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When no spark of recognition appeared on his face, I grew impatient. “The

nostrils of the horse are exactly like those made for my Enishte’s book,” I

exclaimed.

He lowered his magnifying lens over the horse. He bent down so far,

bringing his eye to the lens and picture, that his nose nearly touched the page.

I couldn’t stand the silence. “As you can see, this isn’t a horse made in the

style and method of the horse drawn for my Enishte’s book,” I said, “but the

nose is the same. The artist attempted to see the world the way the Chinese

do.” I fell quiet. “It’s a wedding procession. It resembles a Chinese picture, but

the figures aren’t Chinese, they’re our people.”

The master’s lens seemed to be flat against the page, and his nose was flat

against the lens. In order to see, he made use of not only his eyes, but his head,

the muscles of his neck, his aged back and his shoulders with all his might.

Silence.

“The nostrils of the horse are cut open,” he said later, breathless.

I leaned my head against his. Cheek to cheek we stared at the nostrils for a

long long time. I sadly realized that not only were the horse’s nostrils cut, but

Master Osman was having difficulty seeing them.

“You do see it, don’t you?”

“Only very little,” he said. “Describe the picture.”

“If you ask me, this is a melancholy bride,” I said mournfully. “She’s

mounted on a gray horse with its nostrils cut open, she’s on her way to be

wed, with her companions and an escort of guards who are strangers to her.

The faces of the guards, their harsh expressions, intimidating black beards,

furrowed eyebrows, long thick mustaches, heavy frames, robes of simple thin

cloth, thin shoes, headdresses of bear fur, their battle-axes and scimitars

indicate that they belong to the Whitesheep Turkmen of Transoxiana. Perhaps

the pretty bride—who appears to be on a long journey to judge by the fact

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she’s traveling with her bridesmaid at night by the light of oil lamps and

torches—is a melancholy Chinese princess.”

“Or perhaps we only think the bride is Chinese now, because the

miniaturist, to emphasize her flawless beauty, whitened her face as the

Chinese do and painted her with slanted eyes,” said Master Osman.

“Whoever she might be, my heart aches for this sad beauty, traveling the

steppe in the middle of the night accompanied by grim-faced foreign guards,

heading to a strange land and a husband she’s never seen,” I said. Then I

immediately added, “How shall we determine who our miniaturist is from the

clipped nostrils of the horse she rides?”

“Turn the pages of the album and tell me what you see,” said Master

Osman.

Just then, we were joined by the dwarf whom I’d seen sitting on the

chamber pot as I was running to bring the volume to Master Osman; the

three of us looked at the pages together.

We saw strikingly beautiful Chinese maidens depicted in the style of our

melancholy bride gathered together in a garden playing a peculiar-looking lute.

We saw Chinese houses, morose-looking caravans heading out on long

journeys, vistas of the steppes as beautiful as old memories. We saw gnarled

trees rendered in the Chinese style, their spring blossoms in full bloom, and

nightingales tipsy with elation perched on their branches. We saw princes in

the Khorasan style seated in their tents holding forth on poetry, wine and love;

spectacular gardens; and handsome nobles, with magnificent falcons clutching

their forearms, hunting bolt upright astride their exquisite horses. Then, it was

as if the Devil had passed into the pages; we could sense that the evil in the

illustrations was most often reason itself. Had the miniaturist added an ironic

touch to the actions of the heroic prince who slew the dragon with his gigantic

lance? Had he gloated at the poverty of the unfortunate peasants expecting

comfort from the sheikh in their midst? Was it more pleasurable for him to

draw the sad, empty eyes of dogs locked in coitus or to apply a devilish red to

the open mouths of the women laughing scornfully at the poor beasts? Then

we saw the miniaturist’s devils themselves: These weird creatures resembled

the jinns and giants the old masters of Herat and the artists of the Book of

Kings drew frequently; yet the sardonic talent of the miniaturist made them

more sinister, aggressive and human in form. We laughed watching these

terrifying devils, the size of a man yet with misshapen bodies, branching horns

and feline tails. As I turned the pages, these naked devils with bushy brows,

round faces, bulging eyes, pointed teeth, sharp nails and the dark wrinkled

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skin of old men began to beat each other and wrestle, to steal a great horse

and sacrifice it to their gods, to leap and play, to cut down trees, to spirit away

beautiful princesses in their palanquins and to capture dragons and sack

treasuries. I mentioned that in this volume, which had seen the touch of many

different brushes, the miniaturist known as Black Pen, who’d made the devils,

also drew Kalenderi dervishes with shaved heads, ragged clothes, iron chains

and staffs, and Master Osman had me one by one repeat their similarities,

listening closely to what I said.

“Cutting open the nostrils of horses so they might breathe easier and travel

farther is a centuries-old Mongol custom,” he said later. “Hulagu Khan’s

armies conquered all of Arabia, Persia and China with their horses. When they

entered Baghdad, put its inhabitants to the sword, plundered it and tossed all

its books into the Tigris, as we know, the famous calligrapher, and later,

illuminator Ibn Shakir fled the city and the slaughter, heading north on the

road by which the Mongol horsemen had come, instead of south along with

everyone else. At that time, no one made illustrations because the Koran

forbade them, and painters weren’t taken seriously. We owe the greatest

secrets of our noble occupation to Ibn Shakir, the patron saint and master of

all miniaturists: the vision of the world from a minaret, the persistence of a

horizon line visible or invisible, and the depiction of all things from clouds to

insects the way the Chinese envisaged them, in curling, lively and optimistic

colors. I’ve heard that he studied the nostrils of horses in order to keep himself

moving northward during that legendary journey into the heartland of the

Mongol hordes. However, as far as I’ve seen and heard, none of the horses he

drew in Samarkand, which he reached after a year’s travel on foot undaunted

by snow and severe weather, had clipped nostrils. For him, perfect dream

horses were not the sturdy, powerful, victorious horses of the Mongols that he

came to know in his adulthood; they were the elegant Arab horses that he’d

sorrowfully left behind in his happy youth. This is why for me the strange nose

of the horse made for Enishte’s book brought to mind neither Mongol horses

nor this custom the Mongols spread to Khorasan and Samarkand.”

As he spoke, Master Osman looked now at the book and now at us, as if he

could see only those things he conjured in his mind’s eye.

“Besides horses with clipped noses and Chinese painting, the devils in this

book are another thing brought with the Mongol hordes to Persia and thence

all the way here to Istanbul. You’ve probably heard how these demons are

ambassadors of evil dispatched by dark forces from deep beneath the ground

to snatch away human lives and whatever we deem valuable and how they’re

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bent on carrying us off to their underworld of blackness and death. In this

underground realm everything, whether cloud, tree, object, dog or book, has a

soul and speaks.”

“Quite so,” said the elderly dwarf. “As Allah is my witness, some nights

when I’m locked in here, not only the spirits of the clocks, the Chinese plates

and the crystal bowls that chime constantly anyway, but the spirits of all the

rifles, swords, shields and bloody helmets grow restless and begin to converse

in such a ruckus that the Treasury becomes the swarming field of an

apocalyptic battle.”

“The Kalenderi dervishes, whose pictures we’ve seen, brought this belief

from Khorasan to Persia, and later all the way to Istanbul,” said Master

Osman. “As Sultan Selim the Grim was plundering the Seven Heavens Palace

after defeating Shah Ismail, Bediüzzaman Mirza—a descendant of

Tamerlane—betrayed Shah Ismail and together with the Kalenderis that

constituted his followers, joined the Ottomans. In the train of the Denizen of

Paradise, Sultan Selim, as he returned through winter cold and snow to

Istanbul, were two wives of Shah Ismail, whom he’d routed at Chaldiran. They

were lovely women with white skin and slanting almond eyes, and with them

came all the books preserved in the Seven Heavens Palace library, books left by

the former masters of Tabriz, the Mongols, the Inkhanids, the Jelayirids and

the Blacksheep, and taken as plunder by the defeated shah from the Uzbeks,

the Persians and the Timurids. I shall stare at these books until Our Sultan and

the Head Treasurer remove me from here.”

Yet by now his eyes showed the same lack of direction that one sees in the

blind. He held his mother-of-pearl-handled magnifying glass more out of habit

than to see. We fell silent. Master Osman requested that the dwarf, who

listened to his entire account as though to some bitter tale, once again locate

and bring him a volume whose binding he described in detail. Once the dwarf

had gone away, I naively asked my master:

“So then, who’s responsible for the horse illustration in my Enishte’s

book?”

“Both the horses in question have clipped nostrils,” he said, “regardless of

whether it was done in Samarkand or, as I said, in Transoxiana, the one you’ve

found in this album is rendered in the Chinese style. As for the beautiful horse

of Enishte’s book, that was made in the Persian style like the wondrous horses

drawn by the masters of Herat. Indeed, it is an elegant illustration whose equal

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would be difficult to find anywhere! It’s a horse of artistry, not a Mongol

horse.”

“But its nostrils are cut open like a genuine Mongol horse,” I whispered.

“It’s apparent that two hundred years ago when the Mongols retreated and

the reign of Tamerlane and his descendants began, one of the old masters in

Herat drew an exquisite horse whose nostrils were indeed cut open—

influenced either by a Mongol horse that he’d seen or by another miniaturist

who’d made a Mongol horse with clipped nostrils. No one knows for certain

on which page in which book and for which shah it was made. But I’m sure

that the book and picture were greatly admired and praised—who knows,

maybe by the sultan’s favorite in the harem—and that they were legendary for

a time! I’m also convinced that for this very reason all the mediocre

miniaturists, muttering enviously to themselves, imitated this horse and

multiplied its image. In this fashion, the wonderful horse with its nostrils

gradually became a model of form ingrained in the minds of the artists in that

workshop. Years later, after their rulers were defeated in battle, these painters,

like somber women headed to other harems, found new shahs and princes to

work for in new countries, and carried with them, stowed in their memories,

the image of horses whose nostrils were elegantly cut open. Perhaps under the

influence of different styles and different masters in different workshops,

many of the artists never made use of and eventually forgot this unusual

image which nonetheless remained preserved in a corner of their minds.

Others, however, in the new workshops they joined, not only drew elegant

clipped-nosed horses, they also taught their pretty apprentices to do the same

with the encouragement that ”this is how the old masters used to do it.“ So

then, in this manner, even after the Mongols and their hardy horses retreated

from the lands of the Persians and Arabs, even centuries after new lives had

begun in ravaged and burned cities, some painters continued drawing horses

this way, believing it was a standard form. I’m also sure that others still,

completely unaware of the conquering Mongol cavalry and the clipped noses

of their steeds, draw horses the way we do in our workshop, insisting that this

too is ”a standard form.“”

“My dear master,” I said, overwhelmed with awe, “as we hoped, your

”courtesan method‘ truly did produce an answer. It seems that each artist also

bears his own hidden signature.“

“Not each artist, but each workshop,” he said with pride. “And not even

each workshop. In certain miserable workshops, as in certain miserable

families, everyone speaks in a different voice for years without acknowledging

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that happiness is born of harmony, and that as a matter of course, harmony

becomes happiness. Some painters try to illustrate like the Chinese, some like

the Turkmen and some like they do in Shiraz, fighting for years on end, never

attaining a happy union—like a discontented husband and wife.”

I saw that pride quite definitely ruled his face; the cross expression of a man

who wanted to be all powerful had now replaced the look of the morose,

pitiable old man that I’d seen him wear for so long.

“My dear master,” I said, “over a period of twenty years here in Istanbul,

you’ve united various artists from the four corners of the world, men of all

natures and temperaments, in such harmony that you’ve ended up creating