My Name is Red Read online

  “What are you two doing!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  “Orhan was leaving the room,” Shevket said.

  “Liar,” said Orhan. “Shevket opened the door and I told him not to leave.” He began to cry.

  “If you don’t sit up here quietly, I’ll kill both of you.”

  “Mama, don’t go,” Orhan said.

  Downstairs, I bound Hayriye’s finger, stopping the bleeding. When I told her that my father hadn’t died a natural death, she grew frightened and recited some prayers asking for Allah’s protection. She stared at her injured finger and began crying. Was her affection for my father great enough to unleash such a fit of crying? She wanted to go upstairs and see him.

  “He’s not upstairs,” I said. “He’s in the back room.”

  She gazed at me suspiciously. But when she realized I couldn’t bear another look at him, she was overcome by curiosity. She grabbed the lamp and left. She took four or five steps beyond the entrance of the kitchen, where I stood, and with respect and apprehension, she slowly pushed open the door of the room, and by the light of the lamp she was holding, looked inside. Unable at first to see my father, she raised the lamp even higher, trying to illuminate the corners of the large rectangular room.

  “Aaah!” she screamed. She’d caught sight of my father where I’d left him just beside the door. Frozen, she gazed at him. The shadow she cast along the floor and stable wall was motionless. As she looked, I imagined what she was seeing. When she returned, she wasn’t crying. I was relieved to see that she still had her wits about her, enough to be able to register completely what I was prepared to tell her.

  “Now listen to me, Hayriye,” I said. As I spoke, I waved the fish knife, which my hand had grabbed seemingly on its own. “The upstairs has been ransacked too; the same accursed demon has destroyed all, he’s made a shambles of everything. That’s where he crushed my father’s face and skull; that’s where he killed him. I brought him down here so the children wouldn’t see and so I might have a chance to caution you. After you three left, I also went out. Father was home by himself.”

  “I was not aware of that,” she said insolently. “Where were you?”

  I wanted her to take careful note of my silence. Then I said, “I was with Black. I met with Black in the house of the Hanged Jew. But you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Nor, for the time being, will you mention that my father has been killed.”

  “Who was it that murdered him?”

  Was she truly such an idiot or was she trying to corner me?

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t hide the fact that he was dead,” I said. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “How should I know anything?” she said. “What are we going to do now?”

  “You’re going to behave as if nothing whatsoever has happened,” I said. I felt the urge to wail, to burst out crying, but I restrained myself. We both were quiet.

  Much later, I said, “Forget about the fish for now, set out the dishes for the children.”

  She objected and started to cry, and I put my arms around her. We hugged each other tightly. I loved her then, momentarily pitying, not only myself and the children, but all of us. But even as we embraced, a worm of doubt was anxiously gnawing at me. You know where I was while my father was being murdered. To further my own designs, I’d cleared the house of Hayriye and the children. You know that leaving my father alone in the house was an unforeseen coincidence…But did Hayriye know? Did she comprehend what I’d explained to her, will she understand? Indeed, yes, she’d quickly understand and grow suspicious. I hugged her even tighter; but I knew that with her slave girl’s mind she’d assume I was doing this to cover up my wiles, and before long even I felt as if I were deceiving her. While my father was being murdered here, I was with Black engaged in an act of lovemaking. If it were only Hayriye who knew this, I wouldn’t feel as guilty, but I suspect that you might make something of it as well. So, admit it, you believe that I’m hiding something. Alas, poor woman! Could my fate be any darker? I began to cry, then Hayriye cried, and we embraced again.

  I pretended to satisfy my hunger at the table we’d set upstairs. From time to time, with the excuse of “checking on Grandfather,” I would step into the other room and burst into tears. Later because the children were scared and agitated, they snuggled up tightly next to me in bed. For a long while they were unable to sleep for fear of jinns, and as they tossed and turned they kept asking, “I heard a noise, did you hear it?” To lull them to sleep, I promised to tell them a love story. You know how words take wing in the darkness.

  “Mother, you’re not going to get married are you?” said Shevket.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “There was a prince who, from afar, fell in love with a strikingly beautiful maiden. How did this happen? I’ll tell you how. Before laying eyes on the pretty maiden, he’d seen her portrait, that’s how.”

  As I would often do when I was upset and troubled, I recounted the tale not from memory, but improvising according to how I felt at that time. And since I colored it using a palette of my own memories and worries, what I recounted became a kind of melancholy illustration to accompany all that had happened to me.

  After both children fell asleep, I left the warm bed and, together with Hayriye, cleaned up what that vile demon had scattered about. We picked up ruined chests, books, cloth, ceramic cups, earthenware pots, plates and inkpots that had been thrown about and shattered; we cleared away a demolished folding worktable, paint boxes and papers that had been torn up with furious hatred; and while doing so one of us, periodically, would stop and break down crying. It was as though we were more distraught over the wreckage of the rooms and their furnishings and the savage violation of our privacy, than we were over my father’s death. I can tell you from experience, unfortunates who’ve lost loved ones are comforted by the unchanged presence of objects in the house; they’re lulled by the sameness of the curtains, blankets and daylight, which, in turn, allows them occasionally to forget that Azrael has carried away their beloved or kin. The house that my father looked after with patience and love, whose nooks and doors he had meticulously embellished, had been mercilessly vandalized; thus, we were not only devoid of comfort and pleasant memories but, reminded of the pitilessness of the culprit’s damned soul, we were terrified as well.

  When, for example, at my insistence we went downstairs, drew fresh water from the well, performed our ablutions and were reciting from the “Family of Imran” chapter — which my dearly departed father said he loved so much because it mentioned hope and death — out of his most cherished Herat-bound Koran, we were under sway of this terror and alarmed that the courtyard gate had begun to creak. It was nothing. But, after we checked that the latch was locked, and barricaded the gate by moving with our combined strength the planter of sweet basil that my father would water on spring mornings with freshly drawn well water, we reentered the house in the dead of night, and it suddenly seemed that the elongated shadows we were casting by the light of the oil lamp belonged to others. Most frightening of all was the horror that overcame us like a silent act of piety, as we solemnly washed his bloodied face and changed his clothes so that I might deceive myself into believing that my father had died at his appointed time; “Hand me his sleeve from underneath,” Hayriye had whispered to me.

  As we removed his bloody clothes and undergarments, what aroused our amazement and awe was the vitality and whitish color of my father’s skin illuminated by candlelight. Because there were many more threatening things to frighten us, neither of us was shy about looking at my father’s sprawling naked body covered with moles and wounds. When Hayriye went back upstairs to fetch clean undergarments and his green silk shirt, unable to restrain myself, I looked down there and was immediately quite ashamed at what I’d done. After I’d dressed my father in fresh clothes and carefully cleaned the blood off his neck, face and hair, I embraced him with all my strength, and burying my nose in his beard, I inhaled his scent and cried at length
.

  For those of you who would accuse me of lacking feeling, or even of being guilty, let me hasten to tell of two further instances when I broke down crying: 1. When I was tidying the upstairs room so the children wouldn’t discover what had happened and I brought a seashell he’d used as a paper burnisher to my ear, as I’d done as a child, only to discover that the sound of the sea had diminished. 2. When I saw that the red velvet cushion my father sat upon often over the last twenty years — so much so it’d become part of his rear end — had been torn apart.

  When everything in the house, excluding the damage that was beyond repair, was put back in order, I mercilessly denied Hayriye’s request to spread her roll-up mattress out in our room. “I don’t want the children to get suspicious in the morning,” I explained to her. But, to be honest, I was as eager to be alone with my children as I was to punish her. I entered my bed but was unable to sleep for a long while, not because I was preoccupied with the horror of what had happened, but because I was considering all that yet lay in store.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I AM RED

  I appeared in Ghazni when Book of Kings poet Firdusi completed the final line of a quatrain with the most intricate of rhymes, besting the court poets of Shah Mahmud, who ridiculed him as being nothing but a peasant. I was there on the quiver of Book of Kings hero Rüstem when he traveled far and wide in pursuit of his missing steed; I became the blood that spewed forth when he cut the notorious ogre in half with his wondrous sword; and I was in the folds of the quilt upon which he made furious love with the beautiful daughter of the king who’d received him as a guest. Verily and truly, I’ve been everywhere and am everywhere. I emerged as Tur traitorously decapitated his brother Iraj; as legendary armies, spectacular as a dream, clashed on the steppes; and as Alexander’s lifeblood shimmered brightly from his handsome nose after he suffered sunstroke. Yes, Shah Behram Gür spent every night of the week with a different beauty beneath domes of varying color from distant lands, listening to the story she recounted, and I was upon the outfit of the striking maiden he visited on a Tuesday, whose picture he’d fallen in love with, just as I appeared from the crown to the caftan of Hüsrev, who’d fallen in love with Shirin’s picture. Verily, I was visible upon the military banners of armies besieging fortresses, upon the tablecloths covering tables set for feasts, upon the velvet caftans of ambassadors kissing the feet of sultans, and wherever the sword, whose legends children loved, was depicted. Yes, handsome almond-eyed apprentices applied me with elegant brushes to thick paper from Hindustan and Bukhara; I embellished Ushak carpets, wall ornamentation, the combs of fighting cocks, pomegranates, the fruits of fabled lands, the mouth of Satan, the subtle accent lines within picture borders, the curled embroidery on tents, flowers barely visible to the naked eye made for the artist’s own pleasure, blouses worn by stunning women with outstretched necks watching the street through open shutters, the sour-cherry eyes of bird statues made of sugar, the stockings of shepherds, the dawns described in legends and the corpses and wounds of thousands, nay, tens of thousands of lovers, warriors and shahs. I love engaging in scenes of war where blood blooms like poppies; appearing on the caftan of the most proficient of bards listening to music on a countryside outing as pretty boys and poets partake of wine; I love illuminating the wings of angels, the lips of maidens, the death wounds of corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood.

  I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a color?

  Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness. Because I’ve listened to souls whispering — like the susurrus of the wind — from book to book and object to object for tens of thousands of years, allow me to say that my touch resembles the touch of angels. Part of me, the serious half, calls out to your vision while the mirthful half soars through the air with your glances.

  I’m so fortunate to be red! I’m fiery. I’m strong. I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted.

  I do not conceal myself: For me, delicacy manifests itself neither in weakness nor in subtlety, but through determination and will. So, I draw attention to myself. I’m not afraid of other colors, shadows, crowds or even of loneliness. How wonderful it is to cover a surface that awaits me with my own victorious being! Wherever I’m spread, I see eyes shine, passions increase, eyebrows rise and heartbeats quicken. Behold how wonderful it is to live! Behold how wonderful to see. Behold: Living is seeing. I am everywhere. Life begins with and returns to me. Have faith in what I tell you.

  Hush and listen to how I developed such a magnificent red tone. A master miniaturist, an expert in paints, furiously pounded the best variety of dried red beetle from the hottest climes of Hindustan into a fine powder using his mortar and pestle. He prepared five drachmas of the red powder, one drachma of soapwort and a half drachma of lotor. He boiled the soapwort in a pot containing three okkas of water. Next, he mixed thoroughly the lotor into the water. He let it boil for as long as it took to drink an excellent cup of coffee. As he enjoyed his coffee, I grew as impatient as a child about to be born. The coffee had cleared the master’s mind and given him the eyes of a jinn. He sprinkled the red powder into the kettle and carefully mixed the concoction with one of the thin, clean sticks reserved for this task. I was ready to become genuine red, but the issue of my consistency was of utmost importance: The liquid shouldn’t be permitted to just boil away. He drew the tip of his stirring stick across the nail of his thumb (any other finger was absolutely unacceptable). Oh, how exquisite it is to be red! I gracefully painted that thumbnail without running off the side in watery haste. In short, I was the right consistency, but I still contained sediment. He took the pot off the stove and strained me through a clean piece of cheesecloth, purifying me even further. Next, he heated me up again, bringing me to a frothy boil twice more. After adding a pinch of crushed alum, he left me to cool.

  A few days passed and I sat there quietly in the pan. In the anticipation of being applied to pages, of being spread everywhere and onto everything, sitting still like that broke my heart and spirit. It was during this period of silence that I meditated upon what it meant to be red.

  Once, in a Persian city, as I was being applied by the brush of an apprentice to the embroidery on the saddle cloth of a horse that a blind miniaturist had drawn by heart, I overheard two blind masters having an argument:

  “Because we’ve spent our entire lives ardently and faithfully working as painters, naturally, we, who have now gone blind, know red and remember what kind of color and what kind of feeling it is,” said the one who’d made the horse drawing from memory. “But, what if we’d been born blind? How would we have been truly able to comprehend this red that our handsome apprentice is using?”

  “An excellent issue,” the other said. “But do not forget that colors are not known, but felt.”

  “My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red.”

  “If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. If we tasted it, it would be full-bodied, like salted meat. If we took it between our lips, it would fill our mouths. If we smelled it, it’d have the scent of a horse. If it were a flower, it would smell like a daisy, not a red rose.”

  One hundred and ten years ago Venetian artistry was not yet threat enough that our rulers would bother themselves about it, and the legendary masters believed in their own methods as fervently as they believed in Allah; therefore, they regarded the Venetian method of using a variety of red tones for every ordinary sword wound and even the most common sackcloth as a kind of disrespect and vulgarity hardly worth a chuckle. Only a weak and hesitant miniaturist would use a variety of red tones to depict the red of a caftan, they claimed — shadows were not an excuse. Besides, we believe in only one red.

  “What is the meaning of red?” the blind miniaturist who’d drawn the horse from memory asked again.

  “The meaning of color is that it is ther
e before us and we see it,” said the other. “Red cannot be explained to he who cannot see.”

  “To deny God’s existence, victims of Satan maintain that God is not visible to us,” said the blind miniaturist who’d rendered the horse.

  “Yet, He appears to those who can see,” said the other master. “It is for this reason that the Koran states that the blind and the seeing are not equal.”

  The handsome apprentice ever so delicately dabbed me onto the horse’s saddle cloth. What a wonderful sensation to fix my fullness, power and vigor to the black and white of a well-executed illustration: as the cat-hair brush spreads me onto the waiting page, I become delightfully ticklish. Thereby, as I bring my color to the page, it’s as if I command the world to “Be!” Yes, those who cannot see would deny it, but the truth is I can be found everywhere.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I, SHEKURE

  Before the children awoke, I wrote Black a brief note telling him to hurry to the house of the Hanged Jew and pressed it into Hayriye’s hand so that she might rush to Esther. As Hayriye took the letter, she looked into my eyes with more fearlessness than usual despite worrying what was to become of us; and I, who no longer had a father to fear, returned her glare with newfound temerity. This exchange would determine the tone of our relationship in the future. Over the last two years, I suspected Hayriye might even have a child by my father, and forgetting her status as slave, maneuver to become lady of the house. I visited my unfortunate father, respectfully kissing his now stiffened hand, which, oddly, hadn’t lost its softness. I hid my father’s shoes, quilted turban and purple cloak, then explained to the children once they awoke that their grandfather had gotten better and had left for the Mustafa Pasha district early in the morning.