I AM CALLED BLACK
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Maybe you’ve uood by now that for men like myself, that is, melanen for whom love, agony, happiness and misery are just excuses for maintainiernal loneliness, life offers her great joy nreat sadness. I’m not saying we ’t relate to other souls overwhelmed by these feelings, on the trary, we sympathize with them. What we ot fathom is the odd disquiet our souls sink into at such times. This silent turmoil dims our intellects and dampens our hearts, usurping the place reserved for the true joy and sadness we ought to experience.I had buried her father, thank God, hurried home from the funeral, and in a gesture of dolence, embraced my wife, Shekure; then suddenly, in a fit of tears she collapsed onto a large cushion with her children, whlaring at me with spite, and I didn’t know what to do. Her misery cided with my victory. In one fell swoop, I had wed the dream of my youth, freed myself from her father who belittled me, and beaster of the house. Who would ever believe the siy of my tears? But believe me, it wasn’t like that. I truly wao grieve, but couldn’t: Enishte had always been more of a father to me than my real father. But sihe meddlesome preacher who’d performed Enishte’s final
ablution opped babbling, the rumor that my Enishte died under mysterious circumstances spread among the neighbors during the funeral—as I could seanding in the courtyard of the mosque. I didn’t want my inability to cry to be interpreted ively; I don’t have to tell you how real the fear of being branded “stoed” is.
You know how some sympathetit will always attest that “he’s g on the io prevent someone like me from being banished from the group. I did in fact cry on the inside as I tried to hide in a er from the busybody neighbors and distaives with their astonishing abilities to summon a downpour of tears; I thought about being the master of the house and whether I should somehow take charge of the situation, but just then there came a knock at the door. A moment of panic. Was it Hasan? Regardless, I wao save myself from this hell of whimpering at whatever cost.
It was a royal page, summonio the palace. I was stunned.
As I exited the courtyard, I found a mud-covered silver on the ground. Was I afraid to go to the palace? Yes, but I was also happy to be outside in the cold among the horses, dogs, trees and people. I thought I’d befriend the pageboy like those hopeless daydreamers who, believing they might sweeten the world’s cruelty before fag the executioner, attempt a lighthearted versation with the dungeon guard about this and that, the beauties of life, the ducks afloat on the pond, or the strangeness of a cloud in the sky; but alas he disappointed me, proving a rather morose, pimply, tight-lipped youth. As I passed the Hagia Sophia, notig with awe the slender cypresses delicately stretg into the hazy sky, it wasn’t the horror of dying right after marrying Shekure after all these years that made my hair stand on end. It was the injustice of dying at the hands of the palace torturers without having shared one good session of lovemaking with her.
We didn’t walk toward the terrifying spires of the Middle Gate, beyond which the torturers and the quick-handed executioners saw to their work, but toward the carpentry shops. As we headed between the granaries, a cat ing itself in the mud between the legs of a chestnut horse with steaming nostrils turned but didn’t look at us: The cat reoccupied with its own filth, much as we were.
Behind the grawo figures, whose rank and affiliation I couldn’t determine from their green and purple uniforms, relieved the pageboy, and locked me into the dark room of a small house, which I could tell was new by the smell of fresh lumber. I knew log a man up in a dark room was meant to arouse fear before torture; hoping they’d begin with the bastinado, I thought about the lies I could tell to save my hide. A crowd in the adjoining room seemed to be raising quite a ruckus.
There are most certainly those of you who ’t attribute my mog and mirthful too that of a man on the verge of torture. But haven’t I mentioned I sider myself one of God’s luckier servants? And if the birds of fortuhat alighted upon my head these last two days after years of deprivatio proof enough, surely the silver I found outside the courtyard gate must be some indication.
Awaiting my torture, I was forted by the silver and had plete faith it would protect me; I
palmed it, rubbed it aedly kissed this token of good fortuhat Allah had sent me. But at whatever time they removed me from the darkness and brought me into the room where I saw the ander of the Imperial Guard and his bald-headed Croatian torturers, I khe silver was worthless. The pitiless voice within me was absolutely correct: The in my pocket hadn’t e from God, but was one of those that I’d showered Shekure with two days ago—that the children overlooked. Hence, in the hands of my torturers, I had nothing in which to take refuge.
I didn’t even notice that tears began to fall from my eyes. I wao beg, but as in a dream, no sound issued from my mouth. I knew from wars, deaths and political assassination and torture (which I’d witnessed from afar) that life could be extinguished instantaneously, but I’d never experie this closely. They were going to strip me from this world just as they’d stripped off my garments.
They took off my vest and shirt. One of the executioners sat on me, driving his knees into my shoulders. Another placed a cage over my head with all the practiced elegance of a reparing food and began slowly turning the screw at its front. Nay, it wasn’t a cage, but rather a vise that gradually squeezed my head.
I screamed at the top of my lungs. I begged, but ily. I cried, mostly because my nerves had given out.
They stopped momentarily and asked: “Were you the one who killed Enishte Effendi?”
I took a deep breath: “Nay.”
They began to tighten the vise again. It was excruciating.
They asked again.
“Nay.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know!”
I wondered if I should just tell them I’d killed him. The world spun pleasantly about my head. I was overe with reluce. I asked myself if I were growing aced to the pain. My executioners and I stayed still for a moment. I felt no pain, I was simply terrified.
Just as I decided from the silver in my pocket that they weren’t going to kill me, they suddenly released me. They removed the viselike traption that had actually dotle damage to my head. The executioner who’d pinned me down stood up without even a hint of apology. I donned my shirt a.
There passed a very long silence.
At the other end of the room, I saw Head Illuminator Osman Effendi. I went to him and kissed his hand.
“Don’t be ed, my child,” he said to me. “They were just testing you.”
I k ohat I’d found a new father to replaishte, may he rest in peace.
“Our Sultan has ordered that you not be tortured at this time,” said the ander. “He deemed it appropriate for you to help Head Illuminator Master Osman find the rogue who’s been killing His miniaturists and the loyal servants preparing His manuscripts. You have three days in which to interrogate the miniaturists, scrutihe illuminated pages they’ve made and find the sly culprit. The Sn is quite appalled by the rumors being spread by mischief makers about His miniaturists and illuminated manuscripts. Both the Head Treasurer Haz 1m Agha and I will help you find this sdrel, as the Sultan has decreed. One of you has been very close to Enishte Effendi, and has thus heard his recitations and knows about t<bdi></bdi>he miniaturists who visited him at night and the story behind the book. The other is a great master who takes pride in knowing all the miniaturists of the workshop like the back of his hand. Within three days, if you fail to produce that swine along with the missing page he stole—about which much gossip is flying—it is Our Just Sultan’s express desire that you, my child Black Effendi, be the first to undergo torture and interrogation. Afterward, let there be no doubt, each of the other master miniaturists will have his turn.”
I could deteo secret gestures weewo old friends, who’d worked together for years: Head Treasurer Haz 1m Agha, who issiohe work, and Head Illuminator Master Osman Effendi, who received the funds and materials through him from the treasury.
“Everyone knows, whenever a crime is itted within Our Sultan’s wards, regiments and divisions, that the entire group is sidered guilty until one among them is identified and turned in. A se that fails to he murderer in its midst goes down in the judicial records as a ”division of murderers,“ including its offiaster, and is punished accly,” said the ander. “Therefore, our Head Illuminator Master Osman will keep a sharp watch, scrutinize each of the illustrations with his peing gaze, uhe devilry, ruse, mischief and instigation that has set the i miniaturists at each other’s throats, and remand the guilty party to the unwavering justice of the Refuge of the World, Our Sultan, thereby clearing the good name of his guild. To this end, we’ve ordered that whatsoever Master Osman may require be grao him. My me this moment fisg each of the manuscript pages that the master miniaturists have been illuminating in the privacy of their homes.”
IT IS I, MASTER OSMANThe ader of the Imperial Guard and the Head Treasurer reiterated Our Sultan’s decrees before leaving the two of us alone. Of course, Black was exhausted by fear, g and the ruse of torture. He fell quiet like a boy. I knew I would e to like him, and I didn’t disturb his peace.
I had three days to examihe pages that the ander’s men collected from the homes of my calligraphers and master miniaturists, and to determine who had worked on them. You all know how disgusted I was when I first laid eyes on the paintings prepared for Enishte Effendi’s book, and how Black had giveo the Head Treasurer Haz 1m Agha to clear his name. Grahere must be something to those pages for them to arouse such violent disgust and hatred in a miniaturist like myself who’s devoted his life to artistry; merely bad art wouldn’t provoke such a rea. So, with newfound curiosity, I began to reexamihe nine pages that the deceased fool had issioned from the miniaturists who came to him under cover of night.
I saw a tree in the middle of a blank page, situated within poor Elegant’s border design and gilding work, which gracefully framed every page. I tried to jure the se and story to which the tree belonged. If I had told my illustrators to draw a tree, dear Butterfly, wise Stork and wily Olive would have begun by ceiving of this tree as part of a story so they might draw the image with fidence. If I were then to scrutihat tree, I’d be able to determine which tale the illustrator had in mind based on its branches and leaves. This, however, was a miserable, solitary tree; behind it, there was a quite high horizon lihat hearkened back to the style of the oldest masters of Shiraz and atuated the feeling of isolation. There was nothing at all, however, filling the area created by raising the horizon. The desire to depict a tree simply as such, as the Veian masters did, was here bined with the Persian way of seeing the world from above, and the result was a miserable painting that was her Veian nor Persian. This was how a tree at the edge of the world would look. Attempting to biwo separate styles, my miniaturists and the barren mind of that deceased had created a work devoid of any skill whatsoever. But it wasn’t that the illustration was informed by two different worldviews so much as the lack of skill that incurred my wrath.
I felt the same way as I looked at the other pictures, at the perfect dream horse and the woman with the bowed head. The choice of subject matter also iritated me, whether it was the two wandering dervishes or Satan. It was obvious that my illustrators had coyly ied these inferior pictures into Our Sultan’s illuminated manuscript. I felt renewed awe at exalted Allah’s judgment in taking Enishte’s life before the book had been finished. Needless to say, I had no desire whatsoever to plete this manuscript.
Who wouldn’t be annoyed by this dog, drawn from above but staring at me from just beh my nose as if it were my brother? On the one hand, I was astounded by the plainness of the dog’s positioning, the beauty of its threatening sidelong glance, head lowered to the ground, and the violent whiteness of its teeth, in short, by the talent of the miniaturists who’d depicted it (I was on the verge of determining precisely who’d worked on the picture); oher hand, I couldn’t five the way this talent had been harnessed by the absurd logic of an inscrutable will. her the desire to imitate the Europeans nor the excuse that the book Our Sultan had issioned as a present for the Doge ought to make use of teiques familiar to the Veians was adequate to explain the fawning pretension in these pictures.
I was terrified by the passion of red in one bustling picture, wherein I at once reized the touch of eay master miniaturists in each er. An artist’s hand that I couldn’t identify had applied a peculiar red to the painting uhe guidance of an are logid the entire world revealed by the
illustration was slowly suffused by this color. I spent some time hunched over this crowded picture pointing out to Black whiy miniaturists had drawn the plaree (Stork), the ships and houses (Olive), and the kite and flowers (Butterfly).
“Of course, a great master miniaturist like yourself, who’s been head of a book-arts division for years, could distinguish the craft of each of his illustrators, the disposition of their lines and the temperament of their brush strokes,” Black said. “But when an etric book lover like my Enishte forces these same illustrators to paint with new and ueiques, how you determihe artists responsible for each design with such certainty?”
I decided to answer with a parable: “Once upon a time there was a shah who ruled over Isfahan; he was a lover of book arts, and lived all alone in his castle. He was a strong and mighty, intelligent, but merciless shah, and he had love only for two things: the illustrated manuscripts he issioned and his daughter. So devoted was this shah to his daughter that his enemies could hardly be faulted for claiming he was in love with her—for he roud and jealous enough to declare war on neighb princes and shahs in the event that o ambassadors to ask for her hand. Naturally, there was no husband worthy of his daughter, and he fined her to a room, accessible only through forty locked doors. In keeping with a only held belief in Isfahahought that his daughter’s beauty would fade if other men laid eyes on her. One day, after aion of Hüsrev and Shirin that he’d issioned was inscribed and illustrated in the Herat style, a ruman to circulate in Isfahan: The pale-faced beauty eared in one bustling picture was her than the jealous shah’s daughter! Even before hearing the rumors, the shah, suspicious of this mysterious illustration, opehe pages of the book with trembling hands and in a flood of tears saw that his daughter’s beauty had indeed been captured on the page. As the stoes, it wasn’t actually the shah’s daughter, protected by forty locked doors, who emerged to be portrayed one night, but her beauty which escaped from her room like a ghost stifled by boredom, refleg off a series of mirrors and passih doors and through keyhol<tt>..t>es like a ray of light or wisp of smoke to reach the eyes of an illustrator w through the night. The masterful young miniaturist, uo restrain himself, depicted the beauty, which he couldn’t bear to behold, in the illustration he was in the midst of pleting. It was the se that showed Shirin gazing upon a picture of Hüsrev and falling in love with him during the course of a tryside outing.”
“My beloved master, my good sir, this is quite a ce,” said Black. “I, too, am quite fond of that se from Hüsrev and Shirin.”
“These aren’t fables, but events that actually happened,” I said. “Listen, the miniaturist didn’t depict the shah’s beautiful daughter as Shirin, but as a courtesan playing the lute or setting the table, because that was the figure he was in the midst of illustrating at the time. As a result, Shirin’s beauty paled beside the extraordinary beauty of the courtesan standing off to the side, thus disrupting the painting’s balance. After the shah saw his daughter in the painting, he wao locate the gifted miniaturist who’d depicted her. But the crafty miniaturist, fearing the shah’s wrath, had rendered both the courtesan and Shirin, not in his own style, but in a new way so as to ceal his identity. The skillful brush strokes of quite a few other miniaturists had goo the work as well.”
“How had the shah discovered the identity of the miniaturist who portrayed his daughter?”
“From the ears!”
“Whose ears? The ears of the daughter or her picture?”
“Actually, her. Following his intuition, he first laid out all the books, pages and illustrations that his own miniaturists had made and ied all the ears therein. He saw what he’d known for years in a new l<q>９9ｌｉｂ.</q>ight: Regardless of the level of talent, each of the miniaturists made ears in his own style. It didn’t matter if the face they depicted was the face of a sultan, a child, a warrior, or even, God forbid, the partially veiled face of Our Exalted Prophet, or even, God forbid again, the face of the Devil. Each miniaturist, in each case, always drew the ears the same way, as if this were a secret signature.”
“Why?”
“When the masters illustrated a face, they focused on approag its exalted beauty, on the dictates of the old models of form, on the expression, or oher it should resemble somebody real. But when it came time to make the ears, they her stole from others, imitated a model nor studied a real ear. For the ears, they didn’t think, didn’t aspire to anything, didn’t even stop to sider what they were doing. They simply guided their brushes from memory.”
“But didn’t the great masters also create their masterpieces from memory without ever even looking at real horses, trees or people?” said Black.
“True,” I said, “but those are memories acquired after years of thought, plation and refle. Having seey of horses, illustrated and actual, over their lifetimes, they know that the last flesh-and-blood horse they see before them will only mar the perfect horse they hold ihoughts. The horse that a master miniaturist has drawn tens of thousands of times eventually es close to God’s vision of a horse, and the artist knows this through experiend deep in his soul. The horse that his hand draws quickly from memory is rendered with talent, great effort, and insight, and it is a horse that approaches Allah’s horse. However, the ear that is drawn before the hand has accumulated any knowledge, before the artist has weighed and sidered what it is doing, or before paying attention to the ears of the shah’s daughter, will always be a flaw. Precisely because it is a flaw, or imperfe, it will vary from miniaturist to miniaturist. That is, it amounts to a signature.”
There was a otion. The ander’s men were bringing into the old workshop the pages they’d collected from the homes of the miniaturists and the calligraphers.
“Besides, ears are actually a human flaw,” I said, hoping Black would smile. “They’re at once distind on to everyone: a perfect maion of ugliness.”
“What happeo the miniaturist who’d been caught by the authorities through his style of painting ears?”
I refrained from saying, “He was blinded,” to keep Black from being even more downcast. Instead, I responded, “He married the shah’s daughter, and this method, which has beeo identify miniaturists ever since, is known by many khans, shahs and sultans who fund book-arts workshops as the ”courtesahod.“ Furthermore, it is kept secret so that if one of their miniaturists makes a forbidden figure or a small design that ceals some mischief and later denies having done so, they quickly determine who was responsible—geists have an instinctive desire to draw what’s forbidden! Sometimes their hands make mischief on their own. Unc these transgressions involves finding trivial, quickly drawn aitive details removed from the heart of the painting, such as ears, hands, grass, leaves, or even horses’ manes, legs or hooves. But beware, the method doesn’t work if the illustrator himself is mindful that this detail has bee his ow signature. Mustaches won’t work, for instance, because many artists are aware how freely they’re drawn as a sort of signature anyway. But eyebrows are a possibility: No one pays much attention to them. e now, let’s see which young masters have brought their brushes and reed pens to bear upon late Enishte’s illustrations.”
Thus we brought together the pages of two illustrated manuscripts, ohat was being pleted secretly and the other openly, two books with different stories and subjects, illustrated in two distinct styles; that is, deceased Enishte’s book and the Book of Festivities reting our prince’s circumcision ceremony, whose creation was under my trol. Blad I looked ily wherever I moved my magnifying lens:
1. In the pages of the Book of Festivities, we first studied the open mouth of the fox whose pelt a master of the furrier’s guild, in a red caftan and purple sash, held on his lap as the guild passed before Our Sultan, watg the parade from a loge made specifically for the event. Unmistakably, Olive had made both the fox’s teeth, which were individually distinguishable, and the teeth in Enishte’s illustration of Satan, an ominous creature, half-demon and half-giant, that appeared to have e from Samarkand.
2. On a particularly joyous day of the festivities, below Our Sultan’s loge overlooking the Hippodrome, a division of impoverished frontier ghazis appeared in tattered clothes. One of their lot made a plea: “My Exalted Sultan, we, your heroic soldiers, fell captive as we fought the infidel in the name of ion and were only able to gain our freedom by leaving a number of our brethren behind as hostages; that is, we were set free in order to amass ransom. However, when we arrived ba Istanbul, we found everything so expehat we’ve been uo collect the moo save our brethren who languish as prisoners of the kaffirs. We’re at the mercy of your aid. Please grant us gold or slaves that we might take back to exge for their freedom.” Stork clearly made the nails of the lazy dog off to the side—glaring with one ope Our Sultan, at our poor, destitute ghazis and at the Persian and Tatar ambassadors in the Hippodrome—as well as the nails of the dog occupying a er of the se depig the adventures of the Gold in Enishte’s book.
3. Among the jugglers spinning eggs on pieces of wood and turning somersaults before Our Sultan was a bald man with bare calves wearing a purple vest, who played a tambourine as he sat off to one side on a red carpet; this mahe instrumely the same way the woman held a large brass serving tray in the illustration of Red in Enishte’s book: doubtless the work of Olive.
4. As the cooks’ guild pushed past Our Sultan, they were cooking stuffed cabbage with meat and onions in a cauldroing on a stove in their cart. The master cooks apanying the cart stood on pih resting their stew pots on blue stohese stones were rendered by the same artist who made the red ones on dark-blue earth above which floated the half-ghostly creature in the illustration that Enishte called Death: the unmistakable work of Butterfly.
5. Mouatar messengers brought word that the Persian Shah’s armies had begun to mobilize for another campaign against the Ottomans, who thereupon razed to the ground the exquisite observation kiosk of the Persian ambassador who’d repeatedly affirmed to Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, in a cascade of pleasahat the Shah was His friend and harbored nothing but brotherly affe for Him. During this episode of wrath aru, water bearers ran out to settle the dust raised in the Hippodrome, and a group of men appeared shoulderiher sacks full of linseed oil to pour over a mob ready to attack the ambassador, in hopes of pacifying it. The raised feet of the water bearers and of the men carrying sacks of linseed oil were made by the same artist who paihe raised feet of charging soldiers in the depi of Red: also the work of Butterfly.
I wasn’t the one who made this last discovery as I directed our search for clues, moving the magnifying lens right a, to that picture then this one; rather it was Black, who opened his eyes wide and scarcely blinked gripped by the fear of torture and the hop藏书网e of returning to his wife who awaited him at home. Using the “courtesahod,” it took aire afternoon to sort out which of our miniaturists worked on each of the nine pictures left by the late Enishte, and later, to interpret that information.
Black’s late Enishte didn’t limit any single page to the artistic talent of just one miniaturist; all three of my master miniaturists worked on most of the illustrations. This meant that the pictures were moved from house to house with great frequency. In addition to the work I reized, I noticed the amateurish strokes of a fifth artist, but as I grew angry at the dearth of talent shown by this disgraceful murderer, Black determined from the cautious brush strokes that it was ihe work of his Enishte—thereby saving us from following a false lead. If we disted poor Elegant Effendi, who’d done almost the same gilding for Enishte’s book and our Book of Festivities (yes, this of course broke my heart) and who, I gathered, had occasionally lowered his brush to execute a few walls, leaves and clouds, it was evident that only my three most brilliant master miniaturists had tributed to these illustrations. They were the darlings I’d lovingly trained siheir apprenticeships, my three beloved talents: Olive, Butterfly and Stork.
Discussing their talents, mastery and temperaments to the end of finding the clue we were looking for iably led to a discussion of my own life as well:
The Attributes of OliveHis given name was Velijan. If he had a niame besides the one I’d given him, I don’t know it, because I never saw him sign any of his work. When he prentice, he’d e get me from my home on Tuesday ms. He was very proud, and so if he ever lowered himself to sign his work, he’d want this signature to be plain and reizable; he wouldn’t try to ceal it anywhere. Allah had quite generously endowed him with excess ability. He could readily and easily do anything from gilding to ruling and his work was superb. He was the workshop’s most brilliant creator of trees, animals and the human face. Velijan’s father, whht him to Istanbul when he was, I believe, ten years old, was trained by Siyavush, the famous illustrator specializing in faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop. He hails from a long line of masters whose genealogy goes back to the Mongols, and just like the elderly masters who bore a Mongol-ese influend settled in Samarkand, Bukhara a 150 years ago, he rendered moon-faced young lovers as if they were ese. her during his apprenticeship nor during his time as a master was I able to lead this stubborn artist to other styles. How I would’ve liked him to trahe styles and models of the Mongol, ese a masters billeted deep in his soul, or even for him tet about them entirely. When I told him this, he replied that like many miniaturists who’d moved from workshop to workshop and try to try, he’d fotten these old styles, if he’d ever actually learhem. Though the value of many miniaturists resides precisely in the splendid models of form they’ve itted to memory, had Velijan truly fotten them, he’d have bee an eveer illustrator. Still, there were two bes, of which he wasn’t even aware, to harb the teags of his mentors in the depths of his soul like a pair of unfessed sins: 1. For such a gifted miniaturist, ging to old forms iably stirred feelings of guilt and alienation that would spur his talent to maturity. 2. In a moment of difficulty, he could always recall what he claimed to have fotten, and thus, he could successfully plete any new subject, history or se by recourse to one of the old Herat models. With his keen eye, he knew how to harmonize what he’d learned from the old forms and Shah Tahmasp’s old masters in new pictures. Herat painting and Istanbul orion happily merged in Olive.
As with all of my miniaturists, I once paid an unannounced visit to his home. Unlike my work area and that of many other master miniaturists, his was a filthy fusion of paints, brushes, burnishing shells, his folding worktable and other objects. It was a mystery to me, but he wasn’t even embarrassed by it. He took no outside jobs to earn a few extra silver s. After I related these facts, Black said it was Olive who showed the most enthusiasm for and the most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters admired by his late Enishte. I uood this to be praise from the deceased fool’s point of view, mistaken though it was. I ’t say whether Olive was more deeply aly bound to the Herat styles—which went back to his father’s mentor Siyavush and Siyavush’s mentor Muzaffer, back to the era of Bihzad and the old masters—than he appeared to be, but it always made me wonder whether Olive harbored other hidden tendencies. Of my miniaturists (I told myself spontaneously), he was the most quiet aive, but also the most guilty and traitorous, and by far the most devious. When I thought about the ander’s torture chambers, he was the first to e to mind. (I both wanted and didn’t want him to be tortured.) He had the eyes of a jiniced and took at of everything, including my own shortings; however, with the reserve of an exile able to aodate himself to any situation, he’d rarely open his mouth to point out mistakes. He was wily, yes, but not in my opinion a
murderer. (I didn’t tell Black this.) Olive didn’t believe in anything. He had no faith in money, but he’d nervously squirrel it away. trary to what is only believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers. Manuscript illumination leads to painting, and painting, in turn, leads to—God forbid—challenging Allah. Everybody knows this. Therefore, to judge by his lack of faith, Olive is a geist. heless, I believe that his God-given gifts fall short of Butterfly’s, or even Stork’s. I would’ve wanted Olive to be my son. As I said this, I wao incur Black’s jealousy, but he only responded by opening his dark eyes and staring with childlike curiosity. Then I said Olive was magnifit when he worked in blak, when he rendered, for pasting in albums, warriors, hunting ses, ese-inspired landscapes full of storks and es, pretty boys gathered beh a tree reg verse and playing lutes, and when he depicted the sorrow of legendary lovers, the wrath of a sword-bearing, enraged shah, and a hero’s expression of fear as he dodged the attack of a dragon.
“Perhaps Enishte wanted Olive to do the last picture that would show i detail, iyle of the Europeans, Our Sultan’s fad manner of sitting,” Black said.
Was he trying to fuse me?
“Supposing this were the case, after Olive killed Enishte, why would he absd with a picture he was already familiar with?” I said. “Or, if you like, why would he murder Enishte in order to see that picture?”
We both pohese questions for a while.
“Because there’s something missing in that painting,” said Black. “Or because he regrets something he did and is scared by it. Or even…” he thought for a while. “Or, having killed Enishte, he might’ve taken the painting to do further harm, for the sake of having a memento, or even for no reason at all. Olive is, after all, a great illustrator who’d naturally have a lot of respect for a beautiful painting.”
“We’ve already discussed in what ways Olive is a great illustrator,” I said, growing angry. “But none of Enishte’s illustrations is beautiful.”
“We haven’t yet seen the last painting,” Black said boldly.
The Attributes of ButterflyHe is known as Hasan Chelebi from the Gunpowder Factory district, but to me he’s always been “Butterfly.” This niame always reminds me of the beauty of his boyhood and youth: He was so handsome that those who saw him didn’t believe their eyes and wanted a sed look. I’ve always been astonished by the miracle of his being as talented as he is handsome. He’s a master of color and this is his greatest strength; he painted passionately, reeling with the pleasure of applying color. But I cautioned Black that Butterfly was flighty, aimless and indecisive. Anxious to be just, I added: He’s a genuine miniaturist who paints from the heart. If the arts of orio meant to cater to intelligence,
to speak to the animal within us, or to bolster the pride of the Sultan; that is, if this art is meant to be only a festival for the eyes, then Butterfly is indeed a true miniaturist. He makes wide, easy, blithe curves, as if he’d taken lessons from the masters of Kazvin forty years ago; he fidently applies his bright, pure colors, and there’s always a gentle circularity hidden in the arra of his paintings; but I’m the one who trained him, not those long-dead masters of Kazvin. Maybe it’s for this reason that I love him like a son, nay, more than a son—but I never felt any awe toward him. As with all of my apprentices, in his boyhood and adolesce, I beat him freely with brush handles, rulers and even pieces of wood, but this doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. Though I beat Stork frequently with rulers, I respect him too. In trast to what the casual onlht assume, a master’s beating doesn’t rid the young apprentice of jinns of talent and the Devil, but only suppresses them temporarily. If it happens to be a good beating, and deserved, later on the jinns and the Devil will rise up and stimulate the developing miniaturist’s resolve to work. As for the beatings I administered to Butterfly, they shaped him into a tent and obedient artist.
I at once felt the o praise him to Black: “Butterfly’s artistry,” I said, “is solid proof that the picture of bliss, which the celebrated poet ponders in his masnawi, is only possible through a God-given gift for uanding and applying color. When I realized this, I also realized what Butterfly lacked: He hadn’t known that momentary loss of faith that Jami refers to in his poetry as ”the dark night of the soul.“ Like an illustrator painting in the great happiness of Heaves to his work with vi and te, believing that he make a blissful painting, which he does succeed in doing. Our armies besieging Doppio castle, the Hungarian ambassador kissing the feet of Our Sultan, Our Prophet asding through the seven heavens, these are of course all ily happy ses, but rendered by Butterfly, they bee flights of ecstasy springing from the page. In an illustration of mine, if the darkness of death or the seriousness of a gover session weighs heavy, I’ll tell Butterfly to ”color it as you see fit,“ and thereupon, the outfits, leaves, flags ahat lay there muted as if sprinkled with dirt meant to fill a grave begin to ripple in the breeze. There are times when I think Allah wants the world to be seen the way Butterfly illustrates it, that He wants life to be jubilation. Ihis is a realm where colors harmoniously recite magnifit ghazals to each other, where time stops, where the Devil never appears.”
However, even Butterfly knows this isn’t enough. Someone must have quite rightly—yes, in good measure—whispered to him that in his work everything was as joyous as a holiday, but devoid of depth. Child princes and senile old harem women on the verge of death enjoy his paintings, not men of the world forced tle with evil. Because Butterfly is well aware of these criticisms, poor ma times grows jealous of average miniaturists who though much less talehan he are possessed of demons and jinns. What he mistakenly believes to be devilry and the work of jinns is more often than not straightforward evil and envy.
He aggravates me because when he paints, he doesn’t lose himself in that wondrous world, surrendering to its ecstasy, but only reaches that height when he imagines his work will please others. He aggravates me because he thinks about the money he’ll earn. It’s another of life’s irohere are many artists with much less tale more able than Butterfly to surrehemselves to their art.
In his o make up for his shortings, Butterfly is preoccupied with proving that he has sacrificed himself to art. Like those birdbrained miniaturists who paint on fingernails and pieces of rice, pictures almost invisible to the naked eye, he’s engrossed with minute and delicate craftsmanship. I’d once asked him whether he gave himself over to this ambition, which has blinded many illustrators at an early age, because he was ashamed of the excessive talent Allah had granted him. Only i miniaturists paint each leaf of a tree they’ve drawn on a grain of riake an easy name for themselves and to gain importan the eyes of derons.
Butterfly’s ination to design and illustrate for other people’s pleasure rather than for his own, his untrollable o please others, made him, more than any of the others, a slave to praise. And so it follows that an uain Butterfly wants to ensure his standing by being Head Illuminator. It was Black who had raised this subject.
“Yes,” I said, “I know he’s been scheming to succeed me after I die.”
“Do you think this would drive him to murder his miniaturist brethren?”
“It might. He’s a great master, but he’s not aware of this, and he ’t leave the world behind when he paints.”
I said this, whereupon I grasped that in truth I, too, wanted Butterfly to assume leadership of the workshop after me. I couldn’t trust Olive, and in the end Stork would unwittingly bee slave to the Veian style. Butterfly’s o be admired—I set at the thought that he could take a life—would be vital in handling both the workshop and the Sultan. Only Butterfly’s sensitivity and faith in his own palette could resist the Veian artistry that duped the viewer by trying to depict reality itself rather than its representation, in all its detail: pictures, shadows included, of cardinals, bridges, rowboats, dlesticks, churches and stables, oxen and carriage wheels, as if all of them were of the same importao Allah.
“Was there ever a time when you visited him unannounced as you had with the others?”
“Whosoever looks upon Butterfly’s work will quickly sehat he uands the value of love as well as the meaning of heartfelt joy and sorrow. But as with all lovers of color, he gets carried away with his emotions and is fickle. Because I was so enamored of his God-given and miraculous talent, of his sensitivity to color, I paid close attention to him in his youth and know everything there is to know about him. Of course, in such situations, the other miniaturists quickly bee jealous and the master-disciple relationship bees strained and damaged. There were many moments of love during which Butterfly did not fear what others might say. Retly, since he married the neighborhood fruit seller’s pretty daughter, I’ve her felt the desire to go see him, nor have I had the ce.”
“Rumor has it that he’s in league with the followers of the Hoja from Erzurum,” Black said. “They say he stands to gain a lot if the Hoja and his men declare certain works inpatible with religion, and
thereby, outlaw our books—which depict battles, ons, bloody ses and routine ceremonies, not to mention parades including everyone from chefs to magis, dervishes to boy dancers, and kebab makers to locksmiths—and fine us to the subjects and forms of the old Persian masters.”
“Even if we returned skillfully and victoriously to those wondrous paintings of Tamerlaime, even if we returo that life and vocation in all its minutia—as bright Stork would best be able to do after me—in the final analysis, all of it’ll be fotten,” I said mercilessly, “because everybody will want to paint like the Europeans.”
Did I actually believe these words of damnation?
“My Enishte believed the same,” Black fessed meekly, “yet it filled him with hope.”
The Attributes of StorkI’ve seen him sign his name as the Sinning Painter Mustafa Chelebi. Without paying any mind to whether he had ht to have a style, whether it should be identified with a signature or, like the old masters, remain anonymous, or whether or not a humble bearing required oo do so, he’d just sign his h a smile and a victorious flourish.
He tinued bravely dowh I’d set him on and itted to paper what none before him had been able to. Like myself, he too would watch master glassblowers turning their rods and blowing glass melted io make blue pitchers and green bottles; he saw the leather, needles and wooden molds of the shoemakers who bent with rapt attentiohe shoes and boots they made; a horse swing trag a graceful arc during a holiday festival; a press squeezing oil from seeds; the firing of our on at the enemy; and the screws and the barrels of uns. He saw these things and paihem without objeg that the old masters of Tamerlaime, or the legendary illustrators of Tabriz and Kazvin, hadn’t lowered themselves to do so. He was the first Muslim miniaturist to go to war aurn safe and sound, in preparation for the Book of Victories that he would later illustrate. He was the first to eagerly study enemy fortresses, on, armies, horses with bleeding wounds, injured soldiers struggling for their lives and corpses—all with the io paint.
I reize his work from his subject matter more than his style and from his attention to obscure details more than his subject matter. I could entrust him with plete peaind to execute all aspects of a painting, from the arra of pages and their position to the c of the most trivial details. In this regard, he has the right to succeed me as Head Illuminator. But he’s so ambitious and ceited, and so desding toward the other illustrators that he could never manage so many men, and would end up losing them all. Actually, if it were left to him, with his incredible industriousness, he’d simply make all the illustrations in the workshop himself. If he put his mind to such a task, he could in fact succeed. He’s a great master. He knows his craft. He admires himself. How nice for him.
When I visited him unannounced once, I caught him at work. Resting upon folding worktables, desks
and cushions were all the pages he was w on: illustrations for Our Sultan’s books, for me, for miserable e books that he dashed off for foolish European travelers eager to belittle us, one page of a triptych he was making for a pasha who thought highly of himself, images to be pasted in albums, pages made for his own pleasure and even a vulgar rendition of coitus. Tall, thin Stork was flitting from one illustration to the like a bee among flowers, singing folk songs, tweaking the cheek of his apprentice who was mixing paint and adding a ic twist to the painting he was w on before showing it to me with a smug chuckle. Unlike my other miniaturists, he didn’t stop w in a ceremonial show of respect when I arrived; on the trary, he happily exhibited the swift exercise of his God-given talent and the skill he’d acquired through hard work (he could do the work of seven ht miniaturists at the same time). Now, I catch myself secretly thinking that if the vile murderer is one of my three master miniaturists, I hope to God it’s Stork. During his apprenticeship, the sight of him at my door on Friday ms dide me the way Butterfly did on his day.
Since he paid equal attention to every odd detail, with no basis of discrimination except that it be visible, his aesthetic approach resembled that of the Veian masters. But uhem, my ambitious Stork her saw nor depicted people’s faces as individual or distinct. I assume, since he either openly or secretly belittled everyohat he didn’t sider faces important. I’m certain deceased Enishte didn’t appoint him to draw Our Sultan’s face.
Even wheing a subject of the utmost importance, he couldn’t keep from situating a skeptical dog somewhere at some distance from the event, or drawing a disgraceful beggar whose misery demeahe wealth aravagance of a ceremony. He had enough self-fideo mock whatever illustration he made, its subjed himself.
“Elegant Effendi’s murder resembles the way Joseph’s brothers tossed him into a well out of jealousy,” said Black. “And my Enishte’s death resembles the unforeseen murder of Hüsrev at the hands of his son who had his heart set on Hüsrev’s wife, Shirin. Everyone says that Stork loved to paint ses of war and gruesome depis of death.”
“Anyone who thinks an illuminator resembles the subject of the picture he paints doesn’t uand me or my master miniaturists. What exposes us is not the subject, which others have issioned from us—these are always the same anyway—but the hidden sensibilities we include in the painting as we rehat subject: A light that seems to radiate from within the picture, a palpable hesitancy er oices in the position of figures, horses and trees, the desire and sorrow emanating from a cypress as it reaches to the heavens, the pination and patiehat we introduto the illustration when we or wall tiles with a fervor that tempts blindness…Yes, these are our hidden traces, not those identical horses all in a row. When a painter rehe fury and speed of a horse, he doesn’t paint his own fury and speed; by trying to make the perfect horse, he reveals his love for the riess of this world and its creator, displaying the colors of a passion for life—only that and nothing more.”
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