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brother Elegant said about the book and the last picture. Even then, I would

hear nothing against your late Enishte. I found it quite appropriate that Our

Sultan turn his favors from Master Osman to Enishte Effendi, and I even

believed, if not to the same degree, what Enishte described to me at length

about the Frankish masters and their artistry. I used to believe quite sincerely

that we Ottoman artists could comfortably take from this or that aspect of the

Frankish methods as much as our hearts desired or as much as could be seen

during a visit abroad—without bartering with the Devil or bringing any great

harm upon us. Life was easy; your Enishte, may he rest in peace, had succeeded

Master Osman, and was a new father to me in this new life.“

“Let’s not discuss that point yet,” said Black. “First describe how you

murdered Elegant.”

“This deed,” I said, recognizing that I couldn’t use the word “murder,” “I

committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the

entire workshop. Elegant Effendi knew he posed a powerful threat. I prayed to

Almighty God, begging him to give me a sign showing me how despicable this

scoundrel really was. My prayers were answered when I offered Elegant money.

God had shown me how wretched he really was. These gold pieces came to

mind, but by divine inspiration, I lied. I said the gold pieces weren’t here in

the lodge, but I’d hidden them elsewhere. We went out. I walked him through

empty streets and out-of-the-way neighborhoods without any consideration

for where we were going. I had no idea what I would do, and in short, I was

afraid. At the end of our wandering, after we’d come to a street we’d passed

earlier, our brother Elegant Effendi the gilder, who devoted his entire life to

form and repetition, grew suspicious. But God provided me with an empty lot

ravaged by fire, and nearby, a dry well.”

At this point I knew I couldn’t go on and I told them so. “If you were in my

shoes, you would’ve considered the salvation of your artist brethren and done

the same thing,” I said confidently.

When I heard them agree with me, I felt like crying. I was going to say it

was because their compassion, which I hardly deserved, softened my heart, but

no. I was going to say it was because I again heard the thud of his body hitting

the bottom of the well wherein I dropped him after killing him, but no. I was

going to say it was because I remembered how happy I was before becoming a

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murderer, how I’d been like everybody else, but no. The blind man who used

to pass through our neighborhood in my childhood appeared in my mind’s

eye: He’d take a dirty metal water dipper out of his even dirtier clothes, and

would call out to us neighborhood kids who watched him from a distance,

there by the local water fountain, “My children, which of you will fill this

blind old man’s drinking cup with water from the fountain?” When no one

went to his aid, he’d say, “It’d be a good turn, my children, a pious deed!” The

color of his irises had faded and they were nearly the same color as the whites

of his eyes.

Agitated by the thought of resembling that blind old man, I confessed how

I did away with Enishte Effendi hurriedly, without savoring any of it. I was

neither too honest nor too insincere with them: I found a medium

consistency, such that the story wouldn’t trouble my heart too much, and

they’d be assured I hadn’t gone to Enishte’s house to murder him. I wanted

to make clear that it wasn’t a premeditated murder, which intent they

gathered when I reminded them of the following while trying to absolve

myself: “Without harboring bad intentions, one never goes to Hell.”

“After surrendering Elegant Effendi to the Angels of Allah,” I said

thoughtfully, “what the dearly departed expressed to me in his last moments

started to gnaw at me like a worm. Having caused me to bloody my hands, the

final painting loomed larger in my mind, and so, resolving to see it, I went to

your Enishte, who no longer summoned any of us to his house. Not only did

he refuse to reveal the painting, he behaved as if nothing were the matter.

There was, he sniffled, neither a painting nor anything else so mysterious that

it called for murder! To preempt further humiliation, and to get his attention, I

thereupon confessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendi and tossed

him into a well. Yes, then he took me more seriously, but he continued to

humiliate me all the same. How could a man who humiliates his son be a

father? Great Master Osman would become irate with us, he’d beat us, but he

never once humiliated us. Oh my brothers, we’ve made a grave mistake by

betraying him.”

I smiled at my brethren whose attention was focused upon my eyes,

listening to me as though I lay on my deathbed. Just as a dying man would, I

saw them growing increasingly blurry and moving away from me.

“I murdered your Enishte for two reasons. First, because he shamelessly

forced the great Master Osman into aping the Venetian artist, Sebastiano.

Second, because in a moment of weakness, I lowered myself to ask him

whether I had a style of my own.”

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“How did he respond?”

“It seems I am possessed of a style. But coming from him, of course, this

was not an insult. I remembered wondering, in my shame, if this were indeed

praise: I considered style to be a variety of rootlessness and dishonor, but

doubt was eating at me. I wanted nothing to do with style, but the Devil was

tempting me and I was, furthermore, curious.”

“Everybody secretly desires to have a style,” said Black smartly. “Everybody

also desires to have his portrait made, just as Our Sultan did.”

“Is this affliction impossible to resist?” I said. “As this plague spreads, none

of us will be able to stand against the methods of the Europeans.”

No one was listening to me, however. Black was recounting the story of a

sad Turkmen chieftain who was sent off on a twelve-year exile to China

because he’d prematurely expressed his love for the daughter of the shah.

Since he didn’t have a portrait of his beloved, of whom he dreamed for a

dozen years, he forgot her face amid the Chinese beauties, and his lovelorn

suffering was transformed into a profound trial willed by Allah.

“Thanks to your Enishte, we’ve all learned the meaning of ”portrait,“” I

said. “God willing, one day, we’ll fearlessly tell the story of our own lives the

way we actually live them.”

“All fables are everybody’s fables,” said Black.

“All illumination is God’s illumination too,” I said, completing the verse by

the poet Hatifi of Herat. “But as the methods of the Europeans spread,

everyone will consider it a special talent to tell other men’s stories as if they

were one’s own.”

“This is nothing but the will of Satan.”

“Unhand me now,” I shouted. “Let me look upon the world one last time.”

They were terrified, and a new confidence rose within me.

“Will you take out the final picture?” Black said.

I gave Black such a look that he was quick to understand I’d do so and he

released me. My heart began to beat rapidly.

I’m certain you’ve long ago discovered my identity, which I’ve been trying

to conceal. Even so, don’t be surprised that I’m behaving like the old masters

of Herat, for they would conceal their signatures not to hide their identities,

but out of principle and respect for their masters. Excitedly, I walked through

the pitch-black rooms of the lodge, oil lamp in hand, making way for my own

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pale shadow. Had the curtain of blackness begun to fall over my eyes, or were

these rooms and hallways truly this dark? How many days and weeks, how

much time did I have before going blind? My shadow and I stopped among

the ghosts in the kitchen and lifted up the pages from the clean corner of a

dusty cabinet before quickly heading back. Black had followed me as a

precaution, but he’d neglected to bring his dagger. Would I, perchance,

consider taking up that dagger and blinding him before I myself went blind?

“I’m pleased that I will see this once again before going blind,” I said with

pride. “I want you all to see it as well. Look here.”

Under the light of the oil lamp, I showed them the final picture, which I’d

taken from Enishte’s house the day I killed him. At first, I watched their

curious and timid expressions as they looked at the double-leaf picture. I

circled around and joined them, and I was ever so faintly trembling as I stared.

The lancing of my eyes, or perhaps a sudden rapture, made me feverish.

The pictures we made on various parts of the two pages over the past

year—tree, horse, Satan, Death, dog and woman—were arranged, large and

small, according to Enishte’s albeit inept new method of composition, in such

a way that the dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s gilding and borders made us

feel we were no longer looking at a page from a book but at the world seen

through a window. In the center of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve

been, was my own portrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was

somewhat unsatisfied with it because after laboring in vain for days, looking

into a mirror and erasing and reworking, I was unable to achieve a good

resemblance; still, I felt unbridled elation because the picture not only situated

me at the center of a vast world, but for some unaccountable and diabolic

reason, it made me appear more profound, complicated and mysterious than I

actually was. I wanted only that my artist brethren recognize, understand and

share in my exuberance. I was both the center of everything, like a sultan or a

king, and, at the same time, myself. The situation fed my pride as it increased

my embarrassment. Finally these two feelings balanced each other, and I was

able to relax and take dizzying pleasure in the picture. But for this pleasure to

be complete, I knew every mark on my face and shirt, all of the wrinkles,

shadows, moles and boils, every detail from my whiskers to the weave of my

clothes and all their colors in all their shades had to be perfect, down to the

minutest details, as much as the skill of Frankish painters would allow.

I noted in the faces of my old companions fear, bewilderment and the

inescapable feeling devouring us all: jealousy. Along with the angry revulsion

they felt toward a man hopelessly mired in sin, they were also envious.

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“During the nights I spent here staring at this picture by the light of an oil

lamp, I felt for the first time that God had forsaken me and only Satan would

befriend me in my isolation,” I said. “I know that even if I were truly the

center of the world—and each time I looked at the picture this is precisely

what I wanted—despite the splendor of the red that ruled the painting,

despite being surrounded by all of these things I loved, including my dervish

companions and the woman who resembled beautiful Shekure, I’d still be

lonely. I’m not afraid of possessing character and individuality, nor do I fear

others bowing down and worshiping me; on the contrary, this is what I

desire.”

“You mean to say that you feel no remorse?” said Stork like a man who’d

just left a Friday sermon.

“I feel like the Devil not because I’ve murdered two men, but because my

portrait has been made in this fashion. I suspect that I did away with them so I

could make this picture. But now the isolation I feel terrifies me. Imitating the

Frankish masters without having attained their expertise makes a miniaturist

even more of a slave. Now I’m desperate to escape this trap. Of course, all of

you know: After all is said and done, I killed them both so the workshop might

persist as it always has, and Allah certainly knows this too.”

“Yet this will bring even greater trouble upon us,” said my beloved

Butterfly.

I abruptly grabbed the wrist of that fool Black, who was still looking at the

picture, and with all my strength, digging my nails into his flesh, I angrily

squeezed and twisted it. The dagger that he rather timidly held dropped from

his hand. I grabbed it from the ground.

“But now you won’t be able to resolve your troubles by handing me over to

the torturer,” I said. As if to poke out his eye, I brought the point of the dagger

toward Black’s face. “Give me the plume needle.”

He took it out and handed it to me with his good hand, and I stuck it into

my sash. I focused my gaze into his lamblike eyes.

“I pity beautiful Shekure because she had no alternative but to marry you,”

I said. “If I hadn’t been forced to kill Elegant Effendi to save you all from ruin,

she would’ve married me and been happy. Indeed, I was the one who most

fully understood the tales and talents of the Europeans as her father recounted

them to us. So, listen carefully to the last of what I will tell you: There is no

longer any place here in Istanbul for us master miniaturists who wish to live

by skill and honor alone. Yes, this is what I’ve realized. If we’re reduced to

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imitating the Frankish masters, as the late Enishte and Our Sultan desired, we

will be restrained, if not by the Ezurumis and those like Elegant Effendi, then

by the justified cowardice within us, and we won’t be able to continue. If we

fall sway to the Devil and continue, betraying everything that has come before

in a futile attempt to attain a style and European character, we will still fail—

just as I failed in making this self-portrait despite all my proficiency and

knowledge. This primitive picture I’ve made, without even achieving a fair