My Name is Red Read online

  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 on the banks of the Kinik 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.

  FIFTY-NINE

  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 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 apprentice
or even randomly stopped anyone passing by to test the consistency of paint upon their fingernails after his own nails were completely filled; and the portly artist who made us laugh as he caressed his beard with the furry rabbit’s foot used to collect the excess flecks of gold dust used in gilding? Where were they all?

  Where were the burnishing boards which were used so much they became a part of the apprentices’ bodies and then just tossed aside, and the long paper scissors that the apprentices dulled by playing “swordsman?” Where were the writing boards inscribed with the names of the great masters so they wouldn’t get mixed up, the aroma of China ink and the faint rattle of coffeepots aboil in the silence? Where were the various brushes we made of hairs from the necks and inner ears of kittens born to our tabby cats each summer, and the great sheaves of Indian paper given to us so, in idle moments, we could practice our artistry the way calligraphers did? Where was the ugly steel-handled penknife whose use required permission from the Head Illuminator, thus providing a deterrent to the entire workshop when we had to scrape away large mistakes; and what happened to the rituals that surrounded these mistakes?

  We also agreed that it was wrong for the Sultan to allow the master miniaturists to work at home. We recalled the marvelous warm halva that came to us from the palace kitchen on early winter evenings after we’d worked with aching eyes by the light of oil lamps and candles. Laughing and with tears in our eyes, we remembered how the elderly and senile master gilder, who was stricken with chronic trembling and could take up neither pen nor paper, on his monthly workshop visits brought fried dough-balls in heavy syrup that his daughter had made for us apprentices. We talked about the exquisite pages rendered by the dearly departed Black Memi, Head Illuminator before Master Osman, discovered in his room, which remained empty for days after his funeral, within the portfolio found beneath the light mattress he’d spread out and use for catnaps in the afternoons.

  We talked about and named the pages we took pride in and would want to take out and look at now and again if we had copies of them, the way Master Black Memi had. They explained how the sky on the upper half of the palace picture made for the Book of Skills, illuminated with gold wash, foreshadowed the end of the world, not due to the gold itself, but due to its tone between towers, domes and cypresses — the way gold ought to be used in a polite rendition.

  They described a portrayal of Our Exalted Prophet’s bewilderment and ticklishness, as angels seized him by his underarms during his ascension to Heaven from the top of a minaret; a picture of such grave colors that even children, upon seeing the blessed scene, would first tremble with pious awe and then laugh respectfully as if they themselves were being tickled. I explained how along one edge of a page I’d commemorated the previous Grand Vizier’s suppression of rebels who’d taken to the mountains by delicately and respectfully arranging the heads he’d severed, tastefully drawing each one, not as an ordinary corpse’s head, but as an individual and unique face in the manner of a Frankish portraitist, furrowing their brows before death, dabbing red onto their necks, making their sorrowful lips inquire after the meaning of life, opening their nostrils to one final, desperate breath, and shutting their eyes to this world; and thus, I’d imbued the painting with a terrifying aura of mystery.

  As if they were our own unforgettable and unattainable memories, we wistfully discussed our favorite scenes of love and war, recalling their most magnificent wonders and tear-inducing subtleties. Isolated and mysterious gardens where lovers met on starry nights passed before our eyes: spring trees, fantastic birds, frozen time…We imagined bloody battles as immediate and alarming as our own nightmares, bodies torn in two, chargers with blood-spattered armor, beautiful men stabbing each other with daggers, the small-mouthed, small-handed, slanted-eye, bowed women watching events from barely open windows…We recalled pretty boys who were haughty and conceited, and handsome shahs and khans, their power and palaces long lost to history. Just like the women who wept together in the harems of those shahs, we now knew we were passing from life into memory, but were we passing from history into legend as they had? To avoid being drawn further into a realm of horror by the lengthening shadows of the fear of being forgotten — even more terrifying than the fear of dying — we asked each other about our favorite scenes of death.

  The first thing to come to mind was the way Satan duped Dehhak into killing his father. At the time of that legend, which is described in the beginning of the Book of Kings, the world had been newly created, and everything was so basic that nothing needed explanation. If you wanted milk, you simply milked a goat and drank; you’d say “horse,” then mount it and ride away; you’d contemplate “evil” and Satan would appear and convince you of the beauty of murdering your own father. Dehhak’s murder of Merdas, his father of Arab descent, was beautiful, both because it was unprovoked and because it occurred at night in a magnificent palace garden while golden stars gently illuminated cypresses and colorful spring flowers.

  Next, we recalled legendary Rüstem, who unknowingly killed his son Suhrab, commander of the enemy army that Rüstem had battled for three days. There was something that touched us all in the way Rüstem beat his breast in tearful anguish when he saw the armband he had given the boy’s mother years ago and recognized as his own son the enemy whose chest he’d ravished with thrusts of the sword.

  What was that something?

  The rain continued its patter on the roof of the dervish lodge and I paced back and forth. Suddenly I said the following:

  “Either our father, Master Osman, will betray and kill us, or we shall betray and kill him.”

  We were stricken with horror because what I said rang absolutely true; we fell silent. Still pacing, and panicked by the thought that everything would revert to its former state, I told myself the following: “Tell the story of Afrasiyab’s murder of Siyavush to change the subject. But that’s a betrayal such as fails to frighten me. Recount the death of Hüsrev.” All right then, but should it be the version told by Firdusi in the Book of Kings or the one told by Nizami in Hüsrev and Shirin? The pathos of the account in the Book of Kings rests in Hüsrev’s tearful realization of the identity of the murderer intruding in his bedroom chamber! As a last resort, saying that he wants to perform his prayers, Hüsrev sends the servant boy attending him to fetch water, soap, clean clothes and his prayer rug; the naive boy, without understanding that his master has sent him for help, goes to gather the requested items. Once alone with Hüsrev, the murderer’s first task is to lock the door from the inside. In this scene at the end of the Book of Kings, the man whom the conspirators found to enact the murder is described by Firdusi with disgust: He is foul smelling, hairy and pot-bellied.

  I paced to and fro, my head swarmed with words, but as in a dream, my voice would not take.

  Just then I sensed that the others were whispering among themselves, maligning me.

  They were so quick to take out my legs that the four of us collapsed to the floor. There was a struggle and fight on the ground, but it was brief. I lay faceup on the floor beneath the three of them.

  One of them sat on my knees. Another on my right arm.

  Black pressed a knee into each of my shoulders; he firmly situated his weight between my stomach and chest, and sat on me. I was completely immobilized. All of us were stunned and breathing hard. This is what I remembered:

  My late uncle had a rogue son two years older than me — I hope he’s been caught in the act of raiding caravans and has long since been beheaded. This jealous beast, realizing I knew more than he and was also more intelligent and refined, would find any excuse to pick a fight, or else he’d insist that we wrestle, and after quickly pinning me, he’d hold me down with his knees on my shoulders in this same way; he’d stare into my eyes, the way Black was now doing, and let a string of saliva hang down, slowly directing it toward my eyes as it gained mass, and he’d be greatly entertained as I tried to avoid it by turning my head to the right and to the left.

  Black told me
not to hide anything. Where was the last picture? Confess!

  I felt suffocating regret and anger for two reasons: First, I’d said everything I had for naught, unaware that they’d come to an agreement beforehand; secondly, I hadn’t fled, unable to imagine that their envy would reach this level.

  Black threatened to cut my throat if I didn’t produce the last picture.

  How very ridiculous. I firmly closed my lips, as if the truth would escape if I opened my mouth. Part of me also thought that there was nothing left for me to do. If they came to an agreement among themselves and turned me over to the Head Treasurer as the murderer, they’d end up saving their own hides. My only hope lay with Master Osman, who might point out another suspect or another clue; but then, could I be certain what Black said about him was correct? He could kill me here and now, and later place the onus on me, couldn’t he?

  They rested the dagger against my throat, and I saw at once how this gave Black a pleasure that he could not conceal. They slapped me. Was the dagger cutting my skin? They slapped me again.

  I was able to work through the following logic: If I held my peace, nothing would happen! This gave me strength. They could no longer hide the fact that since the days of our apprenticeships they’d been jealous of me; I, who quite evidently applied paint in the best manner, drew the steadiest line and made the best illuminations. I loved them for their extreme envy. I smiled upon my beloved brethren.

  One of them, I don’t want you to know which of them was responsible for this disgrace, passionately kissed me as if he were kissing the beloved he’d long desired. The others watched by the light of the oil lamp that they brought near to us. I could not but respond in kind to this kiss from my beloved brother. If we’re nearing the end of everything, let it be known that I do the best illuminating. Find my pages and see for yourselves.