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A hollowness and depression descended upon us. In the pale light of the

lamp, Stork and Butterfly were staring at the vulgar pictures in my sketchbook.

They displayed an air of complete indifference; in fact, they were even happy in

some horrid way. I had a strong urge to look at the picture—I could very well

surmise which one it was; I rose and circled around behind them, gazing

silently at the obscene picture I’d painted, thrilled as though I were recalling a

now distant yet blissful memory. Black joined us. For whatever reason, that

the four of us were looking at that illustration relieved me.

“Could the blind and the seeing ever be equal?” said Stork much later. Was

he implying that even though what we saw was obscene, the pleasure of sight

that Allah had bestowed upon us was glorious? Nay, what would Stork know

of such matters? He never read the Koran. I knew that the old masters of Herat

would frequently recite this verse. The great masters used this verse as a

response to enemies of painting who warned that illustrating was forbidden

by our faith and that painters would be sent to Hell on Judgment Day. Until

that magical moment, however, I’d never even once heard from Butterfly those

words that now emerged from his mouth as if on their own:

“I’d like to depict how the blind and the seeing are not equal!”

“Who are the blind and the seeing?” Black said naively.

“The blind and the seeing are not equal, it’s what ‘ve ma yestevil’ama ve’l

basiru’nun means,” Butterfly said and continued:

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“…nor are the darkness and the light.

The shade and the heat are not equal,

nor are the living and the dead.“

I shuddered for an instant, thinking of the fates of Elegant Effendi, Enishte

and our storyteller brother who was killed tonight. Were the others as

frightened as I? Nobody moved for a time. Stork was still holding my book

open, but seemed not to see the vulgarity I’d painted though we were all still

staring at it!

“I’d want to paint Judgment Day,” said Stork. “The resurrection of the

dead, and the separation of the guilty from the innocent. Why is it that we

cannot depict the Sacred Word of our faith?”

In our youth, working together in the same room of our workshop, we

would periodically lift our faces from our work boards and tables, just as the

aging masters would do to rest their eyes, and begin talking about any topic

that happened to enter our minds. Back then, just as we now did while

looking at the book open before us, we didn’t look at one another as we

chatted. For our eyes would be turned toward some distant spot outside an

open window. I’m not sure if it was the excitement of recalling something

remarkably beautiful from my halcyon apprenticeship days, or the sincere

regret I felt at that moment because I hadn’t read the Koran for so long, or the

horror of the crime I’d seen at the coffeehouse that night, but when my turn

came to speak, I grew confused, my heart quickened as if I’d come under the

threat of some danger, and as nothing else came to mind, I simply said the

following:

“You remember those verses at the end of ”The Cow‘ chapter? I’d want

most of all to depict them: “Oh God, judge us not by what we’ve forgotten

and by our mistakes. Oh God, burden us not with a weight we cannot bear, as

with those who have gone before us. Forgive and absolve us of our

transgressions and sins! Treat us with mercy, my dear God.”“ My voice broke

and I was embarrassed by the tears I shed unexpectedly—perhaps because I

was wary of the sarcasm that we always kept at the ready during our

apprenticeships to protect ourselves and to avoid exposing our sensitivities.

I thought my tears would quickly abate, but unable to restrain myself, I

began to cry in great sobs. As I wept, I could sense that each of the others was

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overcome by feelings of fraternity, devastation and sorrow. From now on, the

European style would be preeminent in Our Sultan’s workshop; the styles and

books to which we’d devoted our entire lives would slowly be forgotten—yes,

in fact, the whole venture would come to an end, and if the Erzurumis didn’t

throttle us and finish us off, the Sultan’s torturers would leave us

maimed…But as I cried, sobbed and sighed—even though I continued to

listen to the sad patter of the rain—a part of my mind sensed that these were

not the things I was actually crying about. To what extent were the others

aware of this? I felt vaguely guilty for my tears, which were at once genuine

and false.

Butterfly came up beside me, placed his arm upon my shoulder, stroked my

hair, kissed my cheek and comforted me with honeyed words. This show of

friendship made me cry with even more sincerity and guilt. I couldn’t see his

face but, for some reason, I incorrectly thought he too was crying. We sat

down.

We recalled how we’d started our workshop apprenticeships in the same

year, the strange sadness of being torn away from our mothers to suddenly

begin a new life, the pain of beatings we received from the first day, the joy of

the first gifts from the Head Treasurer, and the days we went back home,

running the whole way. At first, only he talked while I listened sorrowfully, but

later, when Stork and, sometime afterward, Black—who came to the

workshop for a time and left it, during our early apprenticeship years—joined

our mournful conversation, I forgot that I’d just been crying and began to talk

and laugh freely with them.

We reminisced about winter mornings when we would wake early, light the

stove in the largest room of the workshop and mop the floors with hot water.

We recalled an old “master,” may he rest in peace, who was so uninspired and

cautious that he could draw only a single leaf of a single tree during the span

of a single day and who, when he saw that we were again looking at the lush

green leaves of the springtime trees through the open window rather than at

the leaf he drew, without striking us, would chastise us for the hundredth

time: “Not out there, in here!” We recalled the wailing, which could be heard

throughout the entire atelier, of the scrawny apprentice who walked toward

the door, satchel in hand, having been sent back home because the intensity of

the work caused one of his eyes to wander. Next, we imagined how we

watched (with pleasure because it wasn’t our fault) the slow spread of a

deadly red seeping from a bronze inkpot that had cracked over a page three

illuminators had labored on for three months (it depicted the Ottoman army

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on the banks of the K?n?k River en route to Shirvan, overcoming the threat of

starvation by occupying Eresh and filling their stomachs). In a refined and

respectful manner, we talked about how the three of us together made love to

and together fell in love with a Circasian lady, the most beautiful of the wives

of a seventy-year-old pasha who—in consideration of his conquests, strength

and wealth—wanted ceiling ornamentation in his home made in imitation of

the designs in Our Sultan’s hunting lodge. Then, we longingly recalled how on

winter mornings we would have our lentil soup on the threshold of the

yawning door so its steam wouldn’t soften the paper. We also lamented being

separated from workshop friends and masters when the latter compelled us to

travel to distant places to serve as journeymen. For a time, the sweetness of

my dear Butterfly in his sixteenth year appeared before my eyes: He was

burnishing paper to a high gloss by rubbing it quickly with a smooth seashell

as the sunlight, coming through an open window on a summer’s day, struck

his naked honey-colored forearms. For a moment he stopped what he was so

absentmindedly doing and carefully lowered his face to the page to examine a

blemish. After making a few passes over the offending spot with the

burnishing shell using different motions, he returned to his former pattern,

moving his hand back and forth as he stared out of the window into the

distance, losing himself in daydreams. I shall never forget how before looking

outside again, he briefly gazed into my eyes—as I would later do to others.

This dolorous look has only one meaning, which all apprentices know quite

well: Time doesn’t flow if you don’t dream.

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I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER

You’d forgotten about me, hadn’t you? Why should I conceal my presence

from you any longer? For speaking in this voice, which is gradually getting

stronger and stronger, has become irresistible for me. At times, I restrain

myself only with great effort, and I’m afraid that the strain in my voice will

give me away. At times, I let myself go completely unchecked, and that’s when

those words, signs of my second character, which you might recognize, spill

from my lips; my hands begin to tremble, beads of sweat collect on my

forehead and I realize at once that these little whispers of my body, in turn,

will furnish new clues.

Yet I’m so very content here! As we console ourselves with twenty-five years

of memories we’re reminded not of the animosities, but of the beauties and

the pleasures of painting. There’s also something in our sitting here with a

sense of the impending end of the world, caressing each other with tear-filled

eyes as we remember the beauty of bygone days, that recalls harem women.

I’ve taken this comparison from Abu Said of Kirman who included the

stories of the old masters of Shiraz and Herat in his History of the sons of

Tamerlane. Thirty years ago, Jihan Shah, ruler of the Blacksheep, came to the

East where he routed the small armies and ravaged the lands of the Timurid

khans and shahs who were fighting among themselves. With his victorious

Turkmen hordes, he passed through the whole of Persia into the East; finally, at

Astarabad, he defeated Ibrahim, the grandson of Shah Ruh who was

Tamerlane’s son; he then took Gorgan and sent his armies against the fortress

of Herat. According to the historian from Kirman, this devastation, not only to

Persia, but to the heretofore undefeated power of the House of Tamerlane,

which had ruled over half the world from Hindustan to Byzantium for half a

century, caused such a tempest of destruction that pandemonium reigned

over the men and women in the besieged fortress of Herat. The historian Abu

Said reminds the reader with perverse pleasure how Jihan Shah of the

Blacksheep mercilessly killed everyone who was a descendant of Tamerlane in

the fortresses he conquered; how he selectively culled women from the harems

of shahs and princes and added them to his own harem; and how he pitilessly

separated miniaturist from miniaturist and cruelly forced most of them to

serve as apprentices to his own master illuminators. At this point in his

History, he turns his attentions from the shah and his warriors who tried to

repel the enemy from the crenellated towers of the fortress, to the miniaturists

among their pens and paints in the workshop awaiting the terrifying

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culmination of the siege whose outcome was long evident. He lists the names

of the artists, declaring one after another how they were world-renowned and

would never be forgotten, and these illuminators, all of whom, like the women

of the shah’s harem, have since been forgotten, embraced each other and wept,

unable to do anything but recall their former days of bliss.

We too, like melancholy harem women, reminisced about the gifts of fur-

lined caftans and purses full of money that the Sultan would present to us in

reciprocation for the colorful decorated boxes, mirrors and plates, embellished

ostrich eggs, cut-paper work, single-leaf pictures, amusing albums, playing

cards and books we’d offer him on holidays. Where were the hardworking,

long-suffering, elderly artists of that day who were satisfied with so little?

They’d never sequester themselves at home and jealously hide their methods

from others, dreading that their moonlighting would be found out, but would

come to the workshop every day without fail. Where were the old miniaturists

who humbly devoted their entire lives to drawing intricate designs on castle

walls, cypress leaves whose uniqueness was discernible only after close scrutiny

and the seven-leaf steppe grasses used to fill empty spaces? Where were the

uninspired masters who never grew jealous, having accepted the wisdom and

justice inherent in God’s bestowal of talent and ability upon some artists and

patience and pious resignation upon others? We recalled these fatherly

masters, some of whom were hunched and perpetually smiling, others dreamy

and drunk and still others intent upon foisting off a spinster daughter; and as

we recollected, we attempted to resurrect the forgotten details of the

workshop as it had been during our apprentice and early mastership years.

Do you remember the limner who stuck his tongue into his cheek when he

ruled pages—to the left side if the line he drew headed right, and to the right

side if the line went left; the small, thin artist who laughed to himself,

chortling and mumbling “patience, patience, patience” when he dribbled

paint; the septuagenarian master gilder who spent hour upon hour talking to

the binder’s apprentices downstairs and claimed that red ink applied to the

forehead stopped aging; the ornery master who relied on an unsuspecting