I suddenly sensed, as well, that I was perhaps seeing the great master alive for the last time, and in the fluster of wanting to please and hearten him, I asked a question:

“My great master, my dear sir, what separates the genuine miniaturist from the ordinary?” I assumed the Head Illuminator, who was accustomed to such fawning questions, would give me a dismissive response, and that he was presently in the midst of forgetting who I was altogether.

“There is no single measure that can distinguish the great miniaturist from the unskilled and faithless one,” he said in all seriousness. “This changes with time. Yet the skills and morality with which he would face the evils that threaten our art are of significance. Today, in order to determine just how genuine a young painter is, I’d ask him three questions.”

“And what would they be?”

“Has he come to believe, under the sway of recent custom as well as the influence of the Chinese and the European Franks, that he ought to have an individual painting technique, his own style? As an illustrator, does he want to have a manner, an aspect distinct from others, and does he attempt to prove this by signing his name somewhere in his work like the Frankish masters? To determine precisely these things, I’d first ask him a question about ‘style’ and ‘signature.’ ”

“And then?” I asked respectfully.

“Then, I’d want to learn how this illustrator felt about volumes changing hands, being unbound, and our pictures being used in other books and in other eras after the shahs and sultans who’d commissioned them have died. This is a subtle issue demanding a response beyond one’s being simply upset or pleased by it. Thus, I’d ask the illustrator a question about ‘time‘—an illustrator’s time and Allah’s time. Do you follow me, my child?”

Nay. But that’s not what I said. Instead, I asked, “And the third question?”

“The third would be ‘blindness’!” said the great master Head Illuminator Osman, who then fell silent as if this required no explication.

“What is it about ‘blindness‘?” I said with embarrassment.

“Blindness is silence. If you combine what I’ve just now said, the first and the second questions, ‘blindness’ will emerge. It’s the farthest one can go in illustrating; it is seeing what appears out of Allah’s own blackness.”

I said no more. I walked outside. I descended the icy stairs without hurrying. I knew that I would ask the great master’s three great questions of Butterfly, Olive and Stork, not only for the sake of conversation, but to better understand these living legends who were contemporaries of mine.

I did not, however, go to the master illuminators’ houses immediately. I met with Esther near the Jewish quarter at a new bazaar that had an elevated view of the confluence of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. Esther was all atwitter in the pink dress she was forced to wear as a Jew, with her large and lively body, her mouth which never stopped moving, and her eyebrows and eyes which twitched madly and signaled to me; indeed, this is how she was among the shopping slave women, the women wearing the faded and loose caftans of poor neighborhoods and among the crowds that had lost themselves amid carrots, quinces and small bundles of onions and turnips.

Esther was all atwitter in the pink dress she was forced to wear as a Jew, with her large and lively body, her mouth which never stopped moving, and her eyebrows and eyes which twitched madly and signaled to me; indeed, this is how she was among the shopping slave women, the women wearing the faded and loose caftans of poor neighborhoods and among the crowds that had lost themselves amid carrots, quinces and small bundles of onions and turnips.

She stuffed the letter I gave her into her shalwar pants with an adept and mysterious gesture, as if the whole market were spying upon us. She told me that Shekure was thinking of me. She took her baksheesh and when I said, “Please, make haste and deliver it straightaway,” she indicated that she still had quite a lot of work to do by gesturing toward her bundle and said that she only could deliver the letter to Shekure toward midday. I asked her to tell Shekure that I’d gone to pay visits to the three young and renowned master miniaturists.

I AM CALLED “BUTTERFLY”

The midday prayers had yet to be called. A knock at the door: I opened it to find Black Effendi, who was among us for a while during our apprenticeships. We embraced and kissed on the cheeks. I was wondering whether he’d brought some word from his Enishte, when he said that he wanted to look at the pages I’d been illustrating and at my paintings, that he’d called in friendship, and was going to direct a question to me in the name of Our Sultan. “Very well,” I said, “what’s the question I’m to answer?”

He told me. Very well, then!

Style and Signature

“As long as the number of worthless artists motivated by money and fame instead of the pleasure of seeing and a belief in their craft increases,” I said, “we will continue to witness much more vulgarity and greed akin to this preoccupation with ‘style’ and ‘signature.’ ” I made this introduction because this was the way it is done, not because I believed what I said. True ability and talent couldn’t be corrupted even by the love of gold or fame. Furthermore, if truth be told, money and fame are the inalienable rights of the talented, as in my case, and only inspire us to greater feats. But if I were to say this openly, the mediocre illustrators in the miniaturists’ division, rabid with envy, would pounce upon me, so, to prove that I love this work more than they themselves do, I’ll paint the picture of a tree on a grain of rice. I’m well aware that this lust for ‘style,’ ‘signature’ and ‘character’ has come to us all the way from the East by way of certain unfortunate Chinese masters who’ve been led astray under the influence of the Europeans, by pictures brought there from the West by Jesuit priests. Nevertheless, let me tell you three parables that comprise a recital on this topic.”

Three Parables on Style and Signature

ALIF

Once upon a time, to the North of Herat, in a mountain castle, there lived a young Khan who was fascinated with illuminating and painting. This Khan loved only one of the women in his harem, and this striking Tatar woman, whom he loved madly, loved him in return. They engaged in such bouts of lovemaking, sweating until morning, and lived in such ecstasy that their only wish was to live eternally. They soon discovered the best way to realize their wish was by opening books and gazing, for hours and hours and days on end, upon the astounding and flawless pictures of the old masters. As they stared at these perfect renderings, unfalteringly reproduced, they felt as though time would stop and their own felicity would mingle with the bliss of the golden age revealed in the stories. In the royal bookmaker’s workshop, there was a miniaturist, a master of masters, who made the same flawless pieces over and over for the same pages of the same books. As was his custom, the master depicted the anguish of Ferhad’s love for Shirin, or the loving and desirous glances between Leyla and Mejnun, or the duplicitous, suggestive looks Hüsrev and Shirin exchanged in that fabled heavenly garden—with one slight alteration however: In place of these legendary lovers, the artist would paint the Khan and his Tatar beauty. Beholding these pages, the Khan and his beloved were thoroughly convinced that their rapture would never end, and they showered the master miniaturist with praises and gold. Eventually, however, this adulation caused the miniaturist to stray from good sense; incited by the Devil, he dismissed the fact that he was beholden to the old masters for the perfection of his pictures, and haughtily assumed that a touch of his own genius would make his work even more appealing. The Khan and his beloved, considering these innovations—the personal stylistic touches of the master miniaturist—nothing but imperfections, were deeply disturbed by them. In the paintings, which the Khan observed at length, he felt that his former bliss had been disrupted in numerous ways, and he grew increasingly jealous of his Tatar beauty who was depicted with the individual touch of the painter. So, with the intention of making his pretty Tatar jealous, he made love with another concubine. His beloved was so bereft upon learning of this betrayal from the harem gossips that she silently hanged herself from a cedar tree in the harem courtyard. The Khan, understanding the mistake he’d made and realizing that the miniaturist’s own fascination with style lay behind this terrible incident, immediately blinded this master artist whom the Devil had tempted.

In place of these legendary lovers, the artist would paint the Khan and his Tatar beauty.

Once upon a time in a country in the East there was an elderly Sultan, a lover of illustrations, illuminations and miniatures, who lived happily with his Chinese wife of unsurpassed beauty. Alas, it soon happened that the Sultan’s handsome son from a previous marriage and the Sultan’s young wife had become enamored of each other. The son, who lived in terror of his treachery against his father, and ashamed of his forbidden love, sequestered himself in the bookmaker’s workshop and gave himself over to painting. Since he painted out of the sorrow and strength of his love, each of his paintings was so magnificent that admirers couldn’t distinguish them from the work of the old masters. The Sultan took great pride in his son, and his young Chinese wife would say, “Yes, magnificent!” as she looked upon the paintings. “Yet, time will surely pass, and if he doesn’t sign his work, no one will know that he was the one responsible for this majesty.” The Sultan responded, “If my son signs his paintings, won’t he be unjustly taking credit for the techniques and styles of the old masters, which he has imitated? Moreover, if he signs his work, won’t he be saying ‘My paintings bear my imperfections’?” The Chinese wife, seeing that she wouldn’t be able to convince her elderly husband on this issue of signature, was, however, eventually successful in persuading his young son, confined, as always, in the bookmaker’s workshop. Humiliated at having to conceal his love, persuaded by his pretty young stepmother’s ideas and with the Devil’s coercion, the son signed his name in a corner of a painting, between wall and grass, in a spot he assumed was beyond notice. This, the first picture he signed, was a scene from Hüsrev and Shirin. You know the one: After Hüsrev and Shirin are wed, Shiruye, Hüsrev’s son from his first marriage, falls in love with Shirin. One night, entering their bedchamber through the window, Shiruye swiftly sinks his dagger into his father’s chest. When the Sultan saw his son’s depiction of this scene, he was overcome with the sense that the painting embodied some flaw; he’d seen the signature, but wasn’t consciously aware of it, and he simply reacted to the picture with the thought, ‘This painting bears a flaw.’ And since one would never expect any such thing from the old masters, the Sultan was seized by a kind of panic, suspecting that this volume he was reading recounted not a story or a legend, but what was most unbefitting a book: reality itself. When the elderly man sensed this, he was overcome with terror. His illustrator son had entered through the window, as in the painting, and without even looking twice at his father’s bulging eyes, swiftly drove his dagger—as large as the one in the painting—into his father’s chest.

His illustrator son had entered through the window, as in the painting, and without even looking twice at his father’s bulging eyes, swiftly drove his dagger—as large as the one in the painting—into his father’s chest.

DJIM

In his History, Rashiduddin of Kazvin merrily writes that 250 years ago in Kazvin, manuscript illumination, calligraphy and illustration were the most esteemed and beloved arts. The reigning Shah in Kazvin at that time ruled over forty countries from Byzantium to China—perhaps the love of book arts was the secret of this great power—but alas, he had no male heir. To prevent the lands he’d conquered from being divided up after his death, the Shah decided to find a bright miniaturist husband for his beautiful daughter, and toward this end, arranged a competition among the three great young masters of his atelier, all of whom were bachelors. According to Rashiduddin’s History, the object of the competition was very simple: Whoever made the most remarkable painting would be the victor! Like Rashiduddin himself, the young miniaturists knew that this meant painting in the manner of the old masters, and thus, each of the three made a rendition of the most widely liked scene: In a garden reminiscent of Heaven itself, a young and beautiful maiden stood amid cypress and cedar trees, among timid rabbits and anxious swallows, immersed in lovelorn grief, staring at the ground. Unknowingly, the three miniaturists had rendered the same scene exactly as the old masters would have; yet, the one who wanted to distinguish himself and thereby take responsibility for the painting’s beauty had hidden his signature among the narcissus flowers in the most secluded spot in the garden. And on account of this brazen act, by which the artist broke with the humility of the old virtuosos, he was immediately exiled from Kazvin to China. Thus, the competition was begun anew between the two remaining miniaturists. This time, both painted a picture lovely as a poem, depicting a beautiful maiden mounted on her horse in a magnificent garden. But one of the miniaturists—whether by a slip of his brush or by intent, no one knew—had depicted strangely the nostrils of the white horse belonging to the maiden with Chinese eyes and high cheekbones, and this was straightaway perceived as a flaw by the Shah and his daughter. True, this miniaturist hadn’t signed his name, but in his splendid painting, he’d apparently included a masterful variation in the horse’s nostrils to distinguish the work. The Shah, declaring that “Imperfection is the mother of style,” exiled this illustrator to Byzantium. Yet there was one last significant event according to the weighty History by Rashiduddin of Kazvin, which occurred when preparations were being made for the wedding between the Shah’s daughter and the talented miniaturist, who painted exactly like the old masters without any signature or variation: For the entire day before the wedding, the Shah’s daughter gazed grief-stricken at the painting made by the young and handsome great master who was to become her husband on the morrow. As darkness fell that evening, she presented herself to her father: “It is true, yes, that the old masters, in their exquisite paintings, would depict beautiful maidens as Chinese, and this is an unalterable rule come to us from the East,” she said. “But when they loved someone, the painters would include an aspect of their beloved in the rendering of the beautiful maiden’s brow, eye, lip, hair, smile, or even eyelash. This secret variation in their illustrations would be a sign that could be read by the lovers and the lovers alone. I’ve stared at the beautiful maiden mounted on her horse for the whole day, my dear father, and there’s no trace of me in her! This miniaturist is perhaps a great master, he’s young and handsome, but he does not love me.” Thereupon, the Shah canceled the wedding at once, and father and daughter lived out the remainder of their lives together.

“Thus, according to this third parable, imperfection gives rise to what we call ‘style,’ ” said Black quite politely and respectfully. “And does the fact that the miniaturist is in love become apparent from the hidden ‘sign’ in the image of the beauty’s face, eye or smile?”

“Nay,” I said in a manner that bespoke my confidence and pride. “What passes from the maiden, the focus of the master miniaturist’s love, to his picture is not ultimately imperfection or flaw but a new artistic rule. Because, after a time and through imitation, everyone will begin to depict the faces of maidens just like that particular beautiful maiden’s face.”

We fell silent. I saw that Black, who’d listened intently to the three parables I recounted, had now focused his attentions upon the sounds my attractive wife made as she roamed the hallway and the next room. I glared at him menacingly.

“The first story established that ‘style’ is imperfection,” I said. “The second story established that a perfect picture needs no signature, and the third marries the ideas of the first and the second, and thus demonstrates that ‘signature’ and ‘style’ are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-congratulatory about flawed work.”

How much did this man, to whom I’d just given an invaluable lesson, understand of painting? I said: “Have you understood who I am from my stories?”

“Certainly,” he said, without conviction.

So you don’t try to discern who I am through his eyes and perceptions, allow me to tell you directly. I can do anything. Like the old masters of Kazvin, I can draw and color with pleasure and glee. I say this with a smile: I’m better than everybody. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the reason for Black’s visit, which—if perchance my intuition serves me correctly—is the disappearance of Elegant Effendi the Gilder.

Black asked me about the mixing of marriage and art.

I work a lot and I enjoy my work. I recently married the most beautiful maiden in the neighborhood. When I’m not illuminating, we make love like mad. Then I set to working again. That’s not how I answered. “It’s a serious issue,” I said. “If masterpieces issue from the brush of a miniaturist, when it comes to issuing it to his wife, he’ll be at a loss to bestir the same joy,” I said. “The opposite holds true as well: If a man’s reed satisfies the wife, his reed of artistry will pale in comparison,” I added. Like everyone who envies the talent of the miniaturist, Black, too, believed these lies and was heartened.

He said he wanted to see the last pages I’d illustrated. I seated him at my worktable, among the paints, inkwells, burnishing stones, brushes, pens and reed-cutting boards. Black was examining the double-leaf painting I was in the process of completing for the Book of Festivities, which portrayed Our Prince’s circumcision ceremony, and I sat beside him on the red cushion whose warmth reminded me that my beautiful wife with her gorgeous thighs had been sitting here recently; indeed, I had used my reed pen to draw the sorrow of the unfortunate prisoners before Our Sultan, as my intelligent wife clung to the reed of my manhood.

I seated him at my worktable, among the paints, inkwells, burnishing stones, brushes, pens and reed-cutting boards.

The two-page scene I was painting depicted the deliverance of condemned and imprisoned debtors and their families by the grace of Our Sultan. I’d situated the Sultan on the corner of a carpet covered in bags full of silver coins, as I’d personally witnessed during such ceremonies. Behind Him, I’d located the Head Treasurer holding and reading out of the debt ledger. I’d portrayed the condemned debtors, chained to each other by the iron shackles around their necks, in their misery and pain with knit brows, long faces and some with teary eyes. I’d painted the lute players in shades of red with beatific faces as they accompanied the joyous prayers and poems that followed the Sultan’s presentation of His benevolent gift: sparing the condemned from prison. To emphasize deliverance from the pain and embarrassment of debt—though I had no such plan at the outset—beside the last of the miserable prisoners, I’d included his wife, wearing a purple dress in the wretchedness of destitution, along with his longhaired daughter, sorrowful yet beautiful, clad in a crimson mantle. So that this man Black, with his furrowed brows, might understand how illustrating equaled love-of-life, I was going to explain why the chained gang of debtors was extended across two pages; I was going to tell him about the hidden logic of red within the picture; I was going to elucidate the things my wife and I had laughingly discussed while admiring the piece, such as how I’d lovingly colored—something the old masters never did—the dog resting off to the side in precisely the same hue as the Sultan’s caftan of atlas silk, but he asked me a very rude, discourteous question:

Would I, perchance, have any idea where unfortunate Elegant Effendi might be?

What did he mean “unfortunate”! I didn’t say that Elegant Effendi was a worthless plagiarist, a fool who did his gilding for money alone with nary a hint of inspiration. “Nay,” I said, “I do not know.”

Had I ever considered that the aggressive and fanatical followers of the preacher from Erzurum might’ve done Elegant Effendi harm?

I maintained my composure and refrained from responding that Elegant Effendi himself was no doubt one of their lot. “Nay,” I said. “Why?”

The poverty, plague, immorality and scandal we are slave to in this city of Istanbul can only be attributed to our having distanced ourselves from the Islam of the time of Our Prophet, Apostle of God, to adopting new and vile customs and to allowing Frankish, European sensibilities to flourish in our midst. This is all that the Preacher Erzurumi is saying, but his enemies attempt to persuade the Sultan otherwise by claiming that the Erzurumis are attacking dervish lodges where music is played, and that they’re defacing the tombs of saints. They know I don’t share their animosity toward His Excellency Erzurumi, so they’re making polite insinuations: “Are you the one who has taken care of our brother Elegant Effendi?”

It suddenly dawned on me that these rumors had long been spreading among the miniaturists. That group of uninspired, untalented incompetents was gleefully alleging that I was nothing but a beastly murderer. I felt like lowering an inkpot onto the Circassian skull of this buffoon Black purely because he took the slander of this jealous group of miniaturists seriously.

Black was examining my workshop, committing everything he saw to memory. He was intently observing my long paper scissors, ceramic bowls filled with yellow pigment, bowls of paint, the apple I occasionally nibbled as I worked, the coffeepot resting on the edge of the stove in the back, my diminutive coffee cups, the cushions, the light filtering through the half-opened window, the mirror I used to check the composition of a page, my shirts and, over there, my wife’s red sash caught like a sin in the corner where she’d dropped it as she quickly quit the room upon hearing Black’s knock at the front door.

Despite the fact that I’ve concealed my thoughts from him, I’ve surrendered the paintings I’ve made and this room I live in to his bold and aggressive gaze. I sense this hubris of mine will be a shock to you all, but I am the one who earns the most money, and therefore, I am the best of all miniaturists! Yes, God must’ve wanted the art of illumination to be ecstasy so He could demonstrate how the world itself is ecstasy to those who truly see.

I AM CALLED “STORK”

At about the time of midday prayer I heard a knock at the door. It was Black from long ago, from our childhood. We embraced. He was chill and I invited him inside. I didn’t even ask how he’d found his way to the house. His Enishte must have sent him to question me about Elegant Effendi’s absence and his whereabouts. Not only that, he also brought word from Master Osman. “Allow me to ask you a question,” he said. “According to Master Osman, ‘time’ separates a true miniaturist from others: The time of the illustration.”

What were my thoughts? Listen closely.

Painting and Time

Long ago, as is common knowledge, the illustrators of our Islamic realm, including, for example, the old Arab masters, perceiving the world the way Frankish infidels do today, would regard everything and depict it from the level of a vagabond, mutt or clerk at work in his shop. Unaware of today’s perspectival techniques, of which the Frankish masters haughtily boast, their world remained dull and limited, restricted to the simple perspective of the mutt or the shop clerk. Then a great event came to pass and our entire world of illustration changed. Let me begin here.

Three Stories on Painting and Time

ALIF

Three hundred fifty years ago, when Baghdad fell to the Mongols and was mercilessly plundered on a cold day in the month of Safar, Ibn Shakir was the most renowned and proficient calligrapher and scribe not only of the whole Arab world but of all Islamdom; despite his youth, he had transcribed twenty-two volumes, most of which were Korans and could be found in the world-famous libraries of Baghdad. Ibn Shakir believed these books would last until the end of the world, and, therefore, lived with a deep and infinite notion of time. He’d toiled heroically all through the night by flickering candlelight on the last of those legendary books, which are unknown to us today because in the span of a few days, they were one by one torn up, shredded, burned and tossed into the Tigris River by the soldiers of the Mongol Khan Hulagu. Just as the master Arab calligraphers, commited to the notion of the endless persistence of tradition and books, had for five centuries been in the habit of resting their eyes as a precaution against blindness by turning their backs to the rising sun and looking toward the western horizon, Ibn Shakir ascended the minaret of the Caliphet Mosque in the coolness of morning, and from the balcony where the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, witnessed all that would end a five-centuries-long tradition of scribal art. First, he saw Hulagu’s pitiless soldiers enter Baghdad, and yet he remained where he was atop the minaret. He watched the plunder and destruction of the entire city, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, the killing of the last of the Caliphs of Islam who’d ruled Baghdad for half a millennium, the rape of women, the burning of libraries and the destruction of tens of thousands of volumes as they were thrown into the Tigris. Two days later, amid the stench of corpses and cries of death, he watched the flowing waters of the Tigris, turned red from the ink bleeding out of the books, and he thought about how all those volumes he’d transcribed in beautiful script, those books that were now gone, hadn’t in the least served to stop this horrifying massacre and devastation, and in turn, he swore never to write again. Furthermore, he was struck with the desire to express his pain and the disaster he’d witnessed through painting, which until that day, he’d belittled and deemed an affront to Allah; and so, making use of the paper he always carried with him, he depicted what he saw from the top of the minaret. We owe the happy miracle of the three-hundred-year renaissance in Islamic illustration following the Mongol invasion to that element which distinguished it from the artistry of pagans and Christians; that is, to the truly agonizing depiction of the world from an elevated Godlike position attained by drawing none other than a horizon line. We owe this renaissance to the horizon line, and also to Ibn Shakir’s going north after the massacre he witnessed—in the direction the Mongol armies had come from—carrying with him his paintings and the ambition for illustration in his heart; in brief, we owe much to his learning the painting techniques of the Chinese masters. Thereby, it is evident that the notion of endless time that had rested in the hearts of Arab calligrapher-scribes for five hundred years would finally manifest itself not in writing, but in painting. The proof of this resides in the fact that the illustrations in manuscripts and volumes that had been torn apart and vanished have passed into other books and other volumes to survive forever in their revelation of Allah’s worldly realm.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago yet not so recently, everything imitated everything else, and thus, if not for aging and death, man would’ve never been the wiser about the passage of time. Yes, when the worldly realm was repeatedly presented through the same stories and pictures, as if time did not flow, Fahir Shah’s small army routed Selahattin Khan’s soldiers—as Salim of Samarkand’s concise History attests. After the victorious Fahir Shah captured Selahattin Khan and tortured him to death, his first task in asserting his sovereignty, according to custom, was to visit the library and the harem of the vanquished khan. In the library, the late Selahattin Khan’s experienced binder pulled apart the dead shah’s books, and rearranging the pages, began to assemble new volumes. His calligraphers replaced the epithet of “Always Victorious Selahattin Khan” with that of “Victorious Fahir Shah” and his miniaturists set about replacing the late Selahattin Khan—masterfully portrayed on the most beautiful of manuscript pages—who was, as of that moment, starting to fade from people’s memories, with the portrait of the younger Fahir Shah. Upon entering the harem, Fahir Shah had no difficulty in locating the most beautiful woman there, yet instead of forcing himself upon her, because he was a refined man versed in books and artistry, and resolving to win her heart, he engaged her in conversation. Consequently, Neriman Sultan, the late Selahattin Khan’s belle of beauties, his teary-eyed wife, made but one request of Fahir Shah: that the illustration of her husband in a version of the romance Leyla and Mejnun, wherein Leyla was depicted as Neriman Sultan and Mejnun as Selahattin Khan, not be altered. In at least this one page, she maintained, the immortality that her husband had tried to attain over the years through books should not be denied. The victorious Fahir Shah bravely granted this simple request and his masters of the book left that one picture alone. Thereby, Neriman and Fahir immediately made love and within a short period, forgetting the horrors of the past, came to truly love each other. Still, Fahir Shah could not forget that picture in Leyla and Mejnun. Nay, it wasn’t jealousy that made him uneasy or that his wife was portrayed with her old husband. What gnawed at him was this: Since he wasn’t painted in the old legend in that splendid book, he wouldn’t be able to join the ranks of the immortals with his wife. This worm of doubt ate at Fahir Shah for five years, and at the end of a blissful night of copious lovemaking with Neriman, candlestick in hand, he entered the library like a common thief, opened the volume of Leyla and Mejnun, and in place of the face of Neriman’s late husband, drew his own. Like many khans who had a love for illustrating and painting, however, he was an amateur artist and couldn’t portray himself very well. In the morning, when his librarian opened the book on a suspicion of tampering and beheld another figure in place of the late Selahattin Khan, next to Neriman-faced Leyla, rather than identifying it as Fahir Shah, he announced that it was Fahir Shah’s archenemy, the young and handsome Abdullah Shah.

This gossip provoked Fahir Shah’s soldiers and emboldened Abdullah Shah, the young and aggressive new ruler of the neighboring country, who, subsequently, in his first campaign, defeated, captured and killed Fahir Shah, established his own sovereignty over his enemy’s library and harem and became the new husband of the eternally beautiful Neriman Sultan.

DJIM

The miniaturists of Istanbul recount the legend of Tall Mehmet—known as Muhammad Khorasani in Persia—mostly as an example of long life and blindness. However, the legend of Tall Mehmet is essentially a parable of painting and time. The primary distinction of this master, who, having begun his apprenticeship at the age of nine, illustrated for more or less 110 years without going blind, was his lack of distinction. I’m not being witty here, but expressing my sincere admiration. Tall Mehmet drew everything, as everyone else did, in the style of the great masters of old, but even more so, and for this reason, he was the greatest of all masters. His humbleness and complete devotion to illustration and painting, which he deemed a service to Allah, set him above both the disputes within the book-arts workshops where he worked and the ambition to become head miniaturist, though he was of appropriate age and talent. As a miniaturist, for 110 years, he patiently rendered every trivial detail: grass drawn to fill up the edges of the page, thousands of leaves, curly wisping clouds, horse manes of short repetitive strokes, brick walls, never-ending wall ornamentation and the slant-eyed, delicate-chinned tens of thousands of faces that were each an imitation of one another. Tall Mehmet was quite content and reserved and he never presumed to distinguish himself or insisted about style or individuality. He considered whichever khan’s or prince’s workshop he happened to be working in at the time his house and regarded himself as but a fixture in that home. As khans and shahs strangled one another and miniaturists moved from city to city like the women of the harem to assemble under the auspices of new masters, the style of the new book-arts workshop would first be defined in the leaves Tall Mehmet drew, in his grass, in the curves of his rocks and in the hidden contours of his own patience. When he was eighty years old, people forgot that he was mortal and began to believe that he lived within the legends he illustrated. Perhaps for this reason, some maintained that he existed outside time and would never grow old and die. There were those who attributed his not going blind—despite living without a home of his own, sleeping in the rooms or tents which constituted miniaturists’ workshops and spending most of his time staring at manuscript pages—to the miracle of time having ceased to flow for him. Some claimed that he was actually blind, and no longer had any need to see since he painted from memory. At the age of 119, this legendary master who’d never married and had never even made love, met the flesh-and-blood ideal of the beautiful slant-eyed, sharp-chinned, moon-faced boy he’d depicted for a century: a part-Chinese part-Croatian sixteen-year-old apprentice in Shah Tahmasp’s miniaturists’ workshop, with whom quite abruptly and understandably, he fell in love. In order to seduce this boy-apprentice of unimaginable beauty, as a true lover would do, he schemed and joined in power struggles between miniaturists; he gave himself over to lying, deception and trickery. At first, the master miniaturist of Khorasan was invigorated by his attempts to catch up to the artistic fashions he’d successfully avoided for one hundred years, but this effort also divorced him from the eternal legendary days of old. Late one afternoon, staring dreamily at the beautiful apprentice before an open window, he caught cold in the icy Tabriz wind. The following day, during a fit of sneezing, he went completely blind. Two days later, he fell down the lofty stone workshop stairs and died.

“I’ve heard the name of Tall Mehmet of Khorasan, but I’ve never heard this legend,” Black said.

He delicately offered this comment to show he knew the story was finished and his mind was occupied with what I’d related. I fell silent for a time so he could stare at me to his heart’s content. Since it bothers me when my hands are not occupied, just after beginning the second story, I started to paint again, picking up where I’d left off when Black knocked on the door. My comely apprentice Mahmut, who always sat at my knee and mixed my paints, sharpened my reed pens and sometimes erased my errors, silently sat beside me, listening and staring; from within the house the sounds of my wife’s movements could be heard.

“Aahaa,” said Black, “the Sultan has arisen.”

He stared at the painting with awe, and I pretended the reason for his awe was insignificant, but let me tell you candidly: Our Exalted Sultan appears seated in all two hundred of our circumcision ceremony pictures in the Book of Festivities, watching for fifty-two days the passing of the merchants, guilds, spectators, soldiers and prisoners from the window of the royal enclosure erected for the occasion. Only in one picture of mine is He shown on foot, tossing money from florin-filled pouches to the crowds in the square. My aim was to capture the surprise and excitement of the crowds punching, kicking and strangling one another as they scrambled to grab coins off the ground, their asses jutting toward the sky.

My aim was to capture the surprise and excitement of the crowds punching, kicking and strangling one another as they scrambled to grab coins off the ground, their asses jutting toward the sky.

“If love is part of the subject of the painting, the work ought to be rendered with love,” I said. “If there’s pain involved, pain should issue from the painting. Yet the pain ought to emerge from the at first glance invisible yet discernible inner harmony of the picture, not from the figures in the illustration or from their tears. I didn’t depict surprise, as it has been shown for centuries by hundreds of master miniaturists, as a figure with his index finger inserted into the circle of his mouth, but made the whole painting embody surprise. This, I accomplished by inviting the Sovereign to rise to His feet.”

I was intrigued and bothered by how he scrutinized my possessions and illustrating tools, nay my whole life, looking for a clue; and then, I began to see my own house through his eyes.

You know those palace, hamam and castle pictures that were made in Tabriz and Shiraz for a time; so that the picture might replicate the piercing gaze of Exalted Allah, who sees and understands all, the miniaturist would depict the palace in cross-section as though having cut it in half with a huge, magical straight razor, and he’d paint all the interior details—which could otherwise never be seen from outside—down to the pots and pans, drinking glasses, wall ornamentation, curtains, caged parrots, the most private corners, and the pillows on which reclined a lovely maiden such as had never seen the light of day. Like a curious awestruck reader, Black was examining my paints, my papers, my books, my lovely assistant, the pages of a Book of Costumes and the collage album that I’d made for a Frankish traveler, scenes of fucking and other indecent pages I’d secretly dashed off for a pasha, my inkpots of variously colored glass, bronze and ceramic, my ivory penknives, my gold-stemmed brushes, and yes, the glances of my handsome apprentice.

“Unlike the old masters, I’ve seen a lot of battle, a lot,” I said to fill the silence with my presence. “War machines, cannonballs, armies, corpses; it was I who embellished the ceilings of the tents of Our Sultan and our generals. After a military campaign, upon returning to Istanbul, it was I who recorded in pictures the scenes of battle that everyone would otherwise have forgotten, corpses sliced in two, the clash of opposing armies, the soldiers of the miserable infidels quaking before our cannon, the troops defending the crenellated towers of besieged castles, rebels being decapitated and the fury of horses attacking at full gallop. I commit everything I behold to memory: a new coffee grinder, a style of window grating that I’ve never seen before, a cannon, the trigger of a new style of Frankish rifle, who wore what color robe during a feast, who ate what, who placed his hand where and how. . .”

“What are the morals of the three stories you’ve told?” asked Black in a manner that summed everything up and ever so slightly called me to account.

“Alif,” I said. “The first story with the minaret demonstrates that no matter how talented a miniaturist might be, it is time that makes a picture ‘perfect.’ Ba, the second story with the harem and the library, reveals that the only way to escape time is through skill and illustrating. As for the third story, you proceed to tell me, then.”

“Djim!” said Black confidently, “the third story about the one-hundred-and-nineteen-year-old miniaturist unites ‘Alif’ and ‘Ba’ to reveal how time ends for the one who forsakes the perfect life and perfect illuminating, leaving nothing but death. Indeed, this is what it demonstrates.”

I AM CALLED “OLIVE”

After the midday prayers, I was ever so swiftly yet pleasurably drawing the darling faces of boys when I heard a knock at the door. My hand jerked in surprise. I put down my brush. I carefully placed the work-board that was on my knees off to the side. Rushing like the wind, I said a prayer before opening the door. I won’t withhold anything from you, because you, who can hear me from within this book, are much nearer to Allah than we in this filthy and miserable world of ours. Akbar Khan, the Emperor of Hindustan and the world’s richest shah, is preparing what will one day become a legendary book. To complete his project, he sent word to the four corners of Islamdom inviting the world’s greatest artists to join him. The men he’d sent to Istanbul visited me yesterday, inviting me to Hindustan. This time, I opened the door to find, in their place, my childhood acquaintance Black, about whom I’d forgotten entirely. Back then he wasn’t able to keep our company, he was jealous of us. “Yes?”

He said he’d come to converse, to pay a friendly visit, to have a look at my illustrations. I welcomed him so he might see it all. I learned he’d just today visited Head Illuminator Master Osman and kissed his hand. The great master, he explained, had given him wise words to ponder: “A painter’s quality becomes evident in his discussions of blindness and memory,” he’d said. So let it be evident:

Blindness and Memory

Before the art of illumination there was blackness and afterward there will also be blackness. Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to “See”! To know is to remember that you’ve seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness. The great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that color and sight arose from darkness, longed to return to Allah’s blackness by means of color. Artists without memory neither remember Allah nor his blackness. All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time. Let me explain to you what it means to remember this darkness, which was revealed in Herat by the great masters of old.

Three Stories on Blindness and Memory

ALIF

In Lami’i Chelebi’s Turkish translation of the Persian poet Jami’s Gifts of Intimacy, which addresses the stories of the saints, it is written that in the bookmaker’s workshop of Jihan Shah, the ruler of the Blacksheep nation, the renowned master Sheikh Ali Tabrizi had illustrated a magnificent version of Hüsrev and Shirin. According to what I’ve heard, in this legendary manuscript, which took eleven years to complete, the master of master miniaturists, Sheikh Ali, displayed such talent and skill and painted such wonderful pictures that only the greatest of the old masters, Bihzad, could have matched him. Even before the illuminated manuscript was half finished, Jihan Shah knew that he would soon possess a spectacular book without equal in all the world. He thus lived in fear and jealousy of young Tall Hasan, the ruler of the Whitesheep nation, and declared him his archenemy. Moreover, Jihan Shah quickly sensed that though his prestige would grow immensely after the book was completed, an even better version of the manuscript could be made for Tall Hasan. Being one of those truly jealous men who poisoned his own contentment with the thought “What if others come to know such bliss?” Jihan Shah sensed at once that if the virtuoso miniaturist made another copy, or even a better version, it would be for his archenemy Tall Hasan. Thus, in order to prevent anyone besides himself from owning this magnificent book, Jihan Shah decided to have the master miniaturist Sheikh Ali killed after he’d completed the book. But a good-hearted Circassian beauty in his harem advised him that blinding the master miniaturist would suffice. Jihan Shah forthwith adopted this clever idea, which he passed on to his circle of sycophants, until it ultimately reached the ears of Sheikh Ali. Even so, Sheikh Ali didn’t leave the book half finished and flee Tabriz as other, mediocre illustrators might’ve done. He didn’t resort to games like slowing down the progress of the manuscript or making inferior illustrations so it wouldn’t be “perfect” and thereby forestalling his imminent blinding. Indeed, he worked with even more ardor and conviction. In the house where he lived alone, he’d begin working after the morning prayers and continue illustrating the same horses, cypresses, lovers, dragons and handsome princes by candlelight in the middle of the night again and again until bitter tears streamed from his eyes. Much of the time, he’d gaze for days at an illustration by one of the great old masters of Herat as he made an exact copy on another sheet. In the end, he completed the book for Jihan Shah the Blacksheep, and as the master miniaturist had expected, he was at first praised and showered with gold pieces, before being blinded with a sharp plume needle used to affix turban plumes. Before his pain had even subsided, Sheikh Ali left Herat and went to join Tall Hasan the Whitesheep. “Yes, indeed, I am blind,” he explained to Tall Hasan, “yet I remember each of the splendors of the manuscript I’ve illuminated for the last eleven years, down to each mark of the pen and each stroke of the brush, and my hand can draw it again from memory. My Excellency, I could illustrate the greatest manuscript of all time for you. Since my eyes will no longer be distracted by the filth of this world, I’ll be able to depict all the glories of Allah from memory, in their purest form.” Tall Hasan believed the great master miniaturist; and the master miniaturist, keeping his promise, illustrated from memory the most magnificent of books for the ruler of the Whitesheep. Everyone knew the spiritual power provided by the new book was what lay behind Tall Hasan’s subsequent defeat of the Blacksheep and the victorious Khan’s execution of Jihan Shah during a raid near Bingöl. This magnificent book, along with the one Sheikh Ali Tabrizi made for the late Jihan Shah, entered Our Sultan’s treasury in Istanbul when the ever-victorious Tall Hasan was defeated at the Battle of Otlukbeli by Sultan Mehmet Khan the Conqueror, may he rest in peace. Those who can truly see, know.

Since the Denizen of Paradise, Sultan Süleyman Khan the Lawgiver, favored calligraphers over illustrators, unfortunate miniaturists of the day would recount the present story as an example of how illustrating surpasses calligraphy. However, as anyone who pays close attention will realize, this tale is actually about blindness and memory. After the death of Tamerlane, Ruler of the World, his sons and grandchildren set to attacking and mercilessly battling one another. In the event that one of them succeeded in conquering another’s city, his first action was to mint his own coins and have a sermon read at the mosque. His second act as victor was to pull apart the books that had come into his possession; a new dedication would be written, boasting of the conqueror as the new “ruler of the world,” a new colophon added, and it would all be bound together again so that those who laid eyes on the conqueror’s book would believe that he truly was a world ruler. When Abdüllatif, the son of Tamerlane’s grandson Uluğ Bey, captured Herat, he mobilized his miniaturists, calligraphers and binders with such haste, and so pressured them to make a book in honor of his father, a connoisseur of book arts, that as volumes were in the midst of being unbound and the scripted pages destroyed and burned, the corresponding pictures became mixed up. Since it did not befit the honor of Uluğ Bey for his son to arrange and bind albums without a care for which picture belonged to which story, he assembled all the miniaturists in Herat and requested that they recount the stories so as to put the illustrations in proper order. From each miniaturist’s mouth, however, came a different account, and so the correct order of the plates was confused all the more. Thereupon, the oldest surviving head miniaturist was sought out. He was a man who’d extinguished the light of his eyes in painstaking labor on the books of all the shahs and princes who’d ruled over Herat for the last fifty- four years. A great commotion ensued when the men realized that the old master now peering at the pictures was indeed blind. Some laughed. The elderly master requested that an intelligent boy, who had not yet reached the age of seven and who couldn’t read or write, be brought forward. Such a child was found and taken to him. The old miniaturist placed a number of illustrations before him. “Describe what you see,” he instructed. As the boy described the pictures, the old miniaturist, raising his blind eyes to the sky, listened carefully and responded: “Alexander cradling the dying Darius from Firdusi’s Book of Kings. . . the account of the teacher who falls in love with his handsome student from Sadi’s Rosegarden. . . the contest of doctors from Nizami’s Treasury of Secrets. . .” The other miniaturists, vexed by their elderly and blind colleague, said, “We could’ve told you that as well. These are the best-known scenes from the most famous stories.” In turn, the aged and blind miniaturist placed the most difficult illustrations before the child and again listened intently. “Hürmüz poisoning the calligraphers one by one from Firdusi’s Book of Kings,” he said, again facing the sky. “A cheap rendition of the terrible account of the cuckold who catches his wife and her lover in a pear tree, from Rumi’s Masnawi,” he said. In this fashion, relying on the boy’s descriptions, he identified all of the pictures, none of which he could see, and thereby succeeded in having the books properly bound together again. When Uluğ Bey entered Herat with his army, he asked the old miniaturist by what secret he, a blind man, could identify those stories that other master illustrators couldn’t determine even by looking at them. “It isn’t, as one might assume, that my memory compensates for my blindness,” replied the old illustrator. “I have never forgotten that stories are recollected not only through images, but through words as well.” Uluğ Bey responded that his own miniaturists knew those words and stories, but still couldn’t order the pictures. “Because,” said the old miniaturist, “they think quite well when it comes to painting, which is their skill or their art, but they don’t comprehend that the old masters made these pictures out of the memories of Allah Himself.” Uluğ Bey asked how a child could know such things. “The child doesn’t know,” said the old miniaturist. “But I, an elderly and blind miniaturist, know that Allah created this worldly realm the way an intelligent seven-year-old boy would want to see it; what’s more, Allah created this earthly realm so that, above all, it might be seen. Afterward, He provided us with words so we might share and discuss with one another what we’ve seen. We mistakenly assumed that these stories arose out of words and that illustrations were painted in service of these stories. Quite to the contrary, painting is the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.”

DJIM

Two hundred fifty years ago, Arab miniaturists were in the custom of staring at the western horizon at daybreak to alleviate the understandable and eternal anxieties about going blind shared by all miniaturists; likewise, a century later in Shiraz, many illustrators would eat walnuts mashed with rose petals on an empty stomach in the mornings. Again, in the same era, the elder miniaturists of Isfahan who believed sunlight was responsible for the blindness to which they succumbed one by one, as if to the plague, would work in a half-dark corner of the room, and most often by candlelight, to prevent direct sunlight from striking their worktables. At day’s end, in the workshops of the Uzbek artists of Bukhara, master miniaturists would wash their eyes with water blessed by sheikhs. But of all of these precautions, the purest approach to blindness was discovered in Herat by the miniaturist Seyyit Mirek, mentor to the great master Bihzad. According to master miniaturist Mirek, blindness wasn’t a scourge, but rather the crowning reward bestowed by Allah upon the illuminator who had devoted an entire life to His glories; for illustrating was the miniaturist’s search for Allah’s vision of the earthly realm, and this unique perspective could only be attained through recollection after blindness descended, only after a lifetime of hard work and only after the miniaturist’s eyes tired and he had expended himself. Thus, Allah’s vision of His world only becomes manifest through the memory of blind miniaturists. When this image comes to the aging miniaturist, that is, when he sees the world as Allah sees it through the darkness of memory and blindness, the illustrator will have spent his lifetime training his hand so it might transfer this splendid revelation to the page. According to the historian Mirza Muhammet Haydar Duglat, who wrote extensively about the legends of Herat miniaturists, the master Seyyit Mirek, in his explication of the aforementioned notion of painting, used the example of the illustrator who wanted to draw a horse. He reasoned that even the most untalented painter—one whose head is empty like those of today’s Venetian painters—who draws the picture of a horse while looking at a horse will still make the image from memory; because, you see, it is impossible, at one and the same time, to look at the horse and at the page upon which the horse’s image appears. First, the illustrator looks at the horse, then he quickly transfers whatever rests in his mind to the page. In the interim, even if only a wink in time, what the artist represents on the page is not the horse he sees, but the memory of the horse he has just seen. Proof that for even the most miserable illustrator, a picture is possible only through memory. The logical extension of this concept, which regards the active worklife of a miniaturist as but preparation for both the resulting bliss of blindness and blind memory, is that the masters of Herat regarded the illustrations they made for bibliophile shahs and princes as training for the hand—as an exercise. They accepted the work, the endless drawing and staring at pages by candlelight for days without break, as the pleasurable labor that delivered the miniaturist to blindness. Throughout his whole life, the master miniaturist Mirek constantly sought out the most appropriate moment for this most glorious of approaching eventualities, either by purposely hurrying blindness through the painstaking depiction of trees and all their leaves on fingernails, grains of rice and even on strands of hair, or by cautiously delaying the imminent darkness by the effortless drawing of pleasant, sun-filled gardens. When he was seventy, in order to reward this great master, Sultan Hüseyin Baykara allowed him to enter the treasury containing thousands of manuscript plates that the Sultan had collected and secured under lock and key. There, in the treasury that also contained weapons, gold and bolt upon bolt of silk and velvet cloth, by the candlelight of golden candelabra, Master Mirek stared at the magnificent leaves of those books, each a legend in its own right, made by the old masters of Herat. And after three days and nights of continuous scrutiny, the great master went blind. He accepted his condition with maturity and resignation, the way one might greet the Angels of Allah, and he never spoke or painted again. Mirza Muhammet Haydar Duglat, the author of the History of Rashid, ascribed this turn of events as follows: “A miniaturist united with the vision and landscape of Allah’s immortal time can never return to the manuscript pages meant for ordinary mortals”; and he adds, “Wherever the blind miniaturist’s memories reach Allah there reigns an absolute silence, a blessed darkness and the infinity of a blank page.”

Certainly it was less out of desire to hear my answer to Master Osman’s question on blindness and memory than to put himself at ease that Black asked me the question while he pored over my possessions, my room and my pictures. Yet again, I was pleased to see that the stories I recounted affected him. “Blindness is a realm of bliss from which the Devil and guilt are barred,” I said to him.

“In Tabriz,” said Black, “under Master Mirek’s influence, some of the miniaturists of the old style still look upon blindness as the greatest virtue of Allah’s grace, and they’re embarrassed about growing old but not blind. Even today, fearing that others will consider this proof of a lack of talent and skill, they pretend to be blind. As a result of this moral conviction which bears the influence of Jemalettin of Kazvin, some of them sit for weeks in the darkness amid mirrors, in the dim light of an oil lamp, without eating or drinking and stare at illustrated pages painted by the old masters of Herat in order to learn how to perceive the world like a blind man despite not truly being blind.”

Somebody knocked. I opened the door to find a handsome apprentice from the workshop whose lovely almond eyes were opened wide. He said that the body of our brother, the gilder Elegant Effendi, had been discovered in an abandoned well and that his funeral procession would commence at the Mihrimah Mosque during the afternoon prayer. He then ran off to deliver the news to others. Allah, may you protect us all.

I AM ESTHER

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love? I’ve been a clothes peddler and matchmaker for years, and I don’t have the slightest clue. How it’d thrill me to become acquainted with men—or couples—who grew more intelligent and became more cunning and devious as they fell deeper in love. I do know this much though: If a man resorts to wiles, guile and petty deceptions, it means he’s nowhere near being in love. As for Black Effendi, it’s obvious that he’s already lost his composure—when he even talks about Shekure he loses all self-control.

At the bazaar, I fed him by rote all the well-rehearsed refrains that I tell everyone: Shekure is always thinking of him, she asked me about his response to her letter, I’d never seen her like this and so on. He gave me such a look that I pitied him. He told me to take the letter to Shekure straightaway. Every idiot assumes there’s a pressing circumstance about his love that necessitates particular haste, and thereby lays bare the intensity of his love, unwittingly putting a weapon into the hands of his beloved. If his lover is smart, she’ll postpone the answer. The moral: Haste delays the fruits of love.

Had lovesick Black known that I first took a detour while carrying the letter he’d charged me to deliver “posthaste,” he’d thank me. In the market square, I nearly froze to death waiting for him. After he left, I thought I’d visit one of my “daughters” to warm up. I call the maidens whose letters I’ve delivered, the ones I’ve married off through the sweat of my brow, my “daughters.” This ugly maiden of mine was so thankful and beholden to me that at my every visit, beyond waiting on me hand and foot, flitting about like a moth, she’d press a few silver coins into my palm. Now she was pregnant and in good humor. She put linden tea on the boil. I savored each sip. When she left me alone, I counted the coins Black Effendi had given me. Twenty silver pieces.

I set out on my way again. I passed through side streets and through ominous alleyways that were frozen, muddy and nearly impassable. As I was knocking on the door, mirth took hold of me and I began to shout.

“The clothier is here! Clothierrr!” I said. “Come and see the best of my ruffled muslin fit for a sultan. Come get my stunning shawls from Kashmir, my Bursa velvet sash cloth, my superb silk-edged Egyptian shirt cloth, my embroidered muslin tablecloths, my mattress and bedsheets, and my colorful handkerchiefs. Clothierrr!”

The door opened. I entered. As always, the house smelled of bedding, sleep, frying oil and humidity, that terrible smell peculiar to aging bachelors.

“Old hag,” he said. “Why are you shouting?”

I silently removed the letter and handed it to him. In the half-lit room, he stealthily and quietly approached me and snatched it from my hand. He passed into the next room where an oil lamp always burned. I waited at the threshold.

“Isn’t your dear father home?”

He didn’t answer. He’d lost himself in the letter. I left him alone so he could read. He stood behind the lamp, and I couldn’t see his face. After finishing the letter, he read it anew.

“Yes,” I said, “and what has he written?”

Hasan read:

My Dearest Shekure, as I too have for years now sustained myself through my dreams of one single person, I respectfully understand your waiting for your husband without considering another. What else could one expect from a woman of your stature besides honesty and virtue? [Hasan cackled!] My coming to visit your father for the sake of painting, however, does not amount to harassing you. This would never even cross my mind. I make no claim at having received a sign from you or any other encouragement. When your face appeared to me at the window like divine light, I considered it nothing but an act of God’s grace. The pleasure of seeing your face is all I need. [“He took that from Nizami,” Hasan interrupted, annoyed.] But you ask me to keep my distance; tell me then, are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying? Listen to what I have to say, listen: I used to try to sleep watching the moonlight fall onto the naked mountains from remote and godforsaken caravansaries where nobody but a desperate han keeper and a few thugs fleeing the gallows lodged, and there, in the middle of the night, listening to the howling of wolves even lonelier and more unfortunate than myself, I used to think that one day you would suddenly appear to me, just as you did at the window. Read closely: Now that I’ve returned to your father for the sake of the book, you’ve sent back the picture I made in my childhood. I know this is not a sign of your death but a sign that I’ve found you again. I saw one of your children, Orhan. That poor fatherless boy. One day I will become his father!

“God protect him, he’s written well,” I said, “this one has become quite the poet.”

“ ‘Are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying?’ ” he repeated. “He stole that line from Ibn Zerhani. I could do better.” He took his own letter out of his pocket. “Take this and deliver it to Shekure.”

For the first time, accepting money along with the letters disturbed me. I felt something like disgust toward this man and his mad obsession, his unrequited love. Hasan, as if to confirm my hunch, for the first time in a long while set aside his good etiquette and said quite rudely:

“Tell her that if we so desire, we’ll force her back here under pressure of the judge.”

“You really want me to say that?”

Silence. “Nay,” he said. The light from the oil lamp illuminated his face, allowing me to see him lower his head like a guilty child. It’s because I know this side of Hasan’s character as well that I have some respect for his feelings and deliver his letters. It’s not only for the money, as you might think.

I was leaving the house, and he stopped me at the door.

“Do you let Shekure know how much I love her?” he asked me excitedly and foolishly.

“Don’t you tell her so in your letters?”

“Tell me how I might convince her and her father? How might I persuade them?”

“By being a good person,” I said and walked to the door.

“At this age, it’s too late. . .” he said with sincere anguish.

“You’ve begun to earn a lot of money, Customs Officer Hasan. This makes one a good person. . .” I said and fled.

The house was so dark and melancholy that the air outside seemed warmer. The sunlight hit my face. I wished for Shekure’s happiness. But I also felt something for that poor man in that damp, chilly and dark house. On a whim, I turned into the Spice Market in Laleli thinking the smells of cinnamon, saffron and pepper would restore my spirits. I was mistaken.

On a whim, I turned into the Spice Market in Laleli thinking the smells of cinnamon, saffron and pepper would restore my spirits.

At Shekure’s house, after she took up the letters, she immediately asked after Black. I told her that the fire of love had mercilessly engulfed his entire being. This news pleased her.

“Even lonely spinsters busy with their knitting are discussing why Elegant Effendi might’ve been killed,” I said later, changing the subject.

“Hayriye, make some halva as a present of condolence and take it over to Kalbiye, poor Elegant Effendi’s widow,” said Shekure.

“All the Erzurumis and quite a crowd of others will be attending his funeral service,” I said. “His relatives swear they’ll avenge his spilt blood.”

Shekure had already begun to read Black’s letter. I looked into her face intently and angrily. This woman was probably such a fox that she could control how her passions were reflected in her face. As she read I sensed that my silence pleased her, that she regarded it as my approval of the special import she gave to Black’s letter. Shekure finished the letter and smiled at me; to meet with her satisfaction, I felt forced to ask, “What has he written?”

“Just as in his childhood. . . He’s in love with me.”

“What are your thoughts?”

“I’m a married woman. I’m waiting for my husband.”

Contrary to your expectations, the fact that she’d lie to me after asking me to get involved in her affairs didn’t anger me. Actually, this comment relieved me. If more of the young maidens and women I’ve carried letters for and advised in the ways of the world attended to details the way Shekure did, they would’ve lessened the work for us both by half. More importantly, they would’ve ended up in better marriages.

“What does the other one write?” I asked anyway.

“I don’t intend to read Hasan’s letter right now,” she answered. “Does Hasan know that Black’s returned to Istanbul?”

“He doesn’t even know he exists.”

“Do you speak with Hasan?” she asked, opening wide her beautiful black eyes.

“As you’ve requested.”

“Yes?”

“He’s in agony. He’s deeply in love with you. Even if your heart belongs to another, it’ll be difficult ever to be free of him now. By accepting his letters you’ve greatly encouraged him. Be wary of him, however. For not only does he want to make you return there, but by establishing that his older brother has died, he’s preparing to marry you.” I smiled to soften the weight of these words and so as not to be reduced to being that malcontent’s mouthpiece.

“What’s the other one say, then?” she asked, but did she herself know whom she was inquiring after?

“The miniaturist?”

“My mind’s all ajumble,” she said suddenly, perhaps afraid of her own thoughts. “It seems that matters will become even more confused. My father’s growing older. What’ll become of us, of these fatherless children? I sense an evil approaching, that the Devil is preparing some mischief for us. Esther, tell me something that will hearten me.”

“Don’t you fret in the slightest, my dearest Shekure,” I said as emotion welled up within me. “You’re truly intelligent, you’re very beautiful. One day you’ll sleep in the same bed with your handsome husband, you’ll cuddle with him, and having forgotten all your worries, you’ll be happy. I can read this in your eyes.”

Such affection rose within me that my eyes filled with tears.

“Fine, but which one will become my husband?”

“Isn’t that wise heart of yours giving you an answer?”

“It’s because I don’t understand what my heart is saying that I’m dispirited.”

For a moment it occurred to me that Shekure didn’t trust me at all, that she was masterfully concealing her distrust in order to learn what I knew, that she was trying to arouse my pity. When I saw she wouldn’t be writing a response to the letters at present, I grabbed my sack, entered the courtyard and slipped away—but not before saying something I told all my maids, even those who were cross-eyed:

“Fear not, my dear, if you keep those beautiful eyes of yours peeled, no misfortune, no misfortune at all will befall you.”

I, SHEKURE

If truth be told, it used to be that each time Esther the clothier paid a visit, I’d fantasize that a man stricken with love would finally be roused to write a letter that could stir the heart of an intelligent woman like myself—beautiful, well-bred and widowed, yet with her honor still intact—and set it pounding. And to discover that the letter was from one of the usual suitors, would, at the very least, fortify my resolve and forbearance to await my husband’s return. But these days, every time Esther leaves, I become confused and feel all the more wretched.

I listened to the sounds of my world. From the kitchen came the bubbling sound of boiling water and the smell of lemons and onions. Hayriye was boiling zucchini. Shevket and Orhan were frolicking and playing “swordsman” in the courtyard beneath the pomegranate tree, I heard their shouts. My father was sitting silently in the next room. I opened and read Hasan’s letter and was reassured that there was no cause for alarm. Still, I grew a little more frightened of him, and congratulated myself for withstanding his efforts to make love to me when we shared the same house. Next, I read Black’s letter, holding it gently as if it were some delicate and sensitive bird, and my thoughts became muddled. I didn’t read the letters again. The sun broke through the clouds and it occurred to me that if I’d entered Hasan’s bedchamber one night and made love with him, no one, except Allah, would’ve been the wiser. He did resemble my missing husband; it’d be the same thing. Sometimes a strange thought like this entered my head. As the sun quickly warmed me, I could feel my body: my skin, my neck, even my nipples. Orhan slipped inside as the sunlight struck me through the open door.

“Mama, what are you reading?” he said.

All right then, remember how I said that I didn’t reread the letters Esther had just delivered? I lied. I was in the midst of reading them again. This time, I truly did fold them up and tuck them away in my blouse.

“Come here, you, onto my lap,” I said to Orhan. He did so. “Oh my, you’re so heavy. May God protect you, you’ve gotten quite big,” I said and kissed him. “You’re as cold as ice. . .”

“You’re so warm, Mama,” he interrupted, leaning back onto my bosom.

We were leaning tight against each other, enjoying sitting that way in silence. I smelled the nape of his neck and kissed him. I hugged him even more tightly. We were still.

“I’m feeling ticklish,” he said later.

“Tell me then,” I said in my serious voice. “If the Sultan of the Jinns came and said he’d grant you a wish, what would you want most of all?”

“I’d want Shevket to go away.”

“What besides? Would you want to have a father?”

“No, when I grow up I’m going to marry you myself.”

It wasn’t aging, losing one’s beauty or even being bereft of husband and money that was the worst of all calamities, what was truly horrible was not having anyone to be jealous of you. I lowered Orhan’s warming body from my lap. Thinking that a wicked woman like myself ought to wed someone with a good soul, I went up to see my father.

“His Excellency Our Sultan will reward you after seeing for Himself that His book has been completed,” I said. “You’ll go to Venice again.”

“I cannot be certain,” said my father. “This murder has distressed me. Our enemies are apparently quite powerful.”

“I know, as well, that my own situation has emboldened them, giving rise to misunderstandings and unfounded hopes.”

“How do you mean?”

“I ought to be wed as soon as possible.”

“What?” said my father. “To whom? But you are married. Where did this notion come from?” he asked. “Who’s asked for your hand? Even if we were to find a reasonable and appealing prospect,” said my reasonable father, “I doubt we’d be able to take him, not like that, you understand.” He summed up my unfortunate situation as follows: “You’re aware that there are weighty and complicated matters we must settle before you can marry again.” After a protracted silence, he added, “Is it that you want to leave me, my dear daughter?”

“Last night I dreamed that my husband had died,” I said. I didn’t cry the way a woman who’d actually seen such a dream would have.

“Like those who know how to read a picture, one should know how to read a dream.”

“Would you consider it appropriate for me to describe my dream?”

There was a pause: We smiled at each other, quickly inferring—as intelligent people do—all possible conclusions from the matter at hand.

“By interpreting your dream, I might be convinced of his death, yet your father-in-law, your brother-in-law and the judge, who is obligated to listen to them, will demand more proof.”

“Two years have passed since I returned here with the children and my in-laws haven’t been able to force me back. . .”

“Because they very well realize that they have their own misdeeds to answer for,” said my father. “This doesn’t mean that they’ll be willing to let you petition for a divorce.”

“If we were followers of the Maliki or the Hanbeli sects,” I said, “the judge, acknowledging that four years have passed, would grant me a divorce in addition to securing a support allowance for me. But since we are, many thanks to Allah, Hanefis, this option is not open to us.”

“Don’t mention the Üsküdar judge’s Shafüte stand-in to me. That’s not a sound venture.”

“All the women of Istanbul whose husbands are missing at the front go to him with their witnesses to get divorced. Since he’s a Shafüte, he simply asks, ‘Is your husband missing?’ ‘How long has he been missing?’ ‘Are you having trouble making ends meet?’ ‘Are these your witnesses?’ and immediately grants the divorce.”

“My dear Shekure, who’s planted such schemes in your head?” he said. “Who’s stripped you of your reason?”

“After I’m divorced once and for all, if there is a man who can truly strip me of my reason, you will, of course, tell me who that might be and I shall never question your decision about my husband.”

My shrewd father, realizing that his daughter was as shrewd as he, began to blink. My father would blink rapidly like this for three reasons: 1. because he was in a tight spot and his mind was racing to find a clever way out; 2. because he was on the verge of tears of hopelessness and sorrow; 3. because he was in a tight spot, cunningly combining reasons 1 and 2 to give the impression that he might soon cry out of sorrow.

“Are you taking the children and abandoning your old father? Do you realize that on account of our book”—yes, he said “our book”—“I was afraid of being murdered, but now that you want to take the children and leave, I welcome death.”

“My dear father, wasn’t it you who always said that only a divorce could save me from that good-for-nothing brother-in-law?”

“I don’t want you to abandon me. One day your husband might return. Even if he doesn’t, there’s no harm in your being married—so long as you live in this house with your father.”

“I want nothing more than to live in this house with you.”

“Darling, weren’t you just now saying that you wanted to get married as soon as possible?”

This is the dead end you reach by arguing with your father: In due course, you too will be convinced that you’re in the wrong.

“I was,” I said, gazing at the ground in front of me. Then, holding back my tears and encouraged by the truth of what came to mind, I said:

“All right then, shall I never be married again?”

“There’s a special place in my heart for the son-in-law who won’t take you far from me. Who is your suitor, would he be willing to live here with us in this house?”

I fell silent. We both knew, of course, that my father would never respect a son-in-law willing to live here together with us, and would gradually demean and stifle him. And as Father’s underhanded and expert belittling of the man who’d moved in with his bride’s family proceeded I would soon want to be that wife no more.

“Without a father’s approval, in your situation, you know that getting married is practically impossible, don’t you? I don’t want you to get married, and I refuse to grant you permission to do so—”

“I don’t want to get married, I want a divorce.”

“—because some thoughtless beast of a man who cares about nothing but his own concerns might hurt you. You know how much I love you, don’t you, my dear Shekure? Besides, we must finish this book.”

I said nothing. For if I were to speak—prompted by the Devil, who was aware of my anger—I would tell my father right to his face that I knew he slept with Hayriye at night. But would it befit a woman like me to admit that she knew that her elderly father slept with a slave girl?

“Who is it that wants to marry you?”

I gazed at the ground before me and was quiet, not out of embarrassment, but out of anger. And recognizing the extent of my anger, but not being able to respond in some manner made me even more furious. At that juncture, I imagined my father and Hayriye in bed in that ridiculous and disgusting position. I was on the verge of tears when I said:

“There’s zucchini on the stove, I don’t want it to burn.”

I crossed to the room beside the staircase, the one with the always-closed window that looked out onto the well. In the dark, quickly locating the roll-up mattress with my hands, I spread it open and lay down: Ah, what a wonderful feeling, to lie down and fall asleep in a fit of tears like a child who’s been wrongly chastised! And what agony it is to know that I’m the only person in the world who likes me. As I cry in my solitude, only you, who hear my sobs and moans, can come to my aid.

A while later, I found that Orhan had stretched out upon my bed. He placed his head between my breasts. I saw that he was sighing, and crying too. Pulling him close to me, I held him.

“Don’t cry, Mother,” he said later. “Father will return from the war.”

“How do you know?”

He didn’t answer. I loved him so, and pressed him to my bosom so that I forgot my own worries entirely. Before I cuddle up with my fine-boned, delicate Orhan and fall asleep, let me confess my only pressing concern: I regret having just now told you, out of spite, about the matter between my father and Hayriye. No, I wasn’t lying, but I’m still so embarrassed that it would be best if you forgot about it. Pretend I never mentioned anything, as if my father and Hayriye weren’t thus involved, please?

I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE

Alas, it’s difficult having a daughter, difficult. As she wept in the next room, I could hear her sobs, but I could do nothing but look at the pages of the book I held in my hands. On a page of the volume I was trying to read, the Book of the Apocalypse, it was written that three days after death, one’s soul, receiving permission from Allah, visited the body it formerly inhabited. Upon beholding the piteous state of its body, bloodied, decomposing and oozing, as it rested in the grave, the soul would sorrowfully, tearfully and mournfully grieve, “Lo, my miserable mortal coil, my dear wretched old body.” At once, I thought of Elegant Effendi’s bitter end at the bottom of the well, and how upset his soul naturally must have been upon visiting, and finding his body not at his grave, but in the well.

When Shekure’s sobs died down, I put aside the book on death. I donned an extra woolen undershirt, wound my thick wool sash tightly around my waist so as to warm my midriff, pulled on my shalwar pants lined with rabbit fur and, as I was leaving the house, turned to discover Shevket in the doorway.

“Where are you going, Grandfather?”

“You get back inside. To the funeral.”

I passed through snow-covered streets, between poor rotting houses leaning this way and that way, barely able to stand, and through fire-ravaged neighborhoods. I walked for a long time, taking the cautious steps of an aging man trying not to slip and fall on the ice. I passed through out-of-the-way neighborhoods and gardens and fields. I walked by shops that dealt in carriages and wheels and passed iron smiths, saddlers, harness makers and farriers on my way toward the walls of the city.

I’m not sure why they decided to start the funeral procession all the way at the Mihrimah Mosque near the city’s Edirne Gate. At the mosque, I embraced the big-headed and bewildered brothers of the deceased, who looked angry and obstinate. We miniaturists and calligraphers embraced each other and wept. As I was performing my prayers within a leaden fog that had suddenly descended and swallowed everything, my gaze fell on the coffin resting atop the mosque’s stone funeral block, and I felt such anger toward the miscreant who’d committed this crime, believe me, even the Allahümme Barik prayer became muddled in my mind.

After the prayers, while the congregation shouldered the coffin, I was still among all the miniaturists and calligraphers. Stork and I had forgotten that on some nights, when we sat in the dim light of oil lamps working until morning on my book, he’d tried to convince me of the inferiority of Elegant Effendi’s gilding work and of the lack of balance in his use of colors—he colored everything navy blue so it would look richer! We’d both forgotten that I’d actually given him credence, by allowing “But no one else is qualified to do this work,” and we embraced each other anyway, sobbing once more. Later, Olive gave me a friendly and respectful look before hugging me—a man who knows how to embrace is a good man—and these gestures so pleased me that I was reminded how of all the workshop artists, he was the one who most believed in my book.

On the stairs of the courtyard gate I found myself beside Head Illuminator Master Osman. We were both at a loss for words, a strange and tense moment. One of the deceased’s brothers began to cry and sob, and someone pompously shouted, “God is great.”

“To which cemetery?” Master Osman asked me for the sake of asking something.

To respond “I don’t know” seemed hostile for some reason. Flustered, and without thinking, I asked the same question of the man standing next to me on the stairs, “To which cemetery? The one by the Edirne Gate?”

“Eyüp,” said an ill-tempered, bearded and young dolt.

“Eyüp,” I said turning to the master, but he’d heard what the ill-tempered dolt had said anyway. Then, he looked at me as if to say, “I understand” in a way that let me know he didn’t want our encounter to last a moment longer than it already had.

Without mentioning my influence on Our Sultan’s growing interest in Frankish styles of painting, Master Osman was of course annoyed that Our Sultan had ordered me to oversee the writing out, embellishment and illustration of the illuminated manuscript, which I’ve described as “secret.” On one occasion, the Sultan forced the great Master Osman to copy a portrait of His Highness, which had been commissioned from a Venetian. I know Master Osman holds me responsible for having to imitate that painter, for having to make that strange painting, which he did with disgust, referring to the experience as ‘torture.’ His wrath was justified.

Standing in the middle of the staircase for a while, I looked at the sky. When I was convinced that I’d been left quite behind, I continued down the icy stairs. I’d barely descended—ever so slowly—two steps when a man took me by the arm and embraced me: Black.

“The air is freezing,” he said. “You must be cold.”

I hadn’t the slightest doubt that this was the one who’d muddled Shekure’s mind. The self-confidence with which he took my arm was proof enough. There was something in his demeanor that announced, “I’ve worked for twelve years and have truly grown up.” When we came to the bottom of the stairs, I told him that I’d expect an account later of what he’d learned at the workshop.

“You go ahead, my child,” I said. “Go ahead and catch up to the congregation.”

He was taken aback, but didn’t let on. The way he let go of my arm with reservation and walked ahead of me pleased me, even. If I gave Shekure to him, would he agree to live in the same house with us?

We’d left the city through the Edirne Gate. I saw the coffin on the verge of disappearing into the fog along with the crowd of illustrators, calligraphers and apprentices shouldering it as they quickly descended the hill toward the Golden Horn. They were walking so fast, they’d already traveled half of the muddy road that led down the snow-covered valley to Eyüp. In the silent fog, off to the left, the chimney of the Hanım Sultan Charity candleworks shop happily piped up its smoke. Under the shadow of the walls, there were tanneries and the bustling slaughterhouses that served the Greek butchers of Eyüp. The smell of offal coming from these places had wafted over the valley, which extended to the vaguely discernible domes of the Eyüp Mosque and its cypress-lined cemetery. After walking for a while longer, I heard from below the shouts of children at play coming from the new Jewish quarter in Balat.

In the silent fog, off to the left, the chimney of the Hanım Sultan Charity candleworks shop happily piped up its smoke.

When we reached the plain where Eyüp was located, Butterfly approached me, and in his usual fiery manner, abruptly broached his subject:

“Olive and Stork are the ones behind this vulgarity,” he said. “Like everyone else, they knew I had a bad relationship with the deceased. They knew everyone was aware of this. There was jealousy between us, even open animosity and antagonism, over who would assume leadership of the workshop after Master Osman. Now they expect the guilt to fall on my shoulders, or at the least, that the Head Treasurer, and under his influence, Our Sultan, will distance themselves from me, nay, from us.”

“Who is this ‘us’ of which you speak?“

“Those of us who believe that the old morality ought to persist at the workshop, that we should follow the path laid by the Persian masters, that an artist shouldn’t illustrate just any scene for money alone. In place of weapons, armies, slaves and conquests, we believe that the old myths, legends and stories ought to be introduced anew into our books. We shouldn’t forgo the old models. Genuine miniaturists shouldn’t loiter at the shops in the bazaar and paint any old thing, depictions of indecency, for a few extra kurush from anybody who happens by. His Excellency Our Sultan would find us justified.”

“You’re incriminating yourself senselessly,” I said so he might be done with his ranting. “I’m convinced that the atelier could not harbor anybody capable of committing such a crime. You’re all brethren. There’s no great harm in illustrating a few subjects that haven’t been depicted previously, at least no harm so great as to be an occasion for enmity.”

As happened when I first heard the horrid news, I had an epiphany of sorts. Elegant Effendi’s murderer was one of the premier masters in the palace workshop and he was a member of the crowd before me, climbing the hill that led to the cemetery. I was also convinced that the murderer would continue with his devilry and sedition, that he was an enemy of the book I was making, and most probably, that he’d visited my house to pick up some work illustrating and painting. Had Butterfly, too, like most of the artists who frequented my house, fallen in love with Shekure? As he made his assertions, had he forgotten the times when I’d requested that he paint pictures that were contrary to his point of view, or was he just needling me with expert skill?

Nay, I thought a little while later, he couldn’t be needling me. Butterfly, like the other master illustrators, obviously owed me a debt of gratitude: With money and gifts to miniaturists dwindling, due to the wars and lack of interest on the part of Our Sultan, the sole significant source of extra income had for some time been what they earned working for me. I knew they were jealous of one another over my attentions, and for this reason—but not only for this reason—I met with them individually at my house, hardly a basis for hostility toward me. All of my miniaturists were mature enough to behave intelligently, to sincerely find a reason to admire a man to whom they were obliged for their own profit.

To relieve the silence and ensure that the previous topic of conversation wouldn’t be revisited, I said, “Oh, will His wonders never cease! They’re able to take the coffin up that hill as fast as they brought it down.”

Butterfly smiled sweetly showing all his teeth: “Due to the cold.”

Could this one actually kill a man, I wondered, for example, out of envy? Might he kill me? He had the following excuse: This man was debasing my religion. Nay, but he’s a great master, a perfect embodiment of talent, why should he resort to murder? Age means not only straining oneself climbing hills, but also, I gather, not being so afraid of death. It means a lack of desire, entering into a slave girl’s bedchamber, not in a fit of excitement, but out of custom. In a burst of intuition, I told him to his face the decision I’d made:

“I’m not continuing with the book any longer.”

“What?” said Butterfly as his expression changed.

“There’s some kind of ill-fortune in it. Our Sultan has cut off the funding. You’re to tell Olive and Stork, as well.”

Perhaps he would have inquired further, but we found ourselves on the slopes of the graveyard amid tightly spaced towering cypresses, high ferns and tombstones. As the great crowd encircled the grave site, my only clue that the body was at that very moment being lowered into the grave was the increasing intensity of the weeping and sobbing and the exclamations of bismillahi and ala milleti Resulullah.

As the great crowd encircled the grave site, my only clue that the body was at that very moment being lowered into the grave was the increasing intensity of the weeping and sobbing and the exclamations of bismillahi and ala milleti Resulullah.

“Uncover his face completely,” someone said.

They were removing the white shroud, and they must’ve been eye to eye with the corpse if indeed there was an eye remaining in that smashed head. I was in the back and I couldn’t see anything. I’d once gazed into the eyes of Death, not at a grave site, in an entirely different place. . .

A memory: Thirty years ago, Our Sultan’s grandfather, Denizen of Paradise, decided once and for all to take Cyprus from the Venetians. Sheikhulislam Ebussuut Effendi, recalling that this island was once designated a commissariat for Mecca and Medina, issued a fatwa which more or less stated that it was inappropriate for an island which had helped sustain holy sites to remain under Christian infidel control. In turn, the difficult task of informing the Venetians of this unforeseen decision, that they must surrender their island, fell to me. As a result, I was able to tour the cathedrals of Venice. Though I marveled at their bridges and palazzos, I was most enchanted by the pictures hanging in Venetian homes. Nevertheless, in the midst of this bewilderment, trusting in the hospitality displayed by the Venetians, I delivered the menacing correspondence, informing them in a haughty, supercilious fashion that Our Sultan desired Cyprus. The Venetians were so angry that in their congress, which had been hastily convened, it was decided that even to discuss such a letter was unacceptable. Furious mobs had forced me to confine myself to the Doge’s palazzo. And when some rogues managed to get past the guards and doorkeepers and had set to strangling me, two of the Doge’s personal musketeers succeeded in escorting me out one of the secret passageways to an exit that opened onto the canal. There, in a fog not unlike this one, I thought for an instant that the tall and pale gondolier dressed in white, who’d taken me by the arm, was none other than Death. I caught sight of my reflection in his eyes.

Longingly, I dreamed of finishing my book in secret and returning to Venice. I approached the grave, which had been carefully covered with dirt: At this moment, angels are interrogating him above, asking him whether he is male or female, his religion and whom he recognizes as his prophet. The possibility of my own death came to mind.

A crow alighted beside me. I gazed lovingly into Black’s eyes and asked him to take my arm and accompany me on the way back. I told him I expected him at the house early the next morning to continue working on the book. I had indeed imagined my own death, and realized, once again, that the book must be completed, whatever the cost.

I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER

They threw cold, muddy earth onto the battered and disfigured corpse of ill-fated Elegant Effendi and I wept more than any of them. I shouted, “I want to die with him!” and “Let me share his grave!” and they held me by the waist so I wouldn’t fall in. I gasped for air and they pressed their palms to my forehead, drawing my head back so I might breathe. By the glances of the deceased’s relatives, I sensed I might have exaggerated my sobs and wailing; I pulled myself together. Based upon my excessive sorrow the workshop gossips might suppose that Elegant Effendi and I had been in love.

I hid behind a plane tree until the funeral ended to avoid drawing more attention to myself. A relative of the oaf I’d sent to Hell—an even bigger idiot than the deceased—discovered me behind the tree and stared deep into my eyes with a look he assumed was meaningful. He held me in his embrace for a while, then the ignoramus said the following: “Were you ‘Saturday’ or ‘Wednesday’?”

“ ‘Wednesday’ was the workshop name of the dearly departed for a time,” I said. He fell silent.

The story behind these workshop names, which bound us to one another like a secret pact, was simple: During our apprenticeships, when Osman the miniaturist had newly graduated from assistant master to the level of master, we all shared a great respect, admiration and love for him. He was a virtuoso and he taught us everything, for God had blessed him with an enchanting artistic gift and the intellect of a jinn. Early each morning, as was demanded of apprentices, one of us would go to the master’s home, and following respectfully behind him on the way to the workshop, carry his pen and brush box, his bag and his portfolio full of papers. So desperate were we to be near him that we’d argue and fight among ourselves to determine who would go that day.

Master Osman had a favorite. But if he were always to go, it would fan the flames of the never-ending gossip and tasteless jokes that inevitably filled the workshop, and so the great master decided that each of us would be assured a specified day of the week. The great master worked on Fridays and stayed at home Saturdays. His son, whom he loved dearly—who later betrayed him and us by quitting the trade—would accompany his father on Mondays like a common apprentice. There was also a tall thin brother of ours known as ‘Thursday,’ a miniaturist more gifted than any of us, who passed away at a young age, succumbing to the fever brought on by a mysterious illness. Elegant Effendi, may he rest in peace, would go on Wednesdays, and was therefore known as ‘Wednesday.’ Later, our great master meaningfully and lovingly changed our names from ‘Tuesday’ to ‘Olive,’ from ‘Friday’ to ‘Stork, and from ‘Sunday’ to ‘Butterfly,’ renaming the dearly departed as ‘Elegant’ in allusion to the finesse of his gilding work. The great master must have said, “Welcome ‘Wednesday,’ how are you this morning?” to the late Elegant just as he used to greet all of us back then.

When I recalled how he would address me, I thought my eyes might fill with tears: Master Osman admired us, and his own eyes would tear when he beheld the beauty of our work; he’d kiss our hands and arms, and despite the beatings, we felt as if we were in Heaven as apprentices; and so our talent blossomed with his love. Even jealousy, which cast its shadow over those happy years, had a different hue then.

Now I am completely divided, just like those figures whose head and hands are drawn and painted by one master while their bodies and clothes are depicted by another. When a God-fearing man like myself unexpectedly becomes a murderer, it takes time to adjust. I’ve adopted a second voice, one befitting a murderer, so that I might still carry on as though my old life continued. I am speaking now in this derisive and devious second voice, which I keep out of my regular life. From time to time, of course, you’ll hear my familiar, regular voice, which would’ve remained my only voice had I not become a murderer. But when I speak under my workshop name, I’ll never admit to being “a murderer.” Let no one try to associate these two voices, I have no individual style or flaws in artistry to betray my hidden persona. Indeed, I believe that style, or for that matter, anything that serves to distinguish one artist from another, is a flaw—not individual character, as some arrogantly claim.

I do admit that in my own situation, this presents a problem. For though I might speak through my workshop name, lovingly given to me by Master Osman and used by Enishte Effendi, who also admired it, in no wise do I want you to figure out whether I am Butterfly, Olive or Stork. For if you do you won’t hesitate to turn me over to the torturers of the Sultan’s Commander of the Imperial Guard.

And, I must mind what I think about and say. Actually, I know that you’re listening to me even when I’m mulling over matters in private. I can’t afford careless contemplation of my frustrations or the incriminating details of my life. Even when recounting the ‘Alif,’ ‘Ba’ and ‘Djim’ stories. I was always mindful of your gaze.

One side of the warriors, lovers, princes and legendary heroes that I’ve illustrated tens of thousands of times faces whatever is depicted there, in that mythical time—the enemies they’re battling, for example, or the dragons they’re slaying, or the beautiful maidens over whom they weep. But another aspect, and another side of their bodies, faces the book lover who happens to be gazing at the magnificent painting. If I do have style and character, it’s not only hidden in my artwork, but in my crime and in my words as well! Yes, try to discover who I am from the color of my words!

I, too, know that if you catch me, it’ll bring consolation to unfortunate Elegant Effendi’s miserable soul. They’re shoveling dirt on him as I stand here beneath trees, amid chirping birds, watching the gilded waters of the Golden Horn and the leaden domes of Istanbul, and discovering anew how wonderful it is to be alive. Pathetic Elegant Effendi, soon after he joined the circle of that fierce-browed preacher from Erzurum, he stopped liking me completely; yet, in the twenty-five years that we illustrated books for Our Sultan, there were times when we felt very close to each other. Twenty years ago, we became friends while working on a royal history in verse for the late father of our present sultan. But we were never closer than when working on the eight illustrated plates that were to accompany a collection of Fuzuli poems. One summer evening back then, as a concession to his understandable but illogical desires—apparently a miniaturist ought to feel in his soul the text he’s illustrating—I came here and patiently listened to him pretentiously recite lines from Fuzuli’s collected works as flocks of swallows fluttered above us in a frenzy. I still recall a line recited that evening: “I am not me but eternally thee.” I’ve always wondered how one might illustrate this line.

They’re shoveling dirt on him as I stand here beneath trees, amid chirping birds, watching the gilded waters of the Golden Horn and the leaden domes of Istanbul, and discovering anew how wonderful it is to be alive.

I ran to his house as soon as I learned that his body had been found. There, the diminutive garden where we once sat and recited poetry, now covered in snow, seemed diminished, just like any garden revisited after a period of years. His house was that way, too. From the next room, I could hear the wails of women, and their exaggerated exclamations, mounting as if they were competing with each other. When his eldest brother spoke, I listened intently: The face of our forlorn brother Elegant was practically destroyed, and his head was smashed. After he was removed from the bottom of the well where he’d lain for four days, his brothers scarcely knew him, and his poor wife, Kalbiye, whom they’d brought from the house, was forced to identify the unrecognizable body in the dark of night by its torn and tattered clothing. I was reminded of a depiction of the Midian merchants pulling Joseph from the pit into which he’d been cast by his jealous brothers. I quite enjoy painting this scene from the romance of Joseph and Zuleyha, for it reminds us that envy is the prime emotion in life.

There, the diminutive garden where we once sat and recited poetry, now covered in snow, seemed diminished, just like any garden revisited after a period of years.

There was a sudden lull. I sensed their eyes upon me. Should I cry? I caught Black’s eye. That vile scoundrel, he’s peering at us, like someone who’s been sent here by Enishte Effendi to uncover the truth.

“Who could’ve perpetrated such a horrendous crime?” cried the oldest brother. “What kind of heartless beast could’ve slaughtered our brother, our brother who wouldn’t dare harm an ant?”

He answered this question with his own tears, and I joined him, feigning grief while I sought my own answer: Who were Elegant’s enemies? If it hadn’t been me, who else could’ve murdered him? I recalled that some time ago—I believe it was when the Book of Skills was being prepared—he would get involved in arguments with certain artists inclined to dismiss the techniques of the old masters and ruin the pages we illustrators had labored extensively over; thus they would spoil the borders with the horrid colors used to embellish more cheaply and quickly. Who were they? Later, however, rumors began to spread that the enmity had arisen not for this reason, but out of competition for the affections of a handsome binder’s apprentice who worked on the ground floor; but this was an old story. And there were those who were annoyed by Elegant’s dignity, his refinement and his erudite feminine demeanor, but this had to do with another matter entirely: Elegant was slavishly bound to the old style, a fanatic about the coordination of color between gilding and illustration, and in the presence of Master Osman, he would, for instance, point out the nonexistent faults of other miniaturists—mine in particular—with gentle conceit. His last quarrel had to do with an issue about which Master Osman had, in past years, grown quite sensitive: royal miniaturists who moonlighted, secretly accepting trivial commissions outside the auspices of the palace. In recent years, after Our Sultan’s interest had begun to wane and, along with it, the money coming from the Head Treasurer, all the miniaturists started paying visits to the two-story houses of the crass young pashas—and the best of the artists would go late at night to visit Enishte.

I wasn’t at all bothered by Enishte’s decision to stop working on his—on our—book or his excuse that it was ill-omened. He had, of course, guessed that the murderer who did away with brainless Elegant Effendi was one of us who were embellishing his book. Put yourself in his shoes: Would you invite a murderer to your house each fortnight to work on illustrations after dark? Wouldn’t you first determine the identities of the murderer and the best illustrator? I have no doubt that he’ll quickly deduce which of the miniaturists was the most talented and the most skilled in color selection, gilding, page ruling, illustration, face drawing and page composition; and having done so, he’ll continue working with me alone. I can’t imagine he’ll be so petty as to think of me as a common murderer rather than a genuinely talented miniaturist.

Out of the corner of my eye I am watching that fool Black Effendi whom Enishte brought with him. When these two broke away from the cemetery crowd presently dispersing, and walked down to the Eyüp quay, I followed them. They boarded a four-oared longboat, and afterward, I got into a six-oar along with a few young apprentices who’d forgotten about the deceased and the funeral and were making merry. Within sight of the Phanar Gate, our boats momentarily came so near each other that they were about to lock oars, and I could see clearly that Black was earnestly whispering to Enishte. I thereupon thought how easy it was to end a life. My dear God, you’ve given each of us this unbelievable power, but you’ve also made us afraid to exercise it.

Still, if a man but once overcomes this fear and acts, he straightaway becomes an entirely different person. There was a time when I was terrified not only of the Devil, but of the slightest trace of evil within me. Now, however, I have the sense that evil can be endured, and moreover, that it’s indispensable to an artist. After I killed that miserable excuse of a man, discounting the trembling in my hands which lasted only a few days, I drew better, I made use of brighter and bolder colors, and most important, realized that I could conjure up wonders in my imagination. But, this begs the question how many men in Istanbul can truly appreciate the magnificence of my illustrations?

Off the waterfront near Jibali, from all the way in the middle of the Golden Horn, I gazed spitefully at Istanbul. The snow-capped domes shone bright in the sunlight that broke abruptly through the clouds. The larger and more colorful a city is, the more places there are to hide one’s guilt and sin; the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind. A city’s intellect ought to be measured not by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years. By this logic, doubtless, Istanbul is the world’s most intelligent city.

The snow-capped domes shone bright in the sunlight that broke abruptly through the clouds.

At the Unkapanı quay, I left my longboat a little after Black and his Enishte had left theirs. I was behind them as they leaned on one another and mounted the hill. At the site of a recent fire in the shadow of the Sultan Mehmet Mosque, they stopped and exchanged parting words. Enishte Effendi was alone, and he appeared for an instant like a helpless old man. I was tempted to run to him and tell him what that barbarian, from whose funeral we were returning, had slanderously confided in me; I was going to confess what I’d done to protect us, and to ask him: “Is it true what Elegant Effendi had claimed? Are we abusing Our Sultan’s trust through the illustrations we’ve made? Are our painting techniques traitorous and an affront to our religion? And have you finished that last large painting?”

I stood in the middle of the snowy street as evening fell and gazed down the dark road which had been abandoned along with me to jinns, fairies, brigands, thieves, to the grief of fathers and children returning home and to the sorrow of snow-covered trees. At the end of the street, inside Enishte Effendi’s grandiose two-story house, beneath the roof, which I can now see through the bare branches of the chestnut trees, there lives the most beautiful woman in the world. But, no, why should I drive myself mad?

I AM A GOLD COIN

Behold! I am a twenty-two-carat Ottoman Sultani gold coin and I bear the glorious insignia of His Excellency Our Sultan, Refuge of the World. Here, in the middle of the night in this fine coffeehouse overcome with funereal melancholy, Stork, one of Our Sultan’s great masters, has just finished drawing my picture, though he hasn’t yet been able to embellish me with gold wash—I’ll leave that to your imagination. My image is here before you, yet I myself can be found in the money purse of your dear brother, Stork, that illustrious miniaturist. He’s rising now, removing me from his purse and showing me off to each of you. Hello, hello, greetings to all the master artists and assorted guests. Your eyes widen as you behold my glimmer, you thrill as I shimmer in the light of the oil lamp, and finally, you bristle with envy at my owner, Master Stork. You’re justified in behaving so, for there’s no better measure of an illustrator’s talent than I.

Your eyes widen as you behold my glimmer, you thrill as I shimmer in the light of the oil lamp, and finally, you bristle with envy at my owner, Master Stork.

In the past three months, Master Stork has earned exactly forty-seven gold pieces like myself. We’re all in this money-purse and Master Stork, see for yourself, isn’t hiding us from anyone; he knows there’s none among the miniaturists of Istanbul who earns more than he does. I take pride in being recognized as a measure of talent among artists and in putting an end to unnecessary disagreements. In the past, before we got used to coffee and our minds sharpened, these dim-witted miniaturists weren’t satisfied with spending their evenings arguing about who was the most talented or who had the best sense of color, who could draw the best tree or who was most expert in the depiction of clouds; no, they’d also come to blows over such issues, knocking out each other’s teeth in the process. Now that my judgment decides everything, there’s a sweet harmony in the workshop, and what’s more, an air that would suit the old masters of Herat.

In addition to noting the harmony and ambience brought about by my judgment, let me list for you the various things I might be exchanged for: the foot of a young and beautiful slave girl, which amounts to about one-fiftieth of her person; a good-quality walnut-handled barber’s mirror, edges inlaid with bone; a well-painted chest of drawers decorated with sunburst designs and silver leaf worth ninety silver pieces; 120 fresh loaves of bread; a grave site and coffins for three; a silver armband; one-tenth of a horse; the legs of an old and fat concubine; one buffalo calf; two high-quality pieces of china; the monthly wage of Persian miniaturist Mehmet the Dervish of Tabriz and the majority of those of his like who work in Our Sultan’s workshop; one good hunting falcon with cage; ten jugs of Panayot’s wine; a heavenly hour with Mahmut, one of those young boys world-renowned for his beauty, and many other opportunities too numerous to specify.

Before I arrived here, I spent ten days in the dirty sock of a poor shoemaker’s apprentice. Each night the unfortunate man would fall asleep in his bed, naming the endless things he could buy with me. The lines of this epic poem, sweet as a lullaby, proved to me that there was no place on Earth a coin couldn’t go.

Which reminds me. If I recited all that happened to me before I came here, it’d fill volumes. There are no strangers among us, we’re all friends; as long as you promise not to tell anyone, and as long as Stork Effendi won’t take offense, I’ll tell you a secret. Do you swear not to tell?

All right then, I confess. I’m not a genuine twenty-two-carat Ottoman Sultani gold coin minted at the Chemberlitash Mint. I’m counterfeit. They made me in Venice using adulterated gold and brought me here, passing me off as twenty-two-carat Ottoman gold. Your sympathy and understanding are much obliged.

Based on what I could gather from being in the mint in Venice, this business has been going on for years. Until recently, the debased gold pieces that the Venetian infidels brought to the East and spent were Venetian ducats which they minted in that same mint. We Ottomans, forever respectful of whatever is written, paid no heed to the amount of gold in each ducat—so long as the inscription remained the same—and these fake Venetian gold pieces flooded Istanbul. Later, noting that coins with less gold and more copper were harder, we began to distinguish the coins by biting them. For example, you’re burning with love; you go running to Mahmut, that youth of unsurpassed beauty, beloved by all; first, he takes into his soft mouth the coin—not the other thing—and biting it, declares it counterfeit. As a consequence, he’ll take you to Heaven for only half an hour instead of one full hour. The Venetian infidels, realizing that their counterfeit coins presented such disadvantages, decided that they might as well counterfeit Ottoman coins, reasoning that the Ottomans would be fooled again.

Now, let me draw your attention to something quite bizarre: When these Venetian infidels paint, it’s as if they’re not making a painting but actually creating the object they’re painting. When it comes to money, however, rather than making the real thing, they make its counterfeit.

We were loaded into iron chests, hauled onto ships and pitching to and fro traveled from Venice to Istanbul. I found myself in a money changer’s shop, in the garlicky mouth of its proprietor. We waited for a while, and a simple-minded peasant entered, hoping to exchange some gold. The master money changer, who was a genuine trickster, declared that he needed to bite the gold piece to see if it was counterfeit. So he took the peasant’s coin and tossed it into his mouth.

I found myself in a money changer’s shop, in the garlicky mouth of its proprietor.

When we met inside his mouth, I realized that the peasant’s coin was a genuine Ottoman Sultani. He saw me within that stench of garlic and said, “You’re nothing but a counterfeit.” He was right, but his arrogant manner offended my pride and I lied to him: “Actually, my brother, you’re the one who’s counterfeit.”

Meanwhile, the peasant was proudly insisting, “How could my gold coin possibly be counterfeit? I buried it in the ground twenty years ago, did a vice like counterfeiting exist back then?”

I was wondering what the outcome would be when the money changer took me out of his mouth instead of the peasant’s gold coin. “Take your gold coin, I don’t want any vile Venetian infidel’s fake money,” he said, “have you no shame?” The peasant responded with some biting words of his own, then took me with him out the door. After hearing the same pronouncement from other money changers, the peasant’s spirit broke and he exchanged me as a debased coin for only ninety silver pieces. This is how my seven-year saga of endless wandering from hand to hand began.

Allow me to admit proudly that I’ve spent most of my time in Istanbul wandering from purse to purse, and from sash to pocket, as befits an intelligent coin. My worst nightmare is to be stored in a jug and languish for years beneath a rock, buried in some garden; not that it hasn’t happened to me, but for whatever reason, these periods have never lasted long. Many of the people who hold me want to be rid of me as soon as possible, especially if they discover I’m fake. Nonetheless, I have yet to come across someone who’ll warn an unsuspecting buyer that I’m counterfeit. A broker, not recognizing that I’m counterfeit, who has counted out 120 silver coins in exchange for me, will berate himself in fits of anger, sorrow and impatience as soon as he learns he’s been cheated, and these fits won’t subside until he rids himself of me by cheating another. During this crisis, even as he attempts to repeatedly swindle others, failing each time on account of his haste and anger, he’ll continue all the while to curse the “immoral” person who had originally conned him.

Over the last seven years in Istanbul, I’ve changed hands 560 times, and there’s not a house, shop, market, bazaar, mosque, church or synagogue I haven’t entered. As I’ve roamed about, I’ve learned that much more gossip has been spread, many more legends told and lies spun in my name than I’d ever suspected. I’ve constantly had my nose rubbed in it: Nothing’s considered valuable anymore besides me, I’m merciless, I’m blind, I myself am even enamored of money, the unfortunate world revolves around, not God, but me, and there’s nothing I can’t buy—all this is to say nothing of my dirty, vulgar and base nature. And those who know that I’m fake are given to even harsher judgments. As my actual value drops, however, my metaphorical value increases—proof that poetry is consolation to life’s miseries. But despite all such heartless comparison and thoughtless slander, I’ve realized that a large majority do sincerely love me. In this age of hatred, such heartfelt—even impassioned—affection ought to gladden us all.

I’ve seen every square inch of Istanbul, street by street and district by district; I’ve known all hands from Jews to Abkhazians and from Arabs to Mingerians. I once left Istanbul in the purse of a preacher from Edirne who was going to Manisa. On the way, we happened to be attacked by thieves. One of them shouted, “Your money or your life!” Panicking, the miserable preacher hid us in his asshole. This spot, which he assumed was the safest, smelled worse than the mouth of the garlic lover and was much less comfortable. But the situation quickly grew worse when instead of “Your money or your life!” the thieves began to shout “Your honor or your life!” Lining up, they took him by turns. I don’t dare describe the agony we suffered in that cramped hole. It’s for this reason that I dislike leaving Istanbul.

I’ve been well received in Istanbul. Young girls kiss me as if I were the husband of their dreams; they hide me beneath their pillows, between their huge breasts, and in their underwear; they even fondle me in their sleep to make certain I’m still there. I’ve been stored next to the furnace in a public bath, in a boot, at the bottom of a small bottle in a wonderful-smelling musk seller’s shop and in the secret pocket sewn into a chef’s lentil sack. I’ve wandered through Istanbul in belts made of camel leather, jacket linings made from checkered Egyptian cloth, in the thick fabric of shoe lining and in the hidden corners of multicolored shalwars. The master watchmaker Petro hid me in a secret compartment of a grandfather clock, and a Greek grocer stuck me directly into a wheel of kashari cheese. I hid together with jewelry, seals and keys wrapped in pieces of thick cloth stowed away in chimneys, in stoves, beneath windowsills, inside cushions stuffed with rough straw, in underground chambers and in the hidden compartments of chests. I’ve known fathers who frequently stood up from the dinner table to check whether I was still where I was supposed to be, women who sucked on me like candy for no reason, children who sniffed at me as they stuck me up their noses and old people with one foot in the grave who couldn’t relax unless they removed me from their sheepskin purses at least seven times a day. There was a meticulous Circassian woman who, after spending the whole day cleaning the house, took us coins out of her purse and scrubbed us with a coarse brush. I remember the one-eyed money changer who constantly stacked us up into towers; the porter who smelled of morning glories and who, along with his family, watched us as if looking out over a stunning landscape; and the gilder, no longer among us—no need to name names—who spent his evenings arranging us into various designs. I’ve traveled in mahogany skiffs; I’ve visited the Sultan’s palace; I’ve hidden within Herat-made bindings, in the heels of rose-scented shoes and in the covers of packsaddles. I’ve known hundreds of hands: dirty, hairy, plump, oily, trembling and old. I’ve been redolent of opium dens, candle-makers’ shops, dried mackerel and the sweat of all of Istanbul. After experiencing such excitement and commotion, a base thief who had slit his victim’s throat in the blackness of night and tossed me into his purse, once back in his accursed house, spat in my face and grunted, “Damn you, it’s all because of you.” I was so offended, so hurt, that I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

I’ve been stored next to the furnace in a public bath, in a boot, at the bottom of a small bottle in a wonderful-smelling musk seller’s shop and in the secret pocket sewn into a chef’s lentil sack.

If I didn’t exist, however, no one would be able to distinguish a good artist from a bad one, and this would lead to chaos among the miniaturists; they’d all be at each other’s throats. So I haven’t vanished. I’ve entered the purse of the most talented and intelligent of miniaturists and made my way here.

If you think you’re better than Stork, then by all means, get hold of me.

I AM CALLED BLACK

I wondered whether Shekure’s father was aware of the letters we exchanged. If I were to consider her tone, which bespoke a timid maiden quite afraid of her father, I’d have to conclude that not a single word about me had passed between them. Yet, I sensed that this was not the case. The slyness in Esther’s looks, Shekure’s enchanting appearance at the window, the decisiveness with which my Enishte sent me to his illustrators and his despair when he ordered me to come this morning—all of it made me quite uneasy.

In the morning, as soon as my Enishte asked me to sit before him, he began to describe the portraits he saw in Venice. As the ambassador of Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, he’d visited quite a number of palazzos, churches and the houses of prosperous men. Over a period of days, he stood before thousands of portraits. He saw thousands of framed faces depicted on stretched canvas or wood or painted directly onto walls. “Each one was different from the next. They were distinctive, unique human faces!” he said. He was intoxicated by their variety, their colors, the pleasantness—even severity—of the soft light that seemed to fall on them and the meaning emanating from their eyes.

“As if a virulent plague had struck, everyone was having his portrait made,” he said. “In all of Venice, rich and influential men wanted their portraits painted as a symbol, a memento of their lives and a sign of their riches, power and influence—so they might always be there, standing before us, announcing their existence, nay, their individuality and distinction.”

His words were belittling, as if he were speaking out of jealousy, ambition or greed. Though, at times, as he talked about the portraits he’d seen in Venice, his face would abruptly light up like a child’s, invigorated.

Portraiture had become such a contagion among affluent men, princes and great families who were patrons of art that even when they commissioned frescoes of biblical scenes and religious legends for church walls, these infidels would insist that their own images appear somewhere in the work. For instance, in a painting of the burial of St. Stephan, you’d suddenly see, ah yes, present among the tearful graveside mourners, the very prince who was giving you the tour—in a state of pure enthusiasm, exhilaration and conceit—of the paintings hanging on his palazzo walls. Next, in the corner of a fresco depicting St. Peter curing the sick with his shadow, you’d realize with an odd sense of disillusionment that the unfortunate one writhing there in pain was, in fact, the strong-as-an-ox brother of your polite host. The following day, this time in a piece depicting the Resurrection of the Dead, you’d discover the guest who’d stuffed himself beside you at lunch.

“Some have gone so far, just to be included in a painting,” said my Enishte, fearfully as though he were talking about the temptations of Satan, “that they’re willing to be portrayed as a servant filling goblets in the crowd, or a merciless man stoning an adulteress, or a murderer, his hands drenched in blood.”

Pretending not to understand, I said, “Exactly the way we see Shah Ismail ascending the throne in those illustrated books that recount ancient Persian legends. Or when we come across a depiction of Tamerlane, who actually ruled long afterward, in the story of Hüsrev and Shirin.”

Was there a noise somewhere in the house?

“It’s as if the Venetian paintings were made to frighten us,” said my Enishte later. “And it isn’t enough that we be in awe of the authority and money of these men who commission the works, they also want us to know that simply existing in this world is a very special, very mysterious event. They’re attempting to terrify us with their unique faces, eyes, bearing and with their clothing whose every fold is defined by shadow. They’re attempting to terrify us by being creatures of mystery.”

He explained how once he’d gotten lost in the exquisite portrait gallery of a lunatic collector whose opulent estate was perched on the shores of Lake Como; the proprietor had collected the portraits of all the great personages in Frankish history from kings to cardinals, and from soldiers to poets: “When my hospitable host left me alone to roam as I wished throughout his palazzo, which he’d proudly given me a tour of, I saw that these supposedly important infidels—most of whom appeared to be real and some of whom looked me straight in the eye—had attained their importance in this world solely on account of having their portraits made. Their likenesses had imbued them with such magic, had so distinguished them, that for a moment among the paintings I felt flawed and impotent. Had I been depicted in this fashion, it seemed, I’d better understand why I existed in this world.”

He was frightened because he suddenly understood—and perhaps desired—that Islamic artistry, perfected and securely established by the old masters of Herat, would meet its end on account of the appeal of portraiture. “However, it was as if I too wanted to feel extraordinary, different and unique,” he said. As if prodded by the Devil, he felt himself strongly drawn to what he feared. “How should I say it? It’s as if this were a sin of desire, like growing arrogant before God, like considering oneself of utmost importance, like situating oneself at the center of the world.”

Thereafter, this idea dawned on him: These methods which the Frankish artists made use of as if playing a prideful child’s game, could be more than simply magic associated with Our Exalted Sultan—but could in fact become a force meant to serve our religion, bringing under its sway all who beheld it.

I learned that the idea of preparing an illuminated manuscript had arisen then: my Enishte, who’d returned to Istanbul from Venice, suggested it would be excellent indeed for Our Sultan to be the subject of a portrait in the Frankish style. But after His Excellency took exception, a book containing pictures of Our Sultan and the objects that represented Him was agreed upon.

“It is the story that’s essential,” our wisest and most Glorious Sultan had said. “A beautiful illustration elegantly completes the story. An illustration that does not complement a story, in the end, will become but a false idol. Since we cannot possibly believe in an absent story, we will naturally begin believing in the picture itself. This would be no different than the worship of idols in the Kaaba that went on before Our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had destroyed them. If not as part of a story, how would you propose to depict this red carnation, for example, or that insolent dwarf over there?”

“By exposing the carnation’s beauty and uniqueness.”

“In the arrangement of your scene, then, would you situate the flower at the precise center of the page?”

“I was afraid,” my Enishte said. “I panicked momentarily when I realized where Our Sultan’s thoughts were taking me.”

What filled my Enishte with fear was the notion of situating at the center of the page—and thereby, the world—something other than what God had intended.

“Thereafter,” Our Sultan had said, “you’ll want to exhibit a picture in whose center you’ve situated a dwarf.” It was as I had assumed. “But this picture could never be displayed: after a while, we’d begin to worship a picture we’ve hung on a wall, regardless of the original intentions. If I believed, heaven forbid, the way these infidels do, that the Prophet Jesus was also the Lord God himself, then I’d also hold that God could be observed in this world, and even, that He could manifest in human form; only then might I accept the depiction of mankind in full detail and exhibit such images. You do understand that, eventually, we would unthinkingly begin worshiping any picture that is hung on a wall, don’t you?”

My Enishte said: “I understood it quite well, and because I did, I was afraid of what we both were thinking.”

“For this reason,” Our Sultan remarked, “I could never allow my portrait to be displayed.”

“Though this is exactly what he wanted,” whispered my Enishte, with a devilish titter.

It was my turn to be frightened now.

“Nonetheless, it is my desire that my portrait be made in the style of the Frankish masters,” Our Sultan went on. “Such a portrait will, of course, have to be concealed within the pages of a book. Whatever that book might be, you shall be the one to tell me.”

“In an instant of surprise and awe, I considered his statement,” said my Enishte, then grinning more devilishly than before, he seemed, suddenly, to become someone else.

“His Excellency Our Sultan ordered me to start working on His book posthaste. My head spun with joy. He added that it ought to be prepared as a present for the Venetian Doge, whom I was to visit once again. Once the book was completed, it would become a symbol of the vanquishing power of the Islamic Caliph Our Exalted Sultan, in the thousandth year of the Hegira. He requested that I prepare the illuminated manuscript in utmost secrecy, primarily to conceal its purpose as an olive branch extended to the Venetians, but also to avoid aggravating workshop jealousies. And in a state of great elation and sworn to secrecy, I embarked upon this venture.”

I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE

And so it was on that Friday morning, I began to describe the book that would contain Our Sultan’s portrait painted in the Venetian style. I broached the topic to Black by recounting how I’d brought it up with Our Sultan and how I’d persuaded him to fund the book. My hidden purpose was to have Black write the stories—which I hadn’t even begun—that were meant to accompany the illustrations.

I told him I’d completed most of the book’s illustrations and that the last picture was nearly finished. “There’s a depiction of Death,” I said, “and I had the most clever of miniaturists, Stork, illustrate the tree representing the peacefulness of Our Sultan’s worldly realm. There’s a picture of Satan and a horse meant to spirit us far far away. There’s a dog, always cunning and wily, and also a gold coin. . .I had the master miniaturists depict these things with such beauty,” I told Black, “that if you saw them but once, you’d know straightaway what the corresponding text ought to be. Poetry and painting, words and color, these things are brothers to each other, as you well know.”

For a while, I pondered whether I should tell him I might marry off my daughter to him. Would he live together with us in this house? I told myself not to be taken in by his rapt attention and his childlike expression. I knew he was scheming to elope with my Shekure. Still, I could rely on nobody else to finish my book.

Returning together from the Friday prayers, we discussed “shadow,” the greatest of innovations manifest in the paintings of the Venetian masters. “If,” I said, “we intend to make our paintings from the perspective of pedestrians exchanging pleasantries and regarding their world; that is, if we intend to illustrate from the street, we ought to learn how to account for—as the Franks do—what is, in fact, most prevalent there: shadows.”

“How does one depict shadow?” asked Black.

From time to time, as my nephew listened, I perceived impatience in him. He’d begin to fiddle with the Mongol inkpot he’d given me as a present. At times, he’d take up the iron poker and stoke the fire in the stove. Now and then I imagined that he wanted to lower that poker onto my head and kill me because I dared to move the art of illustrating away from Allah’s perspective; because I would betray the dreams of the masters of Herat and their entire tradition of painting; because I’d duped Our Sultan into already doing so. Occasionally, Black would sit dead still for long stretches and fix his eyes deeply into mine. I could imagine what he was thinking: “I’ll be your slave until I can have your daughter.” Once, as I would do when he was a child, I took him out into the yard and tried to explain to him, as a father might, about the trees, about the light falling onto the leaves, about the melting snow and why the houses seemed to shrink as we moved away from them. But this was a mistake: It proved only that our former filial relationship had long since collapsed. Now patient sufferance of the rantings of a demented old man had taken the place of Black’s childhood curiosity and passion for knowledge. I was just an old man whose daughter was the object of Black’s love. The influence and experience of the countries and cities that my nephew had traveled through for a dozen years had been fully absorbed by his soul. He was tired of me, and I pitied him. And he was angry, I assumed, not only because I hadn’t allowed him to marry Shekure twelve years ago—after all, there was no other choice then—but because I dreamed of paintings whose style transgressed the precepts of the masters of Herat. Furthermore, because I raved about this nonsense with such conviction, I imagined my death at his hands.

Once, as I would do when he was a child, I took him out into the yard and tried to explain to him, as a father might, about the trees, about the light falling onto the leaves, about the melting snow and why the houses seemed to shrink as we moved away from them.

I was not, however, afraid of him; on the contrary, I tried to frighten him. For I believed that fear was appropriate to the writing I’d requested of him. “As in those pictures,” I said, “one ought to be able to situate oneself at the center of the world. One of my illustrators brilliantly depicted Death for me. Behold.”

Thus I began to show him the paintings I’d secretly commissioned from the master miniaturists over the last year. At first, he was a tad shy, even frightened. When he understood that the depiction of Death was inspired by familiar scenes that could be found in many Book of Kings volumes—from the scene of Afrasiyab’s decapitation of Siyavush, for example, or Rüstem’s murder of Suhrab without realizing this was his son—he quickly became interested in the subject. Among the pictures that depicted the funeral of the late Sultan Süleyman was one I’d made with bold but sad colors, combining a compositional sensibility inspired by the Franks with my own attempt at shading—which I’d added later. I pointed out the diabolic depth evoked by the interplay of cloud and horizon. I reminded him that Death was unique, just like the portraits of infidels I had seen hanging in Venetian palazzos; all of them desperately yearned to be rendered distinctly. “They want to be so distinct and different, and they want this with such passion that,” I said, “look, look into the eyes of Death. See how men do not fear Death, but rather the violence implicit in the desire to be one-of-a-kind, unique and exceptional. Look at this illustration and write an account of it. Give voice to Death. Here’s paper and pen. I shall give what you write to the calligrapher straightaway.”

He stared at the picture in silence. “Who painted this?” he asked later.

“Butterfly. He’s the most talented of the lot. Master Osman had been in love with and awed by him for years.”

“I’ve seen rougher versions of this depiction of a dog at the coffeehouse where the storyteller performs,” Black said.

“My illustrators, most of whom are spiritually bound to Master Osman and the workshop, take a dim view of the labors performed for my book. When they leave here at night I imagine they have their vulgar fun over these illustrations which they draw for money and ridicule me at the coffeehouse. And who among them will ever forget the time Our Sultan had the young Venetian artist, whom He’d invited from the embassy at my behest, paint His portrait. Thereafter, He had Master Osman make a copy of that oil painting.

Forced to imitate the Venetian painter, Master Osman held me responsible for this unseemly coercion and the shameful portrait that came of it. He was justified.” All day long, I showed him every picture—except the final illustration that I cannot, for whatever reason, finish. I prodded him to write. I discussed the temperaments of the miniaturists, and I enumerated the sums of money I meted out to them. We discussed “perspective” and whether the diminutive objects in the background of Venetian pictures were sacrilegious, and equally, we talked about the possibility that unfortunate Elegant Effendi had been murdered for excessive ambition and out of jealousy over his wealth.

As Black returned home that night, I was confident he’d come again the next morning as promised and that he’d once again listen to me recount the stories that would constitute my book. I listened to his footsteps fading beyond the open gate; there was something to the cold night that seemed to make my sleepless and troubled murderer stronger and more devilish than me and my book.

I closed the courtyard gate tightly behind him. I placed the old ceramic water basin that I used as a basil planter behind the gate as I did each night. Before I reduced the stove to smoldering ashes and went to bed, I glanced up to see Shekure in a white gown looking like a ghost in the blackness.

“Are you absolutely certain that you want to marry him?” I asked.

“No, dear Father. I’ve long since forgotten about marriage. Besides, I am married.”

“If you still want to marry him, I’m willing to give you my blessing now.”

“I wish not to be wed to him.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s against your will. In all sincerity, I desire nobody that you do not want.”

I noticed, momentarily, the coals in the stove reflected in her eyes. Her eyes had aged, not out of unhappiness, but anger; yet there was no trace of offense in her voice.

“Black is in love with you,” I said as if divulging a secret.

“I know.”

“He listened to all I had to say today not out of his love of painting, but out of his love for you.”

“He will complete your book, this is what matters.”

“Your husband might return one day,” I said.

“I’m not certain why, perhaps it’s the silence, but tonight I’ve realized once and for all that my husband will never return. What I’ve dreamt seems to be the truth: They must’ve killed him. He’s long since turned to dust.” She whispered the last statement lest the sleeping children hear. And she said it with a peculiar tinge of anger.

“If they happen to kill me,” I said, “I want you to finish this book to which I’ve dedicated everything. Swear that you will.”

“I give my word. Who will be the one to complete your book?”

“Black! You can ensure that he does so.”

“You are already ensuring that he does so, dear Father,” she said. “You have no need for me.”

“Agreed, but he’s giving in to me because of you. If they kill me, he might be afraid to continue on.”