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illustrations. This meant that the pictures were moved from house to house

with great frequency. In addition to the work I recognized, I noticed the

amateurish strokes of a fifth artist, but as I grew angry at the dearth of talent

shown by this disgraceful murderer, Black determined from the cautious brush

strokes that it was indeed the work of his Enishte—thereby saving us from

following a false lead. If we discounted poor Elegant Effendi, who’d done

almost the same gilding for Enishte’s book and our Book of Festivities (yes, this

of course broke my heart) and who, I gathered, had occasionally lowered his

brush to execute a few walls, leaves and clouds, it was evident that only my

three most brilliant master miniaturists had contributed to these illustrations.

They were the darlings I’d lovingly trained since their apprenticeships, my

three beloved talents: Olive, Butterfly and Stork.

Discussing their talents, mastery and temperaments to the end of finding

the clue we were looking for inevitably led to a discussion of my own life as

well:

The Attributes of Olive

His given name was Velijan. If he had a nickname besides the one I’d given

him, I don’t know it, because I never saw him sign any of his work. When he

was an apprentice, he’d come get me from my home on Tuesday mornings. He

was very proud, and so if he ever lowered himself to sign his work, he’d want

this signature to be plain and recognizable; he wouldn’t try to conceal it

anywhere. Allah had quite generously endowed him with excess ability. He

could readily and easily do anything from gilding to ruling and his work was

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superb. He was the workshop’s most brilliant creator of trees, animals and the

human face. Velijan’s father, who brought him to Istanbul when he was, I

believe, ten years old, was trained by Siyavush, the famous illustrator

specializing in faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop. He hails from a

long line of masters whose genealogy goes back to the Mongols, and just like

the elderly masters who bore a Mongol-Chinese influence and settled in

Samarkand, Bukhara and Herat 150 years ago, he rendered moon-faced young

lovers as if they were Chinese. Neither during his apprenticeship nor during

his time as a master was I able to lead this stubborn artist to other styles. How

I would’ve liked him to transcend the styles and models of the Mongol,

Chinese and Herat masters billeted deep in his soul, or even for him to forget

about them entirely. When I told him this, he replied that like many

miniaturists who’d moved from workshop to workshop and country to

country, he’d forgotten these old styles, if he’d ever actually learned them.

Though the value of many miniaturists resides precisely in the splendid models

of form they’ve committed to memory, had Velijan truly forgotten them, he’d

have become an even greater illustrator. Still, there were two benefits, of which

he wasn’t even aware, to harboring the teachings of his mentors in the depths

of his soul like a pair of unconfessed sins: 1. For such a gifted miniaturist,

clinging to old forms inevitably stirred feelings of guilt and alienation that

would spur his talent to maturity. 2. In a moment of difficulty, he could

always recall what he claimed to have forgotten, and thus, he could

successfully complete any new subject, history or scene by recourse to one of

the old Herat models. With his keen eye, he knew how to harmonize what

he’d learned from the old forms and Shah Tahmasp’s old masters in new

pictures. Herat painting and Istanbul ornamentation happily merged in Olive.

As with all of my miniaturists, I once paid an unannounced visit to his

home. Unlike my work area and that of many other master miniaturists, his

was a filthy confusion of paints, brushes, burnishing shells, his folding

worktable and other objects. It was a mystery to me, but he wasn’t even

embarrassed by it. He took no outside jobs to earn a few extra silver coins.

After I related these facts, Black said it was Olive who showed the most

enthusiasm for and the most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters

admired by his late Enishte. I understood this to be praise from the deceased

fool’s point of view, mistaken though it was. I can’t say whether Olive was

more deeply and secretly bound to the Herat styles—which went back to his

father’s mentor Siyavush and Siyavush’s mentor Muzaffer, back to the era of

Bihzad and the old masters—than he appeared to be, but it always made me

wonder whether Olive harbored other hidden tendencies. Of my miniaturists

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(I told myself spontaneously), he was the most quiet and sensitive, but also

the most guilty and traitorous, and by far the most devious. When I thought

about the Commander’s torture chambers, he was the first to come to mind.

(I both wanted and didn’t want him to be tortured.) He had the eyes of a jinn;

he noticed and took account of everything, including my own shortcomings;

however, with the reserve of an exile able to accommodate himself to any

situation, he’d rarely open his mouth to point out mistakes. He was wily, yes,

but not in my opinion a murderer. (I didn’t tell Black this.) Olive didn’t

believe in anything. He had no faith in money, but he’d nervously squirrel it

away. Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of

extreme faith rather than unbelievers. Manuscript illumination leads to

painting, and painting, in turn, leads to—God forbid—challenging Allah.

Everybody knows this. Therefore, to judge by his lack of faith, Olive is a

genuine artist. Nevertheless, I believe that his God-given gifts fall short of

Butterfly’s, or even Stork’s. I would’ve wanted Olive to be my son. As I said

this, I wanted to incur Black’s jealousy, but he only responded by opening his

dark eyes and staring with childlike curiosity. Then I said Olive was

magnificent when he worked in black ink, when he rendered, for pasting in

albums, warriors, hunting scenes, Chinese-inspired landscapes full of storks

and cranes, pretty boys gathered beneath a tree reciting verse and playing lutes,

and when he depicted the sorrow of legendary lovers, the wrath of a sword-

bearing, enraged shah, and a hero’s expression of fear as he dodged the attack

of a dragon.

“Perhaps Enishte wanted Olive to do the last picture that would show in

great detail, in the style of the Europeans, Our Sultan’s face and manner of

sitting,” Black said.

Was he trying to confuse me?

“Supposing this were the case, after Olive killed Enishte, why would he

abscond with a picture he was already familiar with?” I said. “Or, if you like,

why would he murder Enishte in order to see that picture?”

We both pondered these questions for a while.

“Because there’s something missing in that painting,” said Black. “Or

because he regrets something he did and is scared by it. Or even…” he

thought for a while. “Or, having killed Enishte, he might’ve taken the painting

to do further harm, for the sake of having a memento, or even for no reason at

all. Olive is, after all, a great illustrator who’d naturally have a lot of respect for

a beautiful painting.”

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“We’ve already discussed in what ways Olive is a great illustrator,” I said,

growing angry. “But none of Enishte’s illustrations is beautiful.”

“We haven’t yet seen the last painting,” Black said boldly.

The Attributes of Butterfly

He is known as Hasan Chelebi from the Gunpowder Factory district, but to me

he’s always been “Butterfly.” This nickname always reminds me of the beauty

of his boyhood and youth: He was so handsome that those who saw him

didn’t believe their eyes and wanted a second look. I’ve always been

astonished by the miracle of his being as talented as he is handsome. He’s a

master of color and this is his greatest strength; he painted passionately,

reeling with the pleasure of applying color. But I cautioned Black that Butterfly

was flighty, aimless and indecisive. Anxious to be just, I added: He’s a genuine

miniaturist who paints from the heart. If the arts of ornamentation are not

meant to cater to intelligence, to speak to the animal within us, or to bolster

the pride of the Sultan; that is, if this art is meant to be only a festival for the

eyes, then Butterfly is indeed a true miniaturist. He makes wide, easy, blithe

curves, as if he’d taken lessons from the masters of Kazvin forty years ago; he

confidently applies his bright, pure colors, and there’s always a gentle

circularity hidden in the arrangement of his paintings; but I’m the one who

trained him, not those long-dead masters of Kazvin. Maybe it’s for this reason

that I love him like a son, nay, more than a son—but I never felt any awe

toward him. As with all of my apprentices, in his boyhood and adolescence, I

beat him freely with brush handles, rulers and even pieces of wood, but this

doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. Though I beat Stork frequently with rulers, I

respect him too. In contrast to what the casual onlooker might assume, a

master’s beating doesn’t rid the young apprentice of jinns of talent and the

Devil, but only suppresses them temporarily. If it happens to be a good

beating, and deserved, later on the jinns and the Devil will rise up and

stimulate the developing miniaturist’s resolve to work. As for the beatings I

administered to Butterfly, they shaped him into a content and obedient artist.

I at once felt the need to praise him to Black: “Butterfly’s artistry,” I said,

“is solid proof that the picture of bliss, which the celebrated poet ponders in

his masnawi, is only possible through a God-given gift for understanding and

applying color. When I realized this, I also realized what Butterfly lacked: He

hadn’t known that momentary loss of faith that Jami refers to in his poetry as

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”the dark night of the soul.“ Like an illustrator painting in the great happiness

of Heaven, he sets to his work with conviction and contentment, believing that

he can make a blissful painting, which he does succeed in doing. Our armies

besieging Doppio castle, the Hungarian ambassador kissing the feet of Our

Sultan, Our Prophet ascending through the seven heavens, these are of course

all inherently happy scenes, but rendered by Butterfly, they become flights of

ecstasy springing from the page. In an illustration of mine, if the darkness of

death or the seriousness of a government session weighs heavy, I’ll tell

Butterfly to ”color it as you see fit,“ and thereupon, the outfits, leaves, flags

and sea that lay there muted as if sprinkled with dirt meant to fill a grave

begin to ripple in the breeze. There are times when I think Allah wants the

world to be seen the way Butterfly illustrates it, that He wants life to be

jubilation. Indeed, this is a realm where colors harmoniously recite

magnificent ghazals to each other, where time stops, where the Devil never

appears.”

However, even Butterfly knows this isn’t enough. Someone must have quite

rightly—yes, in good measure—whispered to him that in his work everything

was as joyous as a holiday, but devoid of depth. Child princes and senile old

harem women on the verge of death enjoy his paintings, not men of the world

forced to struggle with evil. Because Butterfly is well aware of these criticisms,

poor man, he at times grows jealous of average miniaturists who though much

less talented than he are possessed of demons and jinns. What he mistakenly

believes to be devilry and the work of jinns is more often than not

straightforward evil and envy.

He aggravates me because when he paints, he doesn’t lose himself in that

wondrous world, surrendering to its ecstasy, but only reaches that height

when he imagines his work will please others. He aggravates me because he

thinks about the money he’ll earn. It’s another of life’s ironies: There are many

artists with much less talent yet more able than Butterfly to surrender

themselves to their art.

In his need to make up for his shortcomings, Butterfly is preoccupied with

proving that he has sacrificed himself to art. Like those birdbrained

miniaturists who paint on fingernails and pieces of rice, pictures almost

invisible to the naked eye, he’s engrossed with minute and delicate

craftsmanship. I’d once asked him whether he gave himself over to this

ambition, which has blinded many illustrators at an early age, because he was

ashamed of the excessive talent Allah had granted him. Only inept miniaturists

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paint each leaf of a tree they’ve drawn on a grain of rice to make an easy name

for themselves and to gain importance in the eyes of dense patrons.

Butterfly’s inclination to design and illustrate for other people’s pleasure

rather than for his own, his uncontrollable need to please others, made him,

more than any of the others, a slave to praise. And so it follows that an

uncertain Butterfly wants to ensure his standing by becoming Head

Illuminator. It was Black who had raised this subject.

“Yes,” I said, “I know he’s been scheming to succeed me after I die.”

“Do you think this would drive him to murder his miniaturist brethren?”

“It might. He’s a great master, but he’s not aware of this, and he can’t leave

the world behind when he paints.”

I said this, whereupon I grasped that in truth I, too, wanted Butterfly to