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unleash such a fit of crying? She wanted to go upstairs and see him.

“He’s not upstairs,” I said. “He’s in the back room.”

She gazed at me suspiciously. But when she realized I couldn’t bear another

look at him, she was overcome by curiosity. She grabbed the lamp and left. She

took four or five steps beyond the entrance of the kitchen, where I stood, and

with respect and apprehension, she slowly pushed open the door of the room,

and by the light of the lamp she was holding, looked inside. Unable at first to

see my father, she raised the lamp even higher, trying to illuminate the corners

of the large rectangular room.

“Aaah!” she screamed. She’d caught sight of my father where I’d left him

just beside the door. Frozen, she gazed at him. The shadow she cast along the

floor and stable wall was motionless. As she looked, I imagined what she was

seeing. When she returned, she wasn’t crying. I was relieved to see that she

still had her wits about her, enough to be able to register completely what I

was prepared to tell her.

“Now listen to me, Hayriye,” I said. As I spoke, I waved the fish knife, which

my hand had grabbed seemingly on its own. “The upstairs has been ransacked

too; the same accursed demon has destroyed all, he’s made a shambles of

everything. That’s where he crushed my father’s face and skull; that’s where he

killed him. I brought him down here so the children wouldn’t see and so I

might have a chance to caution you. After you three left, I also went out.

Father was home by himself.”

“I was not aware of that,” she said insolently. “Where were you?”

I wanted her to take careful note of my silence. Then I said, “I was with

Black. I met with Black in the house of the Hanged Jew. But you won’t breathe

a word of this to anyone. Nor, for the time being, will you mention that my

father has been killed.”

“Who was it that murdered him?”

Was she truly such an idiot or was she trying to corner me?

“If I knew, I wouldn’t hide the fact that he was dead,” I said. “I don’t know.

Do you?”

“How should I know anything?” she said. “What are we going to do now?”

“You’re going to behave as if nothing whatsoever has happened,” I said. I

felt the urge to wail, to burst out crying, but I restrained myself. We both were

quiet.

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Much later, I said, “Forget about the fish for now, set out the dishes for the

children.”

She objected and started to cry, and I put my arms around her. We hugged

each other tightly. I loved her then, momentarily pitying, not only myself and

the children, but all of us. But even as we embraced, a worm of doubt was

anxiously gnawing at me. You know where I was while my father was being

murdered. To further my own designs, I’d cleared the house of Hayriye and the

children. You know that leaving my father alone in the house was an

unforeseen coincidence…But did Hayriye know? Did she comprehend what I’d

explained to her, will she understand? Indeed, yes, she’d quickly understand

and grow suspicious. I hugged her even tighter; but I knew that with her slave

girl’s mind she’d assume I was doing this to cover up my wiles, and before

long even I felt as if I were deceiving her. While my father was being murdered

here, I was with Black engaged in an act of lovemaking. If it were only Hayriye

who knew this, I wouldn’t feel as guilty, but I suspect that you might make

something of it as well. So, admit it, you believe that I’m hiding something.

Alas, poor woman! Could my fate be any darker? I began to cry, then Hayriye

cried, and we embraced again.

I pretended to satisfy my hunger at the table we’d set upstairs. From time

to time, with the excuse of “checking on Grandfather,” I would step into the

other room and burst into tears. Later because the children were scared and

agitated, they snuggled up tightly next to me in bed. For a long while they

were unable to sleep for fear of jinns, and as they tossed and turned they kept

asking, “I heard a noise, did you hear it?” To lull them to sleep, I promised to

tell them a love story. You know how words take wing in the darkness.

“Mother, you’re not going to get married are you?” said Shevket.

“Listen to me,” I said. “There was a prince who, from afar, fell in love with a

strikingly beautiful maiden. How did this happen? I’ll tell you how. Before

laying eyes on the pretty maiden, he’d seen her portrait, that’s how.”

As I would often do when I was upset and troubled, I recounted the tale not

from memory, but improvising according to how I felt at that time. And since I

colored it using a palette of my own memories and worries, what I recounted

became a kind of melancholy illustration to accompany all that had happened

to me.

After both children fell asleep, I left the warm bed and, together with

Hayriye, cleaned up what that vile demon had scattered about. We picked up

ruined chests, books, cloth, ceramic cups, earthenware pots, plates and inkpots

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that had been thrown about and shattered; we cleared away a demolished

folding worktable, paint boxes and papers that had been torn up with furious

hatred; and while doing so one of us, periodically, would stop and break down

crying. It was as though we were more distraught over the wreckage of the

rooms and their furnishings and the savage violation of our privacy, than we

were over my father’s death. I can tell you from experience, unfortunates

who’ve lost loved ones are comforted by the unchanged presence of objects in

the house; they’re lulled by the sameness of the curtains, blankets and

daylight, which, in turn, allows them occasionally to forget that Azrael has

carried away their beloved or kin. The house that my father looked after with

patience and love, whose nooks and doors he had meticulously embellished,

had been mercilessly vandalized; thus, we were not only devoid of comfort and

pleasant memories but, reminded of the pitilessness of the culprit’s damned

soul, we were terrified as well.

When, for example, at my insistence we went downstairs, drew fresh water

from the well, performed our ablutions and were reciting from the “Family of

Imran” chapter—which my dearly departed father said he loved so much

because it mentioned hope and death—out of his most cherished Herat-

bound Koran, we were under sway of this terror and alarmed that the

courtyard gate had begun to creak. It was nothing. But, after we checked that

the latch was locked, and barricaded the gate by moving with our combined

strength the planter of sweet basil that my father would water on spring

mornings with freshly drawn well water, we reentered the house in the dead of

night, and it suddenly seemed that the elongated shadows we were casting by

the light of the oil lamp belonged to others. Most frightening of all was the

horror that overcame us like a silent act of piety, as we solemnly washed his

bloodied face and changed his clothes so that I might deceive myself into

believing that my father had died at his appointed time; “Hand me his sleeve

from underneath,” Hayriye had whispered to me.

As we removed his bloody clothes and undergarments, what aroused our

amazement and awe was the vitality and whitish color of my father’s skin

illuminated by candlelight. Because there were many more threatening things

to frighten us, neither of us was shy about looking at my father’s sprawling

naked body covered with moles and wounds. When Hayriye went back

upstairs to fetch clean undergarments and his green silk shirt, unable to

restrain myself, I looked down there and was immediately quite ashamed at

what I’d done. After I’d dressed my father in fresh clothes and carefully

cleaned the blood off his neck, face and hair, I embraced him with all my

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strength, and burying my nose in his beard, I inhaled his scent and cried at

length.

For those of you who would accuse me of lacking feeling, or even of being

guilty, let me hasten to tell of two further instances when I broke down crying:

1. When I was tidying the upstairs room so the children wouldn’t discover

what had happened and I brought a seashell he’d used as a paper burnisher to

my ear, as I’d done as a child, only to discover that the sound of the sea had

diminished. 2. When I saw that the red velvet cushion my father sat upon

often over the last twenty years—so much so it’d become part of his rear

end—had been torn apart.

When everything in the house, excluding the damage that was beyond

repair, was put back in order, I mercilessly denied Hayriye’s request to spread

her roll-up mattress out in our room. “I don’t want the children to get

suspicious in the morning,” I explained to her. But, to be honest, I was as eager

to be alone with my children as I was to punish her. I entered my bed but was

unable to sleep for a long while, not because I was preoccupied with the

horror of what had happened, but because I was considering all that yet lay in

store.

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I AM RED

I appeared in Ghazni when Book of Kings poet Firdusi completed the final line

of a quatrain with the most intricate of rhymes, besting the court poets of

Shah Mahmud, who ridiculed him as being nothing but a peasant. I was there

on the quiver of Book of Kings hero Rüstem when he traveled far and wide in

pursuit of his missing steed; I became the blood that spewed forth when he

cut the notorious ogre in half with his wondrous sword; and I was in the folds

of the quilt upon which he made furious love with the beautiful daughter of

the king who’d received him as a guest. Verily and truly, I’ve been everywhere

and am everywhere. I emerged as Tur traitorously decapitated his brother Iraj;

as legendary armies, spectacular as a dream, clashed on the steppes; and as

Alexander’s lifeblood shimmered brightly from his handsome nose after he

suffered sunstroke. Yes, Shah Behram Gür spent every night of the week with a

different beauty beneath domes of varying color from distant lands, listening

to the story she recounted, and I was upon the outfit of the striking maiden

he visited on a Tuesday, whose picture he’d fallen in love with, just as I

appeared from the crown to the caftan of Hüsrev, who’d fallen in love with

Shirin’s picture. Verily, I was visible upon the military banners of armies

besieging fortresses, upon the tablecloths covering tables set for feasts, upon

the velvet caftans of ambassadors kissing the feet of sultans, and wherever the

sword, whose legends children loved, was depicted. Yes, handsome almond-

eyed apprentices applied me with elegant brushes to thick paper from

Hindustan and Bukhara; I embellished Ushak carpets, wall ornamentation, the

combs of fighting cocks, pomegranates, the fruits of fabled lands, the mouth

of Satan, the subtle accent lines within picture borders, the curled embroidery

on tents, flowers barely visible to the naked eye made for the artist’s own

pleasure, blouses worn by stunning women with outstretched necks watching

the street through open shutters, the sour-cherry eyes of bird statues made of

sugar, the stockings of shepherds, the dawns described in legends and the

corpses and wounds of thousands, nay, tens of thousands of lovers, warriors

and shahs. I love engaging in scenes of war where blood blooms like poppies;

appearing on the caftan of the most proficient of bards listening to music on a

countryside outing as pretty boys and poets partake of wine; I love

illuminating the wings of angels, the lips of maidens, the death wounds of

corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood.

I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a color?

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Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness.

Because I’ve listened to souls whispering—like the susurrus of the wind—

from book to book and object to object for tens of thousands of years, allow

me to say that my touch resembles the touch of angels. Part of me, the serious

half, calls out to your vision while the mirthful half soars through the air with

your glances.

I’m so fortunate to be red! I’m fiery. I’m strong. I know men take notice of

me and that I cannot be resisted.

I do not conceal myself: For me, delicacy manifests itself neither in

weakness nor in subtlety, but through determination and will. So, I draw

attention to myself. I’m not afraid of other colors, shadows, crowds or even of

loneliness. How wonderful it is to cover a surface that awaits me with my own

victorious being! Wherever I’m spread, I see eyes shine, passions increase,

eyebrows rise and heartbeats quicken. Behold how wonderful it is to live!

Behold how wonderful to see. Behold: Living is seeing. I am everywhere. Life

begins with and returns to me. Have faith in what I tell you.

Hush and listen to how I developed such a magnificent red tone. A master

miniaturist, an expert in paints, furiously pounded the best variety of dried

red beetle from the hottest climes of Hindustan into a fine powder using his

mortar and pestle. He prepared five drachmas of the red powder, one drachma

of soapwort and a half drachma of lotor. He boiled the soapwort in a pot

containing three okkas of water. Next, he mixed thoroughly the lotor into the

water. He let it boil for as long as it took to drink an excellent cup of coffee. As

he enjoyed his coffee, I grew as impatient as a child about to be born. The

coffee had cleared the master’s mind and given him the eyes of a jinn. He