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resemblance of myself, revealed to me what we’ve know all along without

admitting it: The proficiency of the Franks will take centuries to attain. Had

Enishte Effendi’s book been completed and sent to them, the Venetian

masters would’ve smirked, and their ridicule would’ve reached the Venetian

Doge—that is all. They’d have quipped that the Ottomans have given up being

Ottoman and would no longer fear us. How wonderful it would be if we could

persist on the path of the old masters! But no one wants this, neither His

Excellency Our Sultan, nor Black Effendi—who is melancholy because he has

no portrait of his precious Shekure. In that case, sit yourselves down and do

nothing but ape the Europeans century after century! Proudly sign your

names to your imitation paintings. The old masters of Herat tried to depict the

world the way God saw it, and to conceal their individuality they never signed

their names. You, however, are condemned to signing your names to conceal

your lack of individuality. But there is an alternative. Each of you has perhaps

been summoned, and if so, you’re hiding it from me: Akbar, Sultan of

Hindustan, is strewing about money and blandishments, trying to gather in

his court the most talented artists in the world. It’s quite apparent that the

book to be completed for the thousandth year of Islam will not be prepared

here in Istanbul, but in the workshops of Agra.”

“Must an artist first become a murderer to be as high and mighty as you?”

asked Stork.

“Nay, it’s enough to be the most gifted and the most talented,” I said

heedlessly.

A proud cockerel crowed twice in the distance. I gathered my bundle and

my gold pieces, my notebook of forms, and put my illustrations into my

portfolio. I considered how I might kill each of them one by one with the

dagger, whose point I held at Black’s throat, but I felt nothing but affection for

my boyhood friends—including Stork, who’d stuck the plume needle into my

eyes.

I screamed at Butterfly, who had stood up, and thus scared him into sitting

back down. Now, confident I’d be able to escape the lodge safely, I hastened

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toward the door; and at the threshold, I impatiently uttered the momentous

words I’d been planning to say:

“My flight from Istanbul shall resemble Ibn Shakir’s flight from Baghdad

under Mongol occupation.”

“In that case, you must head West instead of East,” said jealous Stork.

“To God belongs the East and the West,” I said in Arabic like the late Enishte.

“But East is east and West is west,” said Black.

“An artist should never succumb to hubris of any kind,” said Butterfly, “he

should simply paint the way he sees fit rather than troubling over East or

West.”

“So very true,” I said to beloved Butterfly. “Accept my kiss.”

I’d hardly taken two steps toward him when Black dutifully pounced upon

me. In one hand I held my satchel containing my clothes and gold coins, and

under my other arm, the portfolio filled with pictures. Taking care to protect

my belongings, I failed to protect myself. I couldn’t prevent him from grabbing

the forearm of the hand that held the dagger. But luck did not shine upon

him, either; he tripped slightly over a low worktable and momentarily lost his

balance. Instead of taking control of my arm, he ended up hanging by it.

Kicking him with all my might and biting his fingers, I freed myself. He

howled, fearing for his life. Then, I stepped on the same hand, causing him

great pain. Brandishing the dagger before the other two, I shouted:

“Halt!”

They stayed seated where they were. I stuck the point of the dagger into one

of Black’s nostrils, the way Keykavus had done in the legend. When it began to

bleed, bitter tears flowed from his imploring eyes.

“Now, tell me then,” I said, “shall I go blind?”

“According to legend, blood clots in the eyes of some and not in others. If

Allah is pleased with your artistry, he’ll bestow His own magnificent blackness

upon you and take you under His care. In that case, you shall behold not this

wretched world, but the exquisite vistas that He sees. If He is displeased, you

shall continue to see the world the way you now do.”

“I shall practice genuine artistry in Hindustan,” I said. “I’ve yet to make the

picture Allah will judge me by.”

“Don’t nourish the illusion over much that you’ll be able to escape

Frankish methods,” said Black. “Did you know that Akbar Khan encourages all

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his artists to sign their work? The Jesuit priests of Portugal long ago introduced

European painting and methods there. They are everywhere now.”

“There’s always work for the artist who wants to remain pure, there’s

always a place to find shelter,” I said.

“Aye,” said Stork, “going blind and fleeing to nonexistent countries.”

“Why is it that you want to remain pure?” said Black. “Stay here with us.”

“For the rest of your lives you’ll do nothing but emulate the Franks for the

sake of an individual style,” I said. “But precisely because you emulate the

Franks you’ll never attain individual style.”

“There’s nothing else left to do,” said Black dishonorably.

Of course, it wasn’t artistry but beautiful Shekure that was his sole source

of happiness. I removed the bloodstained dagger from Black’s bleeding nose

and raised it over his head like the sword of an executioner preparing to

behead a condemned man.

“If I so desired, I could cut off your head this instant,” I said, announcing

what was already apparent. “But I’m prepared to spare you for the sake of

Shekure’s children and her happiness. Be good to her and don’t act crudely

and ignorantly toward her. Promise me!”

“I give my word,” he said.

“I hereby grant you Shekure,” I said.

Yet my arm acted of its own accord, heedless of my words. I drove the

dagger down upon Black with all my might.

At the last moment, both because Black moved and because I altered the

path of my blow, the dagger struck his shoulder, not his neck. I watched in

terror, the deed enacted by my arm alone. Once I removed the dagger, sunk to

its handle in Black’s flesh, the spot bloomed a pure red. What I’d done both

frightened and shamed me. But if I went blind on the ship, perhaps on the

Arabian seas, I knew that I could not then take revenge upon any of my

miniaturist brethren.

Stork, afraid that his turn had come, and justifiably so, fled into the

blackened rooms within. Holding the lamp aloft, I went after him, but soon

grew frightened and turned back. My last gesture was to kiss Butterfly, and

saying farewell, to take my leave of him. Since the tang of blood had come

between us, I couldn’t kiss him to my heart’s content. But he noticed that

tears flowed from my eyes.

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I left the lodge within a kind of deathly silence punctuated by Black’s

moaning. Nearly running, I fled the wet and muddy garden, the dark

neighborhood. The ship that was to take me to Akbar Khan’s workshop would

depart after the morning azan; at that hour the last rowboat would leave for

the ship from Galleon Harbor. As I ran, tears poured from my eyes.

As I passed through Aksaray like a thief, I could faintly make out the first

light of day on the horizon. Opposite the first neighborhood fountain I

encountered, among the side streets, narrow passages and walls, was the stone

house in which I’d spent the night of my first day in Istanbul twenty-five years

ago. There, through the yawning courtyard gate, I saw once again the well into

which I wished to hurl myself in the middle of the night, tormented by guilt

for having at the age of eleven wet the mattress that a distant relative spread

out for me in a show of kind and generous hospitality. By the time I reached

Bayazid, the watchmaker’s shop (where I often came to fix the mechanism of

my broken clock), the bottle seller’s shop (where I purchased the empty crystal

lamps and sherbet cups I embellished and the little bottles I decorated with

floral designs and secretly sold to the gentry) and the public baths (where my

feet went out of habit for a time because it was both inexpensive and empty)

were all respectfully standing at attention before me and my tearful eyes.

There was nobody in the vicinity of the ravaged and burned coffeehouse,

nor anyone at the house of beautiful Shekure and her new husband, who was

perhaps in the throes of death at this very moment. I heartily wished them

nothing but happiness. While roaming the streets in the days after I’d tainted

my hands with blood, all of Istanbul’s dogs, its shadowy trees, shuttered

windows, black chimneys, ghosts and hardworking, unhappy early risers

hurrying toward mosques to perform their morning prayers always stared at

me with animosity; yet, from the moment I confessed my crimes and resolved

to abandon the only city I’d ever known, they all regarded me with friendship.

After passing the Bayazid Mosque, I watched the Golden Horn from a

promontory: The horizon was brightening, yet the water was still black. Ever

so slowly bobbing in invisible waves, two fishermen’s rowboats, freight ships

with their sails furled and an abandoned galleon repeatedly insisted that I not

leave. Were the tears flowing from my eyes caused by the needle? I told myself

to dream of the splendid life I would live in Hindustan off the splendid works

my talent would create!

I left the road, ran through two muddy gardens and took shelter beneath

an old stone house surrounded by greenery. This was the house where I came

each Tuesday as an apprentice to get Master Osman and followed two paces

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behind him carrying his bag, portfolio, pen box and writing board on our way

to the workshop. Nothing had changed here, except the plane trees in the yard

and along the street had grown so large that an aura of grandeur, power and

wealth hearkening back to the time of Sultan Süleyman had settled over the

house and street.

Since the road leading to the harbor was near, I succumbed to the Devil’s

temptation, and was overcome by the excitement of seeing the arches of the

workshop building where I’d spent a quarter century. This was how I ended

up tracing the path that I’d take as an apprentice following Master Osman:

down Archer’s Street which smelled dizzyingly of linden blossoms in the

spring, past the bakery where my master would buy round meat pasties, up

the hill lined with beggars and quince and chestnut trees, past the closed

shutters of the new market and the barber whom my master greeted each

morning, alongside the empty field where acrobats would set up their tents in

summer and perform, in front of the foul-smelling rooming houses for

bachelors, beneath moldy-smelling Byzantine arches, before Ibrahim Pasha’s

palace and the column made up of three coiling snakes, which I’d drawn

hundreds of times, past the plane tree, which we depicted a different way each

time, emerging into the Hippodrome and under the chestnut and mulberry

trees wherein sparrows and magpies alighted and chirped madly in the

mornings.

The heavy door of the workshop was closed. There was nobody at the

entrance or under the arched portico above. I was able to look up only

momentarily at the shuttered small windows from which, as apprentices

stifled by boredom, we used to stare at the trees, before I was accosted.

He had a shrill voice that clawed at one’s ears. He said that the bloody

ruby-handled dagger in my hand belonged to him and that his nephew,

Shevket, and Shekure had conspired to steal it from his house. This was

apparently proof enough that I was one of Black’s men who raided his house

at night to abduct Shekure. This arrogant, shrill-voiced, irate man also knew

Black’s artist friends and that they would return to the workshop. He

brandished a long sword that shimmered brightly with a strange red and

indicated that he had a number of accounts that, for whatever reason, he

meant to settle with me. I considered telling him that there was some

misunderstanding, but I saw the incredible anger on his face. I could read in

his expression that he was about to launch a sudden murderous assault on me.

How I would’ve liked to say, “I beg of you, stop.”

But he’d already acted.

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I wasn’t even able to raise my dagger, I simply lifted the hand in which I

held my satchel.

The satchel dropped. In one smooth motion, without losing speed, the

sword cut first through my hand and then clear through my neck, lopping off

my head.

I knew I’d been beheaded from the two odd steps taken by my poor body

which had left me behind in its confusion, from the stupid manner in which

my hand waved the dagger and from the way my lonely body collapsed, blood

spraying from the neck like a fountain. My poor feet, which continued to

move as though still walking, kicked uselessly like the legs of a dying horse.

From the muddy ground upon which my head had fallen, I could neither

see my murderer nor my satchel full of gold pieces and pictures, which I still

wanted to cling to tightly. These things were behind me, in the direction of the

hill leading down to the sea and Galleon Harbor which I would never reach.

My head would never again turn and see them, or the rest of the world. I

forgot about them and let my thoughts take me away.

This is what occurred to me the moment before I was beheaded: The ship

shall depart from the harbor; this was joined in my mind with a command to