Hamid paced Reshid's study like a caged animal, back and forth, from the door to the bay windows, forever listening for Reshid to return from Stamboul. Smoking and waiting. For what? Reshid would return, and then what? He snorted and, for the hundredth time that morning, came to a halt by the latticed window.

He put his hand to the cold glass and instantly his anxiety was drowned by a wave of excitement. He was here, alone in this house, watching the world go about its business right outside his window.

The view was magnificent. The bay windows sat at the sloping intersection of two impossibly cramped streets. As his eye swept over the sea and the rooftops, and he watched the comings and goings of the many ships which loaded or unloaded foreign goods in the harbour, he thought of what Reshid had taught him about Galata.

When his forefather conquered Constantinople, the Genoese sea-faring, trading colony of Galata had collapsed, but the Italian character of the neighbourhood, and the Italian sounding street names, remained. There were monasteries, gothic churches, a myriad of stepped alleys, and overlooking it all, on a hill about an hour's climb from the harbour, stood Galata Tower.

Indeed, the neighbourhood looked just like the fortified, Italian, mediaeval town Hamid had imagined, with castles and walls and houses built in stone. The Ottomans don't engage in trade, Reshid had explained in his teaching voice. They outsource the business to Europeans and tax it, exports like imports, and it all comes through Galata harbour. They'd been abstract lessons but seeing it happen before his eyes gave Reshid's words meaning.

Agitated, Hamid resumed his pacing. If only Reshid would return.

Yesterday, he had been relieved to be left alone when Reshid rushed to deliver Peresto's message to Midhat Pasha. He'd been physically and morally exhausted, his mind spinning with everything he had thought and felt during the long night, unable to fix his thoughts on any one thing.

By the next morning, when Reshid had not yet returned, he was filled with trepidation. His anxious mind was taken up by several lines of unclear thoughts at once. Why did Reshid not come back? Had he been apprehended? Or had he betrayed him to the Sultan? He told himself if he had, guards would have come to arrest him by now. Mostly, he thought about the coup against the Sultan. Peresto assumed Midhat Pasha and Huseyin Avni were ready to act. What if they weren't? His heart sank.

There were only two possible paths: either the Sultan tracked him down before the coup and accused him of treason, or the coup happened, failed, and he was accused of treason. The third path, that the coup might succeed, was so slim it was not worth considering.

His compulsive mind imagined in graphical detail all the different ways in which he might be killed. There were also the equally terrifying thoughts that concerned the precious time he had left. What should I do, he asked himself over and over, and found no answer. Because in reality there was nothing he could do, other than smoke and pace the floor in Reshid's study, and wait. Like he had always waited, too scared to do anything.

A couple of times, when the front door opened and closed, he held his breath and listened.

Minutes and hours passed, the sense of urgency becoming unbearable. He had to do something. What?

He sent Hifsi to the kitchen to fetch coffee, then waited. After a few minutes, he pressed down the door handle and to his surprise, the door yielded; it opened on silent hinges. In the palace, the doors were controlled by eunuchs. Here, he'd been able to use the strength of his own hand. One second, he was in the study, and the next, he had stepped into the empty hallway. There, he turned left, down the narrow stairs, tip-toeing so as not to make a noise. When he recognised the front door through which he'd entered the house, he crossed the floor with faster and surer steps.

He turned to close the front door behind him and saw Hifsi emerge through a door with a tray in his hands. For a second, their gaze met. Resolutely, Hamid stepped into the street, into the flitting sunlight.

Frozen with fear, he waited. There were two parallel worlds, he had always felt: the harem, dangerous but familiar, and the outside, dark and hostile and mysterious. His fascination with it was a fear instilled in him through the countless horror stories told by the palace eunuchs who'd raised him. It was also a longing encouraged by his visit to Europe, and by Reshid's stories - an urgent need to explore the world, which he could not describe.

On a whim, he chose his direction, taking one step and another. The horrors of the outside world did not consume him as it had Jurad. Each step led him to one street after another, to open squares, to more sunlight, and closer to Pera, perched on the hill.

He didn't have to look over his shoulder to know Hifsi trailed behind at a discreet distance, watching over him as he had been trained to do, blending into the shadows. He didn't mind – he'd come to accept that Hifsi was already a part of him.

In a dead-end street, he came across a coffee bar where a row of thick bearded men reclined on cushions, puffing on narghiles. He turned away from them and headed down another street. A man wearing a fez bumped into him, apologised, and hurried on. People nodded in greeting, and went on with their business.

He contemplated walking away and not returning. Disappearing. A smile spread across his face. It was impossible, but the thought made him feel all bubbly inside.

In one square, he came across a fountain surrounded by women. They attended their children who played in the water, hushing their laughter with cooing and gentle admonitions, and patting them dry with towels. He stayed fixed there for a long while, watching the mothers splash the children, and get splashed themselves by the fountain water.

After an endless climb up wide stairs packed with people, he finally arrived in Pera. He didn't know how long he'd been gone from Reshid's house, or how he would find his way back there.

Galata lay beneath him now and the view from the top of the stairs was spectacular enough to put worry from his mind. To the north lay the long harbour, which grew golden in the rays of the setting sun; to the east the Bosphorus waterway separated Europe and Asia; to the south lay the sea of Marmara, which connected the Aegean and the Black Sea.

With one measured breath he turned into a paved, wide street lined with shops, cafés, restaurants and theatres.

"The Daily News," a boy shouted and waved his newspapers. "Read all about the Bulgarian massacres."

"What's this about?"

"More news about the Bulgarian massacres."

He handed the boy a gold coin. The boy grinned. "For that you can have the whole pile, mister."

"One copy will do."

It was a grim article. When he had finished reading, he put the paper in his pocket. His mind scrambled to recall a conversation with Reshid during one of their lessons. Reshid had drawn a black circle on the map of the empire.

"The Balkan provinces, it's where my yoghurt comes from." They had only studied the map once or twice before, so Hamid had felt foolishly proud for knowing this, and Reshid had smiled.

"Indeed, the empire's Balkan provinces. But for how much longer, my Lord?"

"What do you mean?"

"Those provinces are rebelling against the Porte. Or, to be precise, the empire's Christian subjects are rebelling against their Moslem masters. They demand independence. As in, breaking away from the empire. Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, they want to create their own nation states."

Hamid remembered scrutinising the map and remarking it was a lot of land, about a fifth of the empire, he reckoned. He couldn't quite grasp it. People of all faiths had lived happily together in the Islamic empire for hundreds and hundreds of years, so why now? And could a fifth of the empire simply be chipped away? Would Allah allow it?

Reshid had explained. There were many answers, he said, each a little bit right. Because the world changed, while the empire did not? Hamid quizzed. It had tried to change – tried hard, even – and failed, or not succeeded fast enough. Because, for the past two-hundred years, Ottoman military wars had almost all ended in defeat? Because the empire had lost control over trade between Europe and Asia, and was getting poorer? Much poorer. Because, under the Ottomans, Muslims had access to arms, political power and ways to defend their interests, while the non-believers did not? Because a disproportionate burden of hard economic times fell on the infidel? Because the Tsar's agents encouraged rebellion and supplied them with arms, money and hope?

Reshid had explained all of this and more, and Hamid had not only absorbed the information, he'd understood it, even though it turned everything he had learnt before on its head. In the eunuch's stories of Ottoman glory, time was circular, the empire forever expanding, forever growing its riches. Eternally. The Islamic empire and its Sultan were blessed by Allah.

Reshid's black circle had told him reality was different: it had a beginning and an end, which was sinister and disconcerting.

And yet, even as Hamid read the article on the massacres, he realised Reshid's explanation had remained abstract, like a superficial coating. Like a kaftan removed, and accidentally forgotten in one of the harem rooms after the lesson. Later, they'd often returned to the subject of this conversation, but then Hamid would invariably return to palace life, which continued as it always had done: no sign of urgency, no sign of trouble or concern, no variation. At the heart of the empire, nothing ever changed, time just passed.

Even now, with the paper in his pocket, he didn't know how to think of the massacres. Was he somehow responsible by association?

He stood in the middle of the street and looked about him, trying to find a face, a shop window, a building, to distract him, to quell the feeling of unease the article had provoked in him. His gaze landed on the street name plate; he was standing in the Grand Rue de Pera.

_____________________

Author's note

The embedded image is from the town of Batak, located in the Ottoman Vilayet of Edirne in present-day Bulgaria. Batak was the site of a horrific massacre during the April Uprising against Ottoman rule in 1876. After the town's residents rebelled against the Ottoman authorities, irregular Ottoman troops, known as bashi-bazouks, along with regular soldiers, brutally suppressed the uprising.

The Ottoman forces, under the command of Ahmet Aga, entered Batak on April 30 and proceeded to engage in a series of atrocities against the civilian population. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately killed, with many being burned alive in the town's church where they had sought refuge. Estimates of the number of victims vary, but most sources suggest that between 1,500 and 5,000 Bulgarians were killed in Batak alone.

As you will see in the story, the massacres in Batak and other parts of Bulgaria during the April Uprising shocked the international community and led to widespread condemnation of the Ottoman Empire's actions. The events played a significant role in galvanising support for the Bulgarian cause and ultimately contributed to the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian state in 1878 under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin.