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serving Our Sultan and perhaps dying for Him, so being a miniaturist meant

serving God and dying for the sake of His beauty.

Much later, when the Head Treasurer’s men brought us up toward the

Middle Gate, death occupied my mind, the silence of death. But, as I passed

through the gate where countless pashas had been executed, the guards acted

as if they didn’t even see us. The Divan Square, which yesterday had dazzled

me as if it were Heaven itself, the tower and the peacocks didn’t affect me in

the least, for I knew that we were being taken further inside, to the heart of

Our Sultan’s secret world, to the Private Quarters of the Enderun.

We passed through doors barred even to the Grand Viziers. Like a child

who’d entered a fairy tale, I kept my eyes trained on the ground to avoid

coming face-to-face with the wonders and creatures that might confront me. I

couldn’t even look at the chamber where the Sultan held audiences. But my

gaze happened to fall momentarily on the walls of the harem near an ordinary

plane tree, one no different from other trees, and on a tall man in a caftan of

shimmering blue silk. We passed among towering columns. Finally, we

stopped before a portal, larger and more imposing than the rest, framed in

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ornate stalactite patterns. At its threshold stood Treasury chiefs in glimmering

caftans; one of them was bending to open the lock.

Staring directly into our eyes, the Head Treasurer said: “You are truly blessed

by fortune, His Excellency Our Sultan has granted you permission to enter the

treasury of the Enderun. There, you will examine books that no one else has

seen; you will gaze upon incredible pictures and pages of gold, and like

hunters, you will track the spoor of your prey, the murderer. My Sultan bade

me remind you that good Master Osman has three days—one of which is now

over—until Thursday noon, in which to name the culprit in the miniaturists’

midst; failing that, the matter shall be turned over to the Commander of the

Imperial Guard to be resolved by torture.”

First, they removed the cloth sheath around the padlock, sealed to ensure

no key entered the keyhole without permission. The Doorkeeper of the

Treasury and the two chiefs confirmed the seal was intact, signaling with a

nod. The seal was broken, and when the key was introduced, the lock opened

with a clatter that filled the pervasive silence. Master Osman suddenly turned

an ashen gray. When one wing of the heavy, embellished-wood double door

was opened, his face was struck by a dark radiance that seemed a remnant of

ancient days.

“My Sultan didn’t want the scribal chiefs and the secretaries who keep

inventory records to enter unnecessarily,” said the Head Treasurer. “The Royal

Librarian has passed away and there’s no one to look after the books in his

stead. For this reason, My Sultan has commanded that Jezmi Agha alone

should accompany you within.”

Jezmi Agha was a dwarf with bright, shining eyes who appeared to be at

least seventy years old. His headdress, which resembled a sail, was even more

peculiar than he.

“Jezmi Agha knows the interior of the treasury like his own house; he

knows the locations of books and all else better than anyone.”

The aging dwarf displayed no pride in this. He was running an eye over the

silver-legged heating brazier, the chamber pot with a mother-of-pearl inlaid

handle, the oil lamp and the candlesticks that the palace pages were carrying.

The Head Treasurer announced that the door would again be locked behind

us and sealed with the seventy-year-old signet of Sultan Selim the Grim. After

the evening prayers, at sunset, the seal would again be broken, before the

witness of the attendant crowd of Treasury chiefs. Moreover, we should

exercise great caution that nothing whatsoever “mistakenly” found its way

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into our clothes, pockets or sashes: we would be searched down to our

undergarments upon exiting.

We entered, passing between chiefs standing at either side. Inside, it was ice

cold. When the door closed behind us, we were enveloped in blackness. I

smelled a combination of mildew, dust and humidity that drove deep into my

nasal passages. Everywhere the clutter of objects, chests and helmets

intermingled in a huge chaotic jumble. I had the feeling that I was witness to a

great battle.

My eyes adjusted to the odd light that fell over the entire space, which

filtered through the thick bars of the high windows, through the balustrades

of the stairs along the high walls and the railing of the second-floor wooden

walkways. This chamber was red, tinged with the color of the velvet cloth,

carpets and kilims hanging on the walls. With due reverence, I considered how

the accumulation of all this wealth was the consequence of wars waged, blood

spilt and cities and treasuries plundered.

“Frightened?” asked the elderly dwarf, giving voice to my feelings.

“Everybody is frightened on their first visit. At night the spirits of these objects

whisper to each other.”

What was frightening was the silence in which this abundance of incredible

objects was interred. Behind us we heard the clattering of the seal being

affixed to the lock on the door, and we looked around in awe, motionless.

I saw swords, elephant tusks, caftans, silver candlesticks and satin banners. I

saw mother-of-pearl inlaid boxes, iron trunks, Chinese vases, belts, long-necked

lutes, armor, silk cushions, model globes, boots, furs, rhinoceros horns,

ornamented ostrich eggs, rifles, arrows, maces and cabinets. There were heaps

of carpets, cloth and satin everywhere, seemingly cascading over me from the

wood-paneled upper floors, from the balustrades, the built-in closets and

small storage cells built into the walls. A strange light, the likes of which I’d

never seen, shone on the cloth, the boxes, the caftans of sultans, swords, the

huge pink candles, the wound turbans, pillows embroidered with pearls, gold

filigree saddles, diamond-handled scimitars, ruby-handled maces, quilted

turbans, turban plumes, curious clocks, ewers and daggers, ivory statues of

horses and elephants, narghiles with diamond-studded tops, mother-of-pearl

chests of drawers, horse aigrettes, strands of large prayer beads, and helmets

adorned with rubies and turquoise. This light, which filtered faintly down

from the high windows, illuminated floating dust particles in the half-

darkened room like the summer sunlight that streams in from the glass

skylight atop the dome of a mosque—but this wasn’t sunlight. In this peculiar

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light, the air had become palpable and all the objects appeared as if made from

the same material. After we apprehensively experienced the silence in the

room for a while longer, I knew it was as much the light as the dust covering

everything that dimmed the red color reigning in the cold room, melding all

the objects into an arcane sameness. And as the eye swam over these strange

and indistinct items, unable to distinguish one from another at even the

second or third glance, this great profusion of objects became even more

terrifying. What I thought was a chest, I later decided was a folding worktable,

and later still, some strange Frankish device. I saw that the mother-of-pearl

inlaid chest among the caftans and plumes pulled out of their boxes and

hastily tossed hither and yon was actually an exotic cabinet sent by the

Muscovite Czar.

Jezmi Agha placed the brazier in the fire niche that had been cut into the

wall.

“Where are the books located?” whispered Master Osman.

“Which books?” said the dwarf. “The ones from Arabia, the Kufic Korans,

those that His Excellency Sultan Selim the Grim, Denizen of Paradise, brought

back from Tabriz, the books of pashas whose property was seized when they

were condemned to death, the gift volumes brought by the Venetian

ambassador to Our Sultan’s grandfather, or the Christian books from the time

of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror?”

“The books that Shah Tahmasp sent His Excellency Sultan Selim, Denizen of

Paradise, as a present twenty-five years ago,” said Master Osman.

The dwarf brought us to a large wooden cabinet. Master Osman grew

impatient as he opened the doors and cast his eyes on the volumes before him.

He opened one, read its colophon and leafed through its pages. Together, we

gazed in astonishment at the carefully drawn illustrations of khans with

slightly slanted eyes.

“”Genghis Khan, Chagatai Khan, Tuluy Khan and Kublai Khan the Ruler of

China,“” read Master Osman before closing the book and taking up another.

We came across an incredibly beautiful illustration depicting the scene in

which Ferhad, empowered by love, carries his beloved Shirin and her horse

away on his shoulder. To convey the passion and woe of the lovers, the rocks

on the mountain, the clouds and the three noble cypresses witnessing

Ferhad’s act of love were drawn with a trembling grief-stricken hand in such

agony that Master Osman and I were instantly affected by the taste of tears

and sorrow in the falling leaves. This touching moment had been depicted—as

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the great masters intended—not to signify Ferhad’s muscular strength, but

rather to convey how the pain of his love was felt at once throughout the

entire world.

“A Bihzad imitation made in Tabriz eighty years ago,” Master Osman said

as he replaced the volume and opened another.

This was a picture that showed the forced friendship between the cat and

the mouse from Kelile and Dimne. Out in the fields, a poor mouse, caught

between the attacks of a marten on the ground and a hawk in the air, finds his

salvation in an unfortunate cat caught in a hunter’s trap. They come to an

agreement: The cat, pretending to be the mouse’s friend, licks him, thereby

scaring away the marten and the hawk. In turn, the mouse cautiously frees the

cat from the snare. Even before I could understand the painter’s sensibility,

the master had stuffed the book back beside the other volumes and had

randomly opened another.

This was a pleasant picture of a mysterious woman and a man: The woman

had elegantly opened one hand while asking a question, holding her knee with

the other over her green cloak, as the man turned to her and listened intently.

I looked at the picture avidly, jealous of the intimacy, love and friendship

between them.

Putting that book down, Master Osman opened to a page from another

book. The cavalry of Persian and Turanian armies, eternal enemies, had donned

their full panoply of armor, helmets, greaves, bows, quivers and arrows and

had mounted those magnificent, legendary and fully armored horses. Before

they engaged one another in a battle to the death, they were arrayed in orderly

ranks facing each other on a dusty yellow steppe holding the tips of their

lances upright, bedecked in an array of colors and patiently watching their

commanders, who’d rushed to the fore and begun to fight. I was about to tell

myself that regardless of whether the illustration was made today or a

hundred years ago, whether it’s a depiction of war or love, what the artist of

absolute faith actually paints and conveys is a battle with his will and his love

for painting; I was going to declare further that the miniaturist actually paints

his own patience, when Master Osman said:

“It’s not here either,” and shut the heavy tome.

In the pages of an album we saw high mountains interwoven with curling

clouds in a landscape illustration that seemed to go on forever. I thought how

painting meant seeing this world yet depicting it as if it were the Otherworld.

Master Osman recounted how this Chinese illustration might’ve traveled from

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Bukhara to Herat, from Herat to Tabriz, and at last, from Tabriz to Our

Sultan’s palace, moving from book to book along the way, bound and

unbound, finally to be rebound with other paintings at the end of the journey

from China to Istanbul.

We saw pictures of war and death, each more frightening and more

expertly done than the next: Rüstem together with Shah Mazenderan; Rüstem

attacking Afrasiyab’s army; and Rüstem, disguised in armor, a mysterious and

unidentified hero warrior…In another album we saw dismembered corpses,

daggers drenched in red blood, sorrowful soldiers in whose eyes the light of

death gleamed and warriors cutting each other down like reeds, as fabled

armies, which we could not name, clashed mercilessly. Master Osman—for

who knows how many thousandth time—looked upon Hüsrev spying on

Shirin bathing in a lake by moonlight, upon the lovers Leyla and Mejnun

fainting as they beheld each other after an extended separation, and a spirited

picture, all aflutter with birds, trees and flowers, of Salaman and Absal as they

fled the entire world and lived together on an isle of bliss. Like a true great

master, he couldn’t help drawing my attention to some oddity in a corner of

even the worst painting, perhaps having to do with an oversight on the part of

the illuminator or perhaps with the conversation of colors: As might be

expected, Hüsrev and Shirin are listening to a charming recital by her ladies-in-

waiting, but see there, what kind of sad and spiteful painter had needlessly

perched that ominous owl on a tree branch?; who had included that lovely boy

dressed in woman’s garb among the Egyptian women who cut their fingers