第 6 章

I decided to answer with a parable: “Once upon a time there was a shah who ruled over Isfahan; he was a lover of book arts, and lived all alone in his castle. He was a strong and mighty, intelligent, but merciless shah, and he had love only for two things: the illustrated manuscripts he commissioned and his daughter. So devoted was this shah to his daughter that his enemies could hardly be faulted for claiming he was in love with her—for he was proud and jealous enough to declare war on neighboring princes and shahs in the event that one sent ambassadors to ask for her hand. Naturally, there was no husband worthy of his daughter, and he confined her to a room, accessible only through forty locked doors. In keeping with a commonly held belief in Isfahan, he thought that his daughter’s beauty would fade if other men laid eyes on her. One day, after an edition of Hüsrev and Shirin that he’d commissioned was inscribed and illustrated in the Herat style, a rumor began to circulate in Isfahan: The pale-faced beauty who appeared in one bustling picture was none other than the jealous shah’s daughter! Even before hearing the rumors, the shah, suspicious of this mysterious illustration, opened the pages of the book with trembling hands and in a flood of tears saw that his daughter’s beauty had indeed been captured on the page. As the story goes, it wasn’t actually the shah’s daughter, protected by forty locked doors, who emerged to be portrayed one night, but her beauty which escaped from her room like a ghost stifled by boredom, reflecting off a series of mirrors and passing beneath doors and through keyholes like a ray of light or wisp of smoke to reach the eyes of an illustrator working through the night. The masterful young miniaturist, unable to restrain himself, depicted the beauty, which he couldn’t bear to behold, in the illustration he was in the midst of completing. It was the scene that showed Shirin gazing upon a picture of Hüsrev and falling in love with him during the course of a countryside outing.”

“My beloved master, my good sir, this is quite a coincidence,” said Black. “I, too, am quite fond of that scene from Hüsrev and Shirin.”

“These aren’t fables, but events that actually happened,” I said. “Listen, the miniaturist didn’t depict the shah’s beautiful daughter as Shirin, but as a courtesan playing the lute or setting the table, because that was the figure he was in the midst of illustrating at the time. As a result, Shirin’s beauty paled beside the extraordinary beauty of the courtesan standing off to the side, thus disrupting the painting’s balance. After the shah saw his daughter in the painting, he wanted to locate the gifted miniaturist who’d depicted her. But the crafty miniaturist, fearing the shah’s wrath, had rendered both the courtesan and Shirin, not in his own style, but in a new way so as to conceal his identity. The skillful brush strokes of quite a few other miniaturists had gone into the work as well.”

“How had the shah discovered the identity of the miniaturist who portrayed his daughter?”

“From the ears!”

“Whose ears? The ears of the daughter or her picture?”

“Actually, neither. Following his intuition, he first laid out all the books, pages and illustrations that his own miniaturists had made and inspected all the ears therein. He saw what he’d known for years in a new light: Regardless of the level of talent, each of the miniaturists made ears in his own style. It didn’t matter if the face they depicted was the face of a sultan, a child, a warrior, or even, God forbid, the partially veiled face of Our Exalted Prophet, or even, God forbid again, the face of the Devil. Each miniaturist, in each case, always drew the ears the same way, as if this were a secret signature.”

“Why?”

1. In the pages of the Book of Festivities, we first studied the open mouth of the fox whose pelt a master of the furrier’s guild, in a red caftan and purple sash, held on his lap as the guild passed before Our Sultan, watching the parade from a loge made specifically for the event. Unmistakably, Olive had made both the fox’s teeth, which were individually distinguishable, and the teeth in Enishte’s illustration of Satan, an ominous creature, half-demon and half-giant, that appeared to have come from Samarkand.

2. On a particularly joyous day of the festivities, below Our Sultan’s loge overlooking the Hippodrome, a division of impoverished frontier ghazis appeared in tattered clothes. One of their lot made a plea: “My Exalted Sultan, we, your heroic soldiers, fell captive as we fought the infidel in the name of our religion and were only able to gain our freedom by leaving a number of our brethren behind as hostages; that is, we were set free in order to amass ransom. However, when we arrived back in Istanbul, we found everything so expensive that we’ve been unable to collect the money to save our brethren who languish as prisoners of the kaffirs. We’re at the mercy of your aid. Please grant us gold or slaves that we might take back to exchange for their freedom.” Stork clearly made the nails of the lazy dog off to the side—glaring with one open eye at Our Sultan, at our poor, destitute ghazis and at the Persian and Tatar ambassadors in the Hippodrome—as well as the nails of the dog occupying a corner of the scene depicting the adventures of the Gold Coin in Enishte’s book.

3. Among the jugglers spinning eggs on pieces of wood and turning somersaults before Our Sultan was a bald man with bare calves wearing a purple vest, who played a tambourine as he sat off to one side on a red carpet; this man held the instrument exactly the same way the woman held a large brass serving tray in the illustration of Red in Enishte’s book: doubtless the work of Olive.

4. As the cooks’ guild pushed past Our Sultan, they were cooking stuffed cabbage with meat and onions in a cauldron resting on a stove in their cart. The master cooks accompanying the cart stood on pink earth resting their stew pots on blue stones; these stones were rendered by the same artist who made the red ones on dark-blue earth above which floated the half-ghostly creature in the illustration that Enishte called Death: the unmistakable work of Butterfly.

5. Mounted Tatar messengers brought word that the Persian Shah’s armies had begun to mobilize for another campaign against the Ottomans, who thereupon razed to the ground the exquisite observation kiosk of the Persian ambassador who’d repeatedly affirmed to Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, in a cascade of pleasantries, that the Shah was His friend and harbored nothing but brotherly affection for Him. During this episode of wrath and destruction, water bearers ran out to settle the dust raised in the Hippodrome, and a group of men appeared shouldering leather sacks full of linseed oil to pour over a mob ready to attack the ambassador, in hopes of pacifying it. The raised feet of the water bearers and of the men carrying sacks of linseed oil were made by the same artist who painted the raised feet of charging soldiers in the depiction of Red: also the work of Butterfly.

I wasn’t the one who made this last discovery as I directed our search for clues, moving the magnifying lens right and left, to that picture then this one; rather it was Black, who opened his eyes wide and scarcely blinked gripped by the fear of torture and the hope of returning to his wife who awaited him at home. Using the “courtesan method,” it took an entire afternoon to sort out which of our miniaturists worked on each of the nine pictures left by the late Enishte, and later, to interpret that information.

Black’s late Enishte didn’t limit any single page to the artistic talent of just one miniaturist; all three of my master miniaturists worked on most of the illustrations. This meant that the pictures were moved from house to house with great frequency. In addition to the work I recognized, I noticed the amateurish strokes of a fifth artist, but as I grew angry at the dearth of talent shown by this disgraceful murderer, Black determined from the cautious brush strokes that it was indeed the work of his Enishte—thereby saving us from following a false lead. If we discounted poor Elegant Effendi, who’d done almost the same gilding for Enishte’s book and our Book of Festivities (yes, this of course broke my heart) and who, I gathered, had occasionally lowered his brush to execute a few walls, leaves and clouds, it was evident that only my three most brilliant master miniaturists had contributed to these illustrations. They were the darlings I’d lovingly trained since their apprenticeships, my three beloved talents: Olive, Butterfly and Stork.

Discussing their talents, mastery and temperaments to the end of finding the clue we were looking for inevitably led to a discussion of my own life as well:

The Attributes of Olive

His given name was Velijan. If he had a nickname besides the one I’d given him, I don’t know it, because I never saw him sign any of his work. When he was an apprentice, he’d come get me from my home on Tuesday mornings. He was very proud, and so if he ever lowered himself to sign his work, he’d want this signature to be plain and recognizable; he wouldn’t try to conceal it anywhere. Allah had quite generously endowed him with excess ability. He could readily and easily do anything from gilding to ruling and his work was superb. He was the workshop’s most brilliant creator of trees, animals and the human face. Velijan’s father, who brought him to Istanbul when he was, I believe, ten years old, was trained by Siyavush, the famous illustrator specializing in faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop. He hails from a long line of masters whose genealogy goes back to the Mongols, and just like the elderly masters who bore a Mongol-Chinese influence and settled in Samarkand, Bukhara and Herat 150 years ago, he rendered moon-faced young lovers as if they were Chinese. Neither during his apprenticeship nor during his time as a master was I able to lead this stubborn artist to other styles. How I would’ve liked him to transcend the styles and models of the Mongol, Chinese and Herat masters billeted deep in his soul, or even for him to forget about them entirely. When I told him this, he replied that like many miniaturists who’d moved from workshop to workshop and country to country, he’d forgotten these old styles, if he’d ever actually learned them. Though the value of many miniaturists resides precisely in the splendid models of form they’ve committed to memory, had Velijan truly forgotten them, he’d have become an even greater illustrator. Still, there were two benefits, of which he wasn’t even aware, to harboring the teachings of his mentors in the depths of his soul like a pair of unconfessed sins: 1. For such a gifted miniaturist, clinging to old forms inevitably stirred feelings of guilt and alienation that would spur his talent to maturity. 2. In a moment of difficulty, he could always recall what he claimed to have forgotten, and thus, he could successfully complete any new subject, history or scene by recourse to one of the old Herat models. With his keen eye, he knew how to harmonize what he’d learned from the old forms and Shah Tahmasp’s old masters in new pictures. Herat painting and Istanbul ornamentation happily merged in Olive.

As with all of my miniaturists, I once paid an unannounced visit to his home. Unlike my work area and that of many other master miniaturists, his was a filthy confusion of paints, brushes, burnishing shells, his folding worktable and other objects. It was a mystery to me, but he wasn’t even embarrassed by it. He took no outside jobs to earn a few extra silver coins. After I related these facts, Black said it was Olive who showed the most enthusiasm for and the most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters admired by his late Enishte. I understood this to be praise from the deceased fool’s point of view, mistaken though it was. I can’t say whether Olive was more deeply and secretly bound to the Herat styles—which went back to his father’s mentor Siyavush and Siyavush’s mentor Muzaffer, back to the era of Bihzad and the old masters—than he appeared to be, but it always made me wonder whether Olive harbored other hidden tendencies. Of my miniaturists (I told myself spontaneously), he was the most quiet and sensitive, but also the most guilty and traitorous, and by far the most devious. When I thought about the Commander’s torture chambers, he was the first to come to mind. (I both wanted and didn’t want him to be tortured.) He had the eyes of a jinn; he noticed and took account of everything, including my own shortcomings; however, with the reserve of an exile able to accommodate himself to any situation, he’d rarely open his mouth to point out mistakes. He was wily, yes, but not in my opinion a murderer. (I didn’t tell Black this.) Olive didn’t believe in anything. He had no faith in money, but he’d nervously squirrel it away. Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers. Manuscript illumination leads to painting, and painting, in turn, leads to—God forbid—challenging Allah. Everybody knows this. Therefore, to judge by his lack of faith, Olive is a genuine artist. Nevertheless, I believe that his God-given gifts fall short of Butterfly’s, or even Stork’s. I would’ve wanted Olive to be my son. As I said this, I wanted to incur Black’s jealousy, but he only responded by opening his dark eyes and staring with childlike curiosity. Then I said Olive was magnificent when he worked in black ink, when he rendered, for pasting in albums, warriors, hunting scenes, Chinese-inspired landscapes full of storks and cranes, pretty boys gathered beneath a tree reciting verse and playing lutes, and when he depicted the sorrow of legendary lovers, the wrath of a sword-bearing, enraged shah, and a hero’s expression of fear as he dodged the attack of a dragon.

“Perhaps Enishte wanted Olive to do the last picture that would show in great detail, in the style of the Europeans, Our Sultan’s face and manner of sitting,” Black said.

Was he trying to confuse me?

“Supposing this were the case, after Olive killed Enishte, why would he abscond with a picture he was already familiar with?” I said. “Or, if you like, why would he murder Enishte in order to see that picture?”

We both pondered these questions for a while.

“Because there’s something missing in that painting,” said Black. “Or because he regrets something he did and is scared by it. Or even. . .” he thought for a while. “Or, having killed Enishte, he might’ve taken the painting to do further harm, for the sake of having a memento, or even for no reason at all. Olive is, after all, a great illustrator who’d naturally have a lot of respect for a beautiful painting.”

“Even if we returned skillfully and victoriously to those wondrous paintings of Tamerlane’s time, even if we returned to that life and vocation in all its minutia—as bright Stork would best be able to do after me—in the final analysis, all of it’ll be forgotten,” I said mercilessly, “because everybody will want to paint like the Europeans.”

Did I actually believe these words of damnation?

“My Enishte believed the same,” Black confessed meekly, “yet it filled him with hope.”

The Attributes of Stork

I’ve seen him sign his name as the Sinning Painter Mustafa Chelebi. Without paying any mind to whether he had or ought to have a style, whether it should be identified with a signature or, like the old masters, remain anonymous, or whether or not a humble bearing required one to do so, he’d just sign his name with a smile and a victorious flourish.

He continued bravely down the path I’d set him on and committed to paper what none before him had been able to. Like myself, he too would watch master glassblowers turning their rods and blowing glass melted in ovens to make blue pitchers and green bottles; he saw the leather, needles and wooden molds of the shoemakers who bent with rapt attention over the shoes and boots they made; a horse swing tracing a graceful arc during a holiday festival; a press squeezing oil from seeds; the firing of our cannon at the enemy; and the screws and the barrels of our guns. He saw these things and painted them without objecting that the old masters of Tamerlane’s time, or the legendary illustrators of Tabriz and Kazvin, hadn’t lowered themselves to do so. He was the first Muslim miniaturist to go to war and return safe and sound, in preparation for the Book of Victories that he would later illustrate. He was the first to eagerly study enemy fortresses, cannon, armies, horses with bleeding wounds, injured soldiers struggling for their lives and corpses—all with the intent to paint.

I recognize his work from his subject matter more than his style and from his attention to obscure details more than his subject matter. I could entrust him with complete peace of mind to execute all aspects of a painting, from the arrangement of pages and their composition to the coloring of the most trivial details. In this regard, he has the right to succeed me as Head Illuminator. But he’s so ambitious and conceited, and so condescending toward the other illustrators that he could never manage so many men, and would end up losing them all. Actually, if it were left to him, with his incredible industriousness, he’d simply make all the illustrations in the workshop himself. If he put his mind to such a task, he could in fact succeed. He’s a great master. He knows his craft. He admires himself. How nice for him.

When I visited him unannounced once, I caught him at work. Resting upon folding worktables, desks and cushions were all the pages he was working on: illustrations for Our Sultan’s books, for me, for miserable costume books that he dashed off for foolish European travelers eager to belittle us, one page of a triptych he was making for a pasha who thought highly of himself, images to be pasted in albums, pages made for his own pleasure and even a vulgar rendition of coitus. Tall, thin Stork was flitting from one illustration to the next like a bee among flowers, singing folk songs, tweaking the cheek of his apprentice who was mixing paint and adding a comic twist to the painting he was working on before showing it to me with a smug chuckle. Unlike my other miniaturists, he didn’t stop working in a ceremonial show of respect when I arrived; on the contrary, he happily exhibited the swift exercise of his God-given talent and the skill he’d acquired through hard work (he could do the work of seven or eight miniaturists at the same time). Now, I catch myself secretly thinking that if the vile murderer is one of my three master miniaturists, I hope to God it’s Stork. During his apprenticeship, the sight of him at my door on Friday mornings didn’t excite me the way Butterfly did on his day.

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, longhaired, 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.”

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.

I AM CALLED “OLIVE”

Prior to the evening prayers, there came a knock at the door and I opened it without ceremony: It was one of the Commander’s men from the palace, a clean, handsome, cheerful and becoming youth. In addition to paper and a writing board, he carried an oil lamp in his hand, which cast shadows over his face rather than illuminating it. He quickly apprised me of the situation: Our Sultan had declared a contest among the master miniaturists to see who could draw the best horse in the shortest time. I was asked to sit on the floor, arrange paper on the board and the board on my knees and quickly depict the world’s most beautiful horse in the space indicated within the borders of the page.

I invited my guest inside. I ran and fetched my ink and the finest of my brushes made from hair clipped from a cat’s ear. I sat down on the floor and froze! Might this contest be a ruse or ploy that I’d end up paying for with my blood or my head? Perhaps! But hadn’t all the legendary illustrations by the old masters of Herat been drawn with fine lines that ran between death and beauty?

I was filled with the desire to illustrate, yet I was seemingly afraid to draw exactly like the old masters, and I restrained myself.

Looking at the blank sheet of paper, I paused so that my soul might rid itself of apprehension. I ought to have focused solely on the beautiful horse I was about to render; I ought to have mustered my strength and concentration.

All the horses I’d ever drawn and seen began to gallop before my eyes. Yet one was the most flawless of all. I was presently going to render this horse which nobody had been able to draw before. Decisively, I pictured it in my mind’s eye. The world faded away, as if I’d suddenly forgotten myself, forgotten that I was sitting here, and even that I was about to draw. My hand dipped the brush into the inkwell of its own accord, taking up just the right amount. Come now, my good hand, bring the wonderful horse of my imagination into this world! The horse and I had seemingly become one and we were about to appear.

Following my intuition, I searched for the appropriate place within the bordered blank page. I imagined the horse standing there, and suddenly:

Even before I was able to think, my hand set forth decisively of its own volition—see how gracefully—curling quickly from the hoof, it rendered that beautiful thin lower leg, and moved upward. As it curved with the same decisiveness past the knee and rose quickly to the base of the chest, I grew elated! Arching from here, it moved victoriously higher: How beautiful the animal’s chest was! The chest tapered to form the neck, exactly like that of the horse in my mind’s eye. Without lifting my brush, I came down from the cheek, reaching the powerful mouth, which I’d left open after a moment’s thought; I entered the mouth—this is how it’s going to be then, open your mouth wider now, horsey—and I brought out its tongue. I slowly turned out the nose—no room for indecision! Angling up steadily, I looked momentarily at the whole image, and when I saw that I’d made my line exactly as I’d imagined it, I forgot entirely what I was drawing, and the ears and the magnificent curve of the spectacular neck were rendered by my hand alone. As I drew the backside from memory, my hand stopped on its own to let the bristles of the brush sip from the inkwell. I was quite content while rendering the rump, and the forceful and protruding hindquarters; I was completely engrossed in the picture. I seemed to be standing beside the horse I was drawing as I joyously began the tail. This was a war steed, a racehorse; making a knot of its tail and winding it around, I exuberantly moved upward; as I was drawing the dock and buttocks I felt a pleasant coolness on my own ass and anus. Pleased by that feeling, I gleefully completed the splendid softness of the rump, the left hind leg that was slightly behind the right, and then the hooves. I was astonished by the horse I’d drawn and by my hand, which had rendered the elegant positioning of the left foreleg exactly as I had conceived it.

I lifted my hand from the page and quickly drew the fiery, sorrowful eyes; with but a moment’s hesitation, I made the nostrils and the saddle blanket. I hatched in the mane strand by strand, as if tenderly combing it with my fingers. I fitted the beast with stirrups, added a white blaze to his forehead and finished him off properly by eagerly, measuredly, yet in full proportion drawing his balls and cock.

When I draw a magnificent horse, I become that magnificent horse.

Nonetheless, before long, I not only succeeded in using figurative language to compare my own cock, and those of others that were much-talked about, to brushes, reeds, coffeehouse pillars, flutes, newel posts, door knockers, leeks, minarets, lady fingers in heavy syrup, pine trees, and twice, to the world itself, I was equally successful in comparing the asses of much-discussed pretty boys to oranges, figs, small haycocklike pastries, pillows and also to tiny anthills. Meanwhile, the most conceited of the calligraphers my age was only able to compare his own tool—quite amateurishly and without any self-confidence I might add—to a ship’s mast and a porter’s pole. Furthermore, I made allusions to old miniaturists’ dicks that would no longer rise; the cherry-colored lips of new apprentices; master calligraphers who hoarded their money (as did I) in a certain place (“the most disgusting nook”); how perhaps opium had been put into the wine I was drinking instead of rose petals; the last great masters of Tabriz and Shiraz; the mixing of coffee and wine in Aleppo; and the calligraphers and beautiful boys to be found there.

At times it seemed that one of the two spirits within me had, in the end, emerged victorious, leaving the other behind, and that I’d finally forgotten that silent and loveless aspect of myself. At these times I remembered the holiday celebrations of my childhood during which I was able to be myself along with my kith and kin. Despite all these jokes, kisses and embraces, there was still a silence within me that left me suffering and isolated in the heart of the crowd.

Who had endowed me with this silent and merciless spirit—it was not a spirit but a jinn—which always chided me and cut me off from others? Satan? But the silence within me was eased, not by the crass mischief instigated by Satan, on the contrary, by the most pure and simple stories that drove into one’s soul. Under the influence of wine, I told two stories, hoping that this would grant me peace. A tall, pale, yet pinkish-complected calligrapher’s apprentice focused his green eyes onto mine and was listening to me with rapt attention.

Two Stories on Blindness and Style

the Miniaturist Told to Ease the Loneliness in His Soul

ALIF

Contrary to what is assumed, making drawings of horses by looking at actual horses wasn’t a discovery of European masters. The original idea belonged to the great master Jemalettin of Kazvin. After Tall Hasan, the Khan of the Whitesheep, conquered Kazvin, the old master Jemalettin was not content to simply join the book-arts workshop of the victorious khan; instead he headed out on campaign with him, claiming that he wanted to embellish the khan’s History with scenes of war he’d witnessed himself. So this great master, who for sixty-two years had made pictures of horses, cavalry charges and battles without ever having seen a battle, went to war for the first time. But before he could even see the thunderous and violent clash of sweating horses, he lost his hands and his eyesight to enemy cannon-fire. The old master, like all genuine virtuosos, had in any case been awaiting blindness as though it were Allah’s blessing, and neither did he treat the loss of his hands as a great deficiency. He maintained that the memory of a miniaturist was located not in the hand, as some insisted, but in the intellect and the heart, and furthermore, now that he was blind, he declared that he could see the true pictures, scenery and essential and flawless horses that Allah commanded be seen. To share these wonders with lovers of art, he hired a tall, pale-skinned, pink-complected, green-eyed calligrapher’s apprentice to whom he dictated exactly how to draw the marvelous horses that appeared to him in God’s divine darkness—as he would’ve drawn them had he been able to hold a brush in his hands. After the master’s death, his account of how to draw 303 horses beginning from the left foreleg was collected by the handsome calligrapher’s apprentice into three volumes respectively entitled The Depiction of Horses, The Flow of Horses and The Love of Horses, which were quite widely liked and sought after for a time in the regions where the Whitesheep ruled. Though they appeared in a variety of new editions and copies, were memorized by illustrators, apprentices and their students and were used as practice books, after Tall Hasan’s Whitesheep nation was obliterated and the Herat style of illustration overtook all of Persia, Jemalettin and his manuscripts were forgotten. Doubtless, the logic behind Kemalettin Rıza of Herat’s violent criticism of these three volumes in his book The Blindman’s Horses, and his conclusion that they ought to be burned, had figured in this turn of events. Kemalettin Rıza claimed that none of the horses described by Jemalettin of Kazvin in his three volumes could be a horse of God’s vision—because none of them were “immaculate,” since the old master had described them after he’d witnessed an actual battle scene, no matter how briefly. Since the treasures of Tall Hasan of the Whitesheep had been plundered by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror and brought to Istanbul, it should come as no surprise that occasionally certain of these 303 stories appear in other manuscripts in Istanbul and even that some horses are drawn as instructed therein.

LAM

I, SHEKURE

I dreamed that my father was telling me incomprehensible things, and it was so terrifying that I woke up. Shevket and Orhan were clinging tightly to me on either side, and their warmth made me sweat. Shevket had his hand on my stomach. Orhan was resting his sweaty head on my bosom. Somehow, I was able to get out of bed and leave the room without waking them.

I crossed the wide hallway and silently opened Black’s door. In the light cast by my candle, I couldn’t see him, only the edge of his white mattress which lay like a shrouded body in the middle of the dark, cold room. The candlelight seemed unable to reach the mattress.

When I brought my hand even closer, the reddish-orange light of the candle struck Black’s weary, unshaven face and naked shoulders. I drew near to him. Just as Orhan did, he slept curled up like a pill bug, and he wore the expression of a sleeping maiden.

“This is my husband,” I said to myself. He seemed so distant, so much a stranger, that I was filled with sorrow. If I’d had a dagger with me, I would’ve murdered him—no, I didn’t actually want to do such a thing; I was only wondering, the way children do, how it’d be if I killed him. I didn’t believe he’d lived for years through thoughts of me, neither in his innocent childlike expression.

Prodding his shoulder with the edge of my bare foot, I woke him. When he saw me, he was startled more than enchanted and excited, if only for a moment, just as I’d hoped. Before he’d completely come to his senses, I said:

“I dreamed I saw my father. He confided something horrible to me: You were the one who killed him. . .”

“Weren’t we together when your father was murdered?”

At the palace, we found the Commander of the Imperial Guard and his men even more eager and ready than we. Our Sultan was certain that once we’d looked at the three masters’ horse drawings this morning we could, in a trice, determine who among them was the accursed murderer; and so, He’d ordered that the criminal be quickly put to torture without even allowing him to answer the accusation. We were taken not to the executioners’ fountain where everyone could see and take warning, but to that small slapdash house in the sheltered seclusion of the Sultan’s Private Garden, which was preferred for interrogation, torture and strangling.

A youth, who seemed too elegant and polite to be one of the Commander’s men, authoritatively placed three sheets of paper on a worktable.

Master Osman took out his magnifying lens and my heart began to pound. Like an eagle gliding elegantly over a tract of land, his eye, which he maintained at a constant distance from the lens, passed ever so slowly over the three marvelous horse illustrations. And like that eagle catching sight of the baby gazelle which would be its prey, he slowed over each of the horses’ noses and focused on it intently and calmly.

“It’s not here,” he said coldly after a time.

“What isn’t here?” asked the Commander.

I’d assumed the great master would work with deliberation, scrutinizing every aspect of the horses from mane to hoof.

“The damned painter hasn’t left a single trace,” said Master Osman. “We won’t be able to determine who illustrated the chestnut horse from these pictures.”

Taking up the magnifying lens he’d put aside, I looked at the horses’ nostrils: The master was correct; there was nothing in the three horses resembling the peculiar nostrils of the chestnut horse drawn for my Enishte’s manuscript. Just then, my attention turned to the torturers waiting outside with an implement whose purpose I couldn’t fathom. As I was trying to observe them through the half-opened door, I saw somebody scuttle quickly backward as if possessed by a jinn, seeking shelter behind one of the mulberry trees.

I was trying to read what would happen from Our Sultan’s beautiful face, which I could now look upon without fear, but He suddenly vanished. Had He been incensed and offended? Would we, or even the miniaturists as a whole, be punished on account of my master’s impudence?

Looking at the three horses before me, I imagined that I would be killed before seeing Shekure again, without ever sharing her bed. Despite the immediacy of all their beautiful attributes, these magnificent horses now seemed to have emerged from a quite distant world.

I thoroughly realized during this horrifying silence that just as being taken into the heart of the palace as a child, being raised here and living here meant serving Our Sultan and perhaps dying for Him, so being a miniaturist meant serving God and dying for the sake of His beauty.

Much later, when the Head Treasurer’s men brought us up toward the Middle Gate, death occupied my mind, the silence of death. But, as I passed through the gate where countless pashas had been executed, the guards acted as if they didn’t even see us. The Divan Square, which yesterday had dazzled me as if it were Heaven itself, the tower and the peacocks didn’t affect me in the least, for I knew that we were being taken further inside, to the heart of Our Sultan’s secret world, to the Private Quarters of the Enderun.

We passed through doors barred even to the Grand Viziers. Like a child who’d entered a fairy tale, I kept my eyes trained on the ground to avoid coming face-to-face with the wonders and creatures that might confront me. I couldn’t even look at the chamber where the Sultan held audiences. But my gaze happened to fall momentarily on the walls of the harem near an ordinary plane tree, one no different from other trees, and on a tall man in a caftan of shimmering blue silk. We passed among towering columns. Finally, we stopped before a portal, larger and more imposing than the rest, framed in ornate stalactite patterns. At its threshold stood Treasury chiefs in glimmering caftans; one of them was bending to open the lock.

Staring directly into our eyes, the Head Treasurer said: “You are truly blessed by fortune, His Excellency Our Sultan has granted you permission to enter the treasury of the Enderun. There, you will examine books that no one else has seen; you will gaze upon incredible pictures and pages of gold, and like hunters, you will track the spoor of your prey, the murderer. My Sultan bade me remind you that good Master Osman has three days—one of which is now over—until Thursday noon, in which to name the culprit in the miniaturists’ midst; failing that, the matter shall be turned over to the Commander of the Imperial Guard to be resolved by torture.”

First, they removed the cloth sheath around the padlock, sealed to ensure no key entered the keyhole without permission. The Doorkeeper of the Treasury and the two chiefs confirmed the seal was intact, signaling with a nod. The seal was broken, and when the key was introduced, the lock opened with a clatter that filled the pervasive silence. Master Osman suddenly turned an ashen gray. When one wing of the heavy, embellished-wood double door was opened, his face was struck by a dark radiance that seemed a remnant of ancient days.

“My Sultan didn’t want the scribal chiefs and the secretaries who keep inventory records to enter unnecessarily,” said the Head Treasurer. “The Royal Librarian has passed away and there’s no one to look after the books in his stead. For this reason, My Sultan has commanded that Jezmi Agha alone should accompany you within.”

Jezmi Agha was a dwarf with bright, shining eyes who appeared to be at least seventy years old. His headdress, which resembled a sail, was even more peculiar than he.

“Jezmi Agha knows the interior of the treasury like his own house; he knows the locations of books and all else better than anyone.”

The aging dwarf displayed no pride in this. He was running an eye over the silver-legged heating brazier, the chamber pot with a mother-of-pearl inlaid handle, the oil lamp and the candlesticks that the palace pages were carrying.

The Head Treasurer announced that the door would again be locked behind us and sealed with the seventy-year-old signet of Sultan Selim the Grim. After the evening prayers, at sunset, the seal would again be broken, before the witness of the attendant crowd of Treasury chiefs. Moreover, we should exercise great caution that nothing whatsoever “mistakenly” found its way into our clothes, pockets or sashes: we would be searched down to our undergarments upon exiting.

We entered, passing between chiefs standing at either side. Inside, it was ice cold. When the door closed behind us, we were enveloped in blackness. I smelled a combination of mildew, dust and humidity that drove deep into my nasal passages. Everywhere the clutter of objects, chests and helmets intermingled in a huge chaotic jumble. I had the feeling that I was witness to a great battle.

My eyes adjusted to the odd light that fell over the entire space, which filtered through the thick bars of the high windows, through the balustrades of the stairs along the high walls and the railing of the second-floor wooden walkways. This chamber was red, tinged with the color of the velvet cloth, carpets and kilims hanging on the walls. With due reverence, I considered how the accumulation of all this wealth was the consequence of wars waged, blood spilt and cities and treasuries plundered.

“Frightened?” asked the elderly dwarf, giving voice to my feelings. “Everybody is frightened on their first visit. At night the spirits of these objects whisper to each other.”

What was frightening was the silence in which this abundance of incredible objects was interred. Behind us we heard the clattering of the seal being affixed to the lock on the door, and we looked around in awe, motionless.

I saw swords, elephant tusks, caftans, silver candlesticks and satin banners. I saw mother-of-pearl inlaid boxes, iron trunks, Chinese vases, belts, long-necked lutes, armor, silk cushions, model globes, boots, furs, rhinoceros horns, ornamented ostrich eggs, rifles, arrows, maces and cabinets. There were heaps of carpets, cloth and satin everywhere, seemingly cascading over me from the wood-paneled upper floors, from the balustrades, the built-in closets and small storage cells built into the walls. A strange light, the likes of which I’d never seen, shone on the cloth, the boxes, the caftans of sultans, swords, the huge pink candles, the wound turbans, pillows embroidered with pearls, gold filigree saddles, diamond-handled scimitars, ruby-handled maces, quilted turbans, turban plumes, curious clocks, ewers and daggers, ivory statues of horses and elephants, narghiles with diamond-studded tops, mother-of-pearl chests of drawers, horse aigrettes, strands of large prayer beads, and helmets adorned with rubies and turquoise. This light, which filtered faintly down from the high windows, illuminated floating dust particles in the half-darkened room like the summer sunlight that streams in from the glass skylight atop the dome of a mosque—but this wasn’t sunlight. In this peculiar light, the air had become palpable and all the objects appeared as if made from the same material. After we apprehensively experienced the silence in the room for a while longer, I knew it was as much the light as the dust covering everything that dimmed the red color reigning in the cold room, melding all the objects into an arcane sameness. And as the eye swam over these strange and indistinct items, unable to distinguish one from another at even the second or third glance, this great profusion of objects became even more terrifying. What I thought was a chest, I later decided was a folding worktable, and later still, some strange Frankish device. I saw that the mother-of-pearl inlaid chest among the caftans and plumes pulled out of their boxes and hastily tossed hither and yon was actually an exotic cabinet sent by the Muscovite Czar.

Jezmi Agha placed the brazier in the fire niche that had been cut into the wall.

“Where are the books located?” whispered Master Osman.

“Which books?” said the dwarf. “The ones from Arabia, the Kufic Korans, those that His Excellency Sultan Selim the Grim, Denizen of Paradise, brought back from Tabriz, the books of pashas whose property was seized when they were condemned to death, the gift volumes brought by the Venetian ambassador to Our Sultan’s grandfather, or the Christian books from the time of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror?”

“The books that Shah Tahmasp sent His Excellency Sultan Selim, Denizen of Paradise, as a present twenty-five years ago,” said Master Osman.

The dwarf brought us to a large wooden cabinet. Master Osman grew impatient as he opened the doors and cast his eyes on the volumes before him. He opened one, read its colophon and leafed through its pages. Together, we gazed in astonishment at the carefully drawn illustrations of khans with slightly slanted eyes.

“ ‘Genghis Khan, Chagatai Khan, Tuluy Khan and Kublai Khan the Ruler of China,’ ” read Master Osman before closing the book and taking up another.

We came across an incredibly beautiful illustration depicting the scene in which Ferhad, empowered by love, carries his beloved Shirin and her horse away on his shoulder. To convey the passion and woe of the lovers, the rocks on the mountain, the clouds and the three noble cypresses witnessing Ferhad’s act of love were drawn with a trembling grief-stricken hand in such agony that Master Osman and I were instantly affected by the taste of tears and sorrow in the falling leaves. This touching moment had been depicted—as the great masters intended—not to signify Ferhad’s muscular strength, but rather to convey how the pain of his love was felt at once throughout the entire world.

“A Bihzad imitation made in Tabriz eighty years ago,” Master Osman said as he replaced the volume and opened another.

This was a picture that showed the forced friendship between the cat and the mouse from Kelile and Dimne. Out in the fields, a poor mouse, caught between the attacks of a marten on the ground and a hawk in the air, finds his salvation in an unfortunate cat caught in a hunter’s trap. They come to an agreement: The cat, pretending to be the mouse’s friend, licks him, thereby scaring away the marten and the hawk. In turn, the mouse cautiously frees the cat from the snare. Even before I could understand the painter’s sensibility, the master had stuffed the book back beside the other volumes and had randomly opened another.

This was a pleasant picture of a mysterious woman and a man: The woman had elegantly opened one hand while asking a question, holding her knee with the other over her green cloak, as the man turned to her and listened intently. I looked at the picture avidly, jealous of the intimacy, love and friendship between them.

Putting that book down, Master Osman opened to a page from another book. The cavalry of Persian and Turanian armies, eternal enemies, had donned their full panoply of armor, helmets, greaves, bows, quivers and arrows and had mounted those magnificent, legendary and fully armored horses. Before they engaged one another in a battle to the death, they were arrayed in orderly ranks facing each other on a dusty yellow steppe holding the tips of their lances upright, bedecked in an array of colors and patiently watching their commanders, who’d rushed to the fore and begun to fight. I was about to tell myself that regardless of whether the illustration was made today or a hundred years ago, whether it’s a depiction of war or love, what the artist of absolute faith actually paints and conveys is a battle with his will and his love for painting; I was going to declare further that the miniaturist actually paints his own patience, when Master Osman said:

“It’s not here either,” and shut the heavy tome.

In the pages of an album we saw high mountains interwoven with curling clouds in a landscape illustration that seemed to go on forever. I thought how painting meant seeing this world yet depicting it as if it were the Otherworld. Master Osman recounted how this Chinese illustration might’ve traveled from Bukhara to Herat, from Herat to Tabriz, and at last, from Tabriz to Our Sultan’s palace, moving from book to book along the way, bound and unbound, finally to be rebound with other paintings at the end of the journey from China to Istanbul.

We saw pictures of war and death, each more frightening and more expertly done than the next: Rüstem together with Shah Mazenderan; Rüstem attacking Afrasiyab’s army; and Rüstem, disguised in armor, a mysterious and unidentified hero warrior. . .In another album we saw dismembered corpses, daggers drenched in red blood, sorrowful soldiers in whose eyes the light of death gleamed and warriors cutting each other down like reeds, as fabled armies, which we could not name, clashed mercilessly. Master Osman—for who knows how many thousandth time—looked upon Hüsrev spying on Shirin bathing in a lake by moonlight, upon the lovers Leyla and Mejnun fainting as they beheld each other after an extended separation, and a spirited picture, all aflutter with birds, trees and flowers, of Salaman and Absal as they fled the entire world and lived together on an isle of bliss. Like a true great master, he couldn’t help drawing my attention to some oddity in a corner of even the worst painting, perhaps having to do with an oversight on the part of the illuminator or perhaps with the conversation of colors: As might be expected, Hüsrev and Shirin are listening to a charming recital by her ladies-in-waiting, but see there, what kind of sad and spiteful painter had needlessly perched that ominous owl on a tree branch?; who had included that lovely boy dressed in woman’s garb among the Egyptian women who cut their fingers trying to peel tasty oranges while gazing upon the beauty of handsome Joseph?; could the miniaturist who painted İsfendiyar’s blinding with an arrow foresee that later on he, too, would be blinded?

We saw the angels accompanying Our Exalted Prophet during his Ascension; the dark-skinned, six-armed, long-white-bearded old man symbolizing Saturn; and baby Rüstem sleeping peacefully in his mother-of-pearl-inlaid cradle beneath the watchful eyes of his mother and nursemaids. We saw the way Darius died an agonizing death in Alexander’s arms, how Behram Gür withdrew to the red room with his Russian princess, how Siyavush passed through fire mounted on a black horse whose nostrils bore no peculiarity, and the woeful funeral procession of Hüsrev, murdered by his own son. As Master Osman rapidly picked out the volumes and set them aside, he would at times recognize an artist and show me, or winkle out an illustrator’s signature humbly hidden among flowers growing in the seclusion of a ruined building, or hiding in a black well along with a jinn. By comparing signatures and colophons, he could determine who’d taken what from whom. He’d flip through certain books exhaustively in hope of finding a series of pictures. Long silences passed wherein nothing but the faint susurrus of turning pages could be heard. Occasionally, Master Osman would cry out “Aha!” but I kept my peace, unable to understand what had excited him. At times he would remind me that we’d already encountered the page composition or arrangement of trees and mounted soldiers of a particular illustration in other books, in different scenes of completely different stories, and he’d point out these pictures again to jog my memory. He compared a picture in a version of Nizami’s Quintet from the time of Tamerlane’s son Shah Rıza—that is, from nearly two hundred years ago—with another picture he said was made in Tabriz seventy or eighty years earlier, and then go on to ask me what we could learn from the fact that two miniaturists had created the same picture without having seen each other’s work. He answered the question himself:

“To paint is to remember.”

Opening and shutting old illuminated manuscripts, Master Osman would sink his face with sorrow into the wondrous artwork (because nobody could paint this way anymore) and then become animated with joy before poorly executed pieces (for all miniaturists were brethren!)—and he’d show me what the artist had remembered, that is, old pictures of trees, angels, parasols, tigers, tents, dragons and melancholy princes, and in the process, what he hinted at was this: There was a time when Allah looked upon the world in all its uniqueness, and believing in the beauty of what he saw, bequeathed his creation to us, his servants. The duty of illustrators and of those who, loving art, gaze upon the world, is to remember the magnificence that Allah beheld and left to us. The greatest masters in each generation of painters, expending their lives and toiling until blind, strove with great effort and inspiration to attain and record the wondrous dream that Allah commanded us to see. Their work resembled Mankind recalling his own golden memories from the very beginning. Unfortunately, even the greatest masters, just like tired old men or great miniaturists gone blind from their labors, were only vaguely able to recollect random parts of that magnificent vision. This was the mysterious wisdom behind the phenomenon of old masters who miraculously drew a tree, a bird, the pose of a prince washing himself in the public baths or a sad young woman at a window in exactly the same way despite never having seen each other’s work and despite the hundreds of years that separated them.

Long afterward, once the red light of the Treasury had dimmed and it became evident that the cabinet contained none of the gift books that Shah Tahmasp had sent to Our Sultan’s grandfather, Master Osman revisited the same logic:

“At times, a bird’s wing, the way a leaf holds to a tree, the curves of eaves, the way a cloud floats or the laugh of a woman is preserved for centuries by passing from master to disciple and being shown, taught and memorized over generations. Having learned this detail from his master, the miniaturist believes it to be a perfect form, and is as convinced of its immutability as he is of the glorious Koran’s, and just as he memorizes the Koran, he’ll never forget this detail indelibly painted in his memory. However, never forgetting does not mean the master artist will always use this detail. The customs of the workshop wherein he extinguishes the light of his eyes, the habits and taste for color of the ornery master beside him or the whims of his sultan will, at times, prevent him from painting that detail, and he’ll draw a bird’s wing, or the way a woman laughs—”

“Or the nostrils of a horse.”

“—or the nostrils of a horse,” said a stone-faced Master Osman, “not the way it’s been ingrained in the depths of his soul, but according to the custom of the workshop where he presently finds himself, just like the others there. Do you understand me?”

From a page in Nizami’s Hüsrev and Shirin, quite a few versions of which we’d thumbed through already, in a picture depicting Shirin seated on her throne, Master Osman read aloud an inscription engraved on two stone plates above the palace walls: EXALTED ALLAH PRESERVE THE POWER OF THE VICTORIOUS SON OF TAMERLANE KHAN, OUR NOBLE SULTAN, OUR JUST KHAN, PROTECT HIS SOVEREIGNTY AND DOMAINS SO HE MAY FOREVER BE CONTENTED (the leftmost stone read) AND WEALTHY (the rightmost stone read).

Later, I asked, “Where might we find illustrations wherein the miniaturist has rendered a horse’s nostrils in the same way they were etched upon his memory?”

“We must locate the legendary Book of Kings volume that Shah Tahmasp sent as a gift,” said Master Osman. “We must revisit those glorious old days of legend, when Allah had a hand in the painting of miniatures. We have many more books yet to examine.”

It crossed my mind that, just perhaps, Master Osman’s main goal was not to find horses with peculiarly drawn noses, but to scrutinize as much as possible these spectacular pictures that had slept quietly for years in this Treasury safe from prying eyes. I grew so impatient to find the clues that would unite me with Shekure, who awaited me at the house, that I’d been loath to believe that the great master might want to stay in the icy Treasury as long as possible.

Thus did we persist in opening other cabinets, other chests shown us by the aged dwarf, to examine the pictures therein. Periodically, I’d get fed up with the pictures, which all looked alike, and wish never again to watch Hüsrev visit Shirin under the castle window; I’d leave the master’s side—without even a glance at the nostrils of the horse Hüsrev rode—and try to warm myself at the brazier or I’d walk respectfully and awestruck among the heaps of cloth, gold, weapons, armor and plunder in the adjacent rooms of the Treasury. At times, prompted by an abrupt cry and hand gesture by Master Osman, I’d imagine that a new masterpiece had been found or, yes, at last a horse with a curious nose, and running to his side, I’d look at the picture the master was holding with his hand slightly atremble as he sat curled up on an Ushak carpet dating from the time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, only to encounter an illustration, the likes of which I’d never before seen, depicting, say, Satan slyly boarding Noah’s ark.

We watched as hundreds of shahs, kings, sultans and khans—who’d ruled from the thrones of various kingdoms and empires from the time of Tamerlane to Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent—happily and excitedly hunted gazelles, lions and rabbits. We saw how even the Devil bit his finger and recoiled in embarrassment at the shameless man who stood upon scraps of wood tied to the back legs of a camel so he could violate the poor animal. In an Arabic book that had come by way of Baghdad, we watched the flight of the merchant who clung to the feet of a mythical bird as he spanned the seas. In the next volume, which opened by itself to the first page, we saw the scene that Shekure and I loved the most, in which Shirin beheld Hüsrev’s picture hanging from a branch and fell in love with him. Then, looking at an illustration that brought to life the inner workings of a complicated clock made from bobbins and metal balls, birds and Arabic statuettes seated on the back of an elephant, we remembered time.

I don’t know how much more time we spent examining book after book and illustration after illustration in this manner. It was as if the unchanging, frozen golden time revealed in the pictures and stories we viewed had thoroughly mingled with the damp and moldy time we experienced in the Treasury. It seemed that these illuminated pages, created over the centuries by the lavish expenditure of eyesight in the workshops of countless shahs, khans and sultans, would come to life, as would the objects that seemed to besiege us: The helmets, scimitars, daggers with diamond-studded handles, armor, porcelain cups from China, dusty and delicate lutes, and the pearl-embellished cushions and kilims—the likes of which we’d seen in countless illustrations.

“I now understand that by furtively and gradually re-creating the same pictures for hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of artists had cunningly depicted the gradual transformation of their world into another.”

I’ll be first to admit that I didn’t completely understand what the great master meant. But the close attention my master had shown to the thousands of pictures made over the last two hundred years from Bukhara to Herat, from Tabriz to Baghdad and all the way to Istanbul, had far exceeded the search for a clue in the depiction of some horse’s nostrils. We’d participated in a kind of melancholy elegy to the inspiration, talent and patience of all the masters who’d painted and illuminated in these lands over the years.

For this reason, when the doors of the Treasury were opened at the time of the evening prayer and Master Osman explained to me that he had no desire whatsoever to leave, and that furthermore, only by remaining here until morning examining pictures by the light of oil lamps and candles could he execute properly Our Sultan’s charge, my first response, as I informed him, was to remain here with him and the dwarf.

However, when the door was opened and my master conveyed our wish to the waiting chiefs and asked permission of the Head Treasurer, immediately regretted my decision. I longed for Shekure and our house. I grew increasingly restless as I wondered how she would manage, spending the night alone with the children and how she would batten down the now-repaired shutters of the windows.

Through the opened half of the Treasury portal, I was beckoned to the magnificence of life outside by the large damp plane trees in the courtyard of the Enderun—now under a hint of fog—and by the gestures of two royal pages, speaking to each other in a sign language so as not to disturb the peace of Our Sultan; but I remained where I was, frozen by embarrassment and guilt.

WE TWO DERVISHES

Yea, the rumor that our picture was among the pages from China, Samarkand and Herat comprising an album hidden away in the remotest corner of the Treasury filled with the plunder of hundreds of countries over hundreds of years by the ancestors of His Excellency, Our Sultan, was most probably spread to the miniaturists’ division by the dwarf Jezmi Agha. If we might now recount our own story in our own fashion—the will of God be with us—we hope that none of the crowd in this fine coffeehouse will take offense.

One hundred and ten years have passed since our deaths, forty since the closing of our irredeemable, Persia-partisan dervish lodges, those dens of heresy and nests of devilry, but see for yourselves, here we are before you. How could this be? I’ll tell you how: We were rendered in the Venetian style! As this illustration indicates, one day we two dervishes were tramping through Our Sultan’s domains from one city to the next.

We were barefoot, our heads were shaven, and we were half naked; each of us was wearing a vest and the hide of a deer, a belt around our waists and we were holding our walking sticks, our begging bowls dangling from our necks by a chain; one of us was carrying an axe for cutting wood, and the other a spoon to eat whatever food God had blessed us with.

At that moment, standing before a caravansary beside a fountain, my dear friend, nay, my beloved, nay, my brother and I had given ourselves over to the usual argument: “You first please, no you first,” we were noisily deferring to each other as to who’d be the first to take up the spoon and eat from the bowl, when a Frank traveler, a strange man, stopped us, gave us each a silver Venetian coin and began to draw our picture.