The Abyssinian Proof (20 page)

A
S
K
AMIL RODE
through Fatih toward the Galata Bridge, he wondered why, after two nights with little or no sleep, he felt so energetic. Colors assaulted him from the drab streets, from women’s patterned trousers, their bright sweaters and head-scarves, as they sat on doorsteps and pavements knitting and talking. Laundry stretched between the houses above his head snapped like spinnakers. He thought he heard whispers from behind the latticed windows, a susurration of speech like receding waves. It was disturbing and exhilarating. Ahead, red-and blue-painted ships, boats, and ferries traced criss-crossing wakes across the broad triangle of water where the Golden Horn joined the Bosphorus and emptied into the Sea of Marmara.

He crossed the bridge at Karaköy, then turned onto the shore road. Here, the buildings were substantial, made of stone: the stock exchange, banks, the customs house, the armory, Foundouklou Mosque with its enormous green leather curtains at the door and an ornate public fountain. To his right, the Bosphorus was a deep turquoise, the color of the rarest Iznik bowls. Light chased across the surface like children at play. Kamil almost felt happy despite the tragic events of the day.

I
SMAIL
H
ODJA’S WHITE
beard was neatly trimmed and his robe and white turban were spotless. Kamil looked down with distress at his own cuffs, discolored with blood and grime from his unpleasant task in the hamam. But the distress lifted again and Kamil felt buoyed, his mood a cork bobbing easily to the surface. He was disturbed by this feeling, unmoored. He wished to be sad. Anything else was disrespectful to his friend.

The Sufi sheikh led Kamil into his study. While Kamil filled Ismail Hodja in on the events of the previous two days, the sheikh’s driver, Jemal, brought them glasses of tea on a tray so dainty it was almost lost in his large hands. Kamil had always wondered about Ismail Hodja’s aversion to servants. He lived in a house farther up the Bosphorus and during the day came to these rooms in a dervish lodge high on a hill over Beshiktash to work and meet with his disciples. In neither place had Kamil seen a large staff, although the rooms were always tidy. Most people of his class had several dozen servants. Instead, Jemal seemed to take care of everything. It wouldn’t be a matter of money, Ismail Hodja came from a wealthy family. Kamil supposed he simply preferred to live alone.

Ismail Hodja sat beside Kamil on the low divan. He leaned forward and looked at him thoughtfully.

“You don’t look well, Kamil.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your face is flushed and there’s an unusual brilliance about your eyes. Do you have a fever?” he asked with concern.

Kamil wondered whether he should tell him about the hallucinations in the mosque, but he felt too weary to add yet another story to the day. In any case, he felt certain these effects were due to Courtidis’s balm and planned to ask the surgeon about them. The experience was interesting and not entirely unpleasant, but it wasn’t something he wished to discuss with Ismail Hodja. The feeling would pass. He was puzzled, though, by the duration of the balm’s effects. He had thought earlier that they had worn off, and was surprised to find himself again affected. He wondered briefly about the lady’s navels Saba had given him, but dismissed the idea.

“I’m just tired, but thank you for asking. I was wondering if you knew anything about a sect called the Melisites.”

“They’ve been around for four hundred years or so. The sect was founded right after the Conquest. How did you know about it? Not many people do,” Ismail Hodja asked curiously.

Four hundred years was a remarkably long period of time compared to a man’s lifespan. Malik would have had something wise to say about that, Kamil thought, remembering their conversations. He felt a tide of sadness rising in him and welcomed it.

“Do wings have any special significance for the Melisites?” he asked.

Ismail Hodja rose and went to one of the shelves in his study. He pulled one manuscript or book out after another, flipping through, then replacing it. Finally, he took down a slim, leather-covered volume. He cleared the tea glasses away and placed the book on the table before Kamil, open at a page with an engraving of a seated woman holding a girl child suckling from her right breast. Powerful wings rose from her back. In her left hand, she held an elaborate cross on a stave. Next to her a bearded man dressed in a simple robe bowed down and presented her with a small jeweled book or box.

“This book is about a sect of Jewish Abyssinians. They revere a holy woman who is always depicted with wings.”

Kamil noticed a symbol of a crescent and disk above the woman’s head that was the same as the engraving on Malik and Balkis’s rings. But they weren’t Jews. He told Ismail Hodja about the rings and the blood-stained columns before the prayer hall.

“Some of those old rituals, such as animal sacrifice, were once shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike,” Ismail Hodja explained. “The Jews and Christians don’t practice them anymore. I’ve never had the privilege of seeing one of the Melisite rituals. The community is very secretive, but they have good reason to keep to themselves. Some believe that the Melisites are really Christians living as Muslims, although who’s to say what that means. But ordinary people aren’t interested in philosophical debates and they tend to be quite unforgiving about that sort of thing. They say that he who prays at two altars is without religion.” Ismail Hodja leaned forward to refill their tea glasses. “It’s a remarkable feat, if you think about it, to hide their identity for such a long time.”

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 silent 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.”