My Name is Red

I AM CALLED BLACK

Various manuscript pages lay before me and the great Master Osman-some with calligraphed texts and ready to be bound, some not yet colored or otherwise unfinished for whatever reason-as we spent an entire afternoon evaluating the master miniaturists and the pages of my Enishte’s book, keeping charts of our assessments. We thought we’d seen the last of the Commander’s respectful but crude men, who’d brought us the pages collected from the miniaturists and calligraphers whose homes they raided and searched (some pieces had nothing whatsoever to do with either of our two books and some pages confirmed that the calligraphers, as well, were secretly accepting work from outside the palace for the sake of a few extra coins), when the most brash of them stepped over to the exalted master and removed a piece of paper from his sash.

I paid no mind at first, thinking it was one of those petitions from a father seeking an apprenticeship for his son by approaching as many division heads and group captains as possible. I could tell that the morning sun had vanished by the pale light that filtered inside. To rest my eyes, I was doing an exercise the old masters of Shiraz recommended miniaturists do to stave off premature blindness, that is, I was trying to look emptily into the distance without focusing. That’s when I recognized with a thrill the sweet color and heart-stopping folds of the paper which my master held and stared at with an expression of disbelief. This matched exactly the letters that Shekure had sent me via Esther. I was about to say, “What a coincidence” like an idiot, when I noticed that, like Shekure’s first letter, it was accompanied by a painting on coarse paper!

Master Osman kept the painting to himself. He handed me the letter that I just then embarrassingly realized was from Shekure.

My Dear Husband Black. I sent Esther to sound out late Elegant Effendi’s widow, Kalbiye. While there, Kalbiye showed Esther this illustrated page, which I’m sending to you. Later, I went to Kalbiye’s house, doing everything within my power to persuade her that it was in her best interest to give me the picture. This page was on poor Elegant Effendi’s body when he was removed from the well. Kalbiye swears that nobody had commissioned her husband, may he rest in divine light, to draw horses. So then, who made them? The Commander’s men searched the house. I’m sending this note because this matter must have significance to the investigation. The children kiss your hands respectfully. Your wife, Shekure.

I carefully read the last three words of this beautiful note thrice as if staring at three wondrous red roses in a garden. I leaned over the page that Master Osman was scrutinizing, magnifying lens in hand. I straightaway noticed that the shapes whose ink had bled were horses sketched in a single motion as the old masters would do to accustom the hand.

Master Osman, who read Shekure’s note without comment, voiced a question: “Who drew this?” He then answered himself, “Of course, the same miniaturist who drew the late Enishte’s horse.”

Could he be so certain? Moreover, we weren’t at all sure who’d drawn the horse for the book. We removed the horse from among the nine pages and began to examine it.

It was a handsome, simple, chestnut horse that you couldn’t take your eyes off of. Was I being truthful when I said this? I had plenty of time to look at this horse with my Enishte, and later, when I was left alone with these illustrations, but I hadn’t given it much thought then. It was a beautiful, but ordinary horse: It was so ordinary that we weren’t even able to determine who’d drawn it. It wasn’t a true chestnut, but more bay-colored; there was a faint hint of red in its coat as well. It was a horse that I’d seen so often in other books and other illustrations that I knew it’d been drawn by rote without the miniaturist’s stopping to give it any consideration at all.

We stared at the horse this way until we discovered it concealed a secret. Now, however, I could see a beauty in the horse that shimmered like heat rising before my eyes and within it a force that roused a zest for life, learning and embracing the world. I asked myself, “Who’s the miniaturist with the magic touch that depicted this horse the way Allah would see it?” as if having forgotten suddenly that he was also nothing but a base murderer. The horse stood before me as if it were a real horse, but somewhere in my mind I also knew it was an illustration; being caught between these two thoughts was enchanting and aroused in me a sense of wholeness and perfection.

For a time, we compared the blurred horses drawn for practice with the horse made for my Enishte’s book, determining finally that they’d been made by the same hand. The proud stances of those strong and elegant studs bespoke stillness rather than motion. I was in awe of the horse of Enishte’s book.

“This is such a spectacular horse,” I said, “it gives one the urge to pull out a piece of paper and copy it, and then to draw every last thing.”

“The greatest compliment you can pay a painter is to say that his work has stimulated your own enthusiasm to illustrate,” said Master Osman. “But now let’s forget about his talent and try to uncover this devil’s identity. Had Enishte Effendi, may he rest in peace, ever mentioned the kind of story this picture was meant to accompany?”

“No. According to him, this was one of the horses that lived in the lands that our powerful Sultan rules. It is a handsome horse: a horse of the Ottoman line. It is a symbol that would demonstrate to the Venetian Doge Our Sultan’s wealth and the regions under his control. But on the other hand, as with everything the Venetian masters depict, this horse was also to be more lifelike than a horse born of God’s vision, more like a horse that lived in a particular stable with a particular groom in Istanbul so that the Venetian Doge might say to himself, ”Just as the Ottoman miniaturists have come to see the world like us, so have the Ottomans themselves come to resemble us,“ in turn, accepting Our Sultan’s power and friendship. For if you begin to draw a horse differently, you begin to see the world differently. Despite its peculiarities, this horse was rendered in the manner of the old masters.”

The more we deliberated over the horse, the more beautiful and precious it became in my eyes. His mouth was slightly open, his tongue visible from between his teeth. His eyes shone bright. His legs were strong and elegant. Did a painting become legendary for what it was or for what was said about it? Master Osman was ever so slowly moving the magnifying lens over the animal.

“What is it that this horse is trying to convey?” I said with naive enthusiasm. “Why does this horse exist? Why this horse! What about this horse? Why does this horse excite me?”

“The pictures as well as the books commissioned by sultans, shahs and pashas proclaim their power,” said Master Osman. “The patrons find these works beautiful, with their extensive gold leaf and lavish expenditures of labor and eyesight because they are proof of the ruler’s wealth. An illustration’s beauty is significant because it is proof that a miniaturist’s talent is rare and expensive just like the gold used in the picture’s creation. Others find the picture of a horse beautiful because it resembles a horse, is a horse of God’s vision or is a purely imaginary horse; the effect of verisimilitude is attributed to talent. As for us, beauty in illustration begins with subtlety and profusion of meaning. Of course, to discover that this horse reveals not merely itself, but the hand of the murderer, the mark of that devil, this would augment the meaning of the picture. Then there’s finding out that it’s not the image of the horse, but the horse itself that’s beautiful; that is, seeing the illustration of the horse not as an illustration, but as a true horse.”

“If you looked at this illustration as if you were looking at a horse, what would you see there?”

“Looking at the size of this horse, I could say that this wasn’t a pony but, judging from the length and curve of its neck, a good racehorse and that the flatness of its back would make it suitable for long trips. From its delicate legs we might infer that it was agile and clever like an Arabian, but its body is too long and large to be one. The elegance of its legs suggests what the Bukharan scholar Fadlan said of worthy horses in his Book of Equines, that were it to happen upon a river it’d easily jump it without being startled and spooked. I know by heart the wonderful things written about the choicest horses in the Book of Equines translated so beautifully by our royal veterinarian Fuyuzi, and I can tell you that every word applies to the chestnut horse before us: A good horse should have a pretty face and the eyes of a gazelle; its ears should be straight as reeds with a good distance between them; a good horse should have small teeth, a rounded forehead and slight eyebrows; it should be tall, long-haired, have a short waist, small nose, small shoulders and a broad flat back; it should be full-thighed, long-necked, broadchested, with a broad rump and meaty inner thighs. The beast should be proud and elegant and when it saunters, it should move as though it were greeting those on either side.”

“That’s our chestnut horse exactly,” I said, looking at the image of the horse in astonishment.

“We’ve discovered our horse,” said Master Osman with the same ironic smile, “but unfortunately this doesn’t do us any good when it comes to the identity of the miniaturist, because I know that no miniaturist in his right mind would depict a horse using a real horse as a model. My miniaturists, naturally, would draw a horse from memory in one motion. As proof, let me remind you that most of them begin drawing the outline of the horse from the tip of one of its hooves.”

“Isn’t this done so the horse can be depicted standing firmly on the ground?” I said apologetically.

“As Jemalettin of Kazvin wrote in his The Illustration of Horses, one can properly complete a picture of a horse beginning from its hoof only if he carries the entire horse in his memory. Obviously, to render a horse through excessive thought and recollection, or even more ridiculous, by repeatedly looking at a real horse, one would have to move from head to neck and then neck to body. I hear there are certain Venetian illustrators who are happy to sell tailors and butchers such pictures of your average street packhorse drawn indecisively by trial and error. Such an illustration has nothing whatsoever to do with the meaning of the world or with the beauty of God’s creation. But I’m convinced that even mediocre artists must know a genuine illustration isn’t drawn according to what the eye sees at any particular moment, but according to what the hand remembers and is accustomed to. The painter is always alone before the page. Solely for this reason he’s always dependent on memory. Now, there’s nothing left for us to do but use the ”courtesan method“ to uncover the hidden signature borne by our horse, which has been drawn from memory through the quick and skillful movement of the hand. Take a careful look here.”

He was ever so slowly moving the magnifying lens over the spectacular horse as if he were trying to discover the location of a treasure on an old map meticulously rendered on calfskin.

“Yes,” I said, like a disciple overcome by the pressure to make a quick and brilliant discovery that would impress his master. “We could compare the colors and embroidery of the saddle blanket to those in the other pictures.”

“My master miniaturists wouldn’t even deign to lower a brush to these designs. Apprentices draw the clothes, carpets and blankets in the pictures. Perhaps the late Elegant Effendi might’ve done them. Forget them.”

“What about the ears?” I said in a fluster. “The ears of the horses…”

“No. These ears haven’t changed form since the time of Tamerlane; they’re just like the leaves of reeds, which we well know.”

I was about to say, “What about the braiding of the mane and the depiction of every strand of its hair,” but I fell silent, not at all amused by this master-apprentice game. If I’m the apprentice, I ought to know my place.

“Take a look here,” said Master Osman with the distressed yet attentive air of a doctor pointing out a plague pustule to a colleague. “Do you see it?”

He’d moved the magnifying lens over the horse’s head and was slowly pulling it away from the surface of the picture. I lowered my head to better see what was being enlarged through the lens.

The horse’s nose was peculiar: its nostrils.

“Do you see it?” said Master Osman.

To be certain of what I saw, I thought I should center myself right behind the lens. When Master Osman did likewise, we met cheek to cheek just behind the lens that was now quite a distance from the picture. It momentarily alarmed me to feel the harshness of the master’s dry beard and the coolness of his cheek on my face.

A silence. It was as if something wondrous were happening within the picture a handspan away from my weary eyes, and we were witnessing it with respect and awe.

“What’s wrong with the nose?” I was able to whisper much later.

“He’s drawn the nose oddly,” said Master Osman without taking his eyes off the page.

“Did his hand slip, perhaps? Is this a mistake?”

We were still examining the peculiar, unique rendering of the nose.

“Is this the Venetian-inspired ”style“ everyone, the great masters of China included, has begun talking about?” asked Master Osman mockingly.

I succumbed to resentment, thinking that he was mocking my late Enishte: “My Enishte, may he rest in peace, used to say that any fault arising not from lack of ability or talent, but from the depths of the miniaturist’s soul, ought not be deemed fault but style.”

However it came about, whether by the miniaturist’s own hand or the horse itself, there was no clue other than this nose as to the identity of the blackguard who murdered my Enishte. For, let alone making out the nostrils, we were having difficulty identifying the noses of the smudged horses on the page found with poor Elegant Effendi.

We spent much time searching for horse pictures that Master Osman’s beloved miniaturists had made for various books in recent years, looking for the same irregularity in the horse’s nostrils. Because the Book of Festivities, still being completed, depicted the societies and guilds marching on foot before Our Sultan, there were few horses among its 250 illustrations. Men were dispatched to the book-arts workshop, where certain figure books, some notebooks of standard forms and newly finished volumes were stored, as well as to the private rooms of the Sultan, and the harem so that they could bring back any books that hadn’t been securely locked up and hidden in the palace treasury, all of this, naturally, with the permission of Our Sultan.

In a double-leaf illustration from a Book of Victories found in the quarters of a young prince, which showed the funeral ceremonies of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent who’d died during the siege of Szegetvar, we first examined the chestnut horse with a white blaze, the gazelle-eyed gray pulling the funeral carriage and the other melancholy horses fitted with spectacular saddle blankets and gold embroidered saddles. Butterfly, Olive and Stork had illustrated all these horses. Whether the horses were pulling the large-wheeled funeral carriage or standing at attention with watery eyes trained on their master’s body covered with a red cloth, all stood with the same elegant stance borrowed from the old masters of Herat, that is, with one foreleg proudly extended and the other firmly planted on the ground beside it. All their necks were long and curved, their tails bound up and their manes trimmed and combed, but none of the noses had the peculiarity we sought. Neither was this peculiarity evident in any of the hundreds of horses that bore commanders, scholars and hojas, who’d participated in the funeral ceremony and now stood at attention on the surrounding hilltops in honor of the late Sultan Süleyman.

Something of the sadness of this melancholy funeral passed to us as well. It upset us to see that this illustrated manuscript, upon which Master Osman and his miniaturists labored so much, had been ill-treated, and that women of the harem, playing games with princes, had scribbled and marked various places on the pages. Beside a tree under which Our Sultan’s grandfather hunted, written in a bad hand were the words, “My Exalted Effendi, I love you and am waiting for you with the patience of this tree.” So, it was with our hearts full of defeat and sorrow that we pored over the legendary books, whose creation I’d heard about, but none of which I’d ever seen.

In the second volume of the Book of Skills, which had seen the brush strokes of all three master miniaturists, we saw, behind the roaring cannon and the foot soldiers, hundreds of horses of every hue including chestnuts, grays and blues, clattering along in mail and full panoply, bearing their glorious scimitar-wielding spahi cavalrymen, as they crossed over pink hilltops in an orderly advance, but none of their noses was flawed. “And what is a flaw after all!” Master Osman said later, while examining a page in the same book, which depicted the Royal Outer Gate and the parade ground where we happened to be at that very moment. We also failed to discover the mark we were searching for on the noses of the horses of various hues mounted by guards, heralds and Secretaries of the Divan Council of State in this illustration, which depicted the hospital off to the right, the Sultan’s Royal Audience Hall, and the trees in the courtyard on a scale small enough to fit into the frame yet grand enough to match their importance in our minds. We watched Our Sultan’s great-grandfather Sultan Selim the Grim, during the time he declared war on the ruler of the Dhulkadirids, erect the imperial tent along the banks of the Küskün river and hunt scurrying red-tailed black greyhounds, gazelle fawns with rumps in the air and frightened rabbits, before leaving a leopard lying in a pool of red blood, its spots blooming like flowers. Neither the Sultan’s chestnut horse with the white blaze nor the horses upon which the falconers waited, their birds at the ready on their forearms, had the mark we were looking for.

Till dusk, we pored over hundreds of horses that had issued from the brushes of Olive, Butterfly and Stork over the last four or five years: the Crimean Khan Mehmet Giray’s elegant-eared chestnut palomino; black and golden horses; pinkish and gray-colored horses whose heads and necks alone could be seen behind a hilltop during battle; the horses of Haydar Pasha who recaptured the Halkul-Vad fortress from the Spanish infidels in Tunisia and the Spaniards’ reddish-chestnut and pistachio-green horses, one of which had tumbled headlong, as they fled from him; a black horse that caused Master Osman to remark, “I overlooked this one. I wonder who did such careless work?”; a red horse who politely turned his ears to the lute that a royal pageboy was strumming under a tree; Shirin’s horse, Shebdiz, as bashful and elegant as she, waiting for her while she bathed in a lake by moonlight; the lively horses used in javelin jousts; the tempestlike horse and its beautiful groom that for some reason caused Master Osman to remark, “I loved him dearly in my youth, I’m very tired”; the sun-colored, golden, winged horse which Allah sent to the prophet Elijah to protect him from an attack by the pagans-whose wings had been mistakenly drawn on Elijah; Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent’s gray thoroughbred with the small head and large body, which stared sorrowfully at the young and lovable prince; enraged horses; horses at full gallop; weary horses; beautiful horses; horses that nobody noticed; horses that would never leave these pages; and horses that leapt over gilded borders escaping their confinement.

Not one of them bore the signature we were looking for.

Even so, we were able to maintain a persistent excitement in the face of the weariness and melancholy that descended upon us: A couple of times we forgot about the horse and lost ourselves to the beauty of a picture, to colors that forced a momentary surrender. Master Osman always looked at the pictures-most of which he himself had created, supervised or ornamented-more out of nostalgic enthusiasm than wonder. “These are by Kasım from the Kasım Pasha district!” he said once, pointing out the little purple flowers at the base of the red war tent of Our Sultan’s grandfather Sultan Süleyman. “He was by no means a master, but for forty years he filled the dead space of pictures with these five-leaf, single-blossom flowers, before he unexpectedly died two years ago. I always assigned him to draw this small flower because he could do it better than anyone.” He fell silent for a moment, then exclaimed, “It’s a pity, a pity!” With all my soul, I sensed that these words signified the end of an era.

Darkness had nearly overtaken us, when a light flooded the room. There was a commotion. My heart, which had begun to beat like a drum, comprehended immediately: The Ruler of the World, His Excellency Our Sultan had abruptly entered. I threw myself at His feet. I kissed the hem of His robe. My head spun. I couldn’t look Him in the eye.

He’d long since begun speaking with Head Illuminator Master Osman anyway. It filled me with fiery pride to witness Him speak to the man with whom I’d only moments ago been sitting knee to knee looking at pictures. Unbelievable; His Excellency Our Sultan was now sitting where I’d been earlier and He was listening attentively to what my master was explaining, as I had done. The Head Treasurer, who was at his side and the Agha of the Falconers and a few others whose identities I couldn’t make out were keeping close guard over Him and gazing at the open pages of books with rapt attention. I gathered all my courage and looked at length at the face and eyes of the Sovereign Ruler of the World, albeit with a sidelong glance. How handsome He was! How upright and proper! My heart no longer beat excitedly. At that moment, our eyes met.

“How much I loved your Enishte, may he rest in peace,” He said. Yes, He was speaking to me. In my excitement, I missed some of what He was saying.

“…I was quite aggrieved. However, it’s quite a comfort to see that each of these pictures he made is a masterpiece. When the Venetian giaour sees these, he will be stunned and fear my wisdom. You shall determine who the accursed miniaturist is by this horse’s nose. Otherwise, however merciless, it’ll be necessary to torture all the master miniaturists.”

“Sovereign Refuge of the World Your Excellency My Sultan,” said Master Osman. “Perhaps we can better catch the man responsible for this slip of the brush, if my master miniaturists are forced to draw a horse on a blank sheet of paper, quickly, without any story in mind.”

“Only, of course, if this is really a slip of the brush and not an actual nose,” said Our Sultan shrewdly.

“My Sultan,” said Master Osman, “to this end, if a competition by express command of Your Highness were announced tonight; if a guard were to visit Your miniaturists, requesting them to draw a horse quickly on a blank sheet for this contest…”

Our Sultan looked at the Commander of the Imperial Guard with an expression that said, “Did you hear that?” Then he said, “Do you know which of the Poet Nizami’s stories of rivalry I like best of all?”

Some of us said, “We know.” Some said, “Which one?” Some, including myself, fell silent.

“I’m not fond of the contest of poets or the story about the contest between Chinese and Western painters and the mirror,” said the handsome Sultan. “I like best the contest of doctors who compete to the death.”

After He’d said this, He abruptly took leave of us for His evening prayers.

Later, as the evening azan was being called, in the half dark, after exiting the gates of the palace, I hurried toward my neighborhood happily imagining Shekure, the boys and our house, when I recalled with horror the story of the contest of doctors:

One of the two doctors competing in the presence of their sultan-the one often depicted in pink-made a poison green pill strong enough to fell an elephant, which he gave to the other doctor, the one in the navy-blue caftan. That doctor first swallowed the poisonous pill, and afterward, swallowed a navy-blue antidote that he’d just made. As could be understood from his gentle laughter, nothing at all happened to him. Furthermore, it was now his turn to give his rival a whiff of death. Moving ever so deliberately, savoring the pleasure of taking his turn, he plucked a pink rose from the garden, and bringing it to his lips, inaudibly whispered a mysterious poem into its petals. Next, with gestures that bespoke extreme confidence, he extended the rose to his rival so he might take in its bouquet. The force of the whispered poem so agitated the doctor in pink that upon bringing the flower to his nose, which bore nothing but its regular scent, he collapsed out of fear and died.