My Name is Red Read online

  “You know quite well why! Because they remembered Our Prophet’s warning that on Judgment Day, Allah will punish painters most severely.”

  “Not painters,” corrected Enishte Effendi. “Those who make idols. And this not from the Koran but from Bukhari.”

  “On Judgment Day, the idol makers will be asked to bring the images they’ve created to life,” I said cautiously. “Since they’ll be unable to do so their lot will be to suffer the torments of Hell. Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, “creator” is one of the attributes of Allah. It is Allah who is creative, who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with Him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does, who claim to be as creative as He.”

  I made my statement firmly, as if I, too, were accusing him. He fixed his gaze into my eyes.

  “Do you think this is what we’ve been doing?”

  “Never,” I said with a smile. “However, this is what Elegant Effendi, may he rest in peace, began to assume when he saw the last painting. He’d been saying that your use of the science of perspective and the methods of the Venetian masters was nothing but the temptation of Satan. In the last painting, you’ve supposedly rendered the face of a mortal using the Frankish techniques, so the observer has the impression not of a painting but of reality; to such a degree that this image has the power to entice men to bow down before it, as with icons in churches. According to him, this is the Devil’s work, not only because the art of perspective removes the painting from God’s perspective and lowers it to the level of a street dog, but because your reliance on the methods of the Venetians as well as your mingling of our own established traditions with that of the infidels will strip us of our purity and reduce us to being their slaves.”

  “Nothing is pure,” said Enishte Effendi. “In the realm of book arts, whenever a masterpiece is made, whenever a splendid picture makes my eyes water out of joy and causes a chill to run down my spine, I can be certain of the following: Two styles heretofore never brought together have come together to create something new and wondrous. We owe Bihzad and the splendor of Persian painting to the meeting of an Arabic illustrating sensibility and Mongol-Chinese painting. Shah Tahmasp’s best paintings marry Persian style with Turkmen subtleties. Today, if men cannot adequately praise the book-arts workshops of Akbar Khan in Hindustan, it’s because he urged his miniaturists to adopt the styles of the Frankish masters. To God belongs the East and the West. May He protect us from the will of the pure and unadulterated.”

  However soft and bright his face might have appeared by candlelight, his shadow, cast on the wall, was equally as black and frightening. Despite finding what he said to be exceedingly reasonable and sound, I didn’t believe him. I assumed he was suspicious of me, and thus, I grew suspicious of him; I sensed that he was listening at times for the courtyard gate below, that he was hoping someone would deliver him from my presence.

  “You yourself told me how Sheikh Muhammad the Master of Isfahan burned down the great library containing the paintings he had renounced, and how he also immolated himself in a fit of bad conscience,” he said. “Now let me tell you another story related to that legend that you don’t know. It’s true, he’d spent the last thirty years of his life hunting down his own works. However, in the books he perused, he increasingly discovered imitations inspired by him rather than his original work. In later years, he came to realize that two generations of artists had adopted as models of form the illustrations he himself had renounced, that they’d ingrained his pictures in their minds — or more accurately, had made them a part of their souls. As Sheikh Muhammad attempted to find his own pictures and destroy them, he discovered that young miniaturists had, with reverence, reproduced them in countless books, had relied on them in illustrating other stories, had caused them to be memorized by all and had spread them over the world. Over long years, as we gaze at book after book and illustration after illustration, we come to learn the following: A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. Once a miniaturist’s artistry enters our souls this way, it becomes the criterion for the beauty of our world. At the end of his life, as the Master of Isfahan burned his own art, he not only witnessed the fact that his work, instead of disappearing, actually proliferated and increased; he understood that everybody now saw the world the way he had seen it. Those things which did not resemble the paintings he made in his youth were now considered ugly.”

  Unable to rein in the awe stirring within me and to control my desire to please Enishte Effendi, I fell before his knees. As I kissed his hand, my eyes filled with tears and I felt I had relinquished to him the place in my soul that had always been reserved for Master Osman.

  “A miniaturist,” said Enishte Effendi in the tone of a self-satisfied man, “creates his art by heeding his conscience and by obeying the principles in which he believes, fearing nothing. He pays no attention to what his enemies, the zealots and those who envy him have to say.”

  But it occurred to me that Enishte Effendi wasn’t even a miniaturist as I kissed his aged and mottled hand through my tears. I was embarrassed by my thought. It was as if another had forced this devilish, shameless notion into my head. Even so, you too know how true this statement is.

  “I’m not afraid of them,” Enishte said, “because I’m not afraid of death.”

  Who were “they?” I nodded as if I understood. Yet annoyance began to mount within me. I noticed that the old volume immediately beside Enishte was El-Jevziyye’s Book of the Soul. All dotards who seek death share a love for this book that recounts the adventures that await the soul. Since I’d been here last, I saw only one new item among the objects collected in trays, resting on the chest, among the pen cases, penknives, nib-cutting boards, inkwells and brushes: a bronze inkpot.

  “Let’s establish, once and for all, that we do not fear them,” I said boldly. “Take out the last illustration. Let’s show it to them.”

  “But wouldn’t this prove that we minded their slander, at least enough to take it seriously? We’ve done nothing of which we ought to be afraid. What could justify your being so frightened?”

  He stroked my hair like a father. I was afraid that I might burst into tears again; I embraced him.

  “I know why that unfortunate gilder Elegant Effendi was killed,” I said excitedly. “By slandering you, your book and us, Elegant Effendi was planning to set Nusret Hoja of Erzurum’s men upon us. He was convinced that we’d fallen sway to the Devil. He’d begun spreading such rumors, trying to incite the other miniaturists working on your book to rebel against you. I don’t know why he suddenly began to do this. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps he’d come under Satan’s influence. And the other miniaturists also heard how determined Elegant Effendi was to destroy us all. You can imagine how each of them grew frightened and succumbed to suspicions as I myself had. Because one of their lot was cornered, in the middle of the night, by Elegant Effendi — who had incited him against you, us, our book, as well as against illustrating, painting and all else we believe in — that artist fell into a panic, killing that scoundrel and tossing his body into a well.”

  “Scoundrel?”

  “Elegant Effendi was an ill-natured, ill-bred traitor. Villain!” I shouted as if he were before me in the room.

  Silence. Did he fear me? I was afraid of myself. It was as if I’d succumbed to somebody else’s will and thoughts; yet, this was not wholly unpleasant.

  “Who was this miniaturist who fell into a panic like you and the illustrator from Isfahan? Who killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Yet I wanted him to infer from my expression that I was lying. I realized that I’d made a grave error in coming here, but I wasn’t going to succumb to feelings of guilt and regret. I could see that Enishte Effendi was growing suspicious of me and this pleased and fortified me. I
f he became convinced that I was a murderer and this knowledge struck terror throughout his soul, then he wouldn’t dare refuse to show me the final painting. I was so curious about that picture, not because of any sin I’d committed on its account — I genuinely wanted to see how it’d turned out.

  “Is it important who killed that miscreant?” I said. “Is it not possible that whoever rid us of him has done a good deed?”

  I was encouraged when I saw he could no longer look me directly in the eye. Magnanimous men, who think themselves better and morally superior to others, cannot look you in the eye when they are embarrassed on your behalf, perhaps because they are contemplating reporting you and abandoning you to a fate of torture and execution.

  Outside, just in front of the courtyard gate, the dogs began a frenzied howling.

  “It’s begun to snow again,” I said. “Where has everyone gone at this late hour? Why have they left you here all alone? They haven’t even lit a candle for you.”

  “It’s quite strange, indeed,” he said. “I don’t understand it myself.”

  He was so sincere that I believed him completely, and despite ridiculing him just as the other miniaturists did, I once again knew that I actually loved him profoundly. But how had he so quickly sensed my sudden and great flood of respect and affection, to which he responded by stroking my hair with irresistible fatherly concern? I began to see that Master Osman’s style of painting, and the legacy of the old masters of Herat, had no future whatsoever. And this abominable thought frightened me yet again. After some tragedy, we all feel the same way: In one last desperate hope, and without caring how comic and foolish we might appear, we pray that everything might continue as it always has.

  “Let’s continue to illustrate our book,” I said. “Let everything continue as it always has.”

  “There’s a murderer among the miniaturists. I am continuing my work with Black Effendi.”

  Was he provoking me to kill him?

  “Where is Black now?” I asked. “Where is your daughter and her children?”

  I sensed that some other power had placed these words into my mouth, yet I couldn’t restrain myself. There was no longer any way for me to be happy and hopeful. I could only be smart and sarcastic. Behind these two always entertaining jinns — intelligence and sarcasm — I sensed the presence of the Devil, who controlled them, overcoming me. At the same moment, the accursed dogs beyond the gate began to howl madly as if they’d tracked the scent of blood.

  Had I lived this exact moment long ago? In a distant city, at a time which now seemed far from me, as a snow that I couldn’t see fell, by the light of a candle, I was attempting to explain through tears that I was entirely innocent to a crotchety old dotard, who’d accused me of stealing paint. Back then, just as now, dogs began to howl as if they’d smelled blood. And I understood from Enishte Effendi’s great chin, befitting an evil old man, and from his eyes, which he was finally able to fix mercilessly into mine, that he intended to crush me. I recalled this tattered memory from when I was a ten-year-old miniaturist’s apprentice like a picture whose outlines are clear but whose colors have faded. Thus was I living the present as though it were a distinct but faded memory.

  So, as I arose and circled behind Enishte Effendi, lifting that new, huge and heavy bronze inkpot from among the familiar glass, porcelain and crystal ones that rested on his worktable, the hardworking miniaturist within me — that Master Osman had instilled in us all — was illustrating what I did and what I saw in distinct yet faded colors, not as something I was experiencing now but as if it were a memory from long ago. You know how in dreams we shudder to see ourselves as if from the outside, with the same sensation, holding the large yet small-mouthed bronze inkpot, I said:

  “When I was a ten-year-old apprentice, I saw just such an inkpot.”

  “It’s a three-hundred-year-old Mongol inkpot,” said Enishte Effendi. “Black brought it all the way from Tabriz. It’s for red.”

  At that very moment, it was of course the Devil prodding me to drive that inkpot down with all my might onto this conceited old man’s faulty brain. But I didn’t give in to the Devil, and with false hope, I said, “It is I, I’m the one who murdered Elegant Effendi.”

  You understand why I said this hopefully, don’t you? I trusted that Enishte would understand, and in turn, forgive me — that he would fear and help me.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE

  A silence filled the room when he confessed he’d murdered Elegant Effendi. I assumed he’d kill me as well. My heart quickened. Had he come here to end my life or to confess and terrify me? Did he himself know what he wanted? I was afraid, realizing how absolutely unacquainted I was with the inner world of this magnificent artist whose splendid lines and magical use of color had been familiar to me for years. I could sense him standing stiffly behind me, there at the nape of my neck, holding that large inkpot reserved for red, but I didn’t turn to face him. I knew my silence would make him uneasy. “The dogs haven’t yet quieted down,” I said.

  We fell silent again. This time, I knew that my death, or my somehow avoiding this misfortune, would depend on what I told him. All I knew aside from his work was that he was quite intelligent, and if you grant that an illustrator must never reveal his soul in his work, intelligence is, of course, an asset. How had he cornered me at home when no one else was here? My aged mind was furiously preoccupied with this question, but I was too confused to see myself out of this game. Where was Shekure?

  “You knew it was me, didn’t you?” he asked.

  I hadn’t known at all, not until he told me. In the back of my mind, I was even wondering whether he hadn’t done well by killing Elegant Effendi, and that the late miniaturist might’ve actually succumbed to his anxieties and made trouble for the rest of us.

  I was ever so slightly grateful to this murderer, with whom I was alone in the empty house.

  “I’m not surprised you killed him,” I said. Men like us who live with books and dream eternally of their pages fear only one thing in this world. What’s more, we’re struggling with something more forbidden and dangerous; that is, we’re struggling to make pictures in a Muslim city. As with Sheikh Muhammad of Isfahan, we miniaturists are inclined to feel guilty and regretful, we’re the first to blame ourselves before others do, to be ashamed and beg pardon of God and the community. We make our books in secret like shameful sinners. I know too well how submission to the endless attacks of hojas, preachers, judges and mystics who accuse us of blasphemy, how the endless guilt both deadens and nourishes the artist’s imagination.”

  “You don’t fault me for murdering that idiotic miniaturist, do you then?”

  “What attracts us to writing, illustrating and painting is bound up in this fear of retribution. It’s not only for money and favor that we kneel before our work from morning to evening, continuing by candlelight through the night to the point of blindness and sacrifice ourselves for pictures and books, it’s to escape the prattle of others, to escape the community, but in contrast to this passion to create, we also want those we’ve forsaken to see and appreciate the inspired pictures we’ve made — and if they should call us sinners? Oh, the suffering this brings upon the illustrator of genuine talent! Yet, genuine painting is hidden in the agony no one sees and no one creates. It’s contained in the picture, which on first sight, they’ll say is bad, incomplete, blasphemous or heretical. A genuine miniaturist knows he must reach that point, yet at the same time, he fears the loneliness that awaits him there. Who would accede to such a frightful, nerve-wracking existence? By blaming himself before anyone else does, the artist believes he’ll be spared what he’s feared for years. Others listen to him and believe him only when he admits his guilt, for which he is then condemned to burn in Hell — the illustrator of Isfahan lit these hellfires himself.”

  “But you’re not a miniaturist,” he said. “I didn’t kill him out of fear.”

  “You murdered him because you wanted
to paint as you wished, without fear.”

  For the first time in a long while, the miniaturist who aspired to be my murderer said something quite intelligent: “I know you’re explaining all this to distract me, to dupe me, to get yourself out of this situation,” and he added, “but what you’ve just said is the truth. I want you to understand, listen to me.”

  I looked into his eyes. He’d completely forgotten the formality customary between us as he spoke: He’d been carried away by his own thoughts. But to where?

  “Never fear, I won’t offend your honor,” he said. He laughed bitterly as he circled around to face me. “Even now,” he said, “as I’m doing this, it doesn’t seem to be me. It’s as if there’s something writhing within me compelling me to do its evil bidding. Yet I need that thing nonetheless. It’s that way with painting, too.”

  “These are old wives’ tales about the Devil.”

  “You think I’m lying, then?”

  He didn’t have enough courage to murder me, so he wanted me to enrage him. “Nay, you’re not lying but you’re not acknowledging what you feel either.”

  “I acknowledge very well what I feel. I’m suffering the torments of the grave without having died. Unawares, we’ve sunk to our necks in sin because of you, and now you’re preaching “more courage.” You’re the one who’s made me a murderer. Nusret Hoja’s rabid henchmen will kill us all.”