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neighborhood in Istanbul that hasn’t been burned to the ground at least once

every twenty years that we might expect such a book to survive? In this city,

where every three years more books and libraries disappear than those the

Mongols burned and plundered in Baghdad, what painter could possibly

imagine that his masterpiece might last more than a century, or that one day

his pictures might be seen, and he revered like Bihzad? Not only our own art,

but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be

destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect: Shirin proudly watching Hüsrev

from a window; Hüsrev delightfully spying on Shirin as she bathes by

moonlight; lovers gazing at each other with grace and subtlety; Rüstem’s

wrestling a white demon to death at the bottom of a well; the anguished state

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of a lovelorn Mejnun befriending a white tiger and a mountain goat in the

desert; the capture and hanging of a deceitful shepherd dog who presents a

sheep from his flock to the she-wolf he mates with each night; the flower,

angel, leafy twig, bird and teardrop border illuminations; the lute players that

embellish Hafiz’s enigmatic poems; the wall ornamentations that have ruined

the eyes of thousands, nay tens of thousands of miniaturist apprentices; the

small plaques hung above doors and on walls; the couplets secretly written

between the embedded borders of illustrations; the humble signatures hidden

at the bases of walls, in corners, in facade embellishments, under the soles of

feet, beneath shrubbery and between rocks; the flower-covered quilts covering

lovers; the severed infidel heads patiently awaiting Our Sultan’s late

grandfather as he victoriously marches upon an enemy fortress; the cannon,

guns and tents that even in your youth you helped illustrate and that appeared

in the background as the ambassador of the infidels kissed the feet of Our

Sultan’s great-grandfather; the devils, with and without horns, with and

without tails, with pointed teeth and with pointed nails; the thousands of

varieties of birds including Solomon’s wise hoopoe, the jumping swallow, the

dodo and the singing nightingale; the serene cats and restless dogs; fast-

moving clouds; the small charming blades of grass reproduced in thousands of

pictures; the amateurish shadows falling across rocks and tens of thousands of

cypress, plane and pomegranate trees whose leaves were drawn one after

another with the patience of Job; the palaces—and their hundreds of

thousands of bricks—which were modeled on palaces from the time of

Tamerlane or Shah Tahmasp but accompanied stories from much earlier eras;

the tens of thousands of melancholy princes listening to music played by

beautiful women and boys sitting on magnificent carpets in fields of flowers

and beneath flowering trees; the extraordinary pictures of ceramics and

carpets that owe their perfection to the thousands of apprentice illustrators

from Samarkand to Islambol beaten to the point of tears over the last one

hundred fifty years; the sublime gardens and the soaring black kites that you

still depict with your old enthusiasm, your astounding scenes of death and

war, your graceful hunting sultans, and with the same finesse, your startled

fleeing gazelles, your dying shahs, your prisoners of war, your infidel galleons

and your rival cities, your shiny dark nights that glimmer as if night itself had

flowed from your pen, your stars, your ghostlike cypresses, your red-tinted

pictures of love and death, yours and all the rest, all of it will vanish…”

Raising the inkpot, he struck me on the head with all his strength.

I tottered forward under the force of the blow. I felt a horrible pain that I

could never even hope to describe. The entire world was wrapped in my pain

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and faded to yellow. A large portion of my mind assumed that this attack was

intentional; yet, along with the blow—or perhaps because of it—another,

faltering part of my mind, in a sad show of goodwill, wanted to say to the

madman who aspired to be my murderer: “Have mercy, you’ve attacked me in

error.”

He raised the inkpot again and brought it down upon my head.

This time, even the faltering part of my mind understood that this was no

mistake, but madness and wrath that might very well end in my death. I was

so terrified by this state of affairs that I began to raise my voice, howling with

all my strength and suffering. The color of this howl would be verdigris, and in

the blackness of evening on the empty streets, no one would be able to hear its

hue; I knew I was all alone.

He was startled by my wail and hesitated. We momentarily came eye to

eye. I could tell from his pupils that, despite his horror and embarrassment,

he’d resigned himself to what he was doing. He was no longer the master

miniaturist I knew, but an unfamiliar and ill-willed stranger who didn’t speak

my language, and this sensation protracted my momentary isolation for

centuries. I wanted to hold his hand, as if to embrace this world; it was of no

use. I begged, or thought I did: “My child, my dear child, please do not end my

life.” As if in a dream, he seemed not to hear.

He lowered the inkpot onto my head again.

My thoughts, what I saw, my memories, my eyes, all of it, merging together,

became fear. I could see no one color and realized that all colors had become

red. What I thought was my blood was red ink; what I thought was ink on his

hands was my flowing blood.

How unjust, cruel, and merciless I found it to be dying at that instant. Yet,

this was the conclusion that my aged and bloody head was slowly coming to.

Then I saw it. My recollections were stark white, like the snow outside. My

heart ached as it throbbed as if within my mouth.

I shall now describe my death. Perhaps you’ve understood this long ago:

Death is not the end, this is certain. However, as it is written everywhere in

books, death is something painful beyond comprehension. It was as if not only

my shattered skull and brain but every part of me, merging together, was

burning and racked with torment. Withstanding this boundless suffering was

so difficult that a portion of my mind reacted—as if this were its only

option—by forgetting the agony and seeking a gentle sleep.

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Before I died, I remembered the Assyrian legend that I heard as an

adolescent. An old man, living alone, rises from his bed in the middle of the

night and drinks a glass of water. He places the glass upon the end table to

discover the candle that had been there is missing. Where had it gone? A fine

thread of light is filtering from within. He follows the light, retracing his steps

back to his bedroom to find that somebody is lying in his bed holding the

candle. “Who might you be?” he asks. “I am Death,” says the stranger. The old

man is overcome by a mysterious silence. Then he says, “So, you’ve come.”

“Yes,” responds Death haughtily. “No,” the old man says firmly, “you’re but an

unfinished dream of mine.” The old man abruptly blows out the candle in the

stranger’s hand and everything vanishes in blackness. The old man enters his

own empty bed, goes to sleep and lives for another twenty years.

I knew this was not to be my fate. He brought the inkpot down onto my

head once again. I was in such a state of profound torment that I could only

vaguely discern the impact. He, the inkpot and the room illuminated faintly by

the candle had already begun to fade.

Yet, I was still alive. My desire to cling to this world, to run away and escape

him, the flailing of my hands and arms in an attempt to protect my face and

bloody head, the way, I believe, I bit his wrist at one time, and the inkpot

striking my face made me aware of this.

We struggled for a while, if you can call it that. He was very strong and very

agitated. He laid me out flat on my back. Pressing his knees onto my

shoulders, he practically nailed me to the ground while he raved on in a very

disrespectful tone, accosting me, a dying old man. Perhaps because I could

neither understand nor listen to him, perhaps because I took no pleasure in

looking into his bloodshot eyes, he struck my head once more. His face and his

entire body had become bright red from the ink splattering out of the inkpot,

and I suppose, from the blood splattering out of me.

Saddened that the last thing I’d ever see in this world was this man who

would be my enemy, I closed my eyes. Thereupon, I saw a soft, gentle light. The

light was as sweet and enticing as the sleep I thought would straightaway ease

all my pains. I saw a figure within the light and as a child might, I asked, “Who

are you?”

“It is I, Azrael, the Angel of Death,” he said. “I am the one who ends man’s

journey in this world. I am the one who separates children from their

mothers, wives from their husbands, lovers from each other and fathers from

their daughters. No mortal in this world avoids meeting me.”

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When I knew death was unavoidable, I wept.

My tears made me profoundly thirsty. On the one hand there was the

stupefying agony of my face and eyes drenched in blood; on the other hand

there was the place where frenzy and cruelty ceased, yet that place was strange

and terrifying. I knew it to be that illumined realm, the Land of the Dead, to

which Azrael beckoned me, and I was frightened. Even so, I knew I couldn’t

long remain in this world that caused me to writhe and howl in agony. In this

land of frightful pain and torment, there was no place for me to take solace. To

stay, I’d have to resign myself to this unbearable torment and this was

impossible in my elderly condition.

Just before I died, I actually longed for my death, and at the same time, I

understood the answer to the question that I’d spent my entire life pondering,

the answer I couldn’t find in books: How was it that everybody, without

exception, succeeded in dying? It was precisely through this simple desire to

pass on. I also understood that death would make me a wiser man.

Nonetheless, I was overcome with the indecision of a man about to take a

long journey and unable to refrain from taking one last glance at his room, at

his belongings and his home. In a panic I wished to see my daughter one last

time. I wanted this so badly I was prepared to grit my teeth for a while longer

and endure the pain and my increasing thirst, to wait for Shekure’s return.

And thus, the deathly and gentle light before me faded somewhat, and my

mind opened itself up to the sounds and noises of the world in which I lay

dying. I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the

cabinet, rifling through my papers and searching intently for the last picture.

When he came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my paint set and kick

the chests, boxes, inkpots and folding worktable. I sensed that I was groaning

now and then and making odd twitching gestures with my old arms and tired

legs. And I waited.

My pain was not abating in the least. I grew increasingly silent and could no

longer stand to grit my teeth, but again, I held on, waiting.

Then it occurred to me, if Shekure came home, she might encounter my

ruthless murderer. I didn’t want to even think about this. At that instant, I

sensed that my murderer had exited the room. He’d probably found the last

painting.

I’d become excessively thirsty but still I waited. Come now, dear daughter,

my pretty Shekure, show yourself.

She did not come.

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I no longer had strength to withstand the suffering. I knew I would die

without seeing her. This seemed so bitter I wanted to die of misery. Afterward,

a face I’d never seen before appeared to my left, and smiling all the while, he

kindly offered me a glass of water.

Forgetting all else, I greedily reached for the water.

He pulled the glass back: “Denounce the Prophet Muhammad as a liar,” he

said. “Deny all that he has said.”

It was Satan. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t even afraid of him. Since I never once

believed that painting amounted to being duped by him, I waited confidently.

I dreamed of the endless journey that awaited me and of my future.

Meanwhile, as I was approached by the illuminated angel whom I’d just

seen, Satan vanished. Part of me knew that this glowing angel who had caused

Satan to flee was Azrael. But another rebellious part of my mind remembered

that in the Book of the Apocalypse it was written that Azrael was an angel with

one thousand wings spanning East and West and that he held the whole world

in his hands.

As I grew more confused, the angel bathed in light approached as if coming

to my aid, and yes, just as Gazzali had stated in Pearls of Magnificence, he

sweetly said:

“Open your mouth so that your soul might leave.”

“Nothing but the besmele prayer ever leaves my mouth,” I answered him.

This was just one last excuse however. I knew I could no longer resist, that

my time had now come. For a moment I was embarrassed at having to leave

my bloodied and ugly body in this miserable condition for my daughter,

whom I’d never see again. But I wanted to leave this world, shedding it like

some tight-fitting garment that pinched.

I opened my mouth and abruptly all was color just as in the pictures of Our

Prophet’s Miraj journey, during which he visited Heaven. Everything was

flooded in exquisite brightness as if generously painted with gold wash. Painful

tears flowed from my eyes. A strained exhalation passed from my lungs