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world that extends one foreleg like a curious dog, leaving the other firmly

planted on the ground. There is no spahi cavalry division in existence whose

horses saunter in unison, as if traced with an identical stencil twenty times

back to back. We horses scrounge for and eat the green grass at our feet when

nobody is looking. We never assume a statuesque stance and wait around

elegantly, the way we’re shown in paintings. Why is everybody so embarrassed

about our eating, drinking, shitting and sleeping? Why are they afraid to

depict this wondrous God-given and unique implement of mine? On the sly,

women and children, in particular, love to stare at it, and what’s the harm in

this? Is the Hoja from Erzurum against this as well?

They say that once upon a time there was a feeble and nervous shah in

Shiraz. He was in mortal fear that his enemies would have him deposed so his

son could assume the throne; rather than sending the prince to Isfahan as

provincial governor, he imprisoned him in the most out of the way room of

his palace. The prince grew up and lived in this makeshift cell, which looked

onto neither courtyard nor garden, for thirty-one years. After his father’s

allotted time on Earth ran out, the prince, who’d lived alone with his books,

ascended the throne and declared: “I command that you bring me a horse. I’ve

always seen pictures of them in books, and am curious about them.” They

brought him the most beautiful gray steed in the palace, but when the new

king saw that the horse had nostrils like mine-shafts, a shameless ass, a coat

duller than in the illustrations and a brutish rump, he was so disenchanted

that he had all the horses in his kingdom massacred. After this brutal

slaughter, which lasted forty days, all the kingdom’s rivers flowed a somber

red. But Exalted Allah did not refrain from meting out His justice: The king

now had no cavalry whatsoever, and when faced with the army of his

archenemy, the Turkmen Bey of the Blacksheep clan, he was routed and, in the

end, hacked apart. Let there be no doubt: As all the histories will reveal, the

nation of horses had taken its revenge.

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I AM CALLED BLACK

Shekure shut herself into the room with the children, and I listened at length

to the sounds within the house and to its incessant creaking. Shekure and

Shevket began whispering to each other and she anxiously quieted them with

an abrupt “shush!” I heard a rattling coming from the stone-paved area near

the well, but it didn’t last. Later, my attention was caught by a squawking

seagull that had alighted on the roof. Then it, too, fell silent along with

everything else. Afterward, I heard a low moan from the other side of the

hallway: Hayriye was crying in her sleep. Her moans dissolved into coughing

which ended as suddenly as it had begun, giving way once again to that deep,

dreadful silence. A while later, I imagined that an intruder was roaming

around the room where my dead Enishte lay, and I froze completely.

During each span of silence, I examined the pictures before me,

contemplating how the passionate Olive, the beautiful Butterfly and the

deceased gilder had dabbed paint onto the page. I had the urge to confront

each of the images by shouting “Satan!” or “Death!” as my Enishte used to do

some nights, but fear restrained me. Besides, these illustrations had vexed me

plenty because I couldn’t write an appropriate story to accompany them

despite my Enishte’s insistence. Since I was slowly growing certain that his

death was linked to these images, I felt fretful and impatient. I’d already

scrutinized the illustrations endlessly while listening to Enishte’s stories, all for

a chance to be near Shekure. Now that she was my lawfully wedded wife, why

should I preoccupy myself with them? A merciless inner voice answered:

“Because even after her children have fallen asleep, Shekure refuses to leave her

bed and join you.” I waited for a long while gazing at the pictures by

candlelight, hoping that my black-eyed beauty would come to me.

In the morning, stirred from my sleep by Hayriye’s shrieks, I grabbed the

candle-holder and rushed into the hallway. I thought Hasan had raided the

house with his men, and I considered hiding the illustrations, but quickly

realized that Hayriye had begun screaming upon Shekure’s command, as a way

to announce Enishte Effendi’s death to the children and neighbors.

When I met Shekure in the hall, we embraced fondly. The children, who’d

leapt out of bed when they’d heard Hayriye’s shouts, stood motionless.

“Your grandfather has died,” Shekure said to them. “I don’t want you to

enter that room anymore under any circumstances.”

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She freed herself from my arms and, going to her father’s side, began to

weep.

I herded the children back into their room. “Change out of your bedclothes,

you’ll catch cold,” I said and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Grandfather didn’t die this morning. He died last night,” Shevket said.

A long loose strand of Shekure’s gorgeous hair had coiled into an Arabic

script “vav” on her pillow. Her warmth hadn’t yet dissipated from beneath the

quilt. We could hear her sobbing and wailing along with Hayriye. Her ability to

shriek as though her father had actually died unexpectedly was so shockingly

disingenuous that I felt as if I didn’t know Shekure at all, like she’d been

possessed by a strange jinn.

“I’m frightened,” said Orhan with a glance that was also a request for

permission to cry.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Your mother is crying so the neighbors will know

of your grandfather’s death and pay their respects.”

“What difference does it make if they come?” Shevket asked.

“If they come, they’ll be sad and mourn with us over his death. That way

we can share the burden of our pain.”

“Did you kill my grandfather?” shouted Shevket.

“If you’re going to upset your mother, don’t expect any affection from

me!” I shouted back.

We didn’t shout at each other like stepfather and stepson, but like two men

talking by the banks of a loud rushing river. Shekure stepped out into the

hallway and was forcing the wooden slats of the window trying to throw open

the shutters so her shouts could be better heard throughout the

neighborhood.

I left the room to join her. We both tried to force the window. With a final

combined effort, the shutters came loose and fell into the courtyard. Sunlight

and cold struck our faces and we were stunned momentarily. Shekure

screamed, crying her heart out.

Enishte Effendi’s death, once announced by her cries, turned into a much

more tragic and agonizing pain. Whether sincere or feigned, my wife’s crying

tormented me. Unexpectedly, I began to weep. I didn’t even know if I was

crying sincerely out of grief or was merely pretending for fear of being held

responsible for my Enishte’s death.

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“He’s gone, gone, gone, my dear father’s gone!” cried Shekure.

My sobs and laments mimicked hers, though I didn’t exactly know what I

was saying. I was worried about how I looked to the neighbors staring at us

from their houses, from behind cracked doors and between shutter slats, and

wondered how fitting my behavior was. As I cried, I felt purged of doubts

about whether my agony was genuine, of apprehensions about being accused

of murder and of the fear of Hasan and his men.

Shekure was mine and it was as if I were celebrating with shouts and tears. I

drew my sobbing wife close to me, and without paying any heed to the tearful

children approaching us, I lovingly kissed her cheek and inhaled the scent of

the almond trees of our youth.

Together with the children, we walked back to where the body lay. I said,

“La ilahe illallah, there is no God but Allah” as though addressing not a reeking

two-day-old corpse but a dying man whom I wanted to reaffirm the words of

witness; I wanted my Enishte to go to Heaven with these words on his lips. We

pretended that he’d repeated them, and smiled for a moment as we gazed at

his nearly destroyed face and battered head. I opened my palms to Heaven and

recited from the “Ya Sin” chapter while the others listened quietly. With a

clean piece of gauze that Shekure brought into the room, we carefully bound

my Enishte’s mouth shut, tenderly closed his ravaged eyes and gently rolled

him over onto his right side, arranging his head so it faced Mecca. Shekure

spread a clean white sheet over her father.

I was pleased that the children were watching everything so intensely and

by the quiet that followed the wailing. I felt like somebody with a real wife and

children, with a hearth and home.

One by one, I collected the pictures into a portfolio, donned my heavy

caftan and hastily fled the house. I headed directly for the neighborhood

mosque, pretending not to see one of the neighbors—an elderly woman with

a snot-nosed grandchild who was clearly jubilant about all the sudden activity:

They’d heard our cries and had eagerly come to enjoy our pain.

The tiny hole in the wall that the preacher called his “house” was

embarrassingly small next to the ostentatious structure with its enormous

domes and expansive courtyard, typical of the mosques that were being

constructed lately. The preacher, in what I’d observed as a custom of

increasing frequency, was extending the boundaries of his cold, little rat hole

of a “home,” and had usurped the entire mosque, without the least concern

over the faded and dingy wash his wife had hung between two chestnut trees

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at the edge of the courtyard. We avoided the attacks of two brutish dogs that

had claimed the courtyard, just like the Imam Effendi and his family, and after

the preacher’s sons chased the beasts away with sticks and excused themselves,

the preacher and I retired to a private corner.

After yesterday’s divorce proceedings, and in light of the fact that we hadn’t

asked him to perform the wedding ceremony, which I was certain had upset

him, I could read a “For goodness sake, what brings you here now?” upon his

face.

“Enishte Effendi passed away this morning.”

“May God have mercy upon him. May he find a home in Heaven!” he said

benevolently. Why had I senselessly implicated myself by tacking the words

“this morning” onto my statement? I dropped another gold piece into his

hand, identical to the ones I’d given him yesterday. I requested that he recite

the death prayer before the azan and appoint his brother as crier to go around

announcing the death to the entire neighborhood.

“My brother has a dear friend who is half blind; together, we are expert at

carrying out the final ablutions of the deceased,” he said.

What could be more suitable than having a blind man and a half-wit wash

Enishte Effendi’s body? I explained to him that the ritual funeral prayer would

be performed in the afternoon and that notables and crowds from the palace,

the guilds and theological schools would be attending. I didn’t attempt to

explain the state of Enishte Effendi’s face and battered head, having long

decided that the matter needed to be addressed at a higher level.

Since Our Sultan had entrusted the balance of the funds for the book that

He’d commissioned from my Enishte to the Head Treasurer, I had to report

the death to him before anyone else. To this end, I sought out an upholsterer, a

relative on my late father’s side, who’d worked in the tailors’ work stalls

opposite Coldfountain Gate ever since I was a child. When I found him, I

kissed his mottled hand and explained imploringly that I needed to see the

Head Treasurer. He had me wait among his balding apprentices who were

sewing curtains, doubled over the multicolored silk spread over their laps;

then, he had me follow a head tailor’s assistant who, I learned, was going to

the palace to take measurements. When we climbed up to the Parade Square

through Coldfountain Gate I knew I’d be able to avoid passing the workshop

opposite the Hagia Sophia; and thus, I was spared from announcing the crime

to the other miniaturists.

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The Parade Square seemed abustle now, whereas it usually seemed empty to

me. Though there wasn’t a single person at the Petitioner’s Gate, before which

petitioners would line up on days when the Divan convened, nor anyone in

the vicinity of the granaries, it was as if I could hear a continuous din

emanating from the windows of the sick house, from the carpenters’

workshop, the bakery, the stables, the grooms with their horses before the

Second Gate (whose spires I looked upon with awe) and from among the

cypresses. I attributed my sense of alarm to the fear of passing through the

Gate of Salutation, or Second Gate, which I would soon be doing for the first

time in my life.

At the gate, I could neither focus my attention on the spot where the

executioners were said to be ever at the ready, nor could I hide my agitation

from the keepers of the gate who glanced inquiringly at the bolt of upholstery

cloth I carried as a prop so onlookers would assume I was assisting my tailor-

cum-guide.

As soon as we entered the Divan Square, a deep silence enveloped us. I felt

my heart pounding even in the veins of my forehead and neck. This area, so

often described by my Enishte and others who visited the palace, lay before

me like a heavenly garden of unequaled beauty. Yet, I didn’t feel the elation of