My Name is Red

I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER

Doubtless, you too have experienced what I’m about to describe: At times, while walking through the infinite and winding streets of Istanbul, while spooning a bite of vegetable stew into my mouth at a public kitchen or squinting with fixed attention on the curved design of a reed-style border illumination, I feel I’m living the present as if it were the past. That is, when I’m walking down a street whitewashed with snow, I’ll have the urge to say that I was walking down it.

The extraordinary events I will relate occurred at once in the present and in the past. It was evening, the twilight gave way to blackness and a very faint snow fell as I walked down the street where Enishte Effendi lived.

Unlike other evenings, I’d come here knowing precisely what I wanted. On other evenings, my legs would take me here as I absentmindedly thought about other things: how I’d told my mother I earned seven hundred silver pieces for a single book, about the covers of Herat volumes with ungilded ornamental rosettes dating from the time of Tamerlane, about the continued shock of learning that others still painted under my name or about my tomfoolery and transgressions. This time, however, I’d come here with forethought and intent.

The large courtyard gate-that I feared no one would open for me-opened on its own when I went to knock, reassuring me that Allah was with me. The shiny stone-paved portion of the courtyard that I walked through on those nights when I came to add new illustrations to Enishte Effendi’s magnificent book was empty. To the right beside the well rested the bucket, and perched on it a sparrow apparently oblivious to the cold; a bit farther on sat the open-air stone stove, which for some reason wasn’t lit even at this late hour; and to the left, the stable for visitors’ horses which made up part of the house’s ground floor. Everything was as I expected it to be. I entered through the unlocked door beside the stable, and as an uninvited guest might do to avoid happening upon an inappropriate scene, I stamped my feet and coughed as I climbed the wooden staircase to the living quarters.

My coughing elicited no response. Nor did the noise of stamping my muddy shoes, which I removed and left next to those lined up at the entrance of the wide hall which was also used as an anteroom. As had become my custom whenever I visited, I searched for what I assumed to be Shekure’s elegant green pair among the others, but for naught, and the possibility that no one was home crossed my mind.

I walked to the right into the room-there was one in each corner of the second floor-where I imagined Shekure slept cuddled with her children. I groped for beds and mattresses, and opened a chest in the corner and a tall armoire with a very light door. While I thought the delicate almond scent in the room must be the scent of Shekure’s skin, a pillow, which had been stuffed into the cabinet, fell onto my dim-witted head and then onto a copper pitcher and cups. You hear a noise and suddenly realize the room is dark; well, I realized it was cold.

“Hayriye?” Enishte Effendi called from within another room, “Shekure? Which of you is it?”

I swiftly exited the room, walking diagonally across the wide hall, and entered the room with the blue door where I had labored with Enishte Effendi on his book this past winter.

“It’s me, Enishte Effendi,” I said. “Me.”

“Who might you be?”

At that instant, I understood that the workshop names Enishte Effendi had selected had less to do with secrecy then with his subtle mockery of us. As a haughty scribe might write in the colophon on the last leaf of a magnificently illustrated manuscript, I slowly pronounced the syllables of my full name, which included my father’s name, my place of birth and the phrase “your poor sinful servant.”

“Hah?” he said at first, then added, “Hah!”

Just like the old man who meets Death in the Assyrian fable I heard as a child, Enishte Effendi sank into a very brief silence that lasted forever. If there are those among you who believe, since I’ve just now mentioned “Death,” that I’ve come here to involve myself in such an affair, you’ve completely misunderstood the book you’re holding. Would someone with such designs knock on the gate? Take off his shoes? Come without a knife?

“So, you’ve come,” he said, again like the old man in the fable. But then he assumed an entirely different tone: “Welcome, my child. Tell me then, what is it that you want?”

It had grown quite dark by now. Enough light entered through the narrow beeswax-dipped cloth windowpane-which, when removed in springtime, revealed a pomegranate and plane tree-to distinguish the outlines of objects within the room, enough light to please a humble Chinese illustrator. I could not fully see Enishte Effendi’s face as he sat, as usual, before a low, folding reading desk, so that the light fell to his left side. I tried desperately to recapture the intimacy between us when we’d painted miniatures together, gently and quietly discussing them all night by candlelight amid these burnishing stones, reed pens, inkwells and brushes. I’m not sure if it was out of this sense of alienation or out of embarrassment, but I was ashamed and held back from openly confessing my misgivings; at that moment, I decided to explain myself through a story.

Perhaps you’ve also heard of the artist Sheikh Muhammad of Isfahan? There was no painter who could surpass him in choice of color, in his sense of symmetry, in depicting human figures, animals and faces, in painting with an effusiveness bespeaking poetry, and in the application of an arcane logic reserved for geometry. After achieving the status of master painter at a young age, this virtuoso with a divine touch spent a full thirty years in pursuit of the most fearless innovation of subject matter, composition and style. Working in the Chinese black-ink style-brought to us by the Mongols-with skill and an elegant sense of symmetry, he was the one who introduced the terrifying demons, horned jinns, horses with large testicles, half-human monsters and giants into the devilishly subtle and sensitive Herat style of painting; he was the first to take an interest in and be influenced by the portraiture that had come by Western ships from Portugal and Flanders; he reintroduced forgotten techniques dating back to the time of Genghis Khan and hidden in decaying old volumes; before anybody else, he dared to paint cock-raising scenes like Alexander’s peeping at naked beauties swimming on the island of women and Shirin bathing by moonlight; he depicted Our Glorious Prophet ascending on the back of his winged steed Burak, shahs scratching themselves, dogs copulating and sheikhs drunk with wine and made them acceptable to the entire community of book lovers. He’d done it, at times secretly, at times openly, drinking large quantities of wine and taking opium, with an enthusiasm that lasted for thirty years. Later, in his old age, he became the disciple of a pious sheikh, and within a short time, changed completely. Coming to the conclusion that every painting he’d made over the previous thirty years was profane and ungodly, he rejected them all. What’s more, he devoted the remaining thirty years of his life to going from palace to palace, from city to city, searching through the libraries and the treasuries of sultans and kings, in order to find and destroy the manuscripts he’d illuminated. In whichever shah’s, prince’s or nobleman’s library he found a painting he’d made in previous years, he’d stop at nothing to destroy it; gaining access by flattery or by ruse, and precisely when no one was paying attention, he’d either tear out the page on which his illustration appeared, or, seizing an opportunity, he’d spill water on the piece, ruining it. I recounted this tale as an example of how a miniaturist could suffer great agony for unwittingly forsaking his faith under the spell of his art. This was why I mentioned how Sheikh Muhammad had burned down Prince Ismail Mirza’s immense library containing hundreds of books that the sheikh himself had illustrated; so many books that he couldn’t cull his own from the others. With great exaggeration, as if I’d experienced it myself, I told how the painter, in profound sorrow and regret, had burned to death in that terrible conflagration.

“Are you afraid, my child?” said Enishte Effendi compassionately, “of the paintings we’ve made?”

The room was black now, I couldn’t see for myself, but I sensed that he’d said this with a smile.

“Our book is no longer a secret,” I answered. “Perhaps this isn’t important. But rumors are spreading. They say we’ve underhandedly committed blasphemy. They say that, here, we’ve made a book-not as Our Sultan had commissioned and hoped for-but one meant to entertain our own whims; one that ridicules even Our Prophet and mimics infidel masters. There are those who believe it even depicts Satan as amiable. They say we’ve committed an unforgivable sin by daring to draw, from the perspective of a mangy street dog, a horsefly and a mosque as if they were the same size-with the excuse that the mosque was in the background-thereby mocking the faithful who attend prayers. I cannot sleep for thinking about such things.”

“We made the illustrations together,” said Enishte Effendi. “Could we have even considered such ideas, let alone committed such an offense?”

“Not at all,” I said expansively. “But they’ve heard about it somehow. They say there’s one final painting in which, according to the gossip, there’s open defiance of our religion and what we hold sacred.”

“You yourself have seen the final painting.”

“Nay, I made pictures of whatever you requested in various places on a large sheet, which was to be a double-leaf illustration,” I said with a caution and precision that I hoped would please Enishte Effendi. “But I never saw the completed illustration. If I had seen the entire painting, I’d have a clear conscience about denying all this foul slander.”

“Why is it that you feel guilty?” he asked. “What’s gnawing at your soul? Who has caused you to doubt yourself?”

“…to worry that one has attacked what he knows to be sacred, after spending months merrily illustrating a book…to suffer the torments of Hell while living…if I could only see that last painting in its entirety.”

“Is this what troubles you?” he said. “Is this why you’ve come?”

Suddenly panic seized me. Could he be thinking something horrendous, like I was the one who’d killed the ill-fated Elegant Effendi?

“Those who want Our Sultan dethroned and replaced by the prince,” I said, “are furthering this insidious gossip, saying that He secretly supports the book.”

“How many really believe that?” he asked wearily. “Every cleric with any ambition who’s met with some favor and whose head has swollen as a result will preach that religion is being ignored and disrespected. This is the most reliable way to ensure one’s living.”

Did he suppose I’d come solely to inform him of a rumor?

“Poor old Elegant Effendi, God rest his soul,” I said, my voice quavering. “Supposedly, we killed him because he saw the whole of the last painting and was convinced that it reviled our faith. A division head I know at the palace workshop told me this. You know how junior and senior apprentices are, everyone gossips.”

Maintaining this line of reasoning and growing increasingly impassioned, I went on for quite some time. I didn’t know how much of what I said I myself had indeed heard, how much I fabricated out of fear after doing away with that wicked slanderer, or how much I improvised. Having devoted much of the conversation to flattery, I was anticipating that Enishte Effendi would show me the two-page illustration and put me at ease. Why didn’t he realize this was the only way I might overcome my fears about being mired in sin?

Intending to startle him, I defiantly asked, “Might one be capable of making blasphemous art without being aware of it?”

In place of an answer, he gestured very delicately and elegantly with his hand-as if to warn me there was a child sleeping in the room-and I fell completely silent. “It has become very dark,” he said, almost in a whisper, “let’s light the candle.”

After lighting the candlestick from the hot coals of the brazier which heated the room, I noticed in his face an expression of pride, one to which I was unaccustomed, and this displeased me greatly. Or was it an expression of pity? Had he figured everything out? Was he thinking that I was some sort of a base murderer or was he frightened by me? I remember how suddenly my thoughts spiraled out of control and I was stupidly listening to what I thought as if somebody else was thinking. The carpet beneath me, for example: There was a kind of wolflike design in one corner, but why hadn’t I noticed it before?

“The love all khans, shahs and sultans feel for paintings, illustrations and fine books can be divided into three seasons,” said Enishte Effendi. “At first they are bold, eager and curious. Rulers want paintings for the sake of respect, to influence how others see them. During this period, they educate themselves. During the second phase, they commission books to satisfy their own tastes. Because they’ve learned sincerely to enjoy paintings, they amass prestige while at the same time amassing books, which, after their deaths, ensure the persistence of their renown in this world. However, in the autumn of a sultan’s life, he no longer concerns himself with the persistence of his worldly immortality. By ”worldly immortality“ I mean the desire to be remembered by future generations, by our grandchildren. Rulers who admire miniatures and books have already acquired an immortality through the manuscripts they’ve commissioned from us-upon whose pages they’ve had their names inserted, and, at times, their histories written. Later, each of them comes to the conclusion that painting is an obstacle to securing a place in the Otherworld, naturally something they all desire. This is what bothers and intimidates me the most. Shah Tahmasp, who was himself a master miniaturist and spent his youth in his own workshop, closed down his magnificent atelier as his death approached, chased his divinely inspired painters from Tabriz, destroyed the books he had produced and suffered interminable crises of regret. Why did they all believe that painting would bar them from the gates of Heaven?”

“You know quite well why! Because they remembered Our Prophet’s warning that on Judgment Day, Allah will punish painters most severely.”

“Not painters,” corrected Enishte Effendi. “Those who make idols. And this not from the Koran but from Bukhari.”

“On Judgment Day, the idol makers will be asked to bring the images they’ve created to life,” I said cautiously. “Since they’ll be unable to do so their lot will be to suffer the torments of Hell. Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, ”creator“ is one of the attributes of Allah. It is Allah who is creative, who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with Him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does, who claim to be as creative as He.”

I made my statement firmly, as if I, too, were accusing him. He fixed his gaze into my eyes.

“Do you think this is what we’ve been doing?”

“Never,” I said with a smile. “However, this is what Elegant Effendi, may he rest in peace, began to assume when he saw the last painting. He’d been saying that your use of the science of perspective and the methods of the Venetian masters was nothing but the temptation of Satan. In the last painting, you’ve supposedly rendered the face of a mortal using the Frankish techniques, so the observer has the impression not of a painting but of reality; to such a degree that this image has the power to entice men to bow down before it, as with icons in churches. According to him, this is the Devil’s work, not only because the art of perspective removes the painting from God’s perspective and lowers it to the level of a street dog, but because your reliance on the methods of the Venetians as well as your mingling of our own established traditions with that of the infidels will strip us of our purity and reduce us to being their slaves.”

“Nothing is pure,” said Enishte Effendi. “In the realm of book arts, whenever a masterpiece is made, whenever a splendid picture makes my eyes water out of joy and causes a chill to run down my spine, I can be certain of the following: Two styles heretofore never brought together have come together to create something new and wondrous. We owe Bihzad and the splendor of Persian painting to the meeting of an Arabic illustrating sensibility and Mongol-Chinese painting. Shah Tahmasp’s best paintings marry Persian style with Turkmen subtleties. Today, if men cannot adequately praise the book-arts workshops of Akbar Khan in Hindustan, it’s because he urged his miniaturists to adopt the styles of the Frankish masters. To God belongs the East and the West. May He protect us from the will of the pure and unadulterated.”

However soft and bright his face might have appeared by candlelight, his shadow, cast on the wall, was equally as black and frightening. Despite finding what he said to be exceedingly reasonable and sound, I didn’t believe him. I assumed he was suspicious of me, and thus, I grew suspicious of him; I sensed that he was listening at times for the courtyard gate below, that he was hoping someone would deliver him from my presence.

“You yourself told me how Sheikh Muhammad the Master of Isfahan burned down the great library containing the paintings he had renounced, and how he also immolated himself in a fit of bad conscience,” he said. “Now let me tell you another story related to that legend that you don’t know. It’s true, he’d spent the last thirty years of his life hunting down his own works. However, in the books he perused, he increasingly discovered imitations inspired by him rather than his original work. In later years, he came to realize that two generations of artists had adopted as models of form the illustrations he himself had renounced, that they’d ingrained his pictures in their minds-or more accurately, had made them a part of their souls. As Sheikh Muhammad attempted to find his own pictures and destroy them, he discovered that young miniaturists had, with reverence, reproduced them in countless books, had relied on them in illustrating other stories, had caused them to be memorized by all and had spread them over the world. Over long years, as we gaze at book after book and illustration after illustration, we come to learn the following: A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. Once a miniaturist’s artistry enters our souls this way, it becomes the criterion for the beauty of our world. At the end of his life, as the Master of Isfahan burned his own art, he not only witnessed the fact that his work, instead of disappearing, actually proliferated and increased; he understood that everybody now saw the world the way he had seen it. Those things which did not resemble the paintings he made in his youth were now considered ugly.”

Unable to rein in the awe stirring within me and to control my desire to please Enishte Effendi, I fell before his knees. As I kissed his hand, my eyes filled with tears and I felt I had relinquished to him the place in my soul that had always been reserved for Master Osman.

“A miniaturist,” said Enishte Effendi in the tone of a self-satisfied man, “creates his art by heeding his conscience and by obeying the principles in which he believes, fearing nothing. He pays no attention to what his enemies, the zealots and those who envy him have to say.”

But it occurred to me that Enishte Effendi wasn’t even a miniaturist as I kissed his aged and mottled hand through my tears. I was embarrassed by my thought. It was as if another had forced this devilish, shameless notion into my head. Even so, you too know how true this statement is.

“I’m not afraid of them,” Enishte said, “because I’m not afraid of death.”

Who were “they”? I nodded as if I understood. Yet annoyance began to mount within me. I noticed that the old volume immediately beside Enishte was El-Jevziyye’s Book of the Soul. All dotards who seek death share a love for this book that recounts the adventures that await the soul. Since I’d been here last, I saw only one new item among the objects collected in trays, resting on the chest, among the pen cases, penknives, nib-cutting boards, inkwells and brushes: a bronze inkpot.

“Let’s establish, once and for all, that we do not fear them,” I said boldly. “Take out the last illustration. Let’s show it to them.”

“But wouldn’t this prove that we minded their slander, at least enough to take it seriously? We’ve done nothing of which we ought to be afraid. What could justify your being so frightened?”

He stroked my hair like a father. I was afraid that I might burst into tears again; I embraced him.

“I know why that unfortunate gilder Elegant Effendi was killed,” I said excitedly. “By slandering you, your book and us, Elegant Effendi was planning to set Nusret Hoja of Erzurum ’s men upon us. He was convinced that we’d fallen sway to the Devil. He’d begun spreading such rumors, trying to incite the other miniaturists working on your book to rebel against you. I don’t know why he suddenly began to do this. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps he’d come under Satan’s influence. And the other miniaturists also heard how determined Elegant Effendi was to destroy us all. You can imagine how each of them grew frightened and succumbed to suspicions as I myself had. Because one of their lot was cornered, in the middle of the night, by Elegant Effendi-who had incited him against you, us, our book, as well as against illustrating, painting and all else we believe in-that artist fell into a panic, killing that scoundrel and tossing his body into a well.”

“Scoundrel?”

“Elegant Effendi was an ill-natured, ill-bred traitor. Villain!” I shouted as if he were before me in the room.

Silence. Did he fear me? I was afraid of myself. It was as if I’d succumbed to somebody else’s will and thoughts; yet, this was not wholly unpleasant.

“Who was this miniaturist who fell into a panic like you and the illustrator from Isfahan? Who killed him?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Yet I wanted him to infer from my expression that I was lying. I realized that I’d made a grave error in coming here, but I wasn’t going to succumb to feelings of guilt and regret. I could see that Enishte Effendi was growing suspicious of me and this pleased and fortified me. If he became convinced that I was a murderer and this knowledge struck terror throughout his soul, then he wouldn’t dare refuse to show me the final painting. I was so curious about that picture, not because of any sin I’d committed on its account-I genuinely wanted to see how it’d turned out.

“Is it important who killed that miscreant?” I said. “Is it not possible that whoever rid us of him has done a good deed?”

I was encouraged when I saw he could no longer look me directly in the eye. Magnanimous men, who think themselves better and morally superior to others, cannot look you in the eye when they are embarrassed on your behalf, perhaps because they are contemplating reporting you and abandoning you to a fate of torture and execution.

Outside, just in front of the courtyard gate, the dogs began a frenzied howling.

“It’s begun to snow again,” I said. “Where has everyone gone at this late hour? Why have they left you here all alone? They haven’t even lit a candle for you.”

“It’s quite strange, indeed,” he said. “I don’t understand it myself.”

He was so sincere that I believed him completely, and despite ridiculing him just as the other miniaturists did, I once again knew that I actually loved him profoundly. But how had he so quickly sensed my sudden and great flood of respect and affection, to which he responded by stroking my hair with irresistible fatherly concern? I began to see that Master Osman’s style of painting, and the legacy of the old masters of Herat, had no future whatsoever. And this abominable thought frightened me yet again. After some tragedy, we all feel the same way: In one last desperate hope, and without caring how comic and foolish we might appear, we pray that everything might continue as it always has.

“Let’s continue to illustrate our book,” I said. “Let everything continue as it always has.”

“There’s a murderer among the miniaturists. I am continuing my work with Black Effendi.”

Was he provoking me to kill him?

“Where is Black now?” I asked. “Where is your daughter and her children?”

I sensed that some other power had placed these words into my mouth, yet I couldn’t restrain myself. There was no longer any way for me to be happy and hopeful. I could only be smart and sarcastic. Behind these two always entertaining jinns-intelligence and sarcasm-I sensed the presence of the Devil, who controlled them, overcoming me. At the same moment, the accursed dogs beyond the gate began to howl madly as if they’d tracked the scent of blood.

Had I lived this exact moment long ago? In a distant city, at a time which now seemed far from me, as a snow that I couldn’t see fell, by the light of a candle, I was attempting to explain through tears that I was entirely innocent to a crotchety old dotard, who’d accused me of stealing paint. Back then, just as now, dogs began to howl as if they’d smelled blood. And I understood from Enishte Effendi’s great chin, befitting an evil old man, and from his eyes, which he was finally able to fix mercilessly into mine, that he intended to crush me. I recalled this tattered memory from when I was a ten-year-old miniaturist’s apprentice like a picture whose outlines are clear but whose colors have faded. Thus was I living the present as though it were a distinct but faded memory.

So, as I arose and circled behind Enishte Effendi, lifting that new, huge and heavy bronze inkpot from among the familiar glass, porcelain and crystal ones that rested on his worktable, the hardworking miniaturist within me-that Master Osman had instilled in us all-was illustrating what I did and what I saw in distinct yet faded colors, not as something I was experiencing now but as if it were a memory from long ago. You know how in dreams we shudder to see ourselves as if from the outside, with the same sensation, holding the large yet small-mouthed bronze inkpot, I said:

“When I was a ten-year-old apprentice, I saw just such an inkpot.”

“It’s a three-hundred-year-old Mongol inkpot,” said Enishte Effendi. “Black brought it all the way from Tabriz. It’s for red.”

At that very moment, it was of course the Devil prodding me to drive that inkpot down with all my might onto this conceited old man’s faulty brain. But I didn’t give in to the Devil, and with false hope, I said, “It is I, I’m the one who murdered Elegant Effendi.”

You understand why I said this hopefully, don’t you? I trusted that Enishte would understand, and in turn, forgive me-that he would fear and help me.