Agamemnon's Daughter (11 page)

Carriers of the evil eye would no longer be sentenced to death, as they were in the past; they would only be prevented from perpetrating any more of their wicked deeds. That aim would be achieved by depriving them of the tool of their crimes — that is to say, of their evil eyes.

So the
qorrfirman
stated that anyone convicted of possessing maleficent ocular powers would forfeit his or her eyes.

People affected by this measure would receive compensation from the state, with a higher sum going to afflicted individuals who turned themselves in to the authorities.
Disoculation
(the first time the term had been used in an official document), that is to say, the forcible putting out of eyes, would be inflicted without compensation upon all persons who opposed the Blinding Order by whatever means, or tried to hide from it or to escape its application.

The call went out to all subjects of the age-old Empire to denounce either openly or anonymously any individual who possessed the power. They should put at the foot of their letters the full name and exact address or place of work of the accused. Denunciations could be made of persons of all kinds, be they ordinary citizens or civil servants, whatever their rank in the hierarchy of the state. That last sentence left many people gazing dreamily into space, as if they’d just been staring at an invisible speck on the far horizon.

Shortly after the introduction of newspapers, it became readily apparent that some kinds of government announcements were more effectively disseminated by the traditional channels of communication, namely town criers, whereas others had much more impact through the medium of print. This variation was of course related to the nature of the announcement and whether its audience was to be found primarily among the illiterate masses or among the elite.

Whether spread by ear or by eye, however, the
qorrfirman
aroused instant horror. But it could only be grasped fully if ear and eye worked together to transmit its meaning to the brain. Perhaps that was the reason why people who first heard it proclaimed by a town crier rushed to buy the newspaper in order to read it, while people who first learned of it in the press left their papers on cafe tables or public benches to hasten to the nearest square to await the crier’s arrival.

An old feeling, which people had perhaps forgotten about in recent years, suddenly began to seep back into the atmosphere. The feeling was fear. But this time it was no ordinary fear, like being afraid of sickness, robbery, ghosts, or death. No, what had returned was an ice-cold, impersonal, and baffling emotion called fear of the state. Bearing as it were a great emptiness in its heart, the fear of the state found its way into every recess of the mind. In the course of a few hours, days at most, hundreds of thousands of people would be caught up in its cogs and wheels. Something similar had happened six years previously, when there had been a campaign against forbidden sects (the latter had nonetheless managed to reemerge since then). An even earlier precedent came from fifteen years before, when they’d unraveled a huge plot, which at first appeared to involve only a narrow circle of high officials but which came by stages to wreak its horror on many thousands of households.

People’s natural inclination to erase collective misfortunes from memory made them forget — or believe they had forgotten — the peculiar atmosphere that arises just prior to a major outbreak of terror. Between the first hint of the threat and the first blow struck, in the time when the hope that the horror will not truly come, that evil might be thwarted and the nightmare extinguished, people are suspended in a state of paralysis, deafness, and blankness that, far from placating terror, only serves to aggravate it.

They thought they had forgotten, but as soon as the drums rolled and the criers bawled out the first words of the Blinding Order, they realized they hadn’t forgotten a thing, that it had stayed inside them all the while, carefully hidden like poison in the hollowed-out cavity of a ring. As in times past, before their minds had quite caught up with what was really going on, their mouths went dry and gave them a foretaste of what was to come.

It was clear from the start that what was now being put into place would be even more abominable than the campaign against forbidden sects and all previous episodes of the sort. That was because the new campaign’s target was something so abstract it could never be quite pinned down. All the same, everyone grasped the impact it was bound to have. Even when the ax had been supposed to fall only on specific circles, as in the case of the campaign against the sects, or on isolated officials, as in the affair of the anti-state conspiracy, everyone, and all their relatives too, had felt its effect. This time, though, given that the issue related to something as manifestly indefinable as the maleficent or beneficent quality of a person’s glance, and insofar as said quality pertained to something as universal as eyes (everybody had eyes, nobody could claim exemption on grounds of not being concerned), this time people were sure that the new campaign would be of unprecedented scope and violence. It was obvious that the vicious whirlwind would flush out every single suspect and whisk every last one of them off, without mercy, to their fatal punishment.

In homes, offices, and cafes, people spoke of nothing else from early Saturday morning. But just the way things had happened during previous campaigns, this time, too, people talked about the Blinding Order in a manner completely at odds with the dark foreboding that it aroused in their souls. They treated it in an offhand, almost entertaining way. Apparently, people thought that as far as their personal relations were concerned, lightheartedness was the best way to ward off the least suspicion that might have lurked in their own hearts or in others’ that the order might be directed against them as individuals in any way whatsoever. All the same, in the midst of conversations and laughter, a moment would come when eyes would meet and glances freeze into razor-sharp shards of ice. It was the fatal moment when each speaker tried to fathom his interlocutor’s mind: Does he really think I have
that kind
of eyes?

These tense interludes would last barely two or three seconds. One speaker or the other would relax his stare, and then laughter and chatter would resume with even greater jollity. The discussions mostly focused on the same issue, an issue most people pretended not to take to heart on their own account. Just what
were
evil eyes? Was there a reliable way of identifying them?

There was a wide variety of opinion on the matter. People referred to the traditional view that the evil eye was to be found typically among light-colored irises and rather less among darker hues, but everyone was also aware that eye color was not itself a sufficient means of diagnosing
misophthalmia,
especially as the problem arose in a multinational empire where some ethnic groups had eyes — as well as hair and skin — that were more or less dark than others. No, hue was certainly not an adequate criterion, it was just one factor among many others, like squints, or the unusually large or small size of the eyeballs, which could similarly not be considered determining factors. There could be no doubt about it: no single trait, nor any particular combination of them in an individual pair of eyes, offered definite proof of the presence of
misophthalmia.
No, it was something else, something different . . . A peculiar combination of the intrinsic nature of the eye and of the trace its glance left in surrounding space . . . Of course, it was rather hard to detect, especially because the order mentioned no specific sign that might be of use in the matter. But if the order itself did not stoop to such minutiae, the special commissions that had been set up in more or less every locality must obviously have been given instructions and precise directions in order to identify this maleficent force and to ward off erroneous interpretations and possible abuses.

At that point in the conversation, people usually stifled an anxious sigh and turned back to lively, light-hearted topics.

That’s how it was in office chatter, in cafes infested with informers, or even in homes when visitors were present. But when people found themselves alone, they would rush to wherever they could find a mirror and stand there for minutes on end. People with dark eyes tried to convince themselves that their pupils were sufficiently dark to clear them of all suspicion. People with light-colored eyes tried to convince themselves of the opposite. But the people who stared longest at the mirror were those with squints, or eyes reddened by an allergy, or by high blood pressure, or by some other ocular irritation, as well as people with eyes bleary from jaundice, bloated from toothache or drink, down to people who suffered from a cataract.

Apart from those who were already blind, nobody could be quite sure he was exempt from the order. As everyone soon realized, that was the source of the
qorrfirrnan’s
mortal power.

Although some people told themselves they could keep the evil at bay by putting on a happy face and joking about the matter at every opportunity, others began to withdraw quietly from public life in the hope they would be forgotten. They shut themselves up at home, often staying in bed with their heads under the blanket, as they made mental lists of their personal enemies, or of all the people who envied them their jobs in the civil service and who might take advantage of the situation to make some critical remark about them. Among the latter, some tried to get ahead of the game by denouncing their enemies first, hoping that even if they didn’t manage to destroy them in time, they would at least undermine the force of denunciations yet to come.

Meanwhile, as rumors and gossip about the new order reached their peak, steps were no doubt already being taken, admittedly behind a veil of secrecy: the first denunciations must have been made, and the first lists of suspects based on those denunciations must have been in the process of being compiled. A central commission had now been set up and entrusted with the task of directing the campaign. It was provided with myriad branches in every province of the empire. Shortly thereafter, strange new locales sprang up under a name even more bizarre, composed of the Ottoman term
qorr
prefixed to a word borrowed for God knows what reason from the cursed language of the
giaours:
the new bureaus were called
qorroffices.

People gathered in knots in front of the freshly painted signboards and even though the word
qorroffice
was most often glossed underneath as “Blinding Bureau” in smaller lettering and in parentheses, passersby almost always asked: What are these
offices?
And what are they for?

What were they for? That was only too obvious! Are you living on the moon? Didn’t you hear about the latest order handed down by our great sultan, may Allah grant him long life . . .

Even so, the precise function of the
qorroffices
was not made clear right away. Some thought their only function would be to collect denunciations and to pass them on to higher authority; but others — who grasped the fact as soon as they saw deliveries of high-sided cots equipped with straps on their side bars, reminiscent of the gurneys used in hospital operating theaters — easily guessed that the
qorroffices
would be the very places where eyes would be put out. But in due course, especially at the height of the campaign, the nature of the
qorroffices
and their true purpose were made entirely plain. Apart from the fact that the offices collected the denunciations, which every subject of the empire could deliver by hand (even though the address of the central commission was widely publicized), these locales were all equipped with an official iron blinding bed, called the
qorryatak.
However, this piece of equipment was mostly symbolic. In practice the act of blinding was most often carried out elsewhere, except when it turned out to offer an opportunity to teach this or that area or neighborhood or street a much-needed lesson.

As could be verified over the following weeks, the
qorroffices
were used less for collecting denunciations or for putting out eyes than for something quite different, throughout the entire campaign. Contrary to initial impressions, these locales, though as sinister and desolate as their name implied, became noisy and excitable gathering-places. People went there to find out how the campaign was proceeding, to get information on various details of the order or on the latest instructions from the central commission, to swap news about so-and-so who, after much shilly-shallying, had finally decided to turn himself in to have his eyes put out while singing the sovereign’s praises, and so on.

Some people actually enjoyed spending part of their time in the
qorroffices.
They even brought along the cup of coffee they’d picked up from the corner cafe to drink it there; others, mostly youngsters, played messenger, taking away letters and coming back with envelopes or instruction sheets issued by God knows who; and there were even some who indulged themselves in speechifying, describing in sonorous tones and with a strange light in their eyes all the benefits that would flow from the
qorrfirman,
as a result of which the world, finally cleansed of the evil eye and saved from the dreadful effect of its evil power, would be a finer, more splendid place.

The almost festive atmosphere in the
qorroffices
was occasionally interrupted by the sudden entrance of a group of panting, cursing men dragging a carrier of the evil eye who had been caught in the act, or some other poor fellow convicted of having slighted the royal order.

However, despite the fact that the
qorrofftces
had lost their sinister appearance and become more like public places, everyone agreed that it would not be at all easy to implement the Blinding Order. The central commission had issued a directive listing five acceptable ways of putting out eyes: the Byzantino-Venetian method (an iron bar forking into two sharpened tips); the Tibetan method (which involved piling heavy stones on the convict’s chest until his eyes popped out of their sockets); the local method (using acid); the Romano-Carthaginian method (sudden exposure to a bright light); and the European method (protracted incarceration in total darkness).