships would stop at Mingheria, for in those days there were only three ferries that made regular weekly trips to the island: the Messageries Maritimes Saghalien (whose high-pitched whistle everyone in Arkaz recognized) and Equateur (with its deeper horn), and the Cretian company Pantaleon’s dainty vessel the Zeus (which only rarely sounded its horn, and always in brief bursts). So the fact that an unscheduled ferry was approaching the island of Mingheria two hours before midnight on the twenty-second of April 1901—the day our story begins—signaled that something unusual was afoot.

The ship with pointed bow and slender white chimneys closing in on the island from the north, stealthy as a spy vessel, and bearing the Ottoman flag, was the Aziziye. It had been tasked by Sultan Abdul Hamid II with transporting a distinguished Ottoman delegation from Istanbul on a special mission to China. To this delegation of seventeen fez-, turban-, and hat-clad religious scholars, army officers, translators, and bureaucrats, Abdul Hamid had added at the last moment his niece Princess Pakize, whose marriage he had recently arranged, and her husband, Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey. The joyous, eager, and slightly dazed newlyweds had not been able to fathom the reason for their inclusion in the delegation to China, and had puzzled over the matter at great length.

Princess Pakize—who, like her older sisters, was not fond of her uncle the Sultan—was sure that Abdul Hamid had meant her and her husband some kind of harm by putting them in the delegation, but she had not yet been able to work out what the reason might be. Some palace gossips had suggested that the Sultan’s intention must be to drive the newlyweds out of Istanbul and send them to die in yellow fever–infested Asian lands and cholera-ridden African deserts, while others pointed out that Abdul Hamid’s games tended to be revealed only once he had finished playing them. But Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey was more optimistic. An eminently successful and hardworking thirty-eight-year-old quarantine doctor, he had represented the Ottoman Empire at international public health conferences. His achievements had caught the Sultan’s attention, and when they had been introduced, Doctor Nuri had discovered what many quarantine doctors already knew: that the Sultan’s fascination with murder mysteries was matched by his interest in European medical advances. The Sultan wanted to keep up with developments concerning microbes, laboratories, and vaccinations and introduce the latest medical findings to Istanbul and across Ottoman lands. He was also concerned about the new infectious diseases that were making their way toward the West from Asia and China.

There was no wind in the Levant that night, so the Sultan’s Aziziye cruise ship was making swifter progress than expected. Earlier it had made a stop at the port of Smyrna, though no such stop had been declared in the official itinerary. As the ship had neared the misty Smyrna docks, one by one the committee’s delegates had climbed up the narrow stairwell that led to the captain’s quarters to request an explanation and had learned that a mysterious new passenger was to come on board. Even the captain (who was Russian) had claimed not to know who this passenger was.

The Aziziye’s mysterious passenger was the Ottoman Empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health and Sanitation, the renowned chemist and pharmacist Bonkowski Pasha. Tired but still sprightly at the age of sixty, Bonkowski Pasha was the Sultan’s Royal Chemist and the founder of modern Ottoman pharmacology. He was also a semisuccessful businessman who had once owned a number of different companies producing rosewater and perfumes, bottled mineral water, and pharmaceuticals. But for the past ten years he had worked exclusively as the Ottoman Empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health, sending the Sultan reports on cholera and plague outbreaks, as well as rushing from one outbreak to the next, from port to port and city to city, to oversee quarantine and public health provisions on behalf of the Sultan.

Chemist and pharmacist Bonkowski Pasha had often represented the Ottoman Empire at international quarantine conventions, and had written Sultan Abdul Hamid a treatise four years ago on the precautions that the Ottoman Empire should take against the plague pandemic that had begun in the East. He had also been specially appointed to combat the outbreak of plague in the Greek neighborhoods of Smyrna. After several cholera epidemics over the years, the new plague microbe from the East—whose infectivity (what medical experts termed “virulence”) had waxed and waned in time—had, alas, finally entered the Ottoman Empire too.

Bonkowski Pasha had taken six weeks to halt the outbreak of plague in Smyrna, the largest Ottoman port in the Levant. The local population had obeyed orders to stay indoors, respected sanitary cordons, and acquiesced to the various restrictions that had been introduced. They had also joined forces with the municipal authorities and the police to hunt down rats. Disinfection crews—composed mostly of firemen—had been deployed, the whole city soon reeking of the solution that issued from their spray pumps. The success of the Ottoman Quarantine Authority in Smyrna had been reported not just in the columns of local newspapers like the Harmony and the Amalthea, and in Istanbul dailies like the Voice of Truth and the Endeavor, but also in various French and British newspapers that had already been tracking this plague from the East from port to port; and so to the average European too, Bonkowski Pasha, born in Istanbul of Polish parentage, was an esteemed and well-known figure. The plague in Smyrna had been successfully curbed after just seventeen deaths; the port, the docks, the customhouses, the shops, and the markets had opened again, and in all the schools, classes had resumed once more.

The distinguished passengers of the Aziziye who watched through their cabin portholes and from the deck as the chemist pasha and his assistant boarded the ship were aware of this recent triumph in quarantine and public health policy. Five years ago, the former Royal Chemist had been conferred the honorific title of Pasha by Abdul Hamid himself. Today Stanislaw Bonkowski was wearing a raincoat whose color could not be discerned in the dark, and a jacket which accentuated his long neck and the light stoop of his shoulders, and he was carrying his ever-present gunpowder-gray briefcase that even his students from thirty years ago would have instantly recognized. His assistant, Doctor Ilias, was hauling the portable laboratory which enabled the chemist pasha to isolate cholera or plague bacteria and tell contaminated and potable water apart, which was also an excuse for him to taste and test every source of water in the Empire. Once on board, Bonkowski and his assistant immediately retired to their cabins without greeting any of the Aziziye’s curious passengers.

The two new passengers’ silence and guardedness only heightened the Guidance Committee delegates’ curiosity. What could be the purpose of all this secrecy? Why would the Sultan send the Ottoman Empire’s two foremost plague and epidemic disease experts (the second being Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Effendi) to China on the same ship? When it became apparent that Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant were not bound for China at all, but were due to disembark on the island of Mingheria on the way to Alexandria, the committee delegates were able to turn their attention back to the task at hand. Ahead of them now were three weeks in which to debate how best to explain Islam to the Muslims of China.

Prince Consort Doctor Nuri—the other quarantine expert on the Aziziye—found out from his wife that Bonkowski Pasha had boarded the ship in Smyrna and was due to disembark on Mingheria. The newlyweds were pleased to discover they had both met the amiable chemist pasha before. The Doctor and Prince Consort had recently attended the International Sanitary Conference in Venice with the Royal Chemist, who was more than twenty years his senior. Bonkowski Pasha had also been his chemistry professor when young Nuri was still a student at the Imperial School of Medicine, attending classes at the Demirkapı Garrison in Sirkeci. Like many of his fellow medical students, young Nuri had been captivated by the applied chemistry classes that Paris-trained Bonkowski Bey had taught in his laboratory, and by his lectures on organic and inorganic chemistry. The students had been enthralled by the professor’s jokes, by his wide-ranging Renaissance man’s curiosity, and by his easy command of the Turkish vernacular and of three other European languages which he spoke as fluently as his mother tongue. Stanislaw Bonkowski was the Istanbul-born son of one of the many Polish army officers who had gone into exile following defeat in their nation’s war against Russia and ended up joining the Ottoman army.

The Doctor and Prince Consort’s wife, Princess Pakize, gaily recounted her memories of Bonkowski from her childhood and youth. One summer eleven years ago, when her mother and the other women of the harem in the palace where she and her family were kept confined had been infected with a disease which had left them in the throes of a terrible fever, Sultan Abdul Hamid had declared that the outbreak must have been caused by a microbe and had sent his own Royal Chemist to the palace to collect samples. Another time, her uncle Abdul Hamid had sent Bonkowski Pasha to the Çırağan Palace to test the water Princess Pakize and her family drank every day. Abdul Hamid may have been holding his older brother the former sultan Murad V captive in the Çırağan Palace, watching his every move, but whenever anyone fell ill, he would always send his best doctors. As a child, the Princess had often seen the black-bearded Greek doctor Marko Pasha, who had been Royal Physician to her father’s uncle the assassinated sultan Abdülaziz, in the palace and inside the rooms of the harem, as well as Abdul Hamid’s own Royal Physician Mavroyeni Pasha.

“I saw Bonkowski Pasha again at the Yıldız Palace many years later,” said the Princess. “He was inspecting the palace’s water supplies and preparing a new report. But by then he could only smile at me and my sisters from a distance. It would not have been proper for him to play little jokes on us or tell us funny stories as he used to do when we were children.”

The Doctor and Prince Consort’s memories of the Sultan’s Royal Chemist were more official in nature. The diligence and experience he had displayed at the Venice Conference where they had jointly represented the Ottoman Empire had earned him the Royal Chemist’s respect. It might even have been Bonkowski Pasha himself, as the Doctor and Prince Consort excitedly told his wife, Princess Pakize, that first brought his abilities as quarantine doctor to Sultan Abdul Hamid’s attention, for his path had crossed the chemist and pharmacist pasha’s not just in medical school but also after he had graduated. Once, at the request of the Mayor of Beyoğlu, Eduard Blacque Bey, they had reviewed the sanitary conditions of Istanbul’s roadside abattoirs together. On another occasion, he and a few other students and doctors had gone to Lake Terkos where Bonkowski was preparing a report on the lake’s topographical and geological features and a microscopic analysis of its waters, and once again he had been impressed by Bonkowski’s intelligence, dedication, and discipline. Filled with the excitement and warmth of these recollections, the newlyweds were eager now to meet the chemist and Chief Inspector of Public Health again.

CHAPTER 2

The Doctor and Prince Consort sent a cabin boy with a note for Bonkowski Pasha. Later the captain hosted them all for dinner in what was known as the guest hall. This dinner, where no alcohol was served, was also attended by Princess Pakize, who had hitherto stayed out of sight of the mullahs on the ship and taken all her meals in her cabin. We should note that in those days it was still very rare for a woman to sit at the same table as men, even if she happened to be a princess. But today we know everything about this historic dinner thanks to Princess Pakize, who later wrote her sister a letter in which she described all that she saw and heard that night from her seat at the end of the table.

Bonkowski Pasha had a pale face, a small nose, and large blue eyes that no one who met him ever forgot. When he saw the Doctor and Prince Consort, he immediately embraced his former student. He then turned to Princess Pakize with an elaborate bow, greeting her as he would a princess in some European palace, though he was careful not to touch her bare hand lest he should embarrass her.

The Royal Chemist, who nurtured a particular interest in the intricacies of European etiquette, was wearing the insignia of the Order of Saint Stanislas, Second Class, which he had received from the latest Russian czar, and his Ottoman-issue gold Imtiaz Medal, which he was also particularly fond of.

“Most esteemed professor,” began the Doctor and Prince Consort, “allow me to express my deepest admiration for the prodigious triumph you have achieved in Smyrna.”

Ever since the newspapers had begun to report that the epidemic in Smyrna was dying down, Bonkowski Pasha had perfected a modest smile with which he received these kinds of compliments. “I should congratulate you!” he responded now, peering into Doctor Nuri’s eyes. Although he recognized that he was not being congratulated as a former student who had been working for years in the Quarantine Authority of the Hejaz (the Muslim holy land), but as someone who had married a princess, a member of the Ottoman dynasty, and a sultan’s daughter, Doctor Nuri smiled anyway. Abdul Hamid had arranged for him to marry his niece because he was a brilliant and accomplished doctor; following this match, Doctor Nuri’s brilliance and his accomplishments had largely been forgotten, and people were now far likelier to remember his status as husband to the Princess.

Nevertheless Prince Consort Doctor Nuri had quickly adjusted to this new state of affairs. He was so happy with his wife that he could not even feel resentful. Besides, he idolized his old professor Bonkowski Pasha, who was—to use two words that had recently entered the Turkish language from French and become extremely popular with the Ottoman intellectual elites—as “disciplined” and “methodical” as the Europeans. He decided to say something to flatter him:

“Your victory over the plague in Smyrna has shown the world the true might of the Ottoman Quarantine Authority!” he began. “You have delivered a fitting riposte to those who would call the Ottoman Empire a ‘sick man.’ We may have yet to eradicate cholera, but there has not been a serious outbreak of plague in Ottoman lands in eighty years. They used to say, ‘The dividing line of civilization that sets Europe and the Ottomans two hundred years apart is not the Danube, but the plague!’ But now, thanks to you, that line has disappeared, at least in the fields of medicine and quarantine studies.”

“Alas, the plague has now been detected on the island of Mingheria,” said Bonkowski Pasha. “And with exceptional virulence too.”

“Really?”

“The plague has spread to Mingheria’s Muslim neighborhoods, my dear Pasha. You have been absorbed by wedding preparations, of course, so it is only natural that you should not have been aware, and that you should marvel at the news, for they are keeping it secret. I regret that I was not able to attend your wedding celebrations; I was in Smyrna!”

“I have been following the effects of the epidemic in Hong Kong and Bombay, and reading the latest reports.”

“The situation is much graver than what is being written,” said Bonkowski Pasha with an air of authority. “It is the same microbe, the same strain that has killed thousands in India and China, and it is the one we saw in Smyrna too.”

“Yet the Indian populace is being decimated…while in Smyrna you beat the disease.”

“The people of Smyrna and their newspapers were a great help in that!” said Bonkowski Pasha, then paused for a moment, as if to signal that he was about to say something important. “In Smyrna, the disease affected the Greek neighborhoods,” he continued, “and the people of Smyrna are known for their culture and civility. On the island of Mingheria, the outbreak has mostly affected the Muslim areas, and already fifteen people have died! Our task there will be rather more onerous.”

Doctor Nuri knew from experience that when it came to respecting quarantine measures, Muslims were harder to persuade than Christians, but he had also grown exasperated of hearing these truths exaggerated by Christian experts like Bonkowski Pasha. He decided not to argue. But the silence lengthened, so for the sake of breaking it, he turned to the Princess and the captain and said: “This is the eternal debate, of course!”

“You must be familiar with the story of what happened to poor Doctor Jean-Pierre!” said Bonkowski Pasha with the smiling mien of a jovial schoolteacher. “I have been told repeatedly by the palace and by Governor Sami Pasha that His Highness the Sultan regards claims of a plague outbreak in Mingheria as a political trap, and that I must therefore keep hidden from all the true purpose of my visit to the island. I have known the island’s governor Sami Pasha for a very long time, of course, ever since his earlier postings to other provinces and districts!”

“Fifteen deaths are a significant number for a small island!” said Doctor Nuri.

“I have been forbidden to speak even with you on this subject, Your Excellency!” said Bonkowski Pasha, gesturing humorously toward the end of the table—as if to say “Beware the spy in our midst!”—at Princess Pakize. Then, as he used to do when the royal family’s westernized princesses were still little girls whom he would meet at the theater in the Yıldız Palace, or observe from afar during the various ceremonies that marked Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit, he addressed the Princess with the playful air of a friendly uncle.

“It is the first time in my life that I have seen the daughter of a sultan, a princess, being allowed to travel beyond Istanbul!” he said with a show of incredulity. “Such freedom bestowed upon its women must be a sign that the Ottoman Empire is Europeanizing!”

Those who shall read, once we have published them, Princess Pakize’s letters from this time will see that she had intuited the “ironic,” perhaps even derisory, tone in which these words had been uttered. Like her father Murad V, Princess Pakize was an intelligent and sensitive person. “In truth, Excellency, I would have rather gone to Venice than China,” she told the Royal Chemist, and thus the conversation turned to the city of Venice, where the two men had attended international public health conferences. “Is it true what they say, sir—that in Venice one travels from one waterside mansion to the next by boat, just as we do along the Bosphorus, and that these boats can sail all the way into one’s home?” asked Princess Pakize. From there the discussion moved to the speed and power and comfortable cabins of the Aziziye. Thirty years and two sultans ago, Sultan Abdülaziz (for whom the ship was named) had spent enormous sums on strengthening the Ottoman navy—unlike his nephew today—and having thus thrust the state into debt, he had then ordered the construction of this extravagant ship for his own use. The gilded, mahogany-paneled Sultan’s Cabin—its walls covered in framed paintings and mirrors—was a replica of the Sultan’s Cabin in the battleship Mahmudiye.Their Russian captain explained the ship’s superior specifications: capable of carrying as many as one hundred and fifty passengers, it could reach a maximum speed of up to fourteen miles per hour, but unfortunately the Sultan had not had the time in many years for even a Bosphorus cruise with his Aziziye. The truth was that Sultan Abdul Hamid feared an attempt on his life and thus took especial care to avoid ships and boats, but although everybody at the table knew this, they discreetly avoided the subject.

The captain mentioned that it would be only another six hours before they reached Mingheria, and Bonkowski Pasha asked the Doctor and Prince Consort whether he had ever been to the island before.

“I have not, for there have never been outbreaks of cholera or yellow fever or other infectious diseases there,” Doctor Nuri replied.

“I have not been either, regrettably,” said Bonkowski Pasha. “But I have researched it extensively. Pliny described in great detail in his Naturalis historia the island’s utterly distinctive vegetation, its flora, its trees and flowers, and its steep volcanic peak, as well as the rocky coves that line its northern shore. Even its climate is unique. Many years ago I prepared a report for your esteemed uncle, His Highness the Sultan, on the prospects for rose cultivation there—in this place I have never before had a chance to visit!”

“What happened then, Your Excellency?” asked Princess Pakize.

Bonkowski Pasha gave a rueful, pensive smile. Princess Pakize silently concluded that even the Royal Chemist must at one point have suffered the consequences of the apprehensive sultan’s fears and castigations, and proceeded to ask the question she and her husband had already so often discussed: Could it really be a coincidence that the Ottoman Empire’s two most renowned quarantine specialists had happened to meet one night in the Sultan’s private passenger ship as it sailed through the waters off Crete?

“I assure you that it is indeed a coincidence!” said Bonkowski Pasha. “Nobody, not even the Governor of Smyrna, Kâmil Pasha of Cyprus, knew that the nearest ship heading in the direction of the island would be the Aziziye. I would of course have liked to come with you to explain to the Muslims of China why it is essential that they should obey quarantine rules and other modern conditions and restrictions. To accept quarantine is to accept westernization, and the farther east one travels, the more tortuous the matter becomes. But our Princess must not lose heart. I promise you that there are canals in China too, just like in Venice, and indeed far-larger and longer ones, and graceful little boats that can sail all the way into people’s homes and mansions, just as we see upon the Bosphorus.”

The newlyweds’ admiration for the chemist pasha only grew to hear that he was as knowledgeable about China as he was about Mingheria, despite having been to neither. But the dinner did not last for much longer, and at its conclusion, husband and wife returned to their cabin, which, with its French and Italian coffee tables, clocks, mirrors, and lamps, resembled a room in a royal palace.

“I fear that something has upset you,” said Princess Pakize. “I can see it in your face.”

Doctor Nuri had perceived a note of derision in the way Bonkowski Pasha had kept addressing him as “Pasha” that evening. As tradition dictated, Abdul Hamid had made him a pasha as soon as he had married the Princess, but Doctor Nuri had hitherto been able to avoid using the title. Hearing older, high-ranking, influential men—actual pashas, in other words—calling him “Pasha” flustered Doctor Nuri, who felt he did not really deserve the honorific. But they soon agreed that Bonkowski Pasha was not the kind of person who would make that sort of mean-spirited insinuation, and quickly forgot all about the matter.

Princess Pakize and Doctor Nuri had been married for thirty days now. For many years they had both dreamed of finding a suitable partner to marry, but had long given up hope that they would ever meet the right person. Only two months had elapsed between the day when Abdul Hamid, following a moment of sudden inspiration, had arranged for them to be introduced and the day of their wedding, and if they were quite so happy, the reason was evidently that they had both found so much more pleasure in lovemaking and sexuality than either of them had expected. Ever since they had set sail from Istanbul, they had spent most of their time in bed inside their cabin, and neither of them had ever thought there was anything unusual about this.

They woke up before dawn the next day when the sound of the ship, not unlike a wail, began to die down. Outside, it was still completely dark. In its approach to Arkaz, Mingheria’s largest city and administrative capital, the Aziziye had followed the ridge of the tall, sharp Eldost Mountains that stretched from the north to the south of the island, and once the Arab Lighthouse’s pale beam had become visible to the naked eye, the ship had veered west toward the port. There was a large moon in the sky and a silver shimmer over the water, so from their cabins the passengers could now see, like a phantom rising in the darkness behind Arkaz Castle, the shape of the White Mountain, considered to be the most mysterious among the various volcanic peaks that populated the Mediterranean Sea.

When Princess Pakize spotted the sharp spires of the majestic Arkaz Castle, they climbed on deck for a better view of the scene in the moonlight. The air was humid but mild. A pleasant scent of iodine, kelp, and almonds came from the sea. Like many small seaside towns across the Ottoman Empire, Arkaz did not have a large jetty and dock, so the captain put the engines in reverse in the waters off the Castle and began to wait.

There followed a strange and heavy silence. Husband and wife shivered in the thrall of the resplendent realm before them. The inscrutable landscape, the mountains, the silence beneath the moonlight, were imbued with a wondrous intensity. It felt as if beyond the silver glow of the moon there were another source of light that had bewitched them and that they must search for. For a time the newlyweds observed the glorious, shimmering view as if it were the true source of their wedded bliss. In the darkness ahead they saw the lantern of an approaching rowing boat, and the slow, deliberate motions of its boatmen. Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant materialized at the top of the stairway on the lower deck. They seemed to be standing very far away, as in a dream. The large black rowboat the Governor had sent pulled up to the Aziziye. They heard footsteps and the sound of people speaking in Greek and Mingherian. The rowing boat took Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant on board and vanished back into the darkness.

The newlyweds and a few other passengers in the captain’s quarters and on the deck stood for a long time looking out at the view of Arkaz Castle and of Mingheria’s spectacular mountains, which had inspired so many Romantic travel writers and seemed to belong in the pages of a fairy tale. Had the passengers of the Aziziye looked more closely at the southwestern bastions of the Castle, they would have seen the light of a torch burning inside a window. Parts of the stone-built Castle complex dated from the era of the Crusades, others from periods of Venetian, Byzantine, Arab, and Ottoman rule, and for centuries, one section had been employed as a prison. Now, in an empty cell two floors beneath the room where that torch was burning, a guard—or, in the modern parlance, a “warden”—named Bayram Effendi, a prominent figure in those parts of the great Castle, was fighting for his life.