Firefighting

In 1865, a major fire tour through Constantinople destroyed 8,000 homes. Basil Zaharov's friends on the fire brigade later noted that he fled the city immediately afterwards and stayed away for five full years. In his late teens, it is generally accepted, a maternal uncle, Sevastopolous, offered him a job in his cloth business in the busy Galata district by the port. For two or three years, everything went well. Then suddenly and mysteriously, the young man vanished.