I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE
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A silence filled the room when he fessed he’d murdered Elegant Effendi. I assumed he’d kill me aswell. My heart quied. Had he e here to end my life or to fess and terrify me? Did he himself know what he wanted? I was afraid, realizing how absolutely unacquainted I was with the inner world of this magnifit artist whose splendid lines and magical use of color had been familiar to me for years. I could sense him standing stiffly behihere at the nape of my neck, holding that large inkpot reserved for red, but I didn’t turn to face him. I knew my silence would make him uneasy. “The dogs haven’t yet quieted down,” I said.
We fell silent again. This time, I khat my death, or my somehow avoiding this misfortune, would depend on what I told him. All I knew aside from his work was that he was quite intelligent, and if you grant that an illustrator must never reveal his soul in his work, intelligence is, of course, an asset. How had he ered me at home when no one else was here? My aged mind was furiously preoccupied with this question, but I was too fused to see myself out of this game. Where was Shekure?
“You k was me, didn’t you?” he asked.
I hadn’t known at all, not until he told me. In the bay mind, I was even w whether he hadn’t done well by killing Elegant Effendi, and that the late miniaturist might’ve actually succumbed to his aies and made trouble for the rest of us.
I was ever so slightly grateful to this murderer, with whom I was alone in the empty house.
“I’m not surprised you killed him,” I said. Men like us who live with books and dream eternally of their pages fear only ohing in this world. What’s more, we’re struggling with something more forbidden and dangerous; that is, we’re struggling to make pictures in a Muslim city. As with Sheikh Muhammad of Isfahan, we miniaturists are ined to feel guilty aful, we’re the first to blame ourselves before others do, to be ashamed and beg pardon of God and the unity. We make our books i like shameful sinners. I know too well how submission to the endless attacks of hojas, preachers, judges and mystics who accuse us of blasphemy, how the endless guilt both deadens and nourishes the artist’s imagination.““You don’t fault me for murdering that idiotiiaturist, do you then?”
“What attracts us to writing, illustrating and painting is bound up in this fear of retribution. It’s not only for money and favor that we kneel before our work from m to evening, tinuing by dlelight through the night to the point of blindness and sacrifice ourselves for pictures and books, it’s to escape the prattle of others, to escape the unity, but in trast to this passion to create, we also want those we’ve forsaken to see and appreciate the inspired pictures we’ve made—and if they should call us sinners? Oh, the suffering this brings upon the illustrator of gealent! Yet, genuine painting is hidden in the agony no one sees and no one creates. It’s tained in the picture, whi first sight, they’ll say is bad, inplete, blasphemous or heretical. A genuine miniaturist knows he must reach that point, yet at the same time, he fears the lonelihat awaits him there. Who would accede to such a frightful, nerve-wrag existence? By blaming himself before anyone else does, the artist believes
he’ll be spared what he’s feared for years. Others listen to him and believe him only when he admits his guilt, for which he is then o burn ihe illustrator of Isfahan lit these hellfires himself.”
“But you’re not a miniaturist,” he said. “I didn’t kill him out of fear.”
“You murdered him because you wao paint as you wished, without fear.”
For the first time in a long while, the miniaturist ired to be my murderer said something quite intelligent: “I know you’re explaining all this to distract me, to dupe me, to get yourself out of this situation,” and he added, “but what you’ve just said is the truth. I want you to uand, listen to me.”
I looked into his eyes. He’d pletely fotten the formality ary between us as he spoke: He’d been carried away by his own thoughts. But to where?
“Never fear, I won’t offend your honor,” he said. He laughed bitterly as he circled around to face me. “Even now,” he said, “as I’m doing this, it doesn’t seem to be me. It’s as if there’s something writhing within me pellio do its evil bidding. Yet I hat thing heless. It’s that way with painting, too.”
“These are old wives’ tales about the Devil.”
“You think I’m lying, then?”
He didn’t have enough ce to murder me, so he wanted me te him. “Nay, you’re not lying but you’re not aowledging what you feel either.”
“I aowledge very well what I feel. I’m suffering the torments of the grave without having died. Unawares, we’ve sunk to our necks in sin because of you, and now you’re preag ”more ce.“ You’re the one who’s made me a murderer. Hoja’s rabid hen will kill us all.”
The less fident he became, the more he raised his void the more fiercely he gripped the inkpot. Would somebody passing down the snowy street hear his shouting aer the house?
“How did you kill him?” I asked, more to buy time than out of curiosity. “How did you eet at the mouth of that well?”
“The night Elegant Effendi left your house, he came to me,” he said, with an ued desire to fess. “He said he’d seen the final double-leaf painting. I tried at length to dissuade him from making an issue out of it. I got him to walk over to the area ravaged by the fire. I told him I had money buried he well. When he heard that, he believed me…What better proof that an illustrator is motivated by greed alohat’s another reason I’m not sorry. He was a talented, but mediocre artist. The greedy oaf
was ready to dig into the frozeh with his fingernails. You see, if I truly had gold pieces buried beside that well, I wouldn’t have had to do away with him. Yes, you hired yourself quite a miserable wretch to do yilding. The dearly departed had finesse, but his choice of color and application was ordinary, and his illuminations were uninspired. I didn’t leave a trace…Tell me, then, what is the essence of ”style“? Today, both the Franks and the ese talk about the character of a painter’s talent, what they call ”style.“ Should style distinguish a good artist from others or not?”
“Fear not,” I said, “a yle doesn’t spring from a miniaturist’s own desire. A prince dies, a shah loses a battle, a seemingly never-ending era ends, a workshop is closed and its members disband, searg for other homes and other bibliophiles to bee their patrons. One day, a passionate sultan will assemble these exiles, these bewildered but talented refugee miniaturists and calligraphers, in his ow or palad begin to establish his own book-arts workshop. Even if these artists, unaced to one another, ti first in their respective painting styles, over time, as with children who gradually bee friends by roughhousing oreet, they’ll quarrel, bond, struggle and promise. The birth of a yle is the result of years of disagreements, jealousies, rivalries and studies in color and painting. Generally, it’ll be the most gifted member of the workshop who fathers this form. Let’s also call him the most fortuo the rest of the miniaturists falls the singular duty of perfeg and refining this style through perpetual imitation.”
Uo look me straight in the eye, he assumed an ued gentle manner, and begging my passion as much as my hoy, he asked me, trembling like a maiden:
“Do I have a style of my own?”
I thought tears would flow from my eyes. With all the gentleness, sympathy and kindness I could muster, I hasteo tell him what I believed to be the truth:
“You are the most talented, divinely inspired artist with the most ented toud eye for detail that I’ve seen in all my sixty years. If you put a painting before me which had seen the bined work of a thousand miniaturists, I’d still be able tnize instantly the God-given magnifice of your pen.”
“Agreed, but I know you’re not wise enough to appreciate the mystery of my skill,” he said. “You’re lying, now, because you’re afraid of me. Describe, once again, the character of my methods.”
“Your pes the right line seemingly of its own accord, as if without your touch. What your pen draws is her truthful nor frivolous! When you portray a crowded gathering, the tension emerging from the glances between figures, their positioning on the page and the meaning of the text metamorphose into a eternal whisper. I return to your pai<mark></mark>ntings again and again to hear that whisper, and each time, I realize with a smile that the meaning has ged, and how shall I put it, I begin to read the painting anew. When these layers of meaning are taken together, a depth emerges that surpasses even the perspectivism of the European masters.”
“Fine and well. Fet about the European masters. Start from the beginning.”
“You have such a truly magnifit and forceful lihat the observer believes in what you’ve painted rather than iy itself. And just as your talent could create a picture that would force the most devout man to renounce his faith, it could als the most hopeless, uant unbeliever to Allah’s path.”
“True, but I’m not sure that amounts to praise. Try again.”
“There’s no miniaturist who knows the sistency of paint and its secrets as well as you do. You alrepare and apply the glossiest, most vibrant, most genuine colors.”
“Yes, and what else?”
“You know you’re the greatest of painters after Bihzad and Mir Seyyid Ali.”
“Yes, I’m aware of this. If you are too, why are you making the book with that model of mediocrity Black Effendi?”
“First, the work he does doesn’t require a miniaturist’s skill,” I said. “Sed, unlike yourself, he’s not a murderer.”
He smiled sweetly uhe influeny joke. With this, I thought I might be able to escape this nightmare thanks to a new expression—this word “style.” Upon my broag the subject, we began a pleasant discussion ing the bronze Mongol inkpot he held, not like father and son, but like two curious and experienen. The weight of the brohe balance of the inkpot, the depth of its neck, the length of old calligraphy reed pens and the mysteries of red ink, whose sistency he could feel as he gently swung the inkpot before me…We agreed that if the Mongols hadn’t brought the secrets of red paint—which they’d learned from ese masters—to Khorasan, Bukhara a, we in Istanbul couldn’t make these paintings at all. As we talked, the sistency of time, like that of the paint, seemed to ge, to flow ever more quickly. In a er of my mind I was w why no one had yet returned home. If only he’d put down that weighty object.
With our ary workaday ease, he asked me, “When your book is finished, will those who see my work appreciate my skill?”
“If we , God willing, finish this book without interference, Our Sultan will look it over, of course, cheg first to see whether we used enough gold leaf in the appropriate places. Then, as if reading a description of Himself, as any sultan would, He’ll stare at his own portrait, struck by His own likeness rather than by nifit illustrations; thereafter, if He takes the time to examihe spectacle we’ve painstakingly aedly created at the expense of the light of our eyes, so much the better. You know, as well as I, that barring a miracle, He’ll lock the book away in His treasury without even
asking who made the frame or the gilded illuminations, who paihis man or that horse—and like all skillful artisans, we’ll go back to painting, ever hopeful that one day a miracle of aowledgment will find us.”
We were silent for a while, as if patiently waiting for something.
“When will that miracle happen?” he asked. “When will all those paintings we’ve worked on until we could no longer see straight truly be appreciated? When will they give me, give us, the respect we deserve?”
“Never!”
“How so?”
“They’ll never give you what you want,” I said. “Iure, you’ll be even less appreciated.”
“Books last for turies,” he said proudly but without fidence.
“Believe me, none of the Veian masters have your poetisibility, your vi, your sensitivity, the purity and brightness of your colors, yet their paintings are more pelling because they more closely resemble life itself. They don’t paint the world as seen from the baly of a mi, ign what they call perspective; they depict what’s seen at street level, or from the inside of a prince’s room, taking in his bed, quilt, desk, mirror, his tiger, his daughter and his s. They include it all, as you know. I’m not persuaded by everything they do. Attempting to imitate the world directly through painting seems dishonorable to me. I resent it. But there’s an undeniable allure to the paintings they make by those new methods. They depict what the eye sees just as the eye sees it. Ihey paint what they see, whereas we paint what we look at. Beholding their work, one es to realize that the only way to have one’s face immortalized is through the Frankish style. And it’s not only the inhabitants of Venice who are captured by this notion, but all the tailors, butchers, soldiers, priests and grocers in all the Frankish lands…They all have their portraits made this way. Just a gla those paintings and you too would want to see yourself this way, you’d want to believe that you’re different from all others, a unique, special and particuliar human being. Painting people, not as they are perceived by the mind, but as they are actually seen by the naked eye, painting in the new method, allows for this possibility. One day everyone will paint as they do. When ”painting“ is mentiohe world will think of their work! Even a poor foolish tailor who uands nothing of illustrating will want such a portrait so he might be vinced, upon seeing the unique curve of his hat he’s not an ordinary simpleton, but araordinary man.”
“So? We make that portrait, as well,” quipped the witty assassin.
“We won’t!” I replied. “Haven’t you learned from your victim, the late Elegant Effendi, how afraid we are of being labeled imitators of the Franks? Even if we venture bravely to paint like them, it’ll amount
to the same thing. In the end, our methods will die out, our colors will fade. No one will care about our books and our paintings, and those who do express i will ask with a sneer, with no uanding whatsoever, why there’s no perspective—or else they won’t be able to find the manuscripts at all. Indiffereime and disaster will destroy our art. The Arabian glue used in the bindings tains fish, honey and bone, and the pages are sized and polished with a finish made from egg white and starch. Greedy, shameless mice will nibble these pages away; termites, worms and a thousand varieties of i will gnaw our manuscripts out of existence. Bindings will fall apart and pages will drop out. Women lighting their stoves, thieves, indifferent servants and children will thoughtlessly tear out the pages and pictures. Child princes will scrawl over the illustrations with toy pens. They’ll bla people’s eyes, wipe their runny noses on the pages, doodle in the margins with blak. And religious sors will bla out whatever is left. They’ll tear and cut up our paintings, perhaps use them to make other pictures or fames and sutertai. While mothers destroy the illustrations they sider obse, fathers and older brothers will jack off onto the pictures of women and the pages will stick together, not only because of this, but also due to being smeared with mud, water, bad glue, spit and all manner of filth and food. Stains of mold and dirt will blossom like flowers where the pages have stuck together. Rain, leaky roofs, floods and dirt will ruin our books. Of course, together with the tattered, faded and unreadable pages, which water, humidity, bugs and will have reduced to pulp, the one last volume to emerge intact, like a miracle, from the bottom of a bone-dry chest will also one day disappear, swallowed up in the flames of a merciless fire. Is there a neighborhood in Istanbul that hasn’t been buro the ground at least once every twenty years that we might expect such a book to survive? In this city, where every three years more books and libraries disappear than those the Mongols burned and plundered in Baghdad, ainter could possibly imagihat his masterpiece might last more than a tury, or that one day his pictures might be seen, and he revered like Bihzad? Not only our own art, but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be destroyed by worms or be lost out of : Shirin proudly watg Hüsrev from a window; Hüsrev delightfully spying on Shirin as she bathes by moonlight; lazing at each other with grad subtlety; Rüstem’s wrestling a white demon to death at the bottom of a well; the anguished state of a lovelorn Mejnun befriending a white tiger and a mountain goat in the desert; the capture and hanging of a deceitful shepherd dog who presents a sheep from his flock to the she-wolf he mates with eaight; the flower, angel, leafy twig, bird and teardrop border illuminations; the lute players that embellish Hafiz’s enigmatis; the wall orions that have ruihe eyes of thousands, nay tens of thousands of miniaturist apprehe small plaques hung above doors and on walls; the couplets secretly writteween the embedded borders of illustrations; the humble signatures hidden at the bases of walls, in ers, in facade embellishments, uhe soles of feet, beh shrubbery aween rocks; the flower-covered quilts c lovers; the severed infidel heads patiently awaiting Our Sultan’s late grandfather as he victoriously marches upon an enemy fortress; the on, guns as that even in your youth you helped illustrate and that appeared in the background as the ambassador of the infidels kissed the feet of Our Sultan’s great-grandfather; the devils, with and without horns, with and without tails, with poieeth and with pointed nails; the thousands of varieties of birds including Solomon’s wise hoopoe, the jumping swallow, the dodo and the singing nightihe seres aless dogs; fast-moving clouds; the small charming blades of grass reproduced in thousands of pictures; the amateurish shadows falling across rocks and tens of thousands of cypress, plane and pomegrarees whose leaves were drawer another with the patience of Job; the palaces—and
their hundreds of thousands of bricks—which were modeled on palaces from the time of Tamerlane or Shah Tahmasp but apaories from much earlier eras; the tens of thousands of melancholy princes listening to music played by beautiful women and boys sitting on magnifit carpets in fields of flowers ah fl trees; the extraordinary pictures of ceramid carpets that owe their perfe to the thousands of apprentice illustrators from Samarkand to Islambol beaten to the point of tears over the last one hundred fifty years; the sublime gardens and the s black kites that you still depict with your old enthusiasm, your astounding ses of death and war, yraceful hunting sultans, and with the same finesse, your startled fleeing gazelles, your dying shahs, your prisoners of war, your infidel galleons and your rival cities, your shiny dark nights that glimmer as if night itself had flowed from your pen, your stars, yhostlike cypresses, your red-tinted pictures of love ah, yours and all the rest, all of it will vanish…”
Raising the inkpot, he struck me on the head with all his strength.
I tottered forward uhe force of the blow. I felt a horrible pain that I could never even hope to describe. The entire world was ed in my pain and faded to yellow. A large portion of my mind assumed that this attack was iional; yet, along with the blow—or perhaps because of it—another, faltering part of my mind, in a sad show of goodwill, wao say to the madman ired to be my murderer: “Have mercy, you’ve attacked me in error.”
He raised the inkpot again and brought it down upon my head.
This time, even the faltering part of my mind uood that this was no mistake, but madness and wrath that might very well end in my death. I was so terrified by this state of affairs that I began to raise my voice, howling with all my strength and suffering. The color of this howl would be verdigris, and in the blaess of evening on the empty streets, no one would be able to hear its hue; I knew I was all alone.
He was startled by my wail aated. We momentarily came eye to eye. I could tell from his pupils that, despite his horror and embarrassment, he’d resigned himself to what he was doing. He was no lohe master miniaturist I knew, but an unfamiliar and ill-willed stranger who didn’t speak my language, and this sensation protracted my momentary isolation for turies. I wao hold his hand, as if to embrace this world; it was of no use. I begged, or thought I did: “My child, my dear child, please do not end my life.” As if in a dream, he seemed not to hear.
He lowered the inkpot onto my head again.
My thoughts, what I saw, my memories, my eyes, all of it, merging together, became fear. I could see no one color and realized that all colors had bee red. What I thought was my blood was red ink; what I thought was ink on his hands was my flowing blood.
How unjust, cruel, and merciless I found it to be dying at that instant. Yet, this was the clusion that
my aged and bloody head was slowly ing to. Then I saw it. My recolles were stark white, like the snow outside. My heart ached as it throbbed as if within my mouth.
I shall now describe my death. Perhaps you’ve uood this long ago: Death is not the end, this is certain. However, as it is written everywhere in books, death is something painful beyond prehension. It was as if not only my shattered skull and brain but every part of me, merging together, was burning and racked with torment. Withstanding this boundless suffering was so difficult that a portion of my mied—as if this were its only option—by fetting the agony and seeking a gentle sleep.
Before I died, I remembered the Assyrian legend that I heard as an adolest. An old man, living alone, rises from his bed in the middle of the night and drinks a glass of water. He places the glass upon the end table to discover the dle that had been there is missing. Where had it gone? A fihread of light is filtering from within. He follows the light, retrag his steps back to his bedroom to find that somebody is lying in his bed holding the dle. “Who might you be?” he asks. “I am Death,” says the strahe old man is overe by a mysterious silehen he says, “So, you’ve e.” “Yes,” responds Death haughtily. “No,” the old man says firmly, “you’re but an unfinished dream of mihe old man abruptly blows out the dle iranger’s hand and everything vanishes in blaess. The old maers his owy bed, goes to sleep and lives for awenty years.
I khis was not to be my fate. He brought the inkpot down onto my head once again. I was in such a state of profound torment that I could only vaguely dis the impact. He, the inkpot and the room illuminated faintly by the dle had already begun to fade.
Yet, I was still alive. My desire to g to this world, to run away and escape him, the flailing of my hands and arms in an attempt to protect my fad bloody head, the way, I believe, I bit his wrist at oime, and the inkpot striking my face made me aware of this.
We struggled for a while, if you call it that. He was very strong and very agitated. He laid me out flat on my back. Pressing his knees onto my shoulders, he practically nailed me to the ground while he raved on in a very disrespectful tone, accosting me, a dying old man. Perhaps because I could her uand nor listen to him, perhaps because I took no pleasure in looking into his bloodshot eyes, he struck my head once more. His fad his entire body had bee bright red from the ink splattering out of the inkpot, and I suppose, from the blood splattering out of me.
Saddehat the last thing I’d ever see in this world was this man who would be my enemy, I closed my eyes. Thereupon, I saw a soft, gentle light. The light was as sweet aig as the sleep I thought would straightaway ease all my pains. I saw a figure within the light and as a child might, I asked, “Who are you?”
“It is I, Azrael, the Angel of Death,” he said. “I am the one who ends man’s journey in this world. I am the one who separates children from their mothers, wives from their husbands, lovers from each other
and fathers from their daughters. No mortal in this world avoids meeting me.”
When I knew death was unavoidable, I wept.
My tears made me profoundly thirsty. On the one hand there was the stupefying agony of my fad eyes drenched in blood; oher hand there was the place where frenzy and cruelty ceased, yet that place was strange and terrifying. I k to be that illumined realm, the Land of the Dead, to which Azrael beed me, and I was frightened. Even so, I knew I couldn’t long remain in this world that caused me to writhe and howl in agony. In this land htful pain and torment, there was no plae to take solace. To stay, I’d have tn myself to this unbearable torment and this was impossible in my elderly dition.
Just before I died, I actually longed for my death, and at the same time, I uood the ao the question that I’d spent my entire life p, the answer I couldn’t find in books: How was it that everybody, without exception, succeeded in dying? It recisely through this simple desire to pass on. I also uood that death would make me a wiser man.
heless, I was overe with the indecision of a man about to take a long journey and uo refrain from taking one last gla his room, at his belongings and his home. In a panic I wished to see my daughter one last time. I wahis so badly I repared to grit my teeth for a while longer and ehe pain and my increasing thirst, to wait for Shekure’s return.
And thus, the deathly ale light before me faded somewhat, and my mind opeself up to the sounds and noises of the world in which I lay dying. I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the et, rifling through my papers and searg ily for the last picture. When he came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my pai and kick the chests, boxes, inkpots and folding worktable. I sehat I was groaning now and then and making odd twitg gestures with my old arms and tired legs. And I waited.
My pain was not abating in the least. I grew increasingly silent and could no loand to grit my teeth, but again, I held on, waiting.
Then it occurred to me, if Shekure came home, she might enter my ruthless murderer. I didn’t want to even think about this. At that instant, I sehat my murderer had exited the room. He’d probably found the last painting.
I’d bee excessively thirsty but still I waited. e now, dear daughter, my pretty Shekure, show yourself.
She did not e.
I no longer had strength to withstand the suffering. I knew I would die without seeihis seemed
so bitter I wao die of misery. Afterward, a face I’d never seen before appeared to my left, and smiling all the while, he kindly offered me a glass of water.
Fetting all else, I greedily reached for the water.
He pulled the glass back: “Denouhe Prophet Muhammad as a liar,” he said. “Deny all that he has said.”
It was Satan. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t even afraid of him. Since I never once believed that painting amouo being duped by him, I waited fidently. I dreamed of the endless jourhat awaited me and of my future.
Meanwhile, as I roached by the illuminated angel whom I’d just seen, Satan vanished. Part of me khat this glowing angel who had caused Satan to flee was Azrael. But another rebellious part of my mind remembered that in the Book of the Apocalypse it was written that Azrael was an angel with ohousand wings spanni a and that he held the whole world in his hands.
As I grew more fused, the angel bathed in light approached as if ing to my aid, and yes, just as Gazzali had stated in Pearls of Magnifice, he sweetly said:
“Open your mouth so that your soul might leave.”
“Nothing but the besmele prayer ever leaves my mouth,” I answered him.
This was just one last excuse however. I knew I could no longer resist, that my time had now e. For a moment I was embarrassed at having to leave my bloodied and ugly body in this miserable dition for my daughter, whom I’d never see again. But I wao leave this world, shedding it like some tight-fitting garment that pinched.
I opened my mouth and abruptly all was color just as in the pictures of Our Prophet’s Miraj journey, during which he visited Heaven. Everything was flooded in exquisite brightness as if generously painted with gold wash. Painful tears flowed from my eyes. A strained exhalation passed from my lungs through my mouth. All was subsumed in wondrous silence.
I could see now that my soul had left my body and that I was cupped in Azrael’s hand. My soul, the size of a bee, was bathed in light, and it shuddered as it left my body and tio tremble like mercury in Azrael’s palm. My thoughts were not of this, however, but of the unfamiliar new world I’d just been born into.
After so much suffering, a calm overcame me. Death did not cause me the pain I’d feared; on the trary, I relaxed, quickly realizing that my present situation erma one, whereas the straints I’d felt in life were only temporary. This was how it would be from now on, for tury upon
tury, until the end of the universe. This her upset nladdened me. Events I’d ondured briskly and sequentially were now spread over infinite spad existed simultaneously. As in one of those large double-leaf paintings wherein a witty miniaturist has painted a number of ued things in each er—many things were happening all at once.
I, SHEKUREIt was snowing so hard that snowflakes occasionally passed right through my veil into my eyes. I picked my way through the garden covered in rotting grass, mud and broken brahen quied my pace I’d exited onto the street. I know you’re all w what I’m thinking. How much do I trust Black? Let me be frank with you, then. I myself don’t know what to think. You do uand, don’t you? I’m fused. This much, however, I do know: As always, I’ll fall into the routine of meals, children, my father and errands, and before long my heart, without even having to be asked, will whisper the truth to me of its own accord. Tomorrow, before noon, I’ll know whom I am to marry.
I want to share something with you before I arrive home. No! e off it, now, it’s not about the size of that monstrosity Black showed me. If you want we talk about that later. What I was going to discuss was Black’s haste. It’s not that he seems to think only of satisfying his lust. To be ho, it’d make no difference if he did. What surprises me is his stupidity! I suppose it never crossed his mind that he could frighten and abduct me, play with my honor and put me off, or open the door to even more dangerous outes. I tell from his i expression how much he loves and desires me. But after waiting twelve years, why ’t he play the game acc to the rules and wait awelve days?
Do you know I have the sinking feeling I’ve fallen in love with his inpetend his melancholy childlike glances? At a time when it would’ve been more appropriate to be irate with him, instead, I pitied him. “Oh, my poor child,” a voiside me said, “you suffer suent and are still so utterly inpetent.” I felt so protective of him that I might’ve even made a mistake, I might’ve actually given myself to that spoiled little boy.
Thinking of my unfortunate children, I quied my steps. Just then, in the early darkness and blinding snow, I thought a phantom of a man would run right over me. Dug my head, I slipped by him.
Upoering through the courtyard gate, I khat Hayriye and the children hadn’t yet returned. Very well then, I’d e ba time, the evening prayers hadn’t yet been called. I climbed the stairs, the house smelled e jam. My father was in his darkened room with the blue door; my feet were freezing. I entered my room to the right beside the stairs holding a lamp, and when I saw that the et had been opehat the cushions had fallen out and the room had been ransacked, I assumed it was the naughty work of Shevket and Orhan. There was a silen the house, not unusual, yet uhe usual silence. I donned my house clothes and sat alone in the darkness, and as I gave myself over to momentary daydreaming, my miered a noise ing from below, directly below me, not from the kit but from the large room o the stable, used in summertime as the illustrating workshop. Had my father gone down there, in this cold? I didn’t remember seeing the light of an oil lamp there;
suddenly, I heard the squeak of the front door betweeone walkway and the courtyard, and afterward, the cursed and ominous barking of the pesky dogs roaming past the courtyard gate—I was alarmed, to put it mildly.
“Hayriye,” I shouted. “Shevket, Orhan…”
I felt a cold draft. My father’s brazier must be burning; I ought to sit with him and warm up. As I went to be with him, holding an oil lamp aloft, my thoughts weren’t with Blay longer, but with the children.
I crossed the wide hall diagonally, w if I should set water to boil on the downstairs brazier for the gray mullet soup. I ehe room with the blue door. Everything was in shambles. Without thinking, I was about to say, “What has my father done?”
Then I saw him on the floor.
I screamed, overe with horror. Then I screamed again. Gazing at my father’s body, I fell silent.
Listen, I tell by yht-lipped and cold-blooded rea that you’ve known for some time what’s happened in this room. If not everything, then quite a lot. What you’re w about now is my rea to what I’ve seen, what I feel. As readers sometimes do when studying a picture, you’re trying to dis the pain of the hero and thinking about the events iory leading up to this agonizing moment. And then, having sidered my rea, you’ll take pleasure in trying to imagine, not my pain, but what you’d feel in my place, had it been your father murdered like this. I know this is what you’re so craftily trying to do.
Yes, I returned home in the evening to discover that someone had killed my father. Yes, I tore out my hair. Yes, as I would do in my childhood, I hugged him with all my might and smelled his skin. Yes, I trembled and I couldn’t breathe. Yes, I begged Allah to raise him up and have him sit silently in his er among his books as he always did. Get up, Father, get up, don’t die. His bloodied head was crushed. More thaorn papers and books, more than the breaking and tossing about of the end tables, pais and inkpots, more than the wild destru of cushions, worktables and writing boards, and the ransag of everything, more even than the ahat had killed my father, I feared the hatred that had destroyed the room and everything within it. I was no longer g. A couple passed dowreet outside, laughing and talking in the blaess; meanwhile, I could hear the infinite silence of the world in my mind; with my hands I wiped my running nose and the tears off my cheeks. For a long long time I thought about the children and our lives.
I listeo the silence. I ran, I grabbed my father by the ankles and dragged him into the hallway. For whatever reason, he felt heavier out there, but without paying an<bdo>..</bdo>y mind to this, I began to pull him dowairs. Halfway down, my strength gave out and I sat on a step. I was on the verge of tears again when I heard a hat made me assume that Hayriye and the children had returned. I grabbed my father by the ankles, and pressing them into my armpits, I tio desd, faster this time. My
dear father’s head had been so crushed and was so soaked in blood that it made the sound of a wrung-out mop as it struck each step. At the base of the stairs, I turned his body, whiow seemed to have grown lighter, and with one great effort, dragging him across the stone floor, I took him into the summer painting room. In order to see withich-bla, I hastened back out to the stove i. When I returned with a dle I saw how thhly the room where I’d dragged my father had been pillaged. I was dumbstruck.
Who is it, my God, whie of them?
My mind was ing. Closing the dhtly, I left my father in the demolished room. I grabbed a bucket from the kit, and filled it with water from the well. I climbed the stairs, and by the light of an oil lamp, I quickly wiped away the blood in the hallway, oaircase and everywhere else. I went back upstairs to my room, removed my bloodied clothes and put on clothes. Carrying the bucket and rag, I was about to ehe room with the blue door when I heard the courtyard gate swing open. The evening call to prayer had begun. I mustered all my strength, and holding the oil lamp in my hand, I waited for them at the top of the stairs.
“Mother, we’re back,” Orhan said.
“Hayriye! Where have you been!” I said forcefully, but as if I were whispering, not shouting.
“But Mother, we didn’t stay out past the evening call to prayer…” Shevket had begun to say.
“Quiet! Yrandfather is ill, he’s sleeping.”
“Ill?” said Hayriye from below. She could tell from my silehat I was angry: “Shekure, we waited for Kosta. After the gray mullet arrived, without tarrying, we picked bay leaves, then I bought the dried figs and cherries for the children.”
I had the urge to go down and admonish Hayriye in a whisper, but I was afraid that as I was going downstairs, the oil lamp I carried would illumihe wet steps and the drops of blood I’d missed in my haste. The children noisily climbed the stairs and then removed their shoes.
“Ah-ah-ah,” I said. Guiding them toward our bedroom, “Not that way, yrandfather’s sleeping, don’t go in there.”
“I’m going into the room with the blue door, to be by the brazier,” Shevket said, “not to Grandfather’s room.”
“Yrandfather fell asleep in that room,” I whispered.
But I noticed that they hesitated for a moment. “Let’s be certain that the evil jinns that’ve possessed your
grandfather and made him sick don’t set upoh of you as well,” I said. “Go to your room, now.” I grabbed both of them by their hands and put them into the room where we slept together. “Tell me then, what were you doing out oreets till this hour?” “We saw some black beggars,” said Shevket. “Where?” I asked. “Were they carrying flags?” “As we were climbing the hill. They gave Hayriye a lemon. Hayriye gave them some mohey were covered in snow.” “What else?” “They were practig shooting arrows at a target in the square.” “In this snow?” I said. “Mother, I’m cold,” said Shevket. “I’m going into the room with the blue door.” “You’re not to leave this room,” I said. “Otherwise you’ll die. I’ll bring you the brazier.” “Why do you say we’re going to die?” said Shevket. “I’m going to tell you something,” I said, “but you’re not to tell anyone, are we uood?” They swore not to tell. “While you were out, a pletely white man who’d died and lost his color came here from a faraway try and spoke to yrandfather. It turns out he was a jinn.” They asked me where the jinn came from. “From the other side of the river,” I said. “Where our father is?” asked Shevket. “Yes, from there,” I said. “The jinn came to take a look at the pictures in yrandfather’s books. They say that a sinner who looks at those pictures immediately dies.”
A silence.
“Listen, I’m going downstairs to be with Hayriye,” I said. “I’m going to carry the brazier in here, as well as the diray. Don’t even think of leaving the room or you’ll die. The jinn is still in the house.”
“Mama, Mama, don’t go,” Orhan said.
I squared myself to Shevket. “You’re responsible for your brother,” I said. “If you leave the room and the jin get you, I’ll be the one who kills you.” I put on the frightening expression that I made before slapping them. “Now pray that your ill grandfather doesn’t die. If yood, God will grant you your prayers and no one will be able to harm you.” Without giving themselves over to it too much, they began to pray. I went downstairs.
“Somebody knocked over the pot e jam,” said Hayriye. “The cat couldn’t have do, not strong enough; a dog couldn’t have gotten into the house…”
She abruptly saw the terror on my fad stopped: “What’s the matter, then,” she said, “what happened? Has something happeo your dear father?”
“He’s dead.”
She shrieked. The knife and onion she was holding fell from her hands and hit the cutting board with such force that the fish she reparing flopped. She shrieked agaih noticed that the blood on her left hand had e, not from the fish, but from her index finger, which she’d sliced actally. I ran upstairs, and as I was searg for a pieuslin in the room opposite the ohe children were in, I heard their noises and shouts. Holding the piece of cloth I’d torn off, I ehe room to find that Shevket had climbed onto his younger brother, pinning Orhan’s shoulders down with his knees. He
was choking him.
“What are you two doing!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Orhan was leaving the room,” Shevket said.
“Liar,” said Orhan. “Shevket opehe door and I told him not to leave.” He began to cry.
“If you don’t sit up here quietly, I’ll kill both of you.”
“Mama, don’t go,” Orhan said.
Downstairs, I bound Hayriye’s finger, stopping the bleeding. When I told her that my father hadn’t died a natural death, she grew frightened aed some prayers asking for Allah’s prote. She stared at her injured finger and began g. Was her affe for my father great enough to unleash such a fit ? She wao go upstairs and see him.
“He’s not upstairs,” I said. “He’s in the ba.”
She gazed at me suspiciously. But when she realized I couldn’t bear another look at him, she was overe by curiosity. She grabbed the lamp a. She took four or five steps beyond the entrance of the kit, where I stood, and with resped apprehension, she slowly pushed open the door of the room, and by the light of the lamp she was holding, looked inside. U first to see my father, she raised the lamp even higher, trying to illumihe ers of the large regular room.
“Aaah!” she screamed. She’d caught sight of my father where I’d left him just beside the door. Frozen, she gazed at him. The shadow she cast along the floor and stable wall was motionless. As she looked, I imagined what she was seeing. Wheurned, she wasn’t g. I was relieved to see that she still had her wits about her, enough to be able tister pletely what I repared to tell her.
“Now listen to me, Hayriye,” I said. As I spoke, I waved the fish knife, which my hand had grabbed seemingly on its own. “The upstairs has been ransacked too; the same accursed demon has destroyed all, he’s made a shambles of everything. That’s where he crushed my father’s fad skull; that’s where he killed him. I brought him down here so the children wouldn’t see and so I might have a ce to caution you. After you three left, I also went out. Father was home by himself.”
“I was not aware of that,” she said ily. “Where were you?”
I wanted her to take careful note of my silehen I said, “I was with Black. I met with Bla the house of the Hanged Jew. But you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Nor, for the time being, will you mention that my father has been killed.”
“Who was it that murdered him?”
Was she truly su idiot or was she trying to er me?
“If I knew, I wouldn’t hide the fact that he was dead,” I said. “I don’t know. Do you?”
“How should I know anything?” she said. “What are we going to do now?”
“Yoing to behave as if nothing whatsoever has happened,” I said. I felt the urge to wail, to burst out g, but I restrained myself. We both were quiet.
Much later, I said, “Fet about the fish for now, set out the dishes for the children.”
She objected and started to cry, and I put my arms around her. We hugged each htly. I loved her then, momentarily pitying, not only myself and the children, but all of us. But even as we embraced, a worm of doubt was anxiously gnawing at me. You know where I was while my father was being murdered. To further my own designs, I’d cleared the house of Hayriye and the children. You know that leaving my father alone in the house was an unforeseen ce…But did Hayriye know? Did she prehend what I’d explaio her, will she uand? Indeed, yes, she’d quickly uand and grow suspicious. I hugged her even tighter; but I khat with her slave girl’s mind she’d assume I was doing this to cover up my wiles, and before long even I felt as if I were deceiving her. While my father was being murdered here, I was with Blagaged in an act of lovemaking. If it were only Hayriye who khis, I wouldn’t feel as guilty, but I suspect that you might make something of it as well. So, admit it, you believe that I’m hiding something. Alas, poor woman! Could my fate be any darker? I began to cry, then Hayriye cried, and we embraced again.
I preteo satisfy my hu the table we’d set upstairs. From time to time, with the excuse of “cheg on Grandfather,” I would step into the other room and burst into tears. Later because the children were scared and agitated, they snuggled up tightly o me in bed. For a long while they were uo sleep for fear of jinns, and as they tossed and turhey kept asking, “I heard a noise, did you hear it?” To lull them to sleep, I promised to tell them a love story. You knoords take wing in the darkness.
“Mother, you’re not going to get married are you?” said Shevket.
“Listen to me,” I said. “There rince who, from afar, fell in love with a strikingly beautiful maiden. How did this happen? I’ll tell you how. Before laying eyes on the pretty maiden, he’d seen her portrait, that’s how.”
As I would often do when I set and troubled, I reted the tale not from memory, but improvising acc to how I felt at that time. And since I colored it using a palette of my own memories and worries, what I reted became a kind of melancholy illustration to apany all that
had happeo me.
After both children fell asleep, I left the warm bed and, together with Hayriye, ed up what that vile demon had scattered about. We picked up ruined chests, books, cloth, ceramic cups, earthes, plates and inkpots that had been thrown about and shattered; we cleared away a demolished folding worktable, paint boxes and papers that had been torn up with furious hatred; and while doing so one of us, periodically, would stop and break down g. It was as though we were more distraught over the wreckage of the rooms and their furnishings and the savage violation of our privacy, than we were over my father’s death. I tell you from experience, unfortunates who’ve lost loved ones are forted by the unged presence of objects in the house; they’re lulled by the sameness of the curtains, blas and daylight, which, in turn, allows them occasionally tet that Azrael has carried away their beloved or kin. The house that my father looked after with patiend love, whose nooks and doors he had meticulously embellished, had been mercilessly vandalized; thus, we were not only devoid of fort and pleasant memories but, reminded of the pitilessness of the culprit’s damned soul, we were terrified as well.
When, for example, at my insistence we went downstairs, drew fresh water from the well, performed our ablutions and were reg from the “Family of Imran” chapter—which my dearly departed father said he loved so much because it mentioned hope ah—out of his most cherished Herat-bound Koran, we were under sway of this terror and alarmed that the courtyard gate had begun to creak. It was nothing. But, after we checked that the latch was locked, and barricaded the gate by moving with our birength the planter of sweet basil that my father would water on spring ms with freshly drawn well water, we reehe house in the dead of night, and it suddenly seemed that the elongated shadoere casting by the light of the oil lamp beloo others. Most frightening of all was the horror that overcame us like a silent act of piety, as we solemnly washed his bloodied fad ged his clothes so that I might deceive myself into believing that my father had died at his appoiime; “Hand me his sleeve from underh,” Hayriye had whispered to me.
As we removed his bloody clothes and undergarments, what aroused our amazement and awe was the vitality and whitish color of my father’s skin illuminated by dlelight. Because there were many more threatening things thten us, her of us was shy about looking at my father’s sprawling naked body covered with moles and wounds. When Hayriye went back upstairs to fetch undergarments and his green silk shirt, uo restrain myself, I looked down there and was immediately quite ashamed at what I’d done. After I’d dressed my father in fresh clothes and carefully ed the blood off his neck, fad hair, I embraced him with all my strength, and burying my nose in his beard, I inhaled his st and cried at length.
For those of you who would accuse me of lag feeling, or even of being guilty, let me hasten to tell of two further instances when I broke down g: 1. When I was tidying the upstairs room so the children wouldn’t discover what had happened and I brought a seashell he’d used as a paper buro my ear, as I’d done as a child, only to discover that the sound of the sea had diminished. 2. When I saw that the red velvet cushion my father sat upon oftehe last twenty years—so much so it’d bee part of
his rear end—had been torn apart.
Whehing in the house, excluding the damage that was beyond repair, ut ba order, I mercilessly denied Hayriye’s request to spread her roll-up mattress out in our room. “I don’t want the children to get suspicious in the m,” I explaio her. But, to be ho, I was as eager to be aloh my children as I was to punish her. I entered my bed but was uo sleep for a long while, not because I reoccupied with the horror of what had happened, but because I was sidering all that yet lay in store.
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