Resid Pasha tapped his polished boot with a swizzle stick.

“The Sultan Mahmut, may he rest in peace, was pleased to order the construction of the bridge.” He pointed his stick at the divan. “The old city and Pera have been too much apart. That is also the view of the padishah.”

“Now Pera will come to Istanbul,” Yashim said, “and we will know no peace.”

Resid pursed his lips. “Or perhaps the other way around, Yashim efendi.”

“Yes, my pasha,” Yashim said doubtfully. He took a seat, cross-legged, on the divan. “Perhaps.”

He tried to picture Pera subsiding into dignified silence, as the sober pashas and the minarets and the cypresses of old Istanbul spread their leisurely influence across the bridge, stilling the perpetual scrimmage of touts, tea boys, porters, bankers, shopkeepers, and sailors that milled through the Pera streets. Where would the cypresses find space to grow, between the Belgian hatters and the Greek peddlers, the steam presses and the foreign crowds? Old Ottoman gentlemen brought their families to Pera now and then, and led them in stately astonishment through crowds of every nationality and none, staring into the big glass windows of the shops on the Grande Rue, before embarking again for home.

“I understand that you know many languages,” Yashim added pleasantly.

Yashim did not know Resid well. The young vizier belonged to another generation at the palace school, the generation that studied French and engineering; his training had taken him beyond the boundaries of the empire.