Bystanders chased down the alleys in pursuit of someone — a woman, or perhaps a man wearing a veil — who had stared at the landau as it crossed Blue Mosque Bridge a few moments before toppling over, but in vain, which is why the culprit was never found. But everyone agreed about one thing: the ambassador’s accident, the young hodja’s fall, and the sickness of the crown prince, as well as other facts of a similar kind, must have had a single, common cause. It was the evil eye.
This was obviously not the first time the eye had exercised its maleficent power. Collective memory, not to mention the archives and annals of the state, were full of similar occurrences, which tended to prove that from time to time, when aroused, the eye could spread misfortunes and calamities on an epidemic scale, if not worse. So there was no reason to be surprised that since time immemorial people had often had recourse to the saying: “He’s been struck by the evil eye!”
Maybe because of the cold wet weather that autumn, or because of the economic crisis, the harmful actions of the carriers of the evil eye were doing more damage than ever. That made people all the more tense and angry, just as it provided unusually detailed material for the report that, people said, had already been submitted to the sovereign.
The sultan’s response had been expected for days. If it was not to be a decree (some people were convinced it would take that form), then at least there would be a decision, or a proclamation, or perhaps a secret circular.
By Tuesday evening, no edict had been issued by the imperial chancery. And as always in such circumstances, initial speculation about the expected measures were embroidered by yet more badly muddled tongue-wagging.
In times gone by, any suspected sabotage by an “evil eye” was punished by harsh measures of the same order as those meted out to heretics: the guilty were thrown into a pit of quicklime, flayed alive, or stoned to death. People in the capital still remembered the flaying of Shanisha, an old woman who with a single stare had managed to transmit the haul mat to the daughter of Sultan Aziz’s predecessor, which caused, first of all, untold sadness, then the latter’s long illness, and finally his deposition, itself followed by far-reaching disturbances from which the state took years to recover.
That was how carriers of the evil eye used to be dealt with. But in the modernized, reformed state of today, this kind of punishment looked barbaric and out of date.
So what was the right thing to do? Should carriers of the evil eye be treated kindly, and allowed to indulge their practices to their hearts’ content, until they bring down not just men, but the very walls of our houses? People opposed to clemency for carriers of destructive glances, and those who stood more generally against any relaxation of the laws of the state, were asking these questions. As a matter of fact, do you know of a single case, they would ask, where evil has been stamped out without a firm hand? Were you thinking of obliging the carriers of the evil eye to put on those glass things invented in the land of the giaours,* those diabolical lenses they called spectacles? Or would you rather cover their eyes with a black scarf to make them look like pirates?
No, such measures would be pointless, they said. The evil eye projects its poison just as — or maybe even more — effectively through a blindfold, and obviously more powerfully through those accursed glass things, even if you blacken them with soot, as fashionable young men in the capital had recently started doing.
Such were the comments of the people who were trying to determine what measures lay in store, up to the very day — a Friday — when, at long last, the decree was issued.
Like all great edicts, its title was very short: qorrfirman, meaning, literally, blind decree. However, it was neither as harsh nor as merciful as might have been expected. It was a decision that cut both ways, leaving the opposing parties equally unsatisfied, but in a muted way, which allowed their veneration of the state and its sovereign to assert itself nonetheless — especially with respect to the sultan, who showed himself once again able to rise and to remain above the mere turmoil of human passions.
With astonishing speed — within a week of promulgation — various details emerged about the cabinet debate that had given birth to the order. As was its wont, the Köprülü clan, which stood against the faction of Sheikh ul-Islam, had come out in favor of greater clemency in the treatment of carriers of the evil eye. The Köprülüs proposed to expel them from all state-sponsored activities, or else put them under house arrest, or, for the most heinous cases, deport them and concentrate them in isolated locations, as if they were lepers. On the other side, Sheikh us-lslam and his followers supported traditional sanctions. The sultan listened to each faction and then decided not to favor either; or rather, he took both sides at once. The qorrfirman was such a canny concession to both clans that it channeled resentment of the opponents of barbaric sentences against Sheikh ul-Islam, just as it directed the fanatics’ feeling of disappointment toward the Köprülü clan. The sultan had kept himself above the squabble, and he had not just earned the admiration of both sides but also provoked a special emotion tinged with sorrow at seeing him obliged to intervene in the interminable quarreling of the clans, despite his more pressing preoccupations.
News of the order’s main provisions spread among certain circles in the city even before the text had been read out by public criers or printed in newspapers. The main thrust of the qorrfirman was as follows:
Cases of affliction by the evil eye having recently increased, and with the risk of misophthalmia (the original term, sykeqoja,* was dug out of some ancient dictionary) turning into a real scourge, the state, acting in its own interests and those of its citizens, has felt obliged to take a number of measures.
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.