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and they sold his belongings. Thanks to the master storyteller who purchased

me, I’ve come all the way to Istanbul. Now, I’m most happy, and honored to

be here tonight among you, the Ottoman Sultan’s miraculously inspired,

eagle-eyed, iron-willed, elegant-wristed, sensitive-spirited miniaturists and

calligraphers—and for Heaven’s sake, I beg of you not to believe those who

claim I’ve been hastily sketched onto coarse paper by some master miniaturist

as a wall prop.

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But hear yet what other lies, slander and brazen untruths are being spread!

You might remember how last night my master nailed the picture of a dog

here on the wall and recounted the adventures of this crass beast; and how at

the same time he told of the adventures of Husret Hoja of Erzurum! Well now,

the admirers of His Excellency Nusret Hoja have completely misunderstood

this story; they think he was the target of our account. Could we have possibly

said that the great preacher, His Esteemed Excellency, was of uncertain birth?

God forbid! Would it have even crossed our minds? What mischief, what a

crude lie! Clearly, Husret of Erzurum is being confused with Nusret of

Erzurum, so let me proceed to tell you the story of Cross-Eyed Nedret Hoja of

Sivas and the Tree.

Besides denouncing the wooing of pretty boys and the art of painting, this

Cross-Eyed Nedret Hoja of Sivas maintained that coffee was the Devil’s work

and that coffee drinkers would go to Hell. Hey, you from Sivas, have you

forgotten how this enormous branch of mine was bent? Let me tell you about

it, then, but swear you won’t tell anyone, and may Allah protect you from

baseless slander. One morning, I awoke to find that a giant of a man—God

protect him, he was as tall as a minaret with hands like a lion’s claws—had

climbed up onto this branch of mine and hidden beneath my lush leaves

together with the aforementioned Hoja and, excuse the expression, they were

going at it like dogs in heat. While the giant, whom I later realized was the

Devil, attended to his business with our hero, he was compassionately kissing

his lovely ear and whispering into it, “Coffee is a sin, coffee is a vice…”

Accordingly, those who believe in the harmful effects of coffee, believe not in

the commandments of our good religion, but in the Devil himself.

And finally, I shall make mention of Frank painters, so if there are

degenerates among you who have pretensions to be like them, may you heed

my warning and be deterred. Now, these Frank painters depict the faces of

kings, priests, noblemen and even women in such a manner that after gazing

upon the portrait, you’d be able to identify that person on the street. Their

wives roam freely on the streets anyway—now, just imagine the rest. As if this

weren’t enough, they’ve taken matters even further. I don’t mean in regard to

pimping, but in regard to painting.

A great European master miniaturist and another great master artist are

walking through a Frank meadow discussing virtuosity and art. As they stroll, a

forest comes into view before them. The more expert of the two says to the

other: “Painting in the new style demands such talent that if you depicted one

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of the trees in this forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come

here, and if he so desired, correctly select that tree from among the others.”

I thank Allah that I, the humble tree before you, have not been drawn with

such intent. And not because I fear that if I’d been thus depicted all the dogs

in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don’t want to be a

tree, I want to be its meaning.

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I AM CALLED BLACK

The snow began to fall at a late hour and continued till dawn. I spent the night

reading Shekure’s letter again and again. I paced in the empty room of the

empty house, occasionally leaning toward the candlestick; in the flickering

light of the dim candle, I watched the tense quivering of my beloved’s angry

letters, the somersaults they turned trying to deceive me and their hip-

swinging right-to-left progression. Abruptly, those shutters would open before

my eyes, and my beloved’s face and her sorrowful smile would appear. And

when I saw her real face, I forgot all of those other faces whose sour-cherry

mouths had increasingly matured and ripened in my imagination.

In the middle of the night I lost myself in dreams of marriage: I had no

doubts about my love or that it was reciprocated—we were married in a state

of great contentment—but, my imaginary happiness, set in a house with a

staircase, was dashed when I couldn’t find appropriate work and began

arguing with my wife, unable to make her heed my words.

I knew I’d appropriated these ominous images from the section on the ills

of marriage in Gazzali’s The Revival of Religious Science, which I’d read during

my nights as a bachelor in Arabia; at the same time, I recalled that there was

actually advice on the benefits of marriage in that same section, though now I

could remember only two of these benefits: first, having my household kept in

order (there was no such order in my imagined house); second, being spared

the guilt of self-abuse and of dragging myself—an even deeper sense of guilt—

behind pimps leading me through dark alleyways to the lairs of prostitutes.

The thought of salvation at this late hour brought masturbation to mind.

With a simple-minded desire, and to rid my mind of this irrepressible urge, I

retired to a corner of the room, as was my wont, but after a while I realized I

couldn’t jack off—proof well enough that I’d fallen in love again after twelve

years!

This struck such excitement and fear into my heart that I walked around the

room nearly atremble like the flame of the candle. If Shekure meant to present

herself at the window, then why this letter, which put the opposite belief into

play? Why did her father call for me? As I paced, I sensed that the door, wall

and squeaky floor, stuttering as I myself did, were trying to creak their

responses to my every question.

I looked at the picture I’d made years ago, which depicted Shirin stricken

with love upon gazing at Hüsrev’s image hanging from a branch. It didn’t

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embarrass me as it would each time it came to mind in subsequent years, nor

did it bring back my happy childhood memories. Toward morning, my mind

had mastered the situation: By returning the picture, Shekure had made a

move in an amatory chess game she was masterfully luring me into. I sat in

the candlelight and wrote her a letter of response.

In the morning, after sleeping for a spell, I went out and walked a long way

through the streets, carrying the letter upon my breast and my light pen-and-

ink holder, as was my custom, in my sash. The snow widened Istanbul’s

narrow streets and freed the city of its crowds. All was quieter and slower, as

it’d been in my childhood. Crows seemed to have beset Istanbul’s roofs,

domes and gardens just as they had on the snowy winter days of my youth. I

walked swiftly, listening to my steps in the snow and watching the fog of my

breath. I grew excited, expecting the palace workshop that my Enishte wanted

me to visit to be as silent as the streets. Before I entered the Jewish quarter, I

sent word by way of a little street urchin to Esther, who’d be able to deliver my

letter to Shekure, telling her where to meet me before the noontime prayers.

I arrived early at the royal artisans’ workshop located behind the Hagia

Sophia. Except for the icicles hanging from the eaves, there was no change in

the building where I’d often visited my Enishte and for a time worked as a

child apprentice.

Following a handsome young apprentice, I walked past elderly master

binders dazed from the smell of glue and bookbinder’s paste, master

miniaturists whose backs had hunched at an early age and youths who mixed

paints without even looking into the bowls perched on their knees, so

sorrowfully were they absorbed by the flames of the stove. In a corner, I saw

an old man meticulously painting an ostrich egg on his lap, another elder

enthusiastically embellishing a drawer and a young apprentice graciously

watching them both. Through an open door, I witnessed young students being

reprimanded as they leaned forward, their noses almost touching the pages

spread before their reddened faces, as they tried to understand the mistakes

they’d made. In another room, a mournful and melancholy apprentice, having

forgotten momentarily about colors, papers and painting, stared into the

street I’d just now eagerly walked down.

We climbed the icy staircase. We walked through the portico, which

wrapped around the inner second floor of the building. Below, in the inner

courtyard covered with snow, two young students, obviously trembling from

the cold despite their thick capes of coarse wool, were waiting—perhaps for an

imminent beating. I recalled my early youth and the beatings given to students

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who were lazy or who wasted expensive paints, and the blows of the

bastinado, which landed on the soles of their feet until they bled.

We entered a warm room. I saw two novices who’d recently finished their

apprenticeships. Since the great masters, whom Master Osman had given

workshop names, now worked at home, this room, which once aroused

excessive reverence and delight in me, no longer seemed like the workshop of a

great and wealthy sultan but merely a largish room in some secluded

caravansary in the remote mountains of the East.

Immediately off to the side, before a long counter, I saw the Head

Illuminator, Master Osman, for the first time in fifteen years; he seemed like

an apparition. Whenever I contemplated illustrating and painting during my

travels, the great master would appear in my mind’s eye as if he were Bihzad

himself; now, in his white outfit and in the snow-white light falling through

the window facing the Hagia Sophia, he looked as though he’d long become

one of the spirits of the Otherworld. I kissed his hand, which I noticed was

mottled, and I introduced myself. I explained how my Enishte had enrolled me

here as a youth, but that I’d preferred a bureaucratic post and left. I recounted

my years on the road, my time spent in Eastern cities in the service of pashas

as a clerk or treasurer’s secretary. I told him how, working with Serhat Pasha

and others, I’d met calligraphers and illuminators in Tabriz and produced

books; how I’d spent time in Baghdad and Aleppo, in Van and Tiflis, and how

I’d seen many battles.

“Ah, Tiflis!” the great master said, as he gazed at the light from the snow-

covered garden filtering through the oilskin covering the window. “Is it

snowing there now?”

His demeanor befitted those old Persian masters who grew blind perfecting

their artistry; who, after a certain age, lived half-saintly, half-senile lives, and

about whom endless legends were told. I straightaway saw in his jinnlike eyes

that he despised my Enishte vehemently and that he was furthermore

suspicious of me. Even so, I explained how in the Arabian deserts snow didn’t

simply fall to the Earth, as it was now falling onto the Hagia Sophia, but onto

memories as well. I spun a yarn: When it snowed on the fortress of Tiflis, the

washerwomen sang songs the color of flowers and children hid ice cream

under their pillows for summer.

“Do tell me what those illuminators and painters illustrate in the countries

you’ve visited,” he said. “What do they depict?”

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A dreamy-eyed young painter who was ruling out pages in the corner, lost

in revery, raised his head from his folding work desk along with the others in

the room and gave me a look that said, “Let this be your most honest answer.”

Many of these craftsmen didn’t know the corner grocer in their own

neighborhood, or how much an oke’s worth of bread cost, but they were very

curious about the latest gossip East of Persia, where armies clashed, princes

strangled one another and plundered cities before burning them to the

ground, where war and peace were contested each day, where the best verses

were written and the best illustrations and paintings were made for centuries.

“Shah Tahmasp reigned for fifty-two years. In the last years of his life, as you

know, he abandoned his love of books, illustrating and painting, turned his

back on poets, illustrators and calligraphers, and resigning himself to worship,

passed away, whereupon his son, Ismail, ascended to the throne,” I said. “Shah

Tahmasp had been well aware of his son’s disagreeable and antagonistic

nature, so he kept him, the shah-to-be, behind locked doors for twenty years.

As soon as Ismail assumed the throne, in a mad frenzy, he had his younger

brothers strangled—some of whom he’d blinded beforehand. In the end,

however, Ismail’s enemies succeeded in plying him with opium and poisoning

him, and after being liberated from his worldly presence, they placed his half-

witted older brother Muhammad Khodabandeh on the throne. During his

reign, all the princes, brothers, provincial governors and Uzbeks, in short

everyone, started to revolt. They went after each other and our Serhat Pasha

with such martial ferocity that all of Persia turned to smoke and dust and was

left in disarray. Indeed, the present shah, bereft of money and intelligence and

half-blind, is not fit to sponsor the writing and illustration of illuminated

manuscripts. Thus, these legendary illustrators of Kazvin and Herat, all these