My Name is Red

I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER

You’d forgotten about me, hadn’t you? Why should I conceal my presence from you any longer? For speaking in this voice, which is gradually getting stronger and stronger, has become irresistible for me. At times, I restrain myself only with great effort, and I’m afraid that the strain in my voice will give me away. At times, I let myself go completely unchecked, and that’s when those words, signs of my second character, which you might recognize, spill from my lips; my hands begin to tremble, beads of sweat collect on my forehead and I realize at once that these little whispers of my body, in turn, will furnish new clues.

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

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

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

Do you remember the limner who stuck his tongue into his cheek when he ruled pages-to the left side if the line he drew headed right, and to the right side if the line went left; the small, thin artist who laughed to himself, chortling and mumbling “patience, patience, patience” when he dribbled paint; the septuagenarian master gilder who spent hour upon hour talking to the binder’s apprentices downstairs and claimed that red ink applied to the forehead stopped aging; the ornery master who relied on an unsuspecting apprentice or even randomly stopped anyone passing by to test the consistency of paint upon their fingernails after his own nails were completely filled; and the portly artist who made us laugh as he caressed his beard with the furry rabbit’s foot used to collect the excess flecks of gold dust used in gilding? Where were they all?

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

We also agreed that it was wrong for the Sultan to allow the master miniaturists to work at home. We recalled the marvelous warm halva that came to us from the palace kitchen on early winter evenings after we’d worked with aching eyes by the light of oil lamps and candles. Laughing and with tears in our eyes, we remembered how the elderly and senile master gilder, who was stricken with chronic trembling and could take up neither pen nor paper, on his monthly workshop visits brought fried dough-balls in heavy syrup that his daughter had made for us apprentices. We talked about the exquisite pages rendered by the dearly departed Black Memi, Head Illuminator before Master Osman, discovered in his room, which remained empty for days after his funeral, within the portfolio found beneath the light mattress he’d spread out and use for catnaps in the afternoons.

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

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

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

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

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

What was that something?

The rain continued its patter on the roof of the dervish lodge and I paced back and forth. Suddenly I said the following:

“Either our father, Master Osman, will betray and kill us, or we shall betray and kill him.”

We were stricken with horror because what I said rang absolutely true; we fell silent. Still pacing, and panicked by the thought that everything would revert to its former state, I told myself the following: “Tell the story of Afrasiyab’s murder of Siyavush to change the subject. But that’s a betrayal such as fails to frighten me. Recount the death of Hüsrev.” All right then, but should it be the version told by Firdusi in the Book of Kings or the one told by Nizami in Hüsrev and Shirin? The pathos of the account in the Book of Kings rests in Hüsrev’s tearful realization of the identity of the murderer intruding in his bedroom chamber! As a last resort, saying that he wants to perform his prayers, Hüsrev sends the servant boy attending him to fetch water, soap, clean clothes and his prayer rug; the naive boy, without understanding that his master has sent him for help, goes to gather the requested items. Once alone with Hüsrev, the murderer’s first task is to lock the door from the inside. In this scene at the end of the Book of Kings, the man whom the conspirators found to enact the murder is described by Firdusi with disgust: He is foul smelling, hairy and pot-bellied.

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

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

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

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

Black pressed a knee into each of my shoulders; he firmly situated his weight between my stomach and chest, and sat on me. I was completely immobilized. All of us were stunned and breathing hard. This is what I remembered:

My late uncle had a rogue son two years older than me-I hope he’s been caught in the act of raiding caravans and has long since been beheaded. This jealous beast, realizing I knew more than he and was also more intelligent and refined, would find any excuse to pick a fight, or else he’d insist that we wrestle, and after quickly pinning me, he’d hold me down with his knees on my shoulders in this same way; he’d stare into my eyes, the way Black was now doing, and let a string of saliva hang down, slowly directing it toward my eyes as it gained mass, and he’d be greatly entertained as I tried to avoid it by turning my head to the right and to the left.

Black told me not to hide anything. Where was the last picture? Confess!

I felt suffocating regret and anger for two reasons: First, I’d said everything I had for naught, unaware that they’d come to an agreement beforehand; secondly, I hadn’t fled, unable to imagine that their envy would reach this level.

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

How very ridiculous. I firmly closed my lips, as if the truth would escape if I opened my mouth. Part of me also thought that there was nothing left for me to do. If they came to an agreement among themselves and turned me over to the Head Treasurer as the murderer, they’d end up saving their own hides. My only hope lay with Master Osman, who might point out another suspect or another clue; but then, could I be certain what Black said about him was correct? He could kill me here and now, and later place the onus on me, couldn’t he?

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

I was able to work through the following logic: If I held my peace, nothing would happen! This gave me strength. They could no longer hide the fact that since the days of our apprenticeships they’d been jealous of me; I, who quite evidently applied paint in the best manner, drew the steadiest line and made the best illuminations. I loved them for their extreme envy. I smiled upon my beloved brethren.

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

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

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

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

“Whether or not you blind me, in the end, we’ll no longer be able to find a place for ourselves here,” I said. “If Master Osman truly goes blind, or passes away, and we paint the way we feel like painting, embracing our faults and individuality under the influence of the Franks so we might possess a style, we might resemble ourselves, but we won’t be ourselves. No, even if we were to agree to paint like the old masters, reasoning that only in this way could we be ourselves, Our Sultan, who’s turned His back even on Master Osman, will find others to replace us. No one will look at us anymore, we shall only incur pity. The raiding of the coffeehouse merely rubs salt into our wounds, because half the blame for this incident will fall to us miniaturists, who’ve slandered the respected preacher.”

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

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

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

Everything occurred so fast that I couldn’t make out what happened at first. I felt a sharp but limited pain in my right eye; a passing numbness seized my forehead. Then everything was as it had been, yet a horror had already taken root within me. The oil lamp had been withdrawn, but I could still clearly see the figure before me decisively thrust the needle, this time into my left eye. He’d taken the needle from Black only moments before, and was more careful and meticulous now. When I understood that the needle effortlessly penetrated my eye, I lay dead still, though I felt the same burning sensation. The numbness in my forehead seemed to spread over my entire head, but ceased when the needle was removed. They were looking at the needle and then at my eyes in turn. It was as if they weren’t certain what had transpired. When everybody fully understood the misfortune that had befallen me, the commotion stopped and the weight upon my arms eased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What heresy?”

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

“How did you know this?”

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

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

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

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

“Nothing seems to have changed.”

Were these three, staring into my eyes, the last sight I’d see in this world? I knew I’d never forget these moments until the end of my life, and I related what follows, because despite my regret, I also felt hope:

“Your Enishte taught Elegant Effendi that he was involved in some forbidden project by covering up the final picture, by revealing only a specific spot to each of us and having us draw something there-by giving the picture an air of mystery and secrecy, it was Enishte himself who instilled the fear of heresy. He, not the Erzurumis who’ve never seen an illuminated manuscript in their lives, was the first to spread the frenzy and panic about sin that infected us. Meanwhile, what would an artist with a clear conscience have to fear?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You cannot be certain, can you?” I said, gloating. “Even if you secretly believe that the blemish of blasphemy or the shadow of sacrilege exists in the pictures we’ve made, you could never accept this belief and express it, because this would be equivalent to giving credence to the zealots and Erzurumis who oppose and accuse you. On the other hand, you cannot claim with any conviction that you’re as innocent as freshly fallen snow, because this would mean giving up both the dizzying pride and refined self-congratulation of engaging in a secretive, mysterious and forbidden act. Do you know how I became aware that I was behaving pretentiously in this way? By bringing poor Elegant Effendi to this dervish lodge in the middle of the night! I brought him here with the excuse that we’d nearly frozen walking the streets so long. In actuality, it pleased me to show him I was a free-thinking Kalenderi throwback, or worse yet, that I aspired to be a Kalenderi. When Elegant understood I was the last of the followers of a dervish order based on pederasty, hashish consumption, vagrancy and all manner of aberrant behavior, I thought he’d fear and respect me even more, and in turn, be intimidated into silence. As fate would have it, the exact opposite happened. Our dim-witted boyhood friend disliked it here, and he quickly decided the accusations of blasphemy he’d learned from your Enishte were quite on the mark. So, our beloved apprenticeship companion, who’d at first implored, ”Help me, convince me that we won’t go to Hell so I might sleep in peace tonight,“ in a newfound, threatening tone, began to insist that ”this will end in nothing but evil.“ He was convinced the preacher hoja from Erzurum would hear the rumors that in the final picture we’d veered from the orders of Our Sultan, who’d never forgive this transgression. Convincing him everything was clear skies and sunshine was nearly impossible. He’d tell all to the preacher’s dull congregation, exaggerating Enishte’s absurdities, the anxieties about affronts to the religion and rendering the Devil in a favorable light, and they’d naturally believe every slanderous word. I don’t have to tell you how, not only the artisans, but the entire society of craftsmen have grown jealous of us since we’ve become the intense focus of Our Sultan’s attention. Now all of them will gleefully declare in unison ”the miniaturists are mired in heresy.“ Furthermore, the cooperation between Enishte and Elegant Effendi would prove this slander true. I say ”slander“ because I don’t believe in what my brother Elegant said about the book and the last picture. Even then, I would hear nothing against your late Enishte. I found it quite appropriate that Our Sultan turn his favors from Master Osman to Enishte Effendi, and I even believed, if not to the same degree, what Enishte described to me at length about the Frankish masters and their artistry. I used to believe quite sincerely that we Ottoman artists could comfortably take from this or that aspect of the Frankish methods as much as our hearts desired or as much as could be seen during a visit abroad-without bartering with the Devil or bringing any great harm upon us. Life was easy; your Enishte, may he rest in peace, had succeeded Master Osman, and was a new father to me in this new life.”

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

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

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

When I heard them agree with me, I felt like crying. I was going to say it was because their compassion, which I hardly deserved, softened my heart, but no. I was going to say it was because I again heard the thud of his body hitting the bottom of the well wherein I dropped him after killing him, but no. I was going to say it was because I remembered how happy I was before becoming a murderer, how I’d been like everybody else, but no. The blind man who used to pass through our neighborhood in my childhood appeared in my mind’s eye: He’d take a dirty metal water dipper out of his even dirtier clothes, and would call out to us neighborhood kids who watched him from a distance, there by the local water fountain, “My children, which of you will fill this blind old man’s drinking cup with water from the fountain?” When no one went to his aid, he’d say, “It’d be a good turn, my children, a pious deed!” The color of his irises had faded and they were nearly the same color as the whites of his eyes.

Agitated by the thought of resembling that blind old man, I confessed how I did away with Enishte Effendi hurriedly, without savoring any of it. I was neither too honest nor too insincere with them: I found a medium consistency, such that the story wouldn’t trouble my heart too much, and they’d be assured I hadn’t gone to Enishte’s house to murder him. I wanted to make clear that it wasn’t a premeditated murder, which intent they gathered when I reminded them of the following while trying to absolve myself: “Without harboring bad intentions, one never goes to Hell.”

“After surrendering Elegant Effendi to the Angels of Allah,” I said thoughtfully, “what the dearly departed expressed to me in his last moments started to gnaw at me like a worm. Having caused me to bloody my hands, the final painting loomed larger in my mind, and so, resolving to see it, I went to your Enishte, who no longer summoned any of us to his house. Not only did he refuse to reveal the painting, he behaved as if nothing were the matter. There was, he sniffled, neither a painting nor anything else so mysterious that it called for murder! To preempt further humiliation, and to get his attention, I thereupon confessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendi and tossed him into a well. Yes, then he took me more seriously, but he continued to humiliate me all the same. How could a man who humiliates his son be a father? Great Master Osman would become irate with us, he’d beat us, but he never once humiliated us. Oh my brothers, we’ve made a grave mistake by betraying him.”

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

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

“How did he respond?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is nothing but the will of Satan.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the light of the oil lamp, I showed them the final picture, which I’d taken from Enishte’s house the day I killed him. At first, I watched their curious and timid expressions as they looked at the double-leaf picture. I circled around and joined them, and I was ever so faintly trembling as I stared. The lancing of my eyes, or perhaps a sudden rapture, made me feverish.

The pictures we made on various parts of the two pages over the past year-tree, horse, Satan, Death, dog and woman-were arranged, large and small, according to Enishte’s albeit inept new method of composition, in such a way that the dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s gilding and borders made us feel we were no longer looking at a page from a book but at the world seen through a window. In the center of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve been, was my own portrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was somewhat unsatisfied with it because after laboring in vain for days, looking into a mirror and erasing and reworking, I was unable to achieve a good resemblance; still, I felt unbridled elation because the picture not only situated me at the center of a vast world, but for some unaccountable and diabolic reason, it made me appear more profound, complicated and mysterious than I actually was. I wanted only that my artist brethren recognize, understand and share in my exuberance. I was both the center of everything, like a sultan or a king, and, at the same time, myself. The situation fed my pride as it increased my embarrassment. Finally these two feelings balanced each other, and I was able to relax and take dizzying pleasure in the picture. But for this pleasure to be complete, I knew every mark on my face and shirt, all of the wrinkles, shadows, moles and boils, every detail from my whiskers to the weave of my clothes and all their colors in all their shades had to be perfect, down to the minutest details, as much as the skill of Frankish painters would allow.

I noted in the faces of my old companions fear, bewilderment and the inescapable feeling devouring us all: jealousy. Along with the angry revulsion they felt toward a man hopelessly mired in sin, they were also envious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I pity beautiful Shekure because she had no alternative but to marry you,” I said. “If I hadn’t been forced to kill Elegant Effendi to save you all from ruin, she would’ve married me and been happy. Indeed, I was the one who most fully understood the tales and talents of the Europeans as her father recounted them to us. So, listen carefully to the last of what I will tell you: There is no longer any place here in Istanbul for us master miniaturists who wish to live by skill and honor alone. Yes, this is what I’ve realized. If we’re reduced to imitating the Frankish masters, as the late Enishte and Our Sultan desired, we will be restrained, if not by the Ezurumis and those like Elegant Effendi, then by the justified cowardice within us, and we won’t be able to continue. If we fall sway to the Devil and continue, betraying everything that has come before in a futile attempt to attain a style and European character, we will still fail-just as I failed in making this self-portrait despite all my proficiency and knowledge. This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fair resemblance of myself, revealed to me what we’ve know all along without admitting it: The proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to attain. Had Enishte Effendi’s book been completed and sent to them, the Venetian masters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would’ve reached the Venetian Doge-that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans have given up being Ottoman and would no longer fear us. How wonderful it would be if we could persist on the path of the old masters! But no one wants this, neither His Excellency Our Sultan, nor Black Effendi-who is melancholy because he has no portrait of his precious Shekure. In that case, sit yourselves down and do nothing but ape the Europeans century after century! Proudly sign your names to your imitation paintings. The old masters of Herat tried to depict the world the way God saw it, and to conceal their individuality they never signed their names. You, however, are condemned to signing your names to conceal your lack of individuality. But there is an alternative. Each of you has perhaps been summoned, and if so, you’re hiding it from me: Akbar, Sultan of Hindustan, is strewing about money and blandishments, trying to gather in his court the most talented artists in the world. It’s quite apparent that the book to be completed for the thousandth year of Islam will not be prepared here in Istanbul, but in the workshops of Agra.”

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

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

A proud cockerel crowed twice in the distance. I gathered my bundle and my gold pieces, my notebook of forms, and put my illustrations into my portfolio. I considered how I might kill each of them one by one with the dagger, whose point I held at Black’s throat, but I felt nothing but affection for my boyhood friends-including Stork, who’d stuck the plume needle into my eyes.

I screamed at Butterfly, who had stood up, and thus scared him into sitting back down. Now, confident I’d be able to escape the lodge safely, I hastened toward the door; and at the threshold, I impatiently uttered the momentous words I’d been planning to say:

“My flight from Istanbul shall resemble Ibn Shakir’s flight from Baghdad under Mongol occupation.”

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

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

“But East is east and West is west,” said Black.

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

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

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

“Halt!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aye,” said Stork, “going blind and fleeing to nonexistent countries.”

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

“For the rest of your lives you’ll do nothing but emulate the Franks for the sake of an individual style,” I said. “But precisely because you emulate the Franks you’ll never attain individual style.”

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

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

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

“I give my word,” he said.

“I hereby grant you Shekure,” I said.

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

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

Stork, afraid that his turn had come, and justifiably so, fled into the blackened rooms within. Holding the lamp aloft, I went after him, but soon grew frightened and turned back. My last gesture was to kiss Butterfly, and saying farewell, to take my leave of him. Since the tang of blood had come between us, I couldn’t kiss him to my heart’s content. But he noticed that tears flowed from my eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he’d already acted.

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

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

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

From the muddy ground upon which my head had fallen, I could neither see my murderer nor my satchel full of gold pieces and pictures, which I still wanted to cling to tightly. These things were behind me, in the direction of the hill leading down to the sea and Galleon Harbor which I would never reach. My head would never again turn and see them, or the rest of the world. I forgot about them and let my thoughts take me away.

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

This is what they call death.

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

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

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

All time had now become this time.

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

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