Summary

In the aftermath of the celebration and Hoja's promotion to imperial astrologer, the grand vizir persuades the sultan's mother to force all the wiseacres surrounding her son into exile. Hoja goes every day now to the palace to interpret the sultan's dreams. As they spend more time together, Hoja raises other interesting questions, such as the cause of the Bosphorus currents and what there is to learn from the behavior of ants.

Hoja also draws sketches of weapons of war capable of great violence and shows them to his mirror-image. But when the narrator mentions that there are still deaths from the plague, Hoja gets angry and accuses him of jealousy. Since they had waited fifteen years to develop intimacy with the sultan, the narrator asks himself “why did Hoja speak as if the victory was his alone?” (101). Why did he give him no...