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virtuosos, he was immediately exiled from Kazvin to China. Thus, the

competition was begun anew between the two remaining miniaturists. This

time, both painted a picture lovely as a poem, depicting a beautiful maiden

mounted on her horse in a magnificent garden. But one of the miniaturists—

whether by a slip of his brush or by intent, no one knew—had depicted

strangely the nostrils of the white horse belonging to the maiden with Chinese

eyes and high cheekbones, and this was straightaway perceived as a flaw by the

Shah and his daughter. True, this miniaturist hadn’t signed his name, but in

his splendid painting, he’d apparently included a masterful variation in the

horse’s nostrils to distinguish the work. The Shah, declaring that

“Imperfection is the mother of style,” exiled this illustrator to Byzantium. Yet

there was one last significant event according to the weighty History by

Rashiduddin of Kazvin, which occurred when preparations were being made

for the wedding between the Shah’s daughter and the talented miniaturist,

who painted exactly like the old masters without any signature or variation:

For the entire day before the wedding, the Shah’s daughter gazed grief-stricken

at the painting made by the young and handsome great master who was to

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become her husband on the morrow. As darkness fell that evening, she

presented herself to her father: “It is true, yes, that the old masters, in their

exquisite paintings, would depict beautiful maidens as Chinese, and this is an

unalterable rule come to us from the East,” she said. “But when they loved

someone, the painters would include an aspect of their beloved in the

rendering of the beautiful maiden’s brow, eye, lip, hair, smile, or even eyelash.

This secret variation in their illustrations would be a sign that could be read by

the lovers and the lovers alone. I’ve stared at the beautiful maiden mounted

on her horse for the whole day, my dear father, and there’s no trace of me in

her! This miniaturist is perhaps a great master, he’s young and handsome, but

he does not love me.” Thereupon, the Shah canceled the wedding at once, and

father and daughter lived out the remainder of their lives together.

“Thus, according to this third parable, imperfection gives rise to what we

call ”style,“” said Black quite politely and respectfully. “And does the fact that

the miniaturist is in love become apparent from the hidden ”sign‘ in the

image of the beauty’s face, eye or smile?“

“Nay,” I said in a manner that bespoke my confidence and pride. “What

passes from the maiden, the focus of the master miniaturist’s love, to his

picture is not ultimately imperfection or flaw but a new artistic rule. Because,

after a time and through imitation, everyone will begin to depict the faces of

maidens just like that particular beautiful maiden’s face.”

We fell silent. I saw that Black, who’d listened intently to the three parables

I recounted, had now focused his attentions upon the sounds my attractive

wife made as she roamed the hallway and the next room. I glared at him

menacingly.

“The first story established that ”style‘ is imperfection,“ I said. ”The second

story established that a perfect picture needs no signature, and the third

marries the ideas of the first and the second, and thus demonstrates that

“signature’ and ”style‘ are but means of being brazenly and stupidly self-

congratulatory about flawed work.“

How much did this man, to whom I’d just given an invaluable lesson,

understand of painting? I said: “Have you understood who I am from my

stories?”

“Certainly,” he said, without conviction.

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So you don’t try to discern who I am through his eyes and perceptions,

allow me to tell you directly. I can do anything. Like the old masters of Kazvin,

I can draw and color with pleasure and glee. I say this with a smile: I’m better

than everybody. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the reason for Black’s

visit, which—if perchance my intuition serves me correctly—is the disappear-

ance of Elegant Effendi the Gilder.

Black asked me about the mixing of marriage and art.

I work a lot and I enjoy my work. I recently married the most beautiful

maiden in the neighborhood. When I’m not illuminating, we make love like

mad. Then I set to working again. That’s not how I answered. “It’s a serious

issue,” I said. “If masterpieces issue from the brush of a miniaturist, when it

comes to issuing it to his wife, he’ll be at a loss to bestir the same joy,” I said.

“The opposite holds true as well: If a man’s reed satisfies the wife, his reed of

artistry will pale in comparison,” I added. Like everyone who envies the talent

of the miniaturist, Black, too, believed these lies and was heartened.

He said he wanted to see the last pages I’d illustrated. I seated him at my

worktable, among the paints, inkwells, burnishing stones, brushes, pens and

reed-cutting boards. Black was examining the double-leaf painting I was in the

process of completing for the Book of Festivities, which portrayed Our Prince’s

circumcision ceremony, and I sat beside him on the red cushion whose

warmth reminded me that my beautiful wife with her gorgeous thighs had

been sitting here recently; indeed, I had used my reed pen to draw the sorrow

of the unfortunate prisoners before Our Sultan, as my intelligent wife clung to

the reed of my manhood.

The two-page scene I was painting depicted the deliverance of condemned

and imprisoned debtors and their families by the grace of Our Sultan. I’d

situated the Sultan on the corner of a carpet covered in bags full of silver

coins, as I’d personally witnessed during such ceremonies. Behind Him, I’d

located the Head Treasurer holding and reading out of the debt ledger. I’d

portrayed the condemned debtors, chained to each other by the iron shackles

around their necks, in their misery and pain with knit brows, long faces and

some with teary eyes. I’d painted the lute players in shades of red with beatific

faces as they accompanied the joyous prayers and poems that followed the

Sultan’s presentation of His benevolent gift: sparing the condemned from

prison. To emphasize deliverance from the pain and embarrassment of debt—

though I had no such plan at the outset—beside the last of the miserable

prisoners, I’d included his wife, wearing a purple dress in the wretchedness of

destitution, along with his longhaired daughter, sorrowful yet beautiful, clad

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in a crimson mantle. So that this man Black, with his furrowed brows, might

understand how illustrating equaled love-of-life, I was going to explain why

the chained gang of debtors was extended across two pages; I was going to tell

him about the hidden logic of red within the picture; I was going to elucidate

the things my wife and I had laughingly discussed while admiring the piece,

such as how I’d lovingly colored—something the old masters never did—the

dog resting off to the side in precisely the same hue as the Sultan’s caftan of

atlas silk, but he asked me a very rude, discourteous question:

Would I, perchance, have any idea where unfortunate Elegant Effendi might

be?

What did he mean “unfortunate”! I didn’t say that Elegant Effendi was a

worthless plagiarist, a fool who did his gilding for money alone with nary a

hint of inspiration. “Nay,” I said, “I do not know.”

Had I ever considered that the aggressive and fanatical followers of the

preacher from Erzurum might’ve done Elegant Effendi harm?

I maintained my composure and refrained from responding that Elegant

Effendi himself was no doubt one of their lot. “Nay,” I said. “Why?”

The poverty, plague, immorality and scandal we are slave to in this city of

Istanbul can only be attributed to our having distanced ourselves from the

Islam of the time of Our Prophet, Apostle of God, to adopting new and vile

customs and to allowing Frankish, European sensibilities to flourish in our

midst. This is all that the Preacher Erzurumi is saying, but his enemies attempt

to persuade the Sultan otherwise by claiming that the Erzurumis are attacking

dervish lodges where music is played, and that they’re defacing the tombs of

saints. They know I don’t share their animosity toward His Excellency

Erzurumi, so they’re making polite insinuations: “Are you the one who has

taken care of our brother Elegant Effendi?”

It suddenly dawned on me that these rumors had long been spreading

among the miniaturists. That group of uninspired, untalented incompetents

was gleefully alleging that I was nothing but a beastly murderer. I felt like

lowering an inkpot onto the Circassian skull of this buffoon Black purely

because he took the slander of this jealous group of miniaturists seriously.

Black was examining my workshop, committing everything he saw to

memory. He was intently observing my long paper scissors, ceramic bowls

filled with yellow pigment, bowls of paint, the apple I occasionally nibbled as I

worked, the coffeepot resting on the edge of the stove in the back, my

diminutive coffee cups, the cushions, the light filtering through the half-

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opened window, the mirror I used to check the composition of a page, my

shirts and, over there, my wife’s red sash caught like a sin in the corner where

she’d dropped it as she quickly quit the room upon hearing Black’s knock at

the front door.

Despite the fact that I’ve concealed my thoughts from him, I’ve surrendered

the paintings I’ve made and this room I live in to his bold and aggressive gaze.

I sense this hubris of mine will be a shock to you all, but I am the one who

earns the most money, and therefore, I am the best of all miniaturists! Yes,

God must’ve wanted the art of illumination to be ecstasy so He could

demonstrate how the world itself is ecstasy to those who truly see.

77

I AM CALLED “STORK”

At about the time of midday prayer I heard a knock at the door. It was Black

from long ago, from our childhood. We embraced. He was chill and I invited

him inside. I didn’t even ask how he’d found his way to the house. His Enishte

must have sent him to question me about Elegant Effendi’s absence and his

whereabouts. Not only that, he also brought word from Master Osman.

“Allow me to ask you a question,” he said. “According to Master Osman,

”time‘ separates a true miniaturist from others: The time of the illustration.“

What were my thoughts? Listen closely.

Painting and Time

Long ago, as is common knowledge, the illustrators of our Islamic realm,

including, for example, the old Arab masters, perceiving the world the way

Frankish infidels do today, would regard everything and depict it from the

level of a vagabond, mutt or clerk at work in his shop. Unaware of today’s

perspectival techniques, of which the Frankish masters haughtily boast, their

world remained dull and limited, restricted to the simple perspective of the

mutt or the shop clerk. Then a great event came to pass and our entire world

of illustration changed. Let me begin here.

Three Stories on Painting and Time

ALIF

Three hundred fifty years ago, when Baghdad fell to the Mongols and was

mercilessly plundered on a cold day in the month of Safar, Ibn Shakir was the

most renowned and proficient calligrapher and scribe not only of the whole

Arab world but of all Islamdom; despite his youth, he had transcribed twenty-

two volumes, most of which were Korans and could be found in the world-

famous libraries of Baghdad. Ibn Shakir believed these books would last until

the end of the world, and, therefore, lived with a deep and infinite notion of

time. He’d toiled heroically all through the night by flickering candlelight on

the last of those legendary books, which are unknown to us today because in

the span of a few days, they were one by one torn up, shredded, burned and

tossed into the Tigris River by the soldiers of the Mongol Khan Hulagu. Just as

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the master Arab calligraphers, commited to the notion of the endless

persistence of tradition and books, had for five centuries been in the habit of

resting their eyes as a precaution against blindness by turning their backs to

the rising sun and looking toward the western horizon, Ibn Shakir ascended

the minaret of the Caliphet Mosque in the coolness of morning, and from the

balcony where the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, witnessed all that

would end a five-centuries-long tradition of scribal art. First, he saw Hulagu’s

pitiless soldiers enter Baghdad, and yet he remained where he was atop the

minaret. He watched the plunder and destruction of the entire city, the

slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, the killing of the last of the

Caliphs of Islam who’d ruled Baghdad for half a millennium, the rape of

women, the burning of libraries and the destruction of tens of thousands of

volumes as they were thrown into the Tigris. Two days later, amid the stench

of corpses and cries of death, he watched the flowing waters of the Tigris,

turned red from the ink bleeding out of the books, and he thought about how

all those volumes he’d transcribed in beautiful script, those books that were

now gone, hadn’t in the least served to stop this horrifying massacre and

devastation, and in turn, he swore never to write again. Furthermore, he was