That was all I had to go on as I stood in the court before that head and let its corruption first kindle and then inflame revenue in my heart. Revenge! Against whom? The man was already dead and had made lit tie attempt to save himself from it. But I had such an impression that he had not worked alone, that others, besides my friend Hajji had known about the plot and they had said nothing. Or, more likely, they had known and openly encouraged, promising him the immortality he had bestowed upon my master.
I swore I would, Allah willing, find these people, and I sealed the oath by spitting into the felon’s eye. The spittle slipped down one cheek like a slimy tear, leaving a clean trail in the grime. It halted in the mustache and the flies, startled for a moment from their feast, settled down to business once again, which made the mustache seem to twitch as if still alive and the pride and joy of its wearer.
* * *
My best lead was my friend Hajji. He had at least known enough about the matter to come and give warning. But one quick trip home had been enough to ascertain that he had vanished as soon as his purpose was acquitted. The gardener’s boy—very distraught, of course, by both the death of the master and the grievous wounding of his father—was able only to say that he had gone for refreshment for the old dervish and returned to find he’d disappeared. And the boy did not have kind words to say about holy men and their madnesses in general at that moment, so I knew it was useless to ask further there.
But I did ask nearly everywhere else in the city. I asked the donkey boy delivering goods to our door. He admitted to being a novice to a local holy man. I pressed him further, wondering what sort of doctrine he might be learning. His animal shook a cloud of dust and flies from her flank and her master copied her, shrugging carelessly. He was unable to answer even the most basic questions of theology.
“What is it then that your most reverend teacher is good for?” I asked with frustration.
“If I do not pay him his sack of beans and salt once a month,” the poor boy confessed, “he grows angry, and his anger is terrible indeed. He can cause all my family to fall ill with a wink of his eye. He has done it before; it’s true. If I am careful to pay him, he may deign to visit us on holy days or at a birth or a wedding. Then he may leave an amulet tied in the window to keep away evil and all our business, Allah willing, may then be blessed.”
Such leads I pursued no further. The assassin had been unprincipled, no doubt, but in a much more earnest, intelligent and ambitious way than this petty local charlatan. I took much greater heed of the rumors of begging dervishes who appeared suddenly and inexplicably on any street corner. “Such a blessed saint!” I would be told. “His mind Allah has already gathered to Him to sit in Paradise and gaze perpetually at the archetypal Holy Koran. It is only his grosser parts left here below.”
So I would go and find the fellow, but my skepticism never allowed me to discover more than a blathering idiot or maniac. I, like so many, others, answered his call: “For the love of Allah! For the love of Allah!” with a small coin and so kept him from being a burden to his family. But I, unlike others, never imagined there was anything either divinely clairvoyant or demonically murderous about this lack of wit.
A visit to every tekke in the neighborhood, city, region (my scope expanded as hope dwindled) seemed the next best plan. But Rome has not half so many cloisters as Constantinople has tekkes. The place is absolutely honeycombed with these holy establishments. Although a local mosque may support a brotherhood beneath its eaves, the two are not necessarily and always partners. One would need the perspective of Allah to look down on the rooftops of the town and pick out a tekke from your average house. Indeed, as the sheikh’s family often lives on the upper floor, even the All-Seeing One would have to be able to sense holiness through the everyday clutter of drying figs and laundry.
For the poor mortal making his way through the streets, one door slinking with alley cats and mounds of rubbish was too much like the next. And when such camouflage was linked with vows of secrecy among the members, the search was hopeless.
Some tekkes, however, were powerful and wealthy enough to have come to the notice not only of neighbors, but also of the tax authorities. Though exempt from dues, the holy men had a constant fight to prove they were indeed religious and not political. Into such establishments I easily gained admittance and almost as easily gained an interview with either the sheikh himself or one of his subordinates.
“Are you a seeker?” It never took long before such questions made me feel the interrogated. “Are you a dervish, one who sits on the door-sill of Enlightenment?”
Even when I learned to answer, “Yes, praise Allah!” more often than not our dialogue was wasted time. Sooner or later the man would drive from me what my true search was. Then, no matter what I had learned of
