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trying to peel tasty oranges while gazing upon the beauty of handsome

Joseph?; could the miniaturist who painted ?sfendiyar’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

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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 R?za—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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

He was a Frank; of course, he was weird. He situated us right in the center

of the page as if we were the very tent of the Sultan, and was depicting us in

our half-naked state when I shared with my companion a thought that had

just then dawned upon me: To appear like a pair of truly impoverished

Kalenderi beggar dervishes, we should roll our eyes back so our pupils look