Bukhara, Central Asia. Modesto Gavazzi, an Italian silk merchant, is in Bukhara to buy silkworm eggs. He is captured, imprisoned, and forced to convert to Islam under threat of death. He gets away with 13 months of captivity, during which he learns the less happy story of one of his fellow countrymen. Giovanni Orlandi of Parma, on the other hand, is captured and sold into slavery to the emir. He manages to gain his favor by making him a large clock and a telescope. One day, the telescope falls and breaks. The emir summons the Italian to have it repaired, but Orlandi is drunk. He is then threatened with death for the second time unless he converts to Islam. Orlandi refuses, and his throat is slit—but only just beneath the skin, from ear to ear—with the warning that he has one more day to live. That day, he doesn’t change his mind and is beheaded in Registan Square. It is 1851.
