My Name is Red

I AM CALLED BLACK

Shekure shut herself into the room with the children, and I listened at length to the sounds within the house and to its incessant creaking. Shekure and Shevket began whispering to each other and she anxiously quieted them with an abrupt “shush!” I heard a rattling coming from the stone-paved area near the well, but it didn’t last. Later, my attention was caught by a squawking seagull that had alighted on the roof. Then it, too, fell silent along with everything else. Afterward, I heard a low moan from the other side of the hallway: Hayriye was crying in her sleep. Her moans dissolved into coughing which ended as suddenly as it had begun, giving way once again to that deep, dreadful silence. A while later, I imagined that an intruder was roaming around the room where my dead Enishte lay, and I froze completely.

During each span of silence, I examined the pictures before me, contemplating how the passionate Olive, the beautiful Butterfly and the deceased gilder had dabbed paint onto the page. I had the urge to confront each of the images by shouting “Satan!” or “Death!” as my Enishte used to do some nights, but fear restrained me. Besides, these illustrations had vexed me plenty because I couldn’t write an appropriate story to accompany them despite my Enishte’s insistence. Since I was slowly growing certain that his death was linked to these images, I felt fretful and impatient. I’d already scrutinized the illustrations endlessly while listening to Enishte’s stories, all for a chance to be near Shekure. Now that she was my lawfully wedded wife, why should I preoccupy myself with them? A merciless inner voice answered: “Because even after her children have fallen asleep, Shekure refuses to leave her bed and join you.” I waited for a long while gazing at the pictures by candlelight, hoping that my black-eyed beauty would come to me.

In the morning, stirred from my sleep by Hayriye’s shrieks, I grabbed the candle-holder and rushed into the hallway. I thought Hasan had raided the house with his men, and I considered hiding the illustrations, but quickly realized that Hayriye had begun screaming upon Shekure’s command, as a way to announce Enishte Effendi’s death to the children and neighbors.

When I met Shekure in the hall, we embraced fondly. The children, who’d leapt out of bed when they’d heard Hayriye’s shouts, stood motionless.

“Your grandfather has died,” Shekure said to them. “I don’t want you to enter that room anymore under any circumstances.”

She freed herself from my arms and, going to her father’s side, began to weep.

I herded the children back into their room. “Change out of your bedclothes, you’ll catch cold,” I said and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Grandfather didn’t die this morning. He died last night,” Shevket said.

A long loose strand of Shekure’s gorgeous hair had coiled into an Arabic script “vav” on her pillow. Her warmth hadn’t yet dissipated from beneath the quilt. We could hear her sobbing and wailing along with Hayriye. Her ability to shriek as though her father had actually died unexpectedly was so shockingly disingenuous that I felt as if I didn’t know Shekure at all, like she’d been possessed by a strange jinn.

“I’m frightened,” said Orhan with a glance that was also a request for permission to cry.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Your mother is crying so the neighbors will know of your grandfather’s death and pay their respects.”

“What difference does it make if they come?” Shevket asked.

“If they come, they’ll be sad and mourn with us over his death. That way we can share the burden of our pain.”

“Did you kill my grandfather?” shouted Shevket.

“If you’re going to upset your mother, don’t expect any affection from me!” I shouted back.

We didn’t shout at each other like stepfather and stepson, but like two men talking by the banks of a loud rushing river. Shekure stepped out into the hallway and was forcing the wooden slats of the window trying to throw open the shutters so her shouts could be better heard throughout the neighborhood.

I left the room to join her. We both tried to force the window. With a final combined effort, the shutters came loose and fell into the courtyard. Sunlight and cold struck our faces and we were stunned momentarily. Shekure screamed, crying her heart out.

Enishte Effendi’s death, once announced by her cries, turned into a much more tragic and agonizing pain. Whether sincere or feigned, my wife’s crying tormented me. Unexpectedly, I began to weep. I didn’t even know if I was crying sincerely out of grief or was merely pretending for fear of being held responsible for my Enishte’s death.

“He’s gone, gone, gone, my dear father’s gone!” cried Shekure.

My sobs and laments mimicked hers, though I didn’t exactly know what I was saying. I was worried about how I looked to the neighbors staring at us from their houses, from behind cracked doors and between shutter slats, and wondered how fitting my behavior was. As I cried, I felt purged of doubts about whether my agony was genuine, of apprehensions about being accused of murder and of the fear of Hasan and his men.

Shekure was mine and it was as if I were celebrating with shouts and tears. I drew my sobbing wife close to me, and without paying any heed to the tearful children approaching us, I lovingly kissed her cheek and inhaled the scent of the almond trees of our youth.

Together with the children, we walked back to where the body lay. I said, “La ilahe illallah, there is no God but Allah” as though addressing not a reeking two-day-old corpse but a dying man whom I wanted to reaffirm the words of witness; I wanted my Enishte to go to Heaven with these words on his lips. We pretended that he’d repeated them, and smiled for a moment as we gazed at his nearly destroyed face and battered head. I opened my palms to Heaven and recited from the “Ya Sin” chapter while the others listened quietly. With a clean piece of gauze that Shekure brought into the room, we carefully bound my Enishte’s mouth shut, tenderly closed his ravaged eyes and gently rolled him over onto his right side, arranging his head so it faced Mecca. Shekure spread a clean white sheet over her father.

I was pleased that the children were watching everything so intensely and by the quiet that followed the wailing. I felt like somebody with a real wife and children, with a hearth and home.

One by one, I collected the pictures into a portfolio, donned my heavy caftan and hastily fled the house. I headed directly for the neighborhood mosque, pretending not to see one of the neighbors-an elderly woman with a snot-nosed grandchild who was clearly jubilant about all the sudden activity: They’d heard our cries and had eagerly come to enjoy our pain.

The tiny hole in the wall that the preacher called his “house” was embarrassingly small next to the ostentatious structure with its enormous domes and expansive courtyard, typical of the mosques that were being constructed lately. The preacher, in what I’d observed as a custom of increasing frequency, was extending the boundaries of his cold, little rat hole of a “home,” and had usurped the entire mosque, without the least concern over the faded and dingy wash his wife had hung between two chestnut trees at the edge of the courtyard. We avoided the attacks of two brutish dogs that had claimed the courtyard, just like the Imam Effendi and his family, and after the preacher’s sons chased the beasts away with sticks and excused themselves, the preacher and I retired to a private corner.

After yesterday’s divorce proceedings, and in light of the fact that we hadn’t asked him to perform the wedding ceremony, which I was certain had upset him, I could read a “For goodness sake, what brings you here now?” upon his face.

“Enishte Effendi passed away this morning.”

“May God have mercy upon him. May he find a home in Heaven!” he said benevolently. Why had I senselessly implicated myself by tacking the words “this morning” onto my statement? I dropped another gold piece into his hand, identical to the ones I’d given him yesterday. I requested that he recite the death prayer before the azan and appoint his brother as crier to go around announcing the death to the entire neighborhood.

“My brother has a dear friend who is half blind; together, we are expert at carrying out the final ablutions of the deceased,” he said.

What could be more suitable than having a blind man and a half-wit wash Enishte Effendi’s body? I explained to him that the ritual funeral prayer would be performed in the afternoon and that notables and crowds from the palace, the guilds and theological schools would be attending. I didn’t attempt to explain the state of Enishte Effendi’s face and battered head, having long decided that the matter needed to be addressed at a higher level.

Since Our Sultan had entrusted the balance of the funds for the book that He’d commissioned from my Enishte to the Head Treasurer, I had to report the death to him before anyone else. To this end, I sought out an upholsterer, a relative on my late father’s side, who’d worked in the tailors’ work stalls opposite Coldfountain Gate ever since I was a child. When I found him, I kissed his mottled hand and explained imploringly that I needed to see the Head Treasurer. He had me wait among his balding apprentices who were sewing curtains, doubled over the multicolored silk spread over their laps; then, he had me follow a head tailor’s assistant who, I learned, was going to the palace to take measurements. When we climbed up to the Parade Square through Coldfountain Gate I knew I’d be able to avoid passing the workshop opposite the Hagia Sophia; and thus, I was spared from announcing the crime to the other miniaturists.

The Parade Square seemed abustle now, whereas it usually seemed empty to me. Though there wasn’t a single person at the Petitioner’s Gate, before which petitioners would line up on days when the Divan convened, nor anyone in the vicinity of the granaries, it was as if I could hear a continuous din emanating from the windows of the sick house, from the carpenters’ workshop, the bakery, the stables, the grooms with their horses before the Second Gate (whose spires I looked upon with awe) and from among the cypresses. I attributed my sense of alarm to the fear of passing through the Gate of Salutation, or Second Gate, which I would soon be doing for the first time in my life.

At the gate, I could neither focus my attention on the spot where the executioners were said to be ever at the ready, nor could I hide my agitation from the keepers of the gate who glanced inquiringly at the bolt of upholstery cloth I carried as a prop so onlookers would assume I was assisting my tailor-cum-guide.

As soon as we entered the Divan Square, a deep silence enveloped us. I felt my heart pounding even in the veins of my forehead and neck. This area, so often described by my Enishte and others who visited the palace, lay before me like a heavenly garden of unequaled beauty. Yet, I didn’t feel the elation of a man who’d entered Heaven, just trepidation and pious reverence; I felt myself to be a simple servant of Our Sultan, who, as I now thoroughly understood, was indeed the foundation of this worldly realm. I stared at the peacocks roaming through the greenery, the gold cups chained to splashing fountains and the Grand Vizier’s heralds robed in silk (who seemed to move about without touching the ground), and I felt the thrill of serving my Sovereign. There was no doubt that I would complete Our Sultan’s secret book, whose unfinished illustrations I carried under my arm. Without knowing exactly what I was doing, I trailed behind the tailor, my eyes fixed on the Divan Tower, spellbound by fear more than awe now at its proximity.

Accompanied by a royal page who’d attached himself to us, we fearfully and silently, as in a dream, passed the Divan building and the Treasury; I felt that I’d seen this place before and knew it well.

We entered through a wide door into a room that was referred to as the Old Divan Chamber. Beneath its huge dome, I saw master artisans holding cloth, pieces of leather, silver scabbards and mother-of-pearl inlaid chests. I inferred that these men were from Our Sultan’s craftsmen’s guilds: mace makers, boot makers, silversmiths, master velvet makers, ivory engravers, and luthiers. They were all waiting outside the Head Treasurer’s door with various petitions concerning payments, the acquisition of materials and requests to enter the Sultan’s forbidden private quarters to take measurements. I was pleased to discover no illuminators among them.

We withdrew to one side and began to wait as well. Occasionally, we heard the raised voice of the treasurer’s clerk, suspecting an error in accounts, request clarification; this would be met by a polite response, from a locksmith, for example. Voices rarely rose above a whisper; the flutter of the courtyard pigeons echoing in the dome above us were louder than the petty requests of the humble artisans.

When my turn came, I entered the Head Treasurer’s small domed chamber to find it occupied by a single clerk. I quickly explained that there was an important matter to be submitted to the Head Treasurer’s attention: A book project that Our Sultan had commissioned and that was of utmost importance to Him. Intrigued by what I was holding, the clerk raised his eyes. I showed him the illustrations from my Enishte’s book. I noticed that the peculiarity of the pictures, their striking eccentricity, boggled his mind. I hastened to inform him of my Enishte’s name, his sobriquet and his vocation, adding that he’d died on account of these pictures. I spoke quickly, well aware that if I returned from the palace without reaching Our Sultan, I’d be accused of having put Enishte into that dreadful state myself.

When the clerk left to apprise the Head Treasurer, I broke into a cold sweat. Would the Head Treasurer, who, as my Enishte once informed me, never left Our Sultan’s side, who on occasion even spread out His prayer rug for Him, and who was frequently His confidant-would he ever leave the restricted Enderun quarters of the palace to see me? The fact that a messenger had been dispatched to the heart of the palace on my behalf was unbelievable enough. I wondered where Our Excellency the Sultan Himself might be: Had He retired to one of the kiosks near the shore? Was He in the harem? Was the Head Treasurer in His company?

Much later, I was summoned. Let me put it this way: I was taken so unawares I had no time to be afraid. Even so, I panicked when I saw the respect and astonishment in the expression of the master velvet maker standing at the door. I stepped inside and was at once terrified; I thought I’d be unable to speak. He wore the gold embroidered headdress that only he and the Grand Viziers wore; yes, I was in the presence of the Head Treasurer. He was gazing upon the illustrations that rested on a reading table where the clerk had placed them after taking them from me. I felt as if I were the one who’d made the paintings. I kissed the hem of his robe.

“My dear child,” he said. “I haven’t misunderstood, have I, your Enishte has passed away?”

I couldn’t answer out of excitement, or perhaps guilt, and simply nodded. At the same time the completely unexpected happened: There before the sympathetic and surprised gaze of the Head Treasurer, a teardrop slid ever so slowly down my cheek. I was at a loss; I was oddly affected by being in the palace, by the Head Treasurer having taken leave of Our Sultan to speak to me and by being so near to Him. Tears began to stream from my eyes, but I didn’t feel the slightest tinge of embarrassment.

“Cry to your heart’s content, my dear son,” said the Head Treasurer.

I sobbed and whimpered. Though I’d assumed the past twelve years had matured me, being this close to the Sultan, to the heart of the Empire, one fast realizes he is but a child. I cared not whether the silversmiths and velvet makers outside heard my sobbing. I knew I’d confess to the Head Treasurer.

Yes, I told him all, just as it came to me. As I once again saw my dead Enishte, my marriage to Shekure, Hasan’s threats, the difficulties relating my Enishte’s book and the secrets borne by the illustrations, I regained my composure. I felt certain that the only way to extricate myself from the trap I’d fallen into was to put myself at the mercy of the infinite justice and affection of Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, and so I withheld nothing. Before digesting all that I said and handing me over to the torturers and executioners, would the Head Treasurer convey my story directly to Our Sultan?

“Let Enishte Effendi’s death be announced in the workshop without delay,” said the Head Treasurer. “I want the entire artists’ guild to attend his funeral.”

He looked at me to ascertain whether I might have any objections. Emboldened by his interest, I expressed my concerns about the culprit, and the possible motive behind the deaths of my Enishte and the gilder Elegant Effendi. I hinted that the followers of the preacher from Erzurum and those who were targeting dervish houses where music was played and men danced might be involved. When I saw the doubtful expression of the Head Treasurer, I eagerly shared my other suspicions: I informed him that the monetary rewards and honor involved in being invited to illustrate and illuminate Enishte Effendi’s book had likely led to unavoidable competition and jealousy among the masters. The secrecy of the project alone could very well have instigated these hatreds, grudges and intrigues. As the words left my mouth, I sensed nervously that the Head Treasurer had somehow grown suspicious of me-the way you have as well. My dear Allah, let justice be done, that is all I ask, nothing more.

Within the ensuing silence, the Head Treasurer cast his glance away from me, as if embarrassed on my behalf for my words and my destiny, and fixed his attention on the pictures resting on the folding table.

“There are nine plates here,” he said. “The arrangement had been for a book with ten illustrations. Enishte Effendi took more gold leaf from us than has been used here.”

“That murdering heretic must have stolen the last illustration, upon which much of the gold was applied,” I said.

“You haven’t told us who the calligrapher-scribe might be.”

“My late Enishte hadn’t yet completed the book’s text. He was anticipating my help in its completion.”

“My dear child, you’ve just explained how you’re newly arrived in Istanbul.”

“It’s been one week. I arrived three days after Elegant Effendi was killed.”

“You mean to say that your Enishte Effendi has been illustrating an unwritten-a nonexistent-manuscript for an entire year?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Had he, then, revealed to you what the book was to recount?”

“Precisely what Our Sultan stated He wanted: A book that depicted the thousandth year of the Muslim calendar, which would strike terror into the heart of the Venetian Doge by showing the military strength and pride of Islam, together with the power and wealth of the Exalted House of Osman. This was intended to be a book recounting and depicting the most valuable, most vital aspects of our realm; and just as with the Treatises on Physiognomy, a portrait of Our Sultan would be situated at the heart of the book. Furthermore, since the illustrations were made in the Frankish style using Frankish methods, they would arouse the awe of the Venetian Doge and his desire for friendship.”

“I’m aware of all that, but are these dogs and trees the most valuable and vital aspects of the Exalted House of Osman?” he said, gesturing wildly at the illustrations.

“My Enishte, may he rest in peace, insisted that the book show not Our Sultan’s wealth alone, but His spiritual and moral strength along with His hidden sorrows.”

“And Our Sultan’s portrait?”

“I haven’t seen it. It’s probably wherever that heretic murderer has hidden it. Who knows, it’s probably in his house at this very moment.”

My late Enishte had been diminished to the status of a man who’d commissioned a menagerie of odd pictures that the Head Treasurer deemed worthless, rather than one who’d struggled to complete a book worthy of the gold he’d been paid. Was the Head Treasurer thinking I’d murdered an inept and untrustworthy man in order to marry Enishte’s daughter, or for some other reason-perhaps to sell off the gold leaf? From his glances, I read that my case was about to be closed, so speaking nervously and with the last of my strength, I tried to clear my name: I told him that my Enishte had confided to me that one of the master miniaturists he hired might’ve murdered poor Elegant Effendi. Keeping my declaration brief, I told him how my Enishte suspected Olive, Stork or Butterfly. I neither had much proof nor felt much self-confidence. Afterward, I sensed that the Head Treasurer considered me nothing but a base slanderer and a foolish gossip.

Finally, I was elated when the Head Treasurer said we must conceal the details of Enishte’s mysterious death from the workshop; I took this as a sign that he believed my story. The pictures remained with the Head Treasurer and I passed through the Gate of Salutation-which had earlier felt like the Gate of Heaven. After exiting under the scrutiny of the guards, I immediately relaxed, like a soldier returned home after an absence of many years.