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).
The same directive also stipulated that people who turned themselves in, as well as some others who for various reasons were judged by the commission to deserve the privilege, would not only receive the regular monetary compensation but would have the right to choose the method of their own blinding.
It was easy to guess the two methods that would be chosen most often, and, moreover, be considered a signal favor by their victims, as being the Romano-Carthaginian and the European. Apart from the fact they were painless, both methods left the victim’s eyes untouched, resulting in no empty sockets or mutilation of the face.
The only difference between them was the length of the procedure. Whereas only two or three minutes of forced exposure to the sun was needed to blind the victim in the first case, in the second it required as much as three months of blindfolding for the sudden withdrawal of the wrap to provoke instant and total blindness.
The Romano-Carthaginian method, quite apart from the fact that it did not involve any psychological torture (long months spent in total darkness with depressing memories weighing down on you, and so forth), was carried out in conditions of blistering cleanliness, since it was based on the action of sunlight. As a result it rapidly became the preferred method among volunteers, as among other suspects, often from the higher social classes, who had no special protection from the qorrfirmaris wrath.
As for the other techniques based on force, compounding physical pain with mutilation and the lack of financial compensation, it was hard to say which was the most repulsive. The difficulty of choosing among them was, as people later explained, the reason for the hesitation often observed among victims, who dallied until, in the end, they asked their executioners to choose, begging them to bring their suffering to an end as quickly as they could.
With the promulgation of the instructions on the five different blinding techniques came other emergency measures that clearly indicated full implementation of the Blinding Order was imminent. The Medical High School launched an accelerated training program in ophthalmectomy, several iron yards in the capital completed their first batches of forked iron bars for the Byzantino-Venetian style of blinding, and other workshops began the manufacture of acid, which was stored in small and sturdy kegs intended to make sure it would survive lengthy transportation to the remotest provinces of the Empire. But nothing special was needed for the Tibetan method. Large stones could be found anyplace, and no particular preparation was called for.