I AM CALLED “OLIVE”

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    Was it more fitting for me to abandon my prayers, spring to my feet and open the door for them or to keep them waiting in the rain until I’d finished? When I realized they were watg me, I pleted my prayers in a somewhat distracted state. I opehe door, and there they were—Butterfly, Stork and Black. I gave a cry of joy and embraced Butterfly.

    “Alas, what we’ve had to bear of late!” I lamented, burying my head into his shoulder. “What do they want from us? Why are they killing us?”

    Each of them displayed the panic of being separated from the herd, which I’d seen from time to time in every master painter over the span of my life. Even here in the lodge, they were loath to separate from one another.

    “We  safely take refuge here for days.”

    “We worry,” Black said, “that the person we should fear is perhaps in our very midst.”

    “I, too, grow anxious,” I said. “For I have heard such rumors as well.”

    There were rumors, spreading from the officers of the Imperial Guard to the division of miniaturists, claiming that the mystery about the murderer of Elegant Effendi and late Enishte was solved: He was one of us who’d labored over that book.

    Blaquired as to hoictures I’d drawn for Enishte’s book.

    “The first one I made was Satan. It was of the variety of underground demon on to the old masters in the workshops of the Whitesheep. The storyteller and I were of the same Sufi path; that’s why I made the two dervishes. I was the one who suggested to Enishte that he include them in his book, ving him that there ecial place for these dervishes in the lands of the Ottomans.”

    “Is that all?” asked Black.

    When I told him, “Yes, that’s all,” he went to the door with the superior air of a master who caught an appreealing; he brought in a roll of paper untouched by the rain, and placed it before us three artists like a mother cat bringing a wounded bird to her kittens.

    I reized the pages while they were still under his arm: They were the illustrations I’d rescued from the coffeehouse during the raid. I didn’t deign to ask how these men had entered my house and located them. heless, Butterfly, Stork and I each placidly owned up to the pictures we made for the storyteller, may he rest in peace. Afterward, only the horse, an exquisite horse, remained unclaimed off to the side, its head lowered. Believe me, I didn’t even realize that a horse had been drawn.

    “You weren’t the one who made this horse?” said Black like a teacher holding a switch.

    “I wasn’t,” I said.

    “What about the one in my Enishte’s book?”

    “I didn’t make that oher.”

    “Based oyle of the horse, however, it’s beeermihat you’re the one who drew it,” he said. “Furthermore, it was Master Osman who came to this clusion.”

    “But I have no style whatsoever,” I said. “I’m not saying this out of pride to ter the latest tastes. her am I saying so to prove my innoce. For me, having a style would be worse than being a murderer.”

    “You have a distinct quality that distinguishes you from the old masters and the others,” said Black.

    I smiled at him. He started to relate things that I’m sure you all know by now. I listened ily to how Our Sultan, in sultation with the Head Treasurer, sought a solution to the murders, to the matter of Master Osman’s three days, to the “courtesahod,” to the peculiarity in the noses of the horses and to Black’s miraculous admittao the Royal Private Quarters for the sake of actually examining those superlative books. There are moments in all our lives when we realize, even as we experiehem, that we are living through events we will never fet, even long afterward. A melancholy rain was falling. As if upset by the rain, Butterfly mournfully gripped his dagger. Olive, the backside of whose armor was white with flour, was ceously f into the heart of the dervish lodge, lamp in hand. These master artists, whose shadows roamed the walls like ghosts, were my brethren, and how I loved them! I was delighted to be a miniaturist.

    “Could you appreciate yood fortune as you gazed at the great works of the old masters for days on end with Master Osman at your side?” I asked Black. “Did he kiss you? Did he caress your handsome face? Did he hold your hand? Were you awed by his talent and knowledge?”

    “There among the great works of the old masters he showed me how you had a style,” said Black. “He taught me how the hidden fault of ”style“ isn’t something the artist selects of his own volition, but is determined by the artist’s past and his fotten memories. He also showed me how these secret faults, weaknesses as, at oime such a source of shame they were cealed so we wouldn’t be estranged from the old masters, will heh emerge to be praised as ”personal characteristics’ or “style,” because the European masters have spread them over the world. Heh, thanks to fools who take pride in their own shortings, the world will be a more colorful and more stupid and, of course, a much more imperfect place.“The fact that Black fidently believed in what he said proved that he was one of the new breed of fools.

    “Was Master Osman able to explain why, for years, I drew hundreds of horses with regular nostrils in Our Sultan’s books?” I asked.

    “It was due to the love aings he gave all of you in your childhood. Because he was both father

    and beloved to you all, he doesn’t see that he associates all of you with himself and each of you with the others. He didn’t want you each to have a style of your own, he wahe royal atelier as a whole to have a style. Because of the awesome shadow he cast over all of you, you fot what came from within, the imperfes, the elements and differehat fell outside the fines of standard forms. Only when you painted for other books and es, which Master Osman’s eyes would never see, did you draw the horse that had lain within you all those years.”

    “My mother, may she rest in peace, was more intelligent than my father,” I said. “One night I was at home, in tears, determined never again to return to the workshop because I was daunted not only by Master Osman’s beatings, but by those of the other harsh and irritable masters and by those of the division head who always intimidated us with a ruler. In solation, my dearly departed mother advised me that there were two types of people in the world: those who were cowed and crushed by their childhood beatings, forever downtrodden, she said, because the beatings had the desired effect of killing the inner devils; and those fortunate ones for whom the beatings frightened and tamed the devil within without killing him off. Though the latter group would never fet these painful childhood memories—she’d warned me not to tell this to anybody—the beatings would in time ehem to develop ing, to fathom the unknown, to make friends, to identify eo sense plots being hatched behind their backs and, let me hasten to add, to paier than anyone else. Because I wasn’t able to draw the branches of a tree harmoniously, Master Osman would slap me so hard that, amid bitter tears, forests would burgeon before me. After angrily striking me in the head because I couldn’t see the errors at the bottoms of pages, he lovingly took up a mirror and placed it before the page so I could see the work as if for the first time. Then pressing his cheek to mine, he so lovingly identified the mistakes that magically appeared in the mirror image of the picture that I never fot either the love or the ritual. The m after a night spent weeping in my bed, my pride violated because he chastised me with a ruler before everyone, he came and kissed my arms so tenderly that I passionately knew I’d one day bee a legendary miniaturist. Nay, it was not I who drew that horse.”

    “We,” Black was referring to Stork and himself, “will search the dervish house for the last picture which was stolen by the accursed man who murdered my Enishte. Did you ever see that last picture?”

    “It is nothing that could be accepted by Our Sultan, illuminators like us bound to the old masters or by Muslims bound to their faith,” I said and fell silent.

    My statement made him more eager. He and Stork began their search of the premises, turning the whole place upside down. A few times, simply to make their work easier, I went to them. In one of the dervish cells with a leaky ceiling, I pointed out the hole in the floor so they wouldn’t fall and could search it if they so desired. I gave them the large key to the small room in which the sheikh lived thirty years ago, before the adherents of this lodge joined up with the Bektashis and dispersed. They entered eagerly, but when they saw that aire wall was missing and the room en to the rain, they didn’t even bother to search it.

    It pleased me that Butterfly wasn’t with them, but if evidence implig me were found, he, too, would

    join their ranks. Stork was of the same mind as Black, who was afraid that Master Osman would turn us over to the torturers, and maintaihat we must support one another and must be united in fronting the Head Treasurer. I sensed Black was not only motivated by the desire to give Shekure a genuine wedding present by finding his Enisthe’s murderer, he also inteo set Ottoman miniaturists oh of European masters by paying them with the Sultan’s money in order to finish his Enishte’s book in imitation of the Franks (which was not only sacrilegious, but ridiculous). I also uood, with some certainty, that at the root of this scheme was Stork’s desire to be rid of us and even of Master Osman, for he dreamt of being Head Illuminator and (since everyone guessed that Master Osman preferred Butterfly) he repared to try anything to increase his ces. I was momentarily fused. Listening to the rain, I deliberated at length. , like a man who breaks away from the crowd and struggles to give his petition to the sn and grand vizier as they pass on horseback, I had the sudden inspiration to endear myself to Stork and Black. Leading them through a dark hallway and large portal, I took them to a frightening room that was ohe kit. I asked them if they were able to find anything here among the ruins. Of course, they hadn’t. There was no trace of the kettles, the pots and pans and the bellows that were once used to prepare food for the forsaken and the poor. I never even attempted to  up this ghastly room covered in cobwebs, dust, mud, debris and the excrement of dogs and cats. As always, a strong wind, rising up as if out of nowhere, dimmed the lamp—making our shadows now lighter, now darker.

    “You searched and searched but you couldn’t find my hidden treasure,” I said.

    Out of habit, I used the bay hand as a broom to sweep away the ashes in what used to be a hearth and when an old stove emerged, I lifted up its iron lid with a creak. I held the lamp to the small mouth of the stove. I shall never fet how Stork leapt forward and greedily grabbed the leather pouches within before Black could act. He was about to open the pouches right there in the mouth of the oven, but as I had returo the large salon, followed by Black who was afraid of remaining here, Stork bounded after us on his long thin legs.

    When they saw that one pouch tained a pair of  woolen socks, my drawstring trousers, my red underwear, the  of my undershirts, my silk shirt, my straight razor, my b and other belongings, they were momentarily at a loss. Out of the other pouch, which Black opened, emerged fifty-three Veian gold s, pieces of gold leaf that I’d stolen from the workshop i years, my sketchbook of model forms which I cealed from everybody, more stolen gold leaf hiddeween the pages, i pictures—some of which I’d drawn myself and some I’d collected—a keepsake agate ring from my dear mother along with a lock of her white hair, and my best pens and brushes.

    “If I were truly a murderer as you suspect,” I said with stupid pride, “the final picture would’ve emerged from my secret treasury, not these things.”

    “Why these things?” asked Stork.

    “When the Imperial Guard searched my house, as they did yours, they shamelessly pilfered two of these

    gold pieces that I’ve spent my entire life colleg. I thought about how we’d be searched again on at of this wretched murderer—and I was right. If that last picture were with me, it would be here.”

    It was a mistake to utter this last sentenevertheless, I could sehat they were put at ease and no longer afraid that I’d strahem in a dark er of the lodge. Have I gained your trust as well?

    At this time, however, I was overwhelmed by a severe restlessness; no, it wasn’t that my illuminator friends, whom I’d known since childhood, saw how I’d been greedily squirreling money away for years, how I bought and saved gold, or even that they learned about my sketchbooks and obse pictures. In truth, I regretted having shown them all of these things in a moment of panily the mysteries of a man who lived quite aimlessly could be exposed so easily.

    “heless,” said Black much later, “we must e to a sensus about what we will say uorture if Master Osman happens to turn us over without any forewarning.”

    A hollowness and depression desded upon us. In the pale light of the lamp, Stork and Butterfly were staring at the vulgar pictures in my sketchbook. They displayed an air of plete indifference; in fact, they were even happy in some horrid way. I had a strong urge to look at the picture—I could very well surmise whie it was; I rose and circled around behind them, gazing silently at the obse picture I’d paihrilled as though I were recalling a now dista blissful memory. Black joined us. For whatever reason, that the four of us were looking at that illustration relieved me.

    “Could the blind and the seeing ever be equal?” said Stork much later. Was he implying that even though what we saw was obse, the pleasure of sight that Allah had bestowed upon us was glorious? Nay, what would Stork know of such matters? He never read the Koran. I khat the old masters of Herat would frequently recite this verse. The great masters used this verse as a respoo enemies of painting who warhat illustrating was forbidden by our faith and that painters would be sent to Hell on Judgment Day. Until that magical moment, however, I’d never even once heard from Butterfly those words that now emerged from his mouth as if on their own:“I’d like to depict how the blind and the seeing are not equal!”

    “Who are the blind and the seeing?” Black said naively.

    “The blind and the seeing are not equal, it’s what ”ve ma yestevil’ama ve’l basiru’nun means,“ Butterfly said and tinued:“…nor are the darkness and the light.

    The shade and the heat are not equal, nor are the living and the dead.“

    I shuddered for an instant, thinking of the fates of Elegant Effendi, Enishte and our storyteller brother who was killed tonight. Were the others as frightened as I? Nobody moved for a time. Stork was still holding my book open, but seemed not to see the vulgarity I’d paihough we were all still staring at it!

    “I’d want to paint Judgment Day,” said Stork. “The resurre of the dead, and the separation of the guilty from the i. Why is it that we ot depict the Sacred Word of our faith?”

    In our youth, w together in the same room of our workshop, we would periodically lift our faces from our work boards and tables, just as the aging masters would do to rest their eyes, and begin talking about any topic that happeo enter our minds. Back then, just as we now did while looking at the book open before us, we didn’t look at one another as we chatted. For our eyes would be turoward some distant spot outside an open window. I’m not sure if it was the excitement of recalling something remarkably beautiful from my hal apprenticeship days, or the sincere regret I felt at that moment because I hadn’t read the Koran for so long, or the horror of the crime I’d seen at the coffeehouse that night, but when my turn came to speak, I grew fused, my heart quied as if I’d e uhe threat of some danger, and as nothing else came to mind, I simply said the following:“You remember those verses at the end of ”The Cow“ chapter? I’d want most of all to depict them: ”Oh God, judge us not by what we’ve fotten and by our mistakes. Oh God, burden us not with a weight we ot bear, as with those who have gone before us. Five and absolve us of our transgressions and sins! Treat us with mercy, my dear God.“” My voice broke and I was embarrassed by the tears I shed uedly—perhaps because I was wary of the sarcasm that we always kept at the ready during our apprenticeships to protect ourselves and to avoid exposing our sensitivities.

    I thought my tears would quickly abate, but uo restrain myself, I began to cry i sobs. As I wept, I could sehat each of the others was overe by feelings of fraternity, devastation and sorrow. From now on, the European style would be preemi in Our Sultan’s workshop; the styles and books to which we’d devoted our entire lives would slowly be fotten—yes, in fact, the whole venture would e to an end, and if the Erzurumis didn’t throttle us and finish us off, the Sultan’s torturers would leave us maimed…But as I cried, sobbed and sighed—even though I tio listen to the sad patter of the rain—a part of my mind sehat these were not the things I was actually g about. To what extehe others aware of this? I felt vaguely guilty for my tears, which were at once genuine and false.

    Butterfly came up beside me, placed his arm upon my shoulder, stroked my hair, kissed my cheek and forted me with honeyed words. This show of friendship made me cry with even more siy and guilt. I couldn’t see his face but, for some reason, I incorrectly thought he too was g. We sat down.

    We recalled how we’d started our workshop apprenticeships in the same year, the strange sadness of being torn away from our mothers to suddenly begin a new life, the pain of beatings we received from the first day, the joy of the first gifts from the Head Treasurer, and the days we went bae, running

    the whole way. At first, only he talked while I listened sorrowfully, but later, when Stork and, sometime afterward, Black—who came to the workshop for a time a it, during our early apprenticeship years—joined our mournful versation, I fot that I’d just been g and began to talk and laugh freely with them.

    We reminisced about winter ms when we would wake early, light the stove in the largest room of the workshop and mop the floors with hot water. We recalled an old “master,” may he rest in peace, who was so uninspired and cautious that he could draw only a single leaf of a siree during the span of a single day and who, when he saw that we were again looking at the lush green leaves of the springtime trees through the open window rather than at the leaf he drew, without striking us, would chastise us for the huh time: “Not out there, in here!” We recalled the wailing, which could be heard throughout the eelier, of the sy apprentice who walked toward the door, satchel in hand, having bee bae because the iy of the work caused one of his eyes to wander. , we imagined hoatched (with pleasure because it wasn’t our fault) the slow spread of a deadly red seeping from a bronze inkpot that had cracked over a page three illuminators had labored on for three months (it depicted the Ottoman army on the banks of the K 1n 1k River en route to Shirvan, overing the threat of starvation by occupying Eresh and filling their stomachs). In a refined and respectful manner, we talked about how the three of us together made love to and together fell in love with a Circasian lady, the most beautiful of the wives of a seventy-year-old pasha who—in sideration of his quests, strength ah—wanted ceiling orion in his home made in imitation of the designs in Our Sultan’s hunting lodge. Then, we longingly recalled how on winter ms we would have our lentil soup ohreshold of the yawning door so its steam wouldn’t soften the paper. We also lamented being separated from workshop friends and masters wheter pelled us to travel to distant places to serve as journeymen. For a time, the sweetness of my dear Butterfly in his sixteenth year appeared before my eyes: He was burnishing paper to a high gloss by rubbing it quickly with a smooth seashell as the sunlight, ing through an open window on a summer’s day, struck his naked honey-colored forearms. For a momeopped what he was so absentmindedly doing and carefully lowered his face to the page to examine a blemish. After making a few passes over the offending spot with the burnishing shell using different motions, he returo his former pattern, moving his hand bad forth as he stared out of the window into the distance, losing himself in daydreams. I shall never fet how before looking outside again, he briefly gazed into my eyes—as I would later do to others. This dolorous look has only one meaning, which all apprentices know quite well: Time doesn’t flow if you don’t dream.

    I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERERYou’d fotten about me, hadn’t you? Why should I ceal my presence from you any longer? For speaking in this voice, which is gradually getting stronger and stronger, has bee irresistible for me. At times, I restrain myself only with great effort, and I’m afraid that the strain in my voice will give me away. At times, I let myself go pletely unchecked, and that’s when those words, signs of my sed character, whiight reize, spill from my lips; my hands begin to tremble, beads of sweat colley forehead and I realize at ohat these little whispers of my body, in turn, will furnish new clues.

    Yet I’m so very tent here! As we sole ourselves with twenty-five years of memories we’re reminded not of the animosities, but of the beauties and the pleasures of painting. There’s also something in our sitting here with a sense of the impending end of the world, caressing each other with tear-filled eyes as we remember the beauty of bygone days, that recalls harem women.

    I’ve taken this parison from Abu Said of Kirman who included the stories of the old masters of Shiraz a in his History of the sons of Tamerlahirty years ago, Jihan Shah, ruler of the Blacksheep, came to the East where he routed the small armies and ravaged the lands of the Timurid khans and shahs who were fighting among themselves. With his victorious Turkmen hordes, he passed through the whole of Persia into the East; finally, at Astarabad, he defeated Ibrahim, the grandson of Shah Ruh who was Tamerlane’s sohen took Gan a his armies against the fortress of Herat. Acc to the historian from Kirman, this devastation, not only to Persia, but to the heretofore ued power of the House of Tamerlane, which had ruled over half the world from Hindustan to Byzantium for half a tury, caused such a tempest of destru that pandemonium reigned over the men and women in the besieged fortress of Herat. The historian Abu Said reminds the reader with perverse pleasure how Jihan Shah of the Blacksheep mercilessly killed everyone who was a desdant of Tamerlane in the fortresses he quered; how he selectively culled women from the harems of shahs and princes and added them to his own harem; and how he pitilessly separated miniaturist from miniaturist and cruelly forced most of them to serve as appreo his own master illuminators. At this point in his History, he turns his attentions from the shah and his warriors who tried to repel the enemy from the ellated towers of the fortress, to the miniaturists among their pens and paints in the workshop awaiting the terrifying culmination of the siege whose oute was long evident. He lists the names of the artists, declaring oer another how they were world-renowned and would never be fotten, and these illuminators, all of whom, like the women of the shah’s harem, have since been fotten, embraced each other a, uo do anything but recall their former days of bliss.

    We too, like melancholy harem women, reminisced about the gifts of fur-lined caftans and purses full of mohat the Sultan would present to us in reciprocation for the colorful decorated boxes, mirrors and plates, embellished ostrich eggs, cut-paper work, single-leaf pictures, amusing albums, playing cards and books we’d offer him on holidays. Where were the hardw, long-suffering, elderly artists of that day who were satisfied with so little? They’d never sequester themselves at home and jealously hide their methods from others, dreading that their moonlighting would be found out, but would e to the workshop every day without fail. Where were the old miniaturists who humbly devoted their entire lives to drawing intricate designs on castle walls, cypress leaves whose uniqueness was disible only after close scrutiny and the seven-leaf steppe grasses used to fill empty spaces? Where were the uninspired masters who never grew jealous, having accepted the wisdom and justiherent in God’s bestowal of talent and ability upon some artists and patiend pination upon others? We recalled these fatherly masters, some of whom were hunched aually smiling, others dreamy and drunk and still others i upon foisting off a spinster daughter; and as we recollected, we attempted to resurrect the fotteails of the workshop as it had been during our apprentid early mastership years.

    Do you remember the limner who stuck his too his cheek when he ruled pages—to the left side if the line he drew headed right, and to the right side if the li left; the small, thin artist who

    laughed to himself, chortling and mumbling “patience, patience, patience” when he dribbled paint; the septuagenarian master gilder who spent hour upon hour talking to the binder’s apprentices downstairs and claimed that red ink applied to the forehead stopped aging; the ornery master who relied on an unsuspeg apprentice or even randomly stopped anyone passing by to test the sistency of paint upon their fingernails after his own nails were pletely filled; and the portly artist who made us laugh as he caressed his beard with the furry rabbit’s foot used to collect the excess flecks of gold dust used in gilding? Where were they all?

    Where were the burnishing boards which were used so much they became a part of the apprentices’ bodies and then just tossed aside, and the long paper scissors that the apprentices dulled by playing “swordsman”? Where were the writing boards inscribed with the names of the great masters so they wouldn’t get mixed up, the aroma of a ink and the faint rattle of coffeepots aboil in the silence? Where were the various brushes we made of hairs from the necks and inner ears of kittens born to our tabby cats each summer, and the great sheaves of Indian paper given to us so, in idle moments, we could practice our artistry the way calligraphers did? Where was the ugly steel-handled penknife whose use required permission from the Head Illuminator, thus providing a deterrent to the entire workshop when we had to scrape away large mistakes; and what happeo the rituals that surrouhese mistakes?

    We also agreed that it was wrong for the Sultan to allow the master miniaturists to work at home. We recalled the marvelous warm halva that came to us from the palace kit on early winter evenings after we’d worked with ag eyes by the light of oil lamps and dles. Laughing and with tears in our eyes, we remembered how the elderly and senile master gilder, who was stri with ic trembling and could take up her pen nor paper, on his monthly workshop visits brought fried dough-balls in heavy syrup that his daughter had made for us apprentices. We talked about the exquisite pages rendered by the dearly departed Black Memi, Head Illuminator before Master Osman, discovered in his room, which remaiy for days after his funeral, within the portfolio fouh the light mattress he’d spread out and use for aps iernoons.

    We talked about and he pages we took pride in and would want to take out and look at now and again if we had copies of them, the way Master Black Memi had. They explained how the sky on the upper half of the palace picture made for the Book of Skills, illuminated with gold wash, foreshadowed the end of the world, not due to the gold itself, but due to its toween towers, domes and cypresses—the way gold ought to be used in a polite rendition.

    They described a portrayal of Our Exalted Prophet’s bewilderment and ticklishness, as angels seized him by his underarms during his assion to Heaven from the top of a mi; a picture of such grave colors that even children, upon seeing the blessed se, would first tremble with pious awe and then laugh respectfully as if they themselves were being tickled. I explained how along one edge of a page I’d orated the previous Grand Vizier’s suppression of rebels who’d taken to the mountains by delicately and respectfully arranging the heads he’d severed, tastefully drawing eae, not as an ordinary corpse’s head, but as an individual and unique fa the manner of a Frankish portraitist, furrowing their brows before death, dabbing red onto their necks, making their sorrowful lips inquire after the meaning of life, opening their nostrils to one final, desperate breath, and shutting their eyes to

    this world; and thus, I’d imbued the painting with a terrifying aura of mystery.

    As if they were our own unfettable and unattainable memories, we wistfully discussed our favorite ses of love and war, recalling their most magnifit wonders and tear-indug subtleties. Isolated and mysterious gardens where lovers met on starry nights passed before our eyes: spring trees, fantastic birds, frozen time…We imagined bloody battles as immediate and alarming as our own nightmares, bodies torn in two, chargers with blood-spattered armor, beautiful men stabbing each other with daggers, the small-mouthed, small-handed, slanted-eye, bowed women watg events from barely open windows…We recalled pretty boys who were haughty and ceited, and handsome shahs and khans, their poalaces long lost to history. Just like the women who wept together in the harems of those shahs, we now kneere passing from life into memory, but were we passing from history into legend as they had? To avoid being drawn further into a realm of horror by the lengthening shadows of the fear of being fotten—even more terrifying than the fear of dying—we asked each other about our favorite ses of death.

    The first thing to e to mind was the way Satan duped Dehhak into killing his father. At the time of that legend, which is described in the beginning of the Book of Kings, the world had been newly created, and everything was so basic that nothing needed explanation. If you wanted milk, you simply milked a goat and drank; you’d say “horse,” then mount it and ride away; you’d plate “evil” and Satan would appear and vince you of the beauty of murdering your own father. Dehhak’s murder of Merdas, his father of Arab dest, was beautiful, both because it was unprovoked and because it occurred at night in a magnifit palace garden while golden stars gently illuminated cypresses and colorful spring flowers.

    , we recalled legendary Rüstem, who unknowingly killed his son Suhrab, ander of the enemy army that Rüstem had battled for three days. There was something that touched us all in the way Rüstem beat his breast in tearful anguish when he saw the armband he had given the boy’s mother years ago and reized as his own son the enemy whose chest he’d ravished with thrusts of the sword.

    What was that something?

    The rain tis patter on the roof of the dervish lodge and I paced bad forth. Suddenly I said the followiher our father, Master Osman, will betray and kill us, or we shall betray and kill him.”

    We were stri with horror because what I said rang absolutely true; we fell silent. Still pag, and panicked by the thought that everything would revert to its former state, I told myself the following: “Tell the story of Afrasiyab’s murder of Siyavush to ge the subject. But that’s a betrayal such as fails thten me. Ret the death of Hüsrev.” All right then, but should it be the version told by Firdusi in the Book of Kings or the oold by Nizami in Hüsrev and Shirin? The pathos of the at in the Book of Kings rests in Hüsrev’s tearful realization of the identity of the murderer intruding in his

    bedroom chamber! As a last resort, saying that he wants to perform his prayers, Hüsrev sends the servant boy attending him to fetch water, soap,  clothes and his prayer rug; the naive boy, without uanding that his master has sent him for help, goes to gather the requested items. Once aloh Hüsrev, the murderer’s first task is to lock the door from the inside. In this se at the end of the Book of Kings, the man whom the spirators found to enact the murder is described by Firdusi with disgust: He is foul smelling, hairy and pot-bellied.

    I paced to and fro, my head swarmed with words, but as in a dream, my voice would not take.

    Just then I sehat the others were whispering among themselves, maligning me.

    They were so quick to take out my legs that the four of us collapsed to the floor. There was a struggle and fight on the ground, but it was brief. I lay faceup on the floor beh the three of them.

    One of them sat on my knees. Another on my right arm.

    Black pressed a ko eay shoulders; he firmly situated his weight between my stomad chest, and sat on me. I was pletely immobilized. All of us were stunned and breathing hard. This is what I remembered:My late uncle had a rogue son two years older than me—I hope he’s been caught i of raiding caravans and has long since been beheaded. This jealous beast, realizing I knew more than he and was also more intelligent and refined, would find any excuse to pick a fight, or else he’d insist that we wrestle, and after quickly pinning me, he’d hold me down with his knees on my shoulders in this same way; he’d stare into my eyes, the way Black was now doing, a a string of saliva hang down, slowly direg it toward my eyes as it gained mass, and he’d be greatly eained as I tried to avoid it by turning my head to the right and to the left.

    Blae not to hide anything. Where was the last picture? fess!

    I felt suffog regret and anger for two reasons: First, I’d said everything I had for naught, unaware that they’d e to an agreement beforehand; sedly, I hadn’t fled, uo imagihat their envy would reach this level.

    Black threateo cut my throat if I didn’t produce the last picture.

    How very ridiculous. I firmly closed my lips, as if the truth would escape if I opened my mouth. Part of me also thought that there was nothi for me to do. If they came to an agreement among themselves and turned me over to the Head Treasurer as the murderer, they’d end up saving their own hides. My only hope lay with Master Osman, who might point out another suspect or another clue; but then, could I be certain what Black said about him was correct? He could kill me here and now, and later place the onus on me, couldn’t he?

    They rested the dagger against my throat, and I saw at once how this gave Black a pleasure that he could not ceal. They slapped me. Was the dagger cutting my skin? They slapped me again.

    I was able to work through the following logic: If I held my peaothing would happen! This gave me strength. They could no longer hide the fact that sihe days of our apprenticeships they’d been jealous of me; I, who quite evidently applied paint in the best manner, drew the steadiest line and made the best illuminations. I loved them for their extreme envy. I smiled upon my beloved brethren.

    One of them, I don’t want you to know which of them was responsible for this disgrace, passionately kissed me as if he were kissing the beloved he’d long desired. The others watched by the light of the oil lamp that they brought o us. I could not but respond in kind to this kiss from my beloved brother. If we’re nearing the end of everything, let it be known that I do the best illuminating. Find my pages and see for yourselves.

    He began to beat me angrily, as if I’d enraged him by answering his kiss with a kiss. But the others restrained him. They experienced a moment of indecision. Black set that there was a scuffle among them. It was as if they weren’t angry with me, but with the dire in which their lives were headed, and as a result, they wao take their revenge against the entire world.

    Black removed an object from his sash: a needle with a sharpened point. In an instant, he brought it to my fad made a gesture as if to plu into my eyes.

    “Eighty years ago, the great Bihzad, master of masters, uood that everything was ing to an end with the fall of Herat, and honorably blinded himself so nobody would force him to paint in another way,” he said. “A short while after he deliberately ied this plume needle into his own eye and removed it, God’s exquisite darkness slowly desded over His beloved servant, this artist with the miraculous hand. This needle which came from Herat to Tabriz with the now drunk and blind Bihzad, was sent as a present by Shah Tahmasp to Our Sultan’s father, along with that legendary Book of Kings. At first, Master Osman was uo determine why this object was sent. But today, he was able to see the ill will and just logic behind this cruel present. After Master Osman uood that Our Sultan wao have His own portrait made iyle of the European masters and that you all, whom he loved more than his own children, had betrayed him, he stuck this needle into each of his eyes last night ireasury—in imitation of Bihzad. Now, if I were to blind you, the accursed man responsible fing to ruin the workshop Master Osmaablished at the expense of his entire life, what of it?”

    “Whether or not you blind me, in the end, we’ll no longer be able to find a place for ourselves here,” I said. “If Master Osman truly goes blind, or passes away, and we paint the way we feel like painting, embrag our faults and individuality uhe influence of the Franks so we might possess a style, we might resemble ourselves, but we won’t be ourselves. No, even if we were to agree to paint like the old masters, reasoning that only in this way could we be ourselves, Our Sultan, who’s turned His back even on Master Osman, will find others to replace us. No one will look at us anymore, we shall only incur

    pity. The raiding of the coffeehouse merely rubs salt into our wounds, because half the blame for this i will fall to us miniaturists, who’ve slahe respected preacher.”

    Although I tried at length to persuade them that it would work quite against us to quarrel, it was to no avail. They had no iion of listening to me. They were panicked. If they could only decide quickly, before m, right , which of their lot was guilty, they were vihey could save themselves, be delivered from torture and that everything having to do with the workshop would persist for years to e as it always had.

    heless, what Black threateo do didn’t please the other two. What if it became evident that somebody else was guilty and Our Sultan learhey blinded me for no reason whatsoever? They were terrified both of Black’s closeo Master Osman and his insoleoward him. They tried to pull back the needle which Black, in blind rage, persisted in holding before my eyes.

    Black fell into a panic, as if they were taking the plume needle from his hand, as if we’d taken sides against him. There was another scuffle. All I could do was tilt my head upward to escape the struggle over the needle, which was happening perilously close to my eyes.

    Everything occurred so fast that I couldn’t make out what happe first. I felt a sharp but limited pain in my right eye; a passing numbness seized my forehead. Thehing was as it had bee a horror had already taken root withihe oil lamp had been withdrawn, but I could still clearly see the figure before me decisively thrust the needle, this time into my left eye. He’d taken the needle from Blaly moments before, and was more careful aiculous now. When I uood that the needle effortlessly peed my eye, I lay dead still, though I felt the same burniion. The numbness in my forehead seemed to spread over my entire head, but ceased when the needle was removed. They were looking at the needle and then at my eyes in turn. It was as if they weren’t certain what had transpired. When everybody fully uood the misfortuhat had befallehe otion stopped and the weight upon my arms eased.

    I began to scream, nearly howling. Not from the pain, but from the terror of prehending fully what had been doo me.

    At first, I sehat my wailing put not only me at ease, but them as well. My voice brought us together.

    Even so, as my screaming persisted, their nervousness increased. I could no longer feel any pain. All I could think was that my eyes had been pierced with a needle.

    I was not yet blind. Thank goodness I could still see them watg me in terror and sorrow, I could still see their shadows moving aimlessly on the ceiling of the lodge. This at once pleased and alarmed me. “Unhand me,” I screamed. “Unhand me so I  see everything once more, I implore you.”

    “Quickly, tell us,” said Black. “How did you meet up with Elegant Effendi that night? Then we’ll unhand you.”

    “I was returning home from the coffeehouse. Poor Elegant Effendi accosted me. He was frenzied and very agitated. I pitied him at first. But leave me be now and I shall later ret it all. My eyes are fading.”

    “They won’t fade right away,” said Black with determination. “Believe me, Master Osman could still identify the horses with cut-open nostrils after his eyes had been pierced.”

    “Hapless Elegant Effendi said he wao talk to me and that I was the only person he could trust.”

    Yet it wasn’t him I pitied, but myself now.

    “If you tell us before the blood clots in your eyes, in the m you  look upon the world to your heart’s tent one last time,” said Black. “See, the rain has eased.”

    “”Let’s go back to the coffeehouse,“ I said to Elegant, but se ohat he didn’t like it there, and even that it frightened him. This was how I first knew Elegant Effendi had broken from us pletely and had gone his separate way after painting with us for twenty-five years. In the last eight or ten years, after he married, I’d see him at the workshop, but I didn’t even know what he was occupied with…He told me he saw the last picture, how it tained a sin so grave we’d never live it down. As a sequence, he maintained, we’d all burn in Hell. He was agitated and possessed by fear, overe with the sense of devastatio by a man who’d unwittingly itted heresy.”

    “What heresy?”

    “When I asked him this very question, he opened his eyes wide in surprise as if to say, You mean you don’t know? It was then I thought how our friend had aged, as have we all. He said unfortunate Enishte had brazenly used the perspectival method in the last picture. In this picture, objects weren’t depicted acc to their importan Allah’s mind, but as they appeared to the naked eye—the way the Franks paihis was the first transgression. The sed was depig Our Sultan, the Caliph of Islam, the same size as a dog. The third transgression also involved rendering Satan the same size, and in an endearing light. But what surpassed them all—a natural result of introdug this Frankish uanding into our painting—was drawing Our Sultan’s picture as large as life and his fa all its detail! Just like the idolators do…Or just like the ”portraits’ that Christians, who couldn’t save themselves from their i idolatrous tendencies, painted upon their church walls and worshiped. Elegant Effendi, who learned of portraits from your Enishte, khis quite well, and believed correctly that portraiture was the greatest of sins, and would be the downfall of Muslim painting. As we hadn’t goo the coffeehouse, where, he claimed, our exalted Preacher Effendi and ion were being maligned, he explained all this to me while we walked dowreet. Occasionally, he’d stop, as though seeking help, ask me whether all of this was indeed correct, whether there wasn’t any recourse

    and whether we’d truly burn in Hell. He suffered fits ret a his breast in remorse, but I was unpersuaded. He was an imposter who feigned regret.““How did you know this?”

    “We’ve know Effendi since childhood. He’s very orderly, quiet, ordinary and colorless, like his gilding. It was as if the man standing before me then was dumber, more naive, more devout, yet more superficial than the Elegant we knew.”

    “I hear he’d also bee quite close to the Erzurumis,” said Black.

    “No Muslim would ever feel suent a for iently itting a sin,” I said. “A good Muslim knows God is just and reasonable enough to sider the i of His servants. Only pea-brained ignoramuses believe they’ll go to Hell for eating pork unawares. Anyway, a genuine Muslim knows the fear of damnation serves thten others, not himself. This is what Elegant Effendi was doing, you see, he wao scare me. It was your Enishte who taught him that he might do such a thing; and it was then I khat this was ihe case. Now, tell me in plete hoy, my dear illuminator brethren, has the blood begun to clot in my eyes, have my eyes lost their color?”

    They brought the lamp toward my fad gazed at it, displaying the care and passion of surgeons.

    “Nothing seems to have ged.”

    Were these three, staring into my eyes, the last sight I’d see in this world? I knew I’d never fet these moments until the end of my life, and I related what follows, because despite my regret, I also felt hope:“Your Enishte taught Elegant Effendi that he was involved in some forbidden project by c up the final picture, by revealing only a specific spot to each of us and having us draw something there—by giving the picture an air of mystery and secrecy, it was Enishte himself who instilled the fear of heresy. He, not the Erzurumis who’ve never seen an illuminated manuscript in their lives, was the first to spread the frenzy and panic about sin that ied us. Meanwhile, what would an artist with a clear sce have to fear?”

    “There’s much that an artist with a clear sce has to fear in our day,” said Black smugly. “Indeed, no one has anything to say against decoration, but pictures are forbidden by our faith. Because the illustrations of the Persian masters and even the masterpieces of the greatest masters of Herat are ultimately seen as aension of border orion, no one would take issue with them, reasoning that they enhahe beauty of writing and the magnifice of calligraphy. And who sees our painting anyway? However, as we make use of the methods of the Franks, our painting is being less focused on orion and intricate design and more on straightforward representation. This is what the Glorious Koran forbids and what displeased Our Prophet. Both Our Sultan and my Enishte khis quite well. This was the reason for my Enishte’s murder.”

    “Your Enishte was murdered because he was afraid,” I said. “Just like you, he’d begun to claim that illustration, which he was doing himself, wasn’t trary to the religion or the sacred book…This was exactly the pretext sought by the Erzurumis, who were desperate to find an aspect trary to the religion. Elegant Effendi and your Enishte were a perfect match for each other.”

    “And you’re the one who killed them both, isn’t that so?” said Black.

    I thought for a moment that he would hit me, and in that instant, I also knew beautiful Shekure’s new husband really had nothing to plain about in the murder of his Enishte. He wouldn’t strike me, and even if he did, it made no differeo me any longer.

    “In actuality, as much as Our Sultan wao have a book prepared uhe influence of the Frankish artists,” I tiubbornly, “your Enishte wao prepare a provocative book whose taint of illiess would feed his own pride. He felt a slavish awe toward the pictures of the Frankish masters he’d seen during his travels, and he’d fallen pletely for the artistry that he regaled us about for days on end—you too must have heard that nonsense about perspective and portraiture. If you ask me, there was nothing damaging or sacrilegious in the book we were preparing…Since he was well aware of this, he pretehat he reparing a forbidden book and this gave him great satisfa…Being involved in such a dangerous veh the Sultan’s personal permission was as important to him as the pictures of the Frankish masters. True, if we’d made a painting with the i of exhibiting it, that would’ve been sacrilege. Yet in none of those pieces could I sense anything trary tion, any faithlessness, impiety or even the vaguest illiess. Did you sense anything of the sort?”

    My eyes had almost imperceptibly lost strength, but thank God, I could see enough to know that my question gave them pause.

    “You ot be certain,  you?” I said, gloating. “Even if you secretly believe that the blemish of blasphemy or the shadow of sacrilege exists in the pictures we’ve made, you c<mark></mark>ould never accept this belief and express it, because this would be equivalent to giving credeo the zealots and Erzurumis who oppose and accuse you. Oher hand, you ot claim with any vi that you’re as i as freshly fallen snow, because this would mean giving up both the dizzying pride and refined self-gratulation of engaging in a secretive, mysterious and forbidden act. Do you know how I became aware that I was behaving pretentiously in this way? By bringing poor Elegant Effendi to this dervish lodge in the middle of the night! I brought him here with the excuse that we’d nearly frozen walking the streets so long. In actuality, it pleased me to show him I was a free-thinking Kalehrowback, or worse yet, that I aspired to be a Kalenderi. Whe uood I was the last of the followers of a dervish order based on pederasty, hashish ption, vagrand all manner of aberrant behavior, I thought he’d fear and respect me even more, and in turimidated into silence. As fate would have it, the exact opposite happened. Our dim-witted boyhood friend disliked it here, and he quickly decided the accusations of blasphemy he’d learned from your Enishte were quite on the mark. So, our beloved apprenticeship panion, who’d at first implored, ”Help me, vince me that we won’t go to Hell so I might sleep in peace tonight,“ in a newfound, threatening tone, began to insist that ”this will end in

    nothing but evil.“ He was vihe preacher hoja from Erzurum would hear the rumors that in the final picture we’d veered from the orders of Our Sultan, who’d never five this transgression. ving him everything was clear skies and sunshine was nearly impossible. He’d tell all to the preacher’s dull gregation, exaggerating Enishte’s absurdities, the aies about affronts to the religion and rendering the Devil in a favorable light, and they’d naturally believe every slanderous word. I don’t have to tell you how, not only the artisans, but the entire society of craftsmen have grown jealous of us since we’ve bee the intense focus of Our Sultan’s attention. Now all of them will gleefully declare in unison ”the miniaturists are mired in heresy.“ Furthermore, the cooperatioween Enishte and Elegant Effendi would prove this slarue. I say ”slander“ because I don’t believe in what my brother Elegant said about the book and the last picture. Even then, I would hear nothing against your late Enishte. I found it quite appropriate that Our Sultan turn his favors from Master Osman to Enishte Effendi, and I even believed, if not to the same degree, what Enishte described to me at length about the Frankish masters and their artistry. I used to believe quite sihat we Ottoman artists could fortably take from this or that aspect of the F<bdo></bdo>rankish methods as much as our hearts desired or as much as could be seen during a visit abroad—without bartering with the Devil ing any great harm upon us. Life was easy; your Enishte, may he rest in peace, had succeeded Master Osman, and was a new father to me in this new life.”

    “Let’s not discuss that poi,” said Black. “First describe how you murdered Elegant.”

    “This deed,” I said, reizing that I couldn’t use the word “murder,” “I itted this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the entire workshop. Elegant Effendi knew he posed a powerful threat. I prayed to Almighty God, begging him to give me a sign showing me how despicable this sdrel really was. My prayers were answered when I offered Elegant money. God had shown me how wretched he really was. These gold pieces came to mind, but by divine inspiration, I lied. I said the gold pieces weren’t here in the lodge, but I’d hidden them elsewhere. We went out. I walked him through empty streets and out-of-the-way neighborhoods without any sideration for where we were going. I had no idea what I would do, and in short, I was afraid. At the end of our wandering, after we’d e to a street we’d passed earlier, our brother Elegant Effendi the gilder, who devoted his entire life to form aition, grew suspicious. But God provided me with ay led by fire, and nearby, a dry well.”

    At this point I knew I couldn’t go on and I told them so. “If you were in my shoes, you would’ve sidered the salvation of your artist brethren and dohe same thing,” I said fidently.

    When I heard them agree with me, I felt like g. I was going to say it was because their passion, which I hardly deserved, softened my heart, but no. I was going to say it was because I again heard the thud of his body hitting the bottom of the well wherein I dropped him after killing him, but no. I was going to say it was because I remembered hoy I was before being a murderer, how I’d been like everybody else, but no. The blind man who used to pass through our neighborhood in my childhood appeared in my mind’s eye: He’d take a dirty metal water dipper out of his even dirtier clothes, and would call out to us neighborhood kids who watched him from a distahere by the local water fountain, “My children, which of you will fill this blind old man’s drinking cup with water from the

    fountain?” When no oo his aid, he’d say, “It’d be a good turn, my children, a pious deed!” The color of his irises had faded and they were nearly the same color as the whites of his eyes.

    Agitated by the thought of resembling that blind old man, I fessed how I did away with Enishte Effendi hurriedly, without sav any of it. I was her too ho nor too insih them: I found a medium sistency, such that the story wouldn’t trouble my heart too much, and they’d be assured I hadn’t goo Enishte’s house to murder him. I wao make clear that it wasn’t a premeditated murder, whitent they gathered when I remihem of the following while trying to absolve myself: “Without harb bad iions, one never goes to Hell.”

    “After surrendering Elegant Effendi to the Angels of Allah,” I said thoughtfully, “what the dearly departed expressed to me in his last moments started to gnaw at me like a worm. Having caused me to bloody my hands, the final painting loomed larger in my mind, and so, resolving to see it, I went to your Enishte, who no longer summoned any of us to his house. Not only did he refuse to reveal the painting, he behaved as if nothihe matter. There was, he sniffled, her a painting nor anything else so mysterious that it called for murder! To preempt further humiliation, and to get his attention, I thereupon fessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendi and tossed him into a well. Yes, theook me more seriously, but he tio humiliate me all the same. How could a man who humiliates his son be a father? Great Master Osman would bee irate with us, he’d beat us, but he never once humiliated us. Oh my brothers, we’ve made a grave mistake by betraying him.”

    I smiled at my brethren whose attention was focused upon my eyes, listening to me as though I lay on my deathbed. Just as a dying man would, I saw them growing increasingly blurry and moving away from me.

    “I murdered your Enishte for two reasons. First, because he shamelessly forced the great Master Osman into aping the Veian artist, Sebastiano. Sed, because in a moment of weakness, I lowered myself to ask him whether I had a style of my own.”

    “How did he respond?”

    “It seems I am possessed of a style. But ing from him, of course, this was not an insult. I remembered w, in my shame, if this were indeed praise: I sidered style to be a variety of rootlessness and dishonor, but doubt was eating at me. I wanted nothing to do with style, but the Devil was tempting me and I was, furthermore, curious.”

    “Everybody secretly desires to have a style,” said Black smartly. “Everybody also desires to have his portrait made, just as Our Sultan did.”

    “Is this afflipossible to resist?” I said. “As this plague spreads, none of us will be able to stand against the methods of the Europeans.”

    No one was listening to me, however. Black was reting the story of a sad Turkmen chieftain who was sent off on a twelve-year exile to a because he’d prematurely expressed his love for the daughter of the shah. Since he didn’t have a portrait of his beloved, of whom he dreamed for a dozen years, he fot her face amid the ese beauties, and his lovelorn suffering was transformed into a profound trial willed by Allah.

    “Thanks to your Enishte, we’ve all learhe meaning of ”portrait,“” I said. “God willing, one day, we’ll fearlessly tell the story of our own lives the way we actually live them.”

    “All fables are everybody’s fables,” said Black.

    “All illumination is God’s illumination too,” I said, pleting the verse by the poet Hatifi of Herat. “But as the methods of the Europeans spread, everyone will sider it a special talent to tell other men’s stories as if they were one’s own.”

    “This is nothing but the will of Satan.”

    “Unhand me now,” I shouted. “Let me look upon the world one last time.”

    They were terrified, and a new fidence rose within me.

    “Will you take out the final picture?” Black said.

    I gave Black such a look that he was quick to uand I’d do so and he released me. My heart began to beat rapidly.

    I’m certain you’ve long ago discovered my identity, which I’ve been trying to ceal. Even so, don’t be surprised that I’m behaving like the old masters of Herat, for they would ceal their signatures not to hide their identities, but out of principle and respect for their masters. Excitedly, I walked through the pitch-blas of the lodge, oil lamp in hand, making way for my own pale shadow. Had the curtain of blaess begun to fall over my eyes, or were these rooms and hallways truly this dark? How many days and weeks, how much time did I have befoing blind? My shadow and I stopped among the ghosts i and lifted up the pages from the  er of a dusty et before quickly heading back. Black had followed me as a precaution, but he’d ed t his dagger. Would I, perce, sider taking up that dagger and blinding him before I myself went blind?

    “I’m pleased that I will see this once again befoing blind,” I said with pride. “I want you all to see it as well. Look here.”

    Uhe light of the oil lamp, I showed them the final picture, which I’d taken from Enishte’s house the day I killed him. At first, I watched their curious and timid expressions as they looked at the double-leaf picture. I circled around and joihem, and I was ever so faintly trembling as I stared. The

    lang of my eyes, or perhaps a sudden rapture, made me feverish.

    The pictures we made on various parts of the two pages over the past year—tree, horse, Satah, dog and woman—were arranged, large and small, acc to Enishte’s albeit i new method of position, in such a way that the dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s gilding and borders made us feel we were no longer looking at a page from a book but at the world seen through a window. In the ter of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve been, was my own portrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was somewhat unsatisfied with it because after lab in vain for days, looking into a mirror and erasing and rew, I was uo achieve a good resemblaill, I felt unbridled elation because the picture not only situated me at the ter of a vast world, but for some unatable and diabolic reason, it made me appear more profound, plicated and mysterious than I actually was. I wanted only th<s>藏书网</s>at my artist brethren reize, uand and share in my exuberance. I was both the ter of everything, like a sultan or a king, and, at the same time, myself. The situation fed my pride as it increased my embarrassment. Finally these two feelings balanced each other, and I was able to relax and take dizzying pleasure in the picture. But for this pleasure to be plete, I knew every mark on my fad shirt, all of the wrinkles, shadows, moles and boils, every detail from my whiskers to the weave of my clothes and all their colors in all their shades had to be perfect, down to the mi details, as much as the skill of Frankish painters would allow.

    I noted in the fay old panions fear, bewilderment and the inescapable feeling dev us all: jealousy. Along with the angry revulsion they felt toward a man hopelessly mired in sin, they were also envious.

    “During the nights I spent here staring at this picture by the light of an oil lamp, I felt for the first time that God had forsaken me and only Satan would befriend me in my isolation,” I said. “I know that even if I were truly the ter of the world—and each time I looked at the picture this is precisely what I wanted—despite the splendor of the red that ruled the painting, despite being surrounded by all of these things I loved, including my dervish panions and the woman who resembled beautiful Shekure, I’d still be lonely. I’m not afraid of possessing character and individuality, nor do I fear others bowing down and worshiping me; on the trary, this is what I desire.”

    “You mean to say that you feel no remorse?” said Stork like a man who’d just left a Friday sermon.

    “I feel like the Devil not because I’ve murdered two men, but because my portrait has been made in this fashion. I suspect that I did away with them so I could make this picture. But now the isolation I feel terrifies me. Imitating the Frankish masters without having attaiheir expertise makes a miniaturist even more of a slave. Now I’m desperate to escape this trap. Of course, all of you know: After all is said and done, I killed them both so the workshop might persist as it always has, and Allah certainly knows this too.”

    “Yet this will bring eveer trouble upon us,” said my beloved Butterfly.

    I abruptly grabbed the wrist of that fool Black, who was still looking at the picture, and with all my strength, digging my nails into his flesh, I angrily squeezed and twisted it. The dagger that he rather timidly held dropped from his hand. I grabbed it from the ground.

    “But now you won’t be able to resolve your troubles by handing me over to the torturer,” I said. As if to poke out his eye, I brought the point of the dagger toward Black’s face. “Give me the plume needle.”

    He took it out and ha to me with his good hand, and I stuck it into my sash. I focused my gaze into his lamblike eyes.

    “I pity beautiful Shekure because she had no alternative but to marry you,” I said. “If I hadn’t been forced to kill Elegant Effendi to save you all from ruin, she would’ve married me and been happy. Indeed, I was the one who most fully uood the tales and talents of the Europeans as her father reted them to us. So, listen carefully to the last of what I will tell you: There is no longer any place here in Istanbul for us master miniaturists who wish to live by skill and honor alone. Yes, this is what I’ve realized. If we’re reduced to imitating the Frankish masters, as the late Enishte and Our Sultan desired, we will be restrained, if not by the Ezurumis and those like Elegant Effendi, then by the justified cowardice within us, and we won’t be able to tinue. If we fall sway to the Devil and tinue, betraying everything that has e before in a futile attempt to attain a style and European character, we will still fail—just as I failed in making this self-portrait despite all my profid knowledge. This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fair resemblanyself, revealed to me what we’ve know all along without admitting it: The proficy of the Franks will take turies to attain. Had Enishte Effendi’s book been pleted ao them, the Veian masters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would’ve reached the Veian Doge—that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans have given up being Ottoman and would no longer fear us. How wonderful it would be if we could persist oh of the old masters! But no one wants this, her His Excellency Our Sultan, nor Black Effendi—who is melancholy because he has no portrait of his precious Shekure. In that case, sit yourselves down and do nothing but ape the Europeaury after tury! Proudly sign your o your imitation paintings. The old masters of Herat tried to depict the world the way God saw it, and to ceal their individuality they never sigheir names. You, however, are o signing your o ceal your lack of individuality. But there is an alternative. Each of you has perhaps been summoned, and if so, you’re hiding it from me: Akbar, Sultan of Hindustan, is strewing about money and blandishments, trying to gather in his court the most talented artists in the world. It’s quite apparent that the book to be pleted for the thousandth year of Islam will not be prepared here in Istanbul, but in the workshops of Agra.”

    “Must an artist first bee a murderer to be as high and mighty as you?” asked Stork.

    “Nay, it’s enough to be the most gifted and the most talented,” I said heedlessly.

    A proud cockerel crowed twi the distance. I gathered my bundle and my gold pieces, my notebook of forms, and put my illustrations into my portfolio. I sidered how I might kill each of them one by

    oh the dagger, whose point I held at Black’s throat, but I felt nothing but affe for my boyhood friends—including Stork, who’d stuck the plume needle into my eyes.

    I screamed at Butterfly, who had stood up, and thus scared him into sitting back down. Now, fident I’d be able to escape the lodge safely, I hasteoward the door; and at the threshold, I impatiently uttered the momentous words I’d been planning to say:“My flight from Istanbul shall resemble Ibn Shakir’s flight from Baghdad under Mongol occupation.”

    “In that case, you must head West instead of East,” said jealous Stork.

    “To God belongs the East and the West,” I said in Arabic like the late Enishte.

    “But East is east a is west,” said Black.

    “An artist should never succumb to hubris of any kind,” said Butterfly, “he should simply paint the way he sees fit rather than troubling over East or West.”

    “So very true,” I said to beloved Butterfly. “Accept my kiss.”

    I’d hardly taken two steps toward him when Black dutifully pounced upon me. In one hand I held my satchel taining my clothes and gold s, and under my other arm, the portfolio filled with pictures. Taking care to protect my belongings, I failed to protect myself. I couldn’t prevent him from grabbing the forearm of the hand that held the dagger. But luck did not shine upon him, either; he tripped slightly over a low worktable and momentarily lost his balance. Instead of taking trol of my arm, he ended up hanging by it. Kig him with all my might and biting his fingers, I freed myself. He howled, fearing for his life. Then, I stepped on the same hand, causing him great pain. Brandishing the dagger before the other two, I shouted:“Halt!”

    They stayed seated where they were. I stuck the point of the dagger into one of Black’s nostrils, the way Keykavus had done in the legend. When it began to bleed, bitter tears flowed from his impl eyes.

    “Now, tell me then,” I said, “shall I go blind?”

    “Acc to legend, blood clots in the eyes of some and not in others. If Allah is pleased with your artistry, he’ll bestow His own magnifit blaess upon you and take you under His care. In that case, you shall behold not this wretched world, but the exquisite vistas that He sees. If He is displeased, you shall tio see the world the way you now do.”

    “I shall practice geistry in Hindustan,” I said. “I’ve yet to make the picture Allah will judge me by.”

    “Don’t nourish the illusion over much that you’ll be able to escape Frankish methods,” said Black. “Did you know that Akbar Khan ences all his artists to sign their work? The Jesuit priests of Pal long ago introduced European painting ahods there. They are everywhere now.”

    “There’s always work for the artist who wants to remain pure, there’s always a place to find shelter,” I said.

    “Aye,” said Stork, “going blind and fleeing to ent tries.”

    “Why is it that you want to remain pure?” said Black. “Stay here with us.”

    “For the rest of your lives you’ll do nothing but emulate the Franks for the sake of an individual style,” I said. “But precisely because you emulate the Franks you’ll tain individual style.”

    “There’s nothing else left to do,” said Black dishonorably.

    Of course, it wasn’t artistry but beautiful Shekure that was his sole source of happiness. I removed the bloodstained dagger from Black’s bleeding nose and raised it over his head like the sword of aioner preparing to behead a ned man.

    “If I so desired, I could cut off your head this instant,” I said, announg what was already apparent. “But I’m prepared to spare you for the sake of Shekure’s children and her happiness. Be good to her and don’t act crudely and ignorantly toward her. Promise me!”

    “I give my word,” he said.

    “I hereby grant you Shekure,” I said.

    Yet my arm acted of its own accord, heedless of my words. I drove the dagger down upon Black with all my might.

    At the last moment, both because Black moved and because I altered the path of my blow, the dagger struck his shoulder, not his neck. I watched in terror, the deed enacted by my arm alone. Once I removed the dagger, sunk to its handle in Black’s flesh, the spot bloomed a pure red. What I’d doh frightened and shamed me. But if I went blind on the ship, perhaps on the Arabian seas, I khat I could not then take revenge upon any of my miniaturist brethren.

    Stork, afraid that his turn had e, and justifiably so, fled into the blaed rooms within. Holding the

    lamp aloft, I went after him, but soon grew frightened and turned back. My last gesture was to kiss Butterfly, and saying farewell, to take my leave of him. Sihe tang of blood had e between us, I couldn’t kiss him to my heart’s tent. But he noticed that tears flowed from my eyes.

    I left the lodge within a kind of deathly silence punctuated by Black’s moaning. Nearly running, I fled the wet and muddy garden, the dark neighborhood. The ship that was to take me to Akbar Khan’s workshop would depart after the m azan; at that hour the last rowboat would leave for the ship from Galleon Harbor. As I ran, tears poured from my eyes.

    As I passed through Aksaray like a thief, I could faintly make out the first light of day on the horizon. Opposite the first neighborhood fountain I entered, among the side streets, narrow passages and walls, was the stone house in which I’d spent the night of my first day in Istanbul twenty-five years ago. There, through the yawning courtyard gate, I saw once again the well into which I wished to hurl myself in the middle of the night, tormented by guilt for having at the age of elevehe mattress that a distaive spread out for me in a show of kind and generous hospitality. By the time I reached Bayazid, the watchmaker’s shop (where I often came to fix the meism of my broken clock), the bottle seller’s shop (where I purchased the empty crystal lamps and sherbet cups I embellished and the little bottles I decorated with floral designs aly sold to the gentry) and the public baths (where my feet went out of habit for a time because it was both inexpensive ay) were all respectfully standing at attention before me and my tearful eyes.

    There was nobody in the viity of the ravaged and burned coffeehouse, nor a the house of beautiful Shekure and her new husband, who erhaps ihroes of death at this very moment. I heartily wished them nothing but happiness. While roaming the streets in the days after I’d tainted my hands with blood, all of Istanbul’s dogs, its shadowy trees, shuttered windows, black eys, ghosts and hardw, unhappy early risers hurrying toward mosques to perform their m prayers always stared at me with animosity; yet, from the moment I fessed my crimes and resolved to abandon the only city I’d ever known, they all regarded me with friendship.

    After passing the Bayazid Mosque, I watched the Golden Horn from a promontory: The horizon was brightening, yet the water was still black. Ever so slowly bobbing in invisible waves, two fishermen’s rowboats, freight ships with their sails furled and an abandoned galleoedly insisted that I not leave. Were the tears flowing from my eyes caused by the needle? I told myself to dream of the splendid life I would live in Hindustan off the splendid works my talent would create!

    I left the road, ran through two muddy gardens and took shelter beh an old stone house surrounded by greenery. This was the house where I came each Tuesday as an appreo get Master Osman and followed two paces behind him carrying his bag, portfolio, pen box and writing board on our way to the workshop. Nothing had ged here, except the plarees in the yard and along the street had grown se that an aura of grandeur, power ah hearkening back to the time of Sultan Süleyman had settled over the house and street.

    Sihe road leading to the harbor was near, I succumbed to the Devil’s temptation, and was overe by the excitement of seeing the arches of the workshop building where I’d spent a quarter tury. This was how I ended up trag the path that I’d take as an apprentice following Master Osman: down Archer’s Street which smelled dizzyingly of linden blossoms in the spring, past the bakery where my master would buy rou pasties, up the hill lined with beggars and quind chestnut trees, past the closed shutters of the new market and the barber whom my master greeted each m, alongside the empty field where acrobats would set up their tents in summer and perform, in front of the foul-smelling rooming houses for bachelors, beh moldy-smelling Byzantine arches, before Ibrahim Pasha’s palad the n made up of three coiling snakes, which I’d drawn hundreds of times, past the plaree, which we depicted a different way each time, emerging into the Hippodrome and uhe chestnut and mulberry trees wherein sparrows and magpies alighted and chirped madly in the ms.

    The heavy door of the workshop was closed. There was nobody at the entrance or uhe arched portico above. I was able to look up only momentarily at the shuttered small windows from which, as appreifled by boredom, we used to stare at the trees, before I was accosted.

    He had a shrill voice that clawed at one’s ears. He said that the bloody ruby-handled dagger in my hand beloo him and that his nephew, Shevket, and Shekure had spired to steal it from his house. This arently proof enough that I was one of Black’s men who raided his house at night to abduct Shekure. This arrogant, shrill-voiced, irate man also knew Black’s artist friends and that they would return to the workshop. He brandished a long sword that shimmered brightly with a strange red and indicated that he had a number of ats that, for whatever reason, he meant to settle with me. I sidered telling him that there was some misuanding, but I saw the incredible anger on his face. I could read in his expression that he was about to launch a sudden murderous assault on me. How I would’ve liked to say, “I beg of you, stop.”

    But he’d already acted.

    I wasn’t even able to raise my dagger, I simply lifted the hand in which I held my satchel.

    The satchel dropped. In one smooth motion, without losing speed, the sword cut first through my hand and thehrough my neck, lopping off my head.

    I knew I’d been beheaded from the two odd steps taken by my poor body which had left me behind in its fusion, from the stupid manner in which my hand waved the dagger and from the way my lonely body collapsed, blood spraying from the neck like a fountain. My poor feet, which tio move as though still walking, kicked uselessly like the legs of a dying horse.

    From the muddy ground upon which my head had fallen, I could her see my murderer nor my satchel full of gold pieces and pictures, which I still wao g to tightly. These things were behind me, in the dire of the hill leading down to the sea and Galleon Harbor which I would never reach. My head

    would never again turn ahem, or the rest of the world. I fot about them a my thoughts take me away.

    This is what occurred to me the moment before I was beheaded: The ship shall depart from the harbor; this was joined in my mind with a and to hurry; it was the way my mother would say “hurry” when I was a child. Mother, my neck aches and all is still.

    This is what they call death.

    But I khat I wasn’t dead yet. My punctured pupils were motionless, but I could still see quite well through my open eyes.

    What I saw from ground level filled my thoughts: The road ining slightly upward, the wall, the arch, the roof of the workshop, the sky…this is how the picture receded.

    It seemed as if this moment of observatio on and on and I realized seeing had bee a variety of memory. I was reminded of what I thought when staring for hours at a beautiful picture: If you stare long enough your miers the time of the painting.

    All time had now bee this time.

    It seemed as if no one would see me, as my thoughts faded away, my mud-covered head would go on staring at this melancholy ine, the stone wall and the nearby yet unattainable mulberry and chestnut trees for years.

    This endless waiting suddenly assumed such bitter and tedious proportions, I wanted nothing more than to quit this time.

    I, SHEKUREBlack had hidden us away in the house of a distaive, where I spent a sleepless night. In the bed where I curled up with Hayriye and the children, I was occasionally able to nod off amid the sounds of sn and coughing, but in my restless dreams, I saw strange creatures and women whose arms and legs had been severed and randomly reattached; they wouldn’t stop chasing me and tinually woke me. Toward m, the cold roused me and I covered Shevket and Orhan, embrag them, kissing their heads and begging Allah for pleasant dreams, such as I’d enjoyed during the blissful days when I slept in peader my late father’s roof.

    I couldn’t sleep, however. After the m prayers, looking out oreet through the shutters of the window in the small, dark room, I saw what I’d always seen in my happy dreams: A ghostly man, exhausted from warring and the wounds he’d received, brandishing a stick as if it were a sword, longingly approach me with familiar steps. In my dream, whenever I was on the verge of embrag this

    man, I’d awake in tears. When I saw the man ireet was Black, the scream that would never leave my throat in dreams sounded.

    I ran and opehe door.

    His face was swollen and bruised purple from fighting. His nose was mangled and covered in blood. He had a large gash from his shoulder to his neck. His shirt had turned bright red from the blood. Like the husband of my dreams, Black smiled at me faintly because he had, in the end, successfully returned.

    “Get inside,” I said.

    “Call for the children,” he said. “We’re going home.”

    “You’re in no dition to return home.”

    “There’s no reason to fear him anymore,” he said. “The murderer is Velijan Effendi, the Persian.”

    “Olive…” I said. “Did you kill that miserable rogue?”

    “He’s fled to India on the ship that departed from Galleon Harbor,” he said and avoided my eyes, knowing that he hadn’t properly aplished his task.

    “Will you be able to walk back to our house?” I said. “Shall we have them bring a horse for you?”

    I sehat he would die upon arriving home and I pitied him. Not because he would die alone, but because he’d never known any true happiness. I could see from the sorrow aermination in his eyes that he wished not to be in this strange house, and that he actually wao disappear without being seen by anybody in this horrible state. With some difficulty, they mounted him on a horse.

    During our trip back, as we passed through side streets ging to our buhe children were at first thteo look Bla the face. But from astride the slowly ambling horse, Black was still able to describe how he foiled the schemes of the wretched murderer who’d killed their grandfather and how he challenged him to a sword fight. I could see that the children had warmed up to him somewhat, and I prayed to Allah: Please, don’t let him die!

    When we reached the house, Orhan shouted, “We’re home!” with such joy I had the intuition that Azrael, the Angel of Death, pitied us and Allah would grant Black more time. But I knew from experiehat one could ell wheed Allah would take one’s soul, and I wasn’t overly hopeful.

    We helped Black down from the horse. We brought him upstairs, aled him into the bed in my

    father’s room, the oh the blue door. Hayriye boiled water and brought it upstairs. Hayriye and I undressed him, tearing his clothes and cutting them with scissors, removing the bloodied shirt stuck to his flesh, his sash, his shoes and his underclothes. When we opehe shutters, the soft winter sunlight playing on the branches in the garden filled the room, reflected off the ewers, pots, glue boxes, inkwells, pieces of glass and penknives, and illuminated Black’s deathly pale skin, and his flesh- and sour-cherry-colored wounds.

    I soaked pieces of bedding in hot water and rubbed them with soap. Then I wiped  Black’s body, carefully as though ing a valuable antique carpet, and affeately and eagerly as though g for one of my boys. Without pressing on the bruises that covered his face, without jarring the cut in his nostril, I sed the horrible wound on his shoulder as a dht. As I’d do when bathing the childrehey were babies, I cooed to him in a singsong voice. There were cuts on his chest and arms as well. The fingers of his left hand were purple from being bitten. The rags I used to wipe his body were soon bloodsoaked. I touched his chest; I felt the softness of his abdomen with my hand; I looked at his cock for a long time. The sounds of the children were ing from the courtyard below. Why did some poets call this thing a “reed pen”?

    I could hear Esther ehe kit with that joyous void mysterious air she adopted when she brought news, and I went down to greet her.

    She was so excited she began without embrag or kissing me: Olive’s severed head was found in front of the workshop; the pictures proving his guilt in the crimes and his satchel had also been recovered. He was intending to flee to Hindustan, but had decided first to call at the workshop one last time.

    There were wito the ordeal: Hasan, entering Olive, had drawn his red sword and cut off Olive’s head in a siroke.

    As she reted, I thought about where my unfortuher was. Learning that the murderer had received his due punishment at first put my fears to rest. And revenge lent me a feeling of fort and justice. At that instant, I wondered intensely whether my now-dead father could experiehis feeling; suddenly, it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with tless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the  only by exerg our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room.

    “Don’t cry, my dear,” said Esther. “You see, in the end everything has turned out fine.”

    I gave her fold s. She took them, o a time, into her mouth and bit down upon them crudely with eagerness and longing.

    “s terfeited by the Veians are everywhere,” she said, smiling.

    As soon as she’d left, I warned Hayriye not to let the children upstairs. I went up to the room where Black lay, locked the door behind me and cuddled up eagerly o Black’s naked body. Then, more out of curiosity than desire, more out of care than fear, I did what Black wanted me to do in the house of the Hanged Jew the night my poor father was killed.

    I ’t say I pletely uood why Persias, who for turies had likehat male tool to a reed pen, also pared the mouths of us women to inkwells, or what lay behind suparisons whose ins had been fotten through rote repetition—was it the smallness of the mouth? The are silence of the inkwell? Was it that God Himself was an illuminator? Love, however, must be uood, not through the logic of a woman like me who tinually racks her brain to protect herself, but through its illogic.

    So, let me tell you a secret: There, in that room that smelled of death, it wasn’t the obje my mouth that delighted me. What delighted me then, lying there with the entire world throbbiween my lips, was the happy twittering of my sons cursing and roughhousing with each other in the courtyard.

    While my mouth was thus occupied, my eyes could make out Black looking at me in a pletely different way. He said he’d never again fet my fad my mouth. As with some of my father’s old books, his skin smelled of moldy paper, and the st of the Treasury’s dust and cloth had saturated his hair. As I let myself go and caressed his wounds, his cuts and swellings, he groaned like a child, moving further and further away from death, and it was then I uood I would bee even more attached to him. Like a solemn ship that gains speed as its sails swell with wind, radually quiing lovemaking took us boldly into unfamiliar seas.

    I could tell by the way he was able to navigate these waters, even on his deathbed, that Black had plied these seas many times before with who knows what manner of i women. While I was fused as to whether the forearm I kissed was my own or his, whether I was sug my own finger or aire life, he stared out of one half-opened eye, nearly intoxicated by his wounds and pleasure, cheg where the world was taking him, and from time to time, he would hold my head delicately in his hands, and stare at my face astounded, now looking as if at a picture, now as if at a Mingerian whore.

    At the peak of pleasure, he cried out like the legendary heroes cut clear in half with a siroke of the sword in fabled pictures that immortalized the clash of Persian and Turanian armies; the fact that this cry could be heard throughout the neighborhohtened me. Like a genuine master miniaturist at the moment of greatest inspiration, holding his reed uhe direct guidance of Allah, yet still able to take into sideration the form and position of the entire page, Black tio direct our pla the world from a er of his mind even through his highest excitement.

    “You  tell them you were spreading salve onto my wounds,” he said breathlessly.

    These words not only stituted the color of our love—which settled into a bottleneck between life ah, prohibition and paradise, hopelessness and shame—they also were the excuse for our love. For

    the wenty-six years, until my beloved husband Black collapsed o the well one m to die of a bad heart, each afternoon, as the sunlight filtered into the room through the slats of the shutters, and for the first few years, to the sounds of Shevket and Orhan playing, we made love, always referring to it as “spreading salve onto wounds.” This was how my jealous sons, whom I didn’t want to suffer beatings at the jealous whims of a rough and melancholy father, were able to tinue sleeping in the same bed with me for years. All sensible women know how it’s muicer to sleep curled up with one’s children than with a melancholy husband who’s beeen down by life.

    We, my children and I, were happy, but Black couldn’t be. The most obvious reason for this was the wound on his shoulder ahat never pletely healed; my beloved husband was left “crippled,” as I heard him described by others. But this didn’t disrupt his life, other than in its appearahere were even times when I heard other women, who’d seen my husband from a distance, describe him as handsome. But Black’s right shoulder was lower than the left and his neck remained oddly cocked. I also heard gossip to the effect that a woman like myself could only marry a husband whom she felt was beh her, and how as much as Black’s wound was the cause of his distent, it was also the secret source of our shared happiness.

    As with all gossip, there is perhaps a of truth in this as well. However deprived aute I felt at not being able to pass dowreets of Istanbul mouall on an exceptionally beautiful horse, surrounded by slaves, lady servants and attendants—what Esther always thought I deserved—I also occasionally longed for a brave and spirited husband who held his head high and looked at the world with a sense of victory.

    Whatever the cause, Black always remained melancholy. Because I khat his sadness had nothing to do with his shoulder, I believed that somewhere in a secret er of his soul he ossessed by a jinn of sorrow that dampened his mood even during our most exhilarating moments of lovemaking. To appease that jinn, at times he’d drink wi times stare at illustrations in books and take an i in art, at times he’d even spend his days and nights with miniaturists chasing after pretty boys. There were periods wheertained himself in the pany of painters, calligraphers and poets in ies of puns, double entendres, innuendos, metaphors and games of flattery, and there were periods when he fot everything and surrendered himself to secretarial duties and a goveral clerkship under Hunched Süleyman Pasha, into whose service he’d mao enter. Four years later, when Our Sultan died, and with the assion of Sultan Mehmed, who turned his batirely on all artistry, Black’s enthusiasm for illumination and painting turned from an openly celebrated pleasure into a private secret pursued behind closed doors. There were times when he’d open one of the books left to us by my father, and stare, guilty and sad, at an illustration made during the era of Tamerlane’s sons i—yes, Shirin falling in love with Hüsrev after seeing his picture—not as if it were part of a happy game of talent still being played in palace circles, but as if he were dwelling upon a sweet secret long surreo memory.

    Ihird year of Our Sultan’s reign, the Queen of Engla His Excellency a miraculous clock that tained a musical instrument with a bellows. An English delegation assembled this enormous clock after weeks of toil with various pieces, cogs, pictures and statuettes that they brought with them

    from Englaing it on a slope of the Royal Private Garden fag the Golden Horn. The crowds that collected on the slopes of the Golden Horn or came in ca?ques to watch, astonished and awed, saw how the life-size statues and ors spun around each other purposefully when the huge clock played its noisy and terrifying music, how they danced elegantly and meaningfully by themselves in time to the melody as if they were creations of God rather than of His servants, and how the clonouhe time to all Istanbul with a chime that resembled the sounding of a bell.

    Blad Esther told me on different occasions how the clock, as well as being the focus of endless astonishment on the part of Istanbul’s riffraff and dull-witted mobs, was uandably a source of disfort to the pious and to Our Sultan because it symbolized the power of the infidel. In a time when rumors of this sort abounded, Sultan Ahmed, the subsequent sn, woke up in the middle of the night under Allah’s instigation, seized His mad desded from the harem to the Private Garden where He shattered the clod its statues to pieces. Those whht us the news and the rumors explained how as Our Sulta, He saw the sacred face of Our Exalted Prophet bathed in holy light and how the Apostle of God warned Him: If Our Sultan allowed his subjects to be awed by pictures and, worse yet, by objects that mimicked Mankind and thus peted with Allah’s creations, the sn would be diverging from divine will. They also added that Our Sultan had taken up His mace while still dreaming. This was more or less how Our Sultan dictated the event to His faithful historian. He had this book, entitled The Quintessence of Histories, prepared by calligraphers, upon whom He lavished purses full of gold, though He forbade its illustration by miniaturists.

    Thus withered the red rose of the joy of painting and illumination that had bloomed for a tury in Istanbul, nurtured by inspiration from the lands of Persia. The flict betweehods of the old masters of Herat and the Frankish masters that paved the way for quarrels among artists and endless quandries was never resolved. For painting itself was abandoned; artists painted her like Easterners nor Westerners. The miniaturists did not grow angry a, but like old men who quietly succumb to an illness, they gradually accepted the situation with humble grief and resignation. They were her curious about nor dreamed about the work of the great masters of Herat and Tabriz, whom they once followed with awe, or the Frankish masters, whose innovative methods they aspired to, caught indecisively between envy and hatred. Just as the doors of houses are closed of an evening and the city is left to darkness, painting was also abandoned. It was mercilessly fotten that we’d once looked upon our world quite differently.

    My father’s book, sadly, remained unfinished. From where Hasan scattered the pleted pages on the ground, they were transferred to the Treasury; there, an effit and fastidious librarian had them bound together with other ued illustrations belonging to the workshop, and thus they were separated into several bound albums. Hasan fled Istanbul, and disappeared, o be heard from again. Shevket and Orhan never fot that it wasn’t Black but their Uncle Hasan who was the one who killed my father’s murderer.

    In plaaster Osman, who died two years after going blind, Stork became Head Illuminator. Butterfly, who was also quite in awe of my late father’s talents, devoted the rest of his life to drawing oral designs for carpets, cloths as. The young assistant masters of the workshop gave

    themselves over to similar work. No one behaved as though abandoning illustration were any great loss. Perhaps because nobody had ever seen his own face done justi the page.

    My whole life, I’ve secretly very much wawo paintings made, which I’ve never mentioo anybody:1. My own portrait; but I knew however hard the Sultan’s miniaturists tried, they’d fail, because even if they could see my beauty, woefully, none of them would believe a woman’s face was beautiful without depig her eyes and lips like a ese woman’s. Had they represented me as a ese beauty, the way the old masters of Herat would’ve, perhaps those who saw it and reized me could dis my face behind the face of that ese beauty. But later geions, even if they realized my eyes weren’t really slanted, could never determine what my face truly looked like. Hoy I’d be today, in my old age—which I live out through the fort of my children—if I had a youthful portrait of myself!

    2. A picture of bliss: What the poet Blond Naz 1m of Ran had pondered in one of his verses. I know quite well how this painting ought to be made. Imagihe picture of a mother with her two children; the younger one, whom she cradles in her arms, nursing him as she smiles, suckles happily at her bountiful breast, smiling as well. The eyes of the slightly jealous older brother and those of the mother should be locked. I’d like to be the mother in that picture. I’d want the bird in the sky to be depicted as if flying, and at the same time, happily aernally suspehere, iyle of the old masters of Herat who were able to stop time. I know it’s not easy.

    My son Orhan, who’s foolish enough to be logical in all matters, reminds me on the one hand that the time-halting masters of Herat could never depict me as I am, and oher hand, that the Frankish masters who perpetually painted mother-with-child portraits could op time. He’s been insisting for years that my picture of bliss could never be painted anyhow.

    Perhaps he’s right. In actuality, we don’t look for smiles in pictures of bliss, but rather, for the happiness in life itself. Painters know this, but this is precisely what they ot depict. That’s why they substitute the joy of seeing for the joy of life.

    In the hopes that he might pen this story, which is beyoion, I’ve told it to my son Orhan. Without hesitation I gave him the letters Hasan and Black sent me, along with the rough horse illustrations with the smeared ink, which were found on poor Elegant Effendi. Above all, don’t be taken in by Orhan if he’s drawn Black more absentmihan he is, made our lives harder than they are, Shevket worse and me prettier and harsher than I am. For the sake of a delightful and ving story, there isn’t a lie Orhan wouldn’t deign to tell.

    1990–92, 1994–98336–330 B.C.: <strong>Darius ruled in Persia.</strong> He was the last king of the Achaemenids, losing his empire to Alexahe Great.

    336–323 B.C.: <strong>Alexahe Great established his empire.</strong> He quered Persia and invaded India. His exploits as hero and monarch were legendary throughout the Islamic world even until modern times.

    622: <strong>The Hegira.</strong> The emigration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecedina, and the beginning of the Muslim dar.

    1010: <strong>Firdusi’s Book of Kings.</strong> The Persia Firdusi (lived circa 935–1020) presented his Book of Kings to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Its episodes on Persian myth and history—including Alexander’s invasion, tales of the hero Rüstem and the struggle between Persia and Turan—have inspired miniaturists sihe fourteenth tury.

    1206–1227: <strong>The reign of Mongol ruler Genghis Khan.</strong> He invaded Persia, Russia and a, aended his empire from Mongolia to Europe.

    C. 1141–1209: <strong>The Persia Nizami lived.</strong> He wrote the romantic epic the Qui, prised of the following stories, all of which have inspired miniaturist painters: The Treasury of Mysteries, Hüsrev and Shirin, Leyla and Mejnun, The Seveies and The Book of Alexahe Great.

    1258: <strong>The Sack of Baghdad.</strong> Hulagu (reigned 1251–1265), the grandson of Genghis Khan, quered Baghdad.

    1300–1922: <strong>The Ottoman Empire, a Sunni Muslim power, ruled southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.</strong> At its greatest extent, the empire reached the gates of Vienna and Persia.

    1370–1405: <strn of the Turkic ruler Tamerlane.</strong> Subdued the areas that the Blacksheep ruled in Persia. Tamerlane quered areas from Mongolia to the Mediterranean including parts of Russia, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Anatolia (where he defeated the Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I in 1402).

    1370–1526: <strong>The Timurid Dynasty, established by Tamerlane, fostered a brilliant revival of artistid intellectual life, and ruled in Persia, tral Asia and Transoxiana.</strong> The schools of miniature painting at Shiraz, Tabriz a flourished uhe Timurids. In the early fifteenth tury Herat was the ter of painting in the Islamic world and home to the great master Bihzad.

    1375–1467: <strong>The Blacksheep, a Turkmen tribal federation, ruled over parts of Iraq, eastern Anatolia and Iran.</strong> Jihan Shah (reigned 1438–67), the last Blacksheep ruler, was defeated by the Whitesheep Tall Hasan in 1467.

    1378–1502: <strong>The Whitesheep federation of Turkmen tribes ruled northern Iraq, Azerbaijan aern Anatolia.</strong> Whitesheep ruler Tall Hasan (reigned 1452–78) failed in his attempts to tain the eastward expansion of the Ottomans, but he defeated the Blacksheep Jihan Shah in 1467 and the Timurid Abu Said in 1468, extending his dominions to Baghdad, Herat, and the Persian Gulf.

    1453: <strong>Ottoman Sulta the queror took Istanbul.</strong> Demise of the Byzantine Empire. Sulta later issioned his portrait from Bellini.

    1501–1736: <strong>The Safavid Empire ruled in Persia.</strong> The establishment of Shia Islam as the state religion helped unify the empire. The seat of the empire was at first located in Tabriz, then moved to Kazvin, and later, to Isfahan. The first Safavid ruler, Shah Ismail (reigned 1501–24), subdued the areas that the Whitesheep ruled in Azerbaijan and Persia. Persia weakened appreciably during the rule of Shah Tahmasp I (reigned 1524–76).

    1512: <strong>The Flight of Bihzad.</strong> The great miniaturist Bihzad emigrated from Herat to Tabriz.

    1514: <strong>The Plunder of the Seven Heavens Palace.</strong> The Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim, after defeating the Safavid army at Chaldiran, pluhe Seven Heavens Pala Tabriz. He returo Istanbul with an exquisite colle of Persian miniatures and books.

    1520–66: <strong>Süleyman the Magnifit and the Golden Age of Ottoman Culture.</strong> The reign of Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnifit. Important quests expahe empire to the east and the west, including the first seige of Vienna (1529) and the capture of Baghdad from the Safavids (1535).

    1556–1605: <strn of Akbar, Emperor of Hindustan, a desdant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.</strong> He established miniaturists’ workshops in Agra.

    1566–74: <strong>The reign of Ottoman Sultan Selim II.</strong> Peace treaties signed with Austria and Persia.

    1571: <strong>The Battle of Lepanto.</strong> A four-hour naval battle between allied Christian forces and the Ottomans subsequent to the Ottoman invasion of Cyprus (1570). Though the Ottomans were defeated, Venice surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans in 1573. The battle had great impa European morale and was the subject of paintings by Titian, Tio and Veronese.

    1574–95: <strong>The reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III (during whose rule the events of our ake place).</strong> His rule witnessed a series of struggles between 1578–90 known as the Ottoman-Safavid wars. He was the Ottoman sultan most ied in miniatures and books, and he had the Book of Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories produced in Istanbul. The most promi Ottoman miniaturists, including Osman the Miniaturist (Master Osman) and his disciples, tributed to them.

    1576: <strong>Shah Tahmasp’s Peace  to the Ottomans. </strong>After decades of hostility, Safavid Shah Tahmasp made a present to the Ottoman Sultan Selim II upon the death of Süleyman the Magnifit in an attempt to foster future peace. Among the gifts sent to Edirne is an exceptional copy of the Book of Kings, produced over a period of twenty-five years. The book was later transferred to the Treasury iopkapi Palace.

    1583: <strong>The Persian miniaturist Velijan (Olive), about ten years after ing to Istanbul, is issioo work for the Ottoman court.</strong>

    1587–1629: <strn of the Safavid Persian ruler Shah Abbas I, begins with the deposition of his father Muhammad Khodabandeh. </strong>Shah Abb<dfn></dfn>as reduced Turkmen power in Persia by moving the capital from Kazvin to Isfahan. He made peace with the Ottomans in 1590.

    1591: <strong>The Story of Blad the Ottoman Court Painters. </strong>A year before the thousandth anniversary (calculated in lunar years) of the Hegira, Black returns to Istanbul from the east, beginning the events reted in the novel.

    1603–17: <strong>The reign of Ottoman Sultan Ahmet I, who destroyed the large clock with statuary sent to the sultan as a present by Queen Elizabeth I.</strong>

    <em><strong>Orhan Pamuk</strong></em>

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