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against us to quarrel, it was to no avail. They had no intention of listening to

me. They were panicked. If they could only decide quickly, before morning,

right or wrong, which of their lot was guilty, they were convinced they could

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save themselves, be delivered from torture and that everything having to do

with the workshop would persist for years to come as it always had.

Nevertheless, what Black threatened to do didn’t please the other two.

What if it became evident that somebody else was guilty and Our Sultan

learned they blinded me for no reason whatsoever? They were terrified both of

Black’s closeness to Master Osman and his insolence toward him. They tried

to pull back the needle which Black, in blind rage, persisted in holding before

my eyes.

Black fell into a panic, as if they were taking the plume needle from his

hand, as if we’d taken sides against him. There was another scuffle. All I could

do was tilt my head upward to escape the struggle over the needle, which was

happening perilously close to my eyes.

Everything occurred so fast that I couldn’t make out what happened at

first. I felt a sharp but limited pain in my right eye; a passing numbness seized

my forehead. Then everything was as it had been, yet a horror had already

taken root within me. The oil lamp had been withdrawn, but I could still

clearly see the figure before me decisively thrust the needle, this time into my

left eye. He’d taken the needle from Black only moments before, and was more

careful and meticulous now. When I understood that the needle effortlessly

penetrated my eye, I lay dead still, though I felt the same burning sensation.

The numbness in my forehead seemed to spread over my entire head, but

ceased when the needle was removed. They were looking at the needle and

then at my eyes in turn. It was as if they weren’t certain what had transpired.

When everybody fully understood the misfortune that had befallen me, the

commotion stopped and the weight upon my arms eased.

I began to scream, nearly howling. Not from the pain, but from the terror

of comprehending fully what had been done to me.

At first, I sensed that my wailing put not only me at ease, but them as well.

My voice brought us together.

Even so, as my screaming persisted, their nervousness increased. I could no

longer feel any pain. All I could think was that my eyes had been pierced with a

needle.

I was not yet blind. Thank goodness I could still see them watching me in

terror and sorrow, I could still see their shadows moving aimlessly on the

ceiling of the lodge. This at once pleased and alarmed me. “Unhand me,” I

screamed. “Unhand me so I can see everything once more, I implore you.”

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“Quickly, tell us,” said Black. “How did you meet up with Elegant Effendi

that night? Then we’ll unhand you.”

“I was returning home from the coffeehouse. Poor Elegant Effendi accosted

me. He was frenzied and very agitated. I pitied him at first. But leave me be

now and I shall later recount it all. My eyes are fading.”

“They won’t fade right away,” said Black with determination. “Believe me,

Master Osman could still identify the horses with cut-open nostrils after his

eyes had been pierced.”

“Hapless Elegant Effendi said he wanted to talk to me and that I was the

only person he could trust.”

Yet it wasn’t him I pitied, but myself now.

“If you tell us before the blood clots in your eyes, in the morning you can

look upon the world to your heart’s content one last time,” said Black. “See,

the rain has eased.”

“”Let’s go back to the coffeehouse,“ I said to Elegant, but sensed at once

that he didn’t like it there, and even that it frightened him. This was how I

first knew Elegant Effendi had broken from us completely and had gone his

separate way after painting with us for twenty-five years. In the last eight or

ten years, after he married, I’d see him at the workshop, but I didn’t even

know what he was occupied with…He told me he saw the last picture, how it

contained a sin so grave we’d never live it down. As a consequence, he

maintained, we’d all burn in Hell. He was agitated and possessed by fear,

overcome with the sense of devastation felt by a man who’d unwittingly

committed heresy.”

“What heresy?”

“When I asked him this very question, he opened his eyes wide in surprise

as if to say, You mean you don’t know? It was then I thought how our friend

had aged, as have we all. He said unfortunate Enishte had brazenly used the

perspectival method in the last picture. In this picture, objects weren’t

depicted according to their importance in Allah’s mind, but as they appeared

to the naked eye—the way the Franks painted. This was the first transgression.

The second was depicting Our Sultan, the Caliph of Islam, the same size as a

dog. The third transgression also involved rendering Satan the same size, and

in an endearing light. But what surpassed them all—a natural result of

introducing this Frankish understanding into our painting—was drawing Our

Sultan’s picture as large as life and his face in all its detail! Just like the

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idolators do…Or just like the ”portraits’ that Christians, who couldn’t save

themselves from their inherent idolatrous tendencies, painted upon their

church walls and worshiped. Elegant Effendi, who learned of portraits from

your Enishte, knew this quite well, and believed correctly that portraiture was

the greatest of sins, and would be the downfall of Muslim painting. As we

hadn’t gone to the coffeehouse, where, he claimed, our exalted Preacher

Effendi and our religion were being maligned, he explained all this to me while

we walked down the street. Occasionally, he’d stop, as though seeking help,

ask me whether all of this was indeed correct, whether there wasn’t any

recourse and whether we’d truly burn in Hell. He suffered fits of regret and

beat his breast in remorse, but I was unpersuaded. He was an imposter who

feigned regret.“

“How did you know this?”

“We’ve known Elegant Effendi since childhood. He’s very orderly, quiet,

ordinary and colorless, like his gilding. It was as if the man standing before me

then was dumber, more naive, more devout, yet more superficial than the

Elegant we knew.”

“I hear he’d also become quite close to the Erzurumis,” said Black.

“No Muslim would ever feel such torment and regret for inadvertently

committing a sin,” I said. “A good Muslim knows God is just and reasonable

enough to consider the intent of His servants. Only pea-brained ignoramuses

believe they’ll go to Hell for eating pork unawares. Anyway, a genuine Muslim

knows the fear of damnation serves to frighten others, not himself. This is

what Elegant Effendi was doing, you see, he wanted to scare me. It was your

Enishte who taught him that he might do such a thing; and it was then I knew

that this was indeed the case. Now, tell me in complete honesty, my dear

illuminator brethren, has the blood begun to clot in my eyes, have my eyes lost

their color?”

They brought the lamp toward my face and gazed at it, displaying the care

and compassion of surgeons.

“Nothing seems to have changed.”

Were these three, staring into my eyes, the last sight I’d see in this world? I

knew I’d never forget these moments until the end of my life, and I related

what follows, because despite my regret, I also felt hope:

“Your Enishte taught Elegant Effendi that he was involved in some

forbidden project by covering up the final picture, by revealing only a specific

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spot to each of us and having us draw something there—by giving the picture

an air of mystery and secrecy, it was Enishte himself who instilled the fear of

heresy. He, not the Erzurumis who’ve never seen an illuminated manuscript in

their lives, was the first to spread the frenzy and panic about sin that infected

us. Meanwhile, what would an artist with a clear conscience have to fear?”

“There’s much that an artist with a clear conscience has to fear in our day,”

said Black smugly. “Indeed, no one has anything to say against decoration, but

pictures are forbidden by our faith. Because the illustrations of the Persian

masters and even the masterpieces of the greatest masters of Herat are

ultimately seen as an extension of border ornamentation, no one would take

issue with them, reasoning that they enhanced the beauty of writing and the

magnificence of calligraphy. And who sees our painting anyway? However, as

we make use of the methods of the Franks, our painting is becoming less

focused on ornamentation and intricate design and more on straightforward

representation. This is what the Glorious Koran forbids and what displeased

Our Prophet. Both Our Sultan and my Enishte knew this quite well. This was

the reason for my Enishte’s murder.”

“Your Enishte was murdered because he was afraid,” I said. “Just like you,

he’d begun to claim that illustration, which he was doing himself, wasn’t

contrary to the religion or the sacred book…This was exactly the pretext

sought by the Erzurumis, who were desperate to find an aspect contrary to the

religion. Elegant Effendi and your Enishte were a perfect match for each

other.”

“And you’re the one who killed them both, isn’t that so?” said Black.

I thought for a moment that he would hit me, and in that instant, I also

knew beautiful Shekure’s new husband really had nothing to complain about

in the murder of his Enishte. He wouldn’t strike me, and even if he did, it

made no difference to me any longer.

“In actuality, as much as Our Sultan wanted to have a book prepared under

the influence of the Frankish artists,” I continued stubbornly, “your Enishte

wanted to prepare a provocative book whose taint of illicitness would feed his

own pride. He felt a slavish awe toward the pictures of the Frankish masters

he’d seen during his travels, and he’d fallen completely for the artistry that he

regaled us about for days on end—you too must have heard that nonsense

about perspective and portraiture. If you ask me, there was nothing damaging

or sacrilegious in the book we were preparing…Since he was well aware of

this, he pretended that he was preparing a forbidden book and this gave him

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great satisfaction…Being involved in such a dangerous venture with the

Sultan’s personal permission was as important to him as the pictures of the

Frankish masters. True, if we’d made a painting with the intent of exhibiting

it, that would’ve been sacrilege. Yet in none of those pieces could I sense

anything contrary to religion, any faithlessness, impiety or even the vaguest

illicitness. Did you sense anything of the sort?”

My eyes had almost imperceptibly lost strength, but thank God, I could see

enough to know that my question gave them pause.

“You cannot be certain, can you?” I said, gloating. “Even if you secretly

believe that the blemish of blasphemy or the shadow of sacrilege exists in the

pictures we’ve made, you could never accept this belief and express it, because

this would be equivalent to giving credence to the zealots and Erzurumis who

oppose and accuse you. On the other hand, you cannot claim with any

conviction that you’re as innocent as freshly fallen snow, because this would

mean giving up both the dizzying pride and refined self-congratulation of

engaging in a secretive, mysterious and forbidden act. Do you know how I

became aware that I was behaving pretentiously in this way? By bringing poor

Elegant Effendi to this dervish lodge in the middle of the night! I brought him

here with the excuse that we’d nearly frozen walking the streets so long. In

actuality, it pleased me to show him I was a free-thinking Kalenderi throwback,

or worse yet, that I aspired to be a Kalenderi. When Elegant understood I was

the last of the followers of a dervish order based on pederasty, hashish

consumption, vagrancy and all manner of aberrant behavior, I thought he’d

fear and respect me even more, and in turn, be intimidated into silence. As

fate would have it, the exact opposite happened. Our dim-witted boyhood

friend disliked it here, and he quickly decided the accusations of blasphemy

he’d learned from your Enishte were quite on the mark. So, our beloved

apprenticeship companion, who’d at first implored, ”Help me, convince me

that we won’t go to Hell so I might sleep in peace tonight,“ in a newfound,

threatening tone, began to insist that ”this will end in nothing but evil.“ He

was convinced the preacher hoja from Erzurum would hear the rumors that in

the final picture we’d veered from the orders of Our Sultan, who’d never

forgive this transgression. Convincing him everything was clear skies and

sunshine was nearly impossible. He’d tell all to the preacher’s dull

congregation, exaggerating Enishte’s absurdities, the anxieties about affronts

to the religion and rendering the Devil in a favorable light, and they’d

naturally believe every slanderous word. I don’t have to tell you how, not only

the artisans, but the entire society of craftsmen have grown jealous of us since

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we’ve become the intense focus of Our Sultan’s attention. Now all of them

will gleefully declare in unison ”the miniaturists are mired in heresy.“

Furthermore, the cooperation between Enishte and Elegant Effendi would

prove this slander true. I say ”slander‘ because I don’t believe in what my