My Name is Red

My legs, which have always been quicker than my head, had taken me of their own accord to Enishte Effendi’s street. I crouched in a secluded spot, and for a long time observed the house as best I could in the blackness. I watched for a long time: Nestled among trees was the large and odd-looking two-story house of a rich man! I couldn’t tell on which side Shekure’s room was located. As is the case in some of the pictures made in Tabriz during the reign of Shah Tahmasp, I imagined the house in cross-section-as if it were cut in half with a knife-and I tried to illustrate in my mind’s eye where I would find my Shekure, behind which shutter.

The door opened. I saw Black leaving the house in the darkness. Enishte gazed at him with affection from behind the courtyard gate for a moment before closing it.

Even my mind, which had given itself over to idiotic fantasies, quickly, and painfully, drew three conclusions based on what I had seen:

One: Since Black was cheaper and less dangerous, Enishte Effendi would have him complete our book.

Two: The beautiful Shekure would marry Black.

Three: What the unfortunate Elegant Effendi had said was true, and so, I’d killed him for naught.

In situations such as this, as soon as our merciless intellects draw the bitter conclusion that our hearts refuse, the entire body rebels against the mind. At first, half my mind violently opposed the third conclusion, which indicated that I was nothing but the vilest of murderers. My legs, once again, acting quicker and more rationally than my head, had already put me in pursuit of Black Effendi.

We’d passed down a few side streets when I thought how very easy it would be to murder him, so contentedly and self-assuredly walking before me, and how such a crime would save me from having to confront the first two vexing conclusions established by my mind. Furthermore, I wouldn’t have cracked Elegant Effendi’s skull for no reason at all. Now, if I run ahead eight or ten paces, catch up to Black and land a blow onto his head with all my might, everything will go on as usual. Enishte Effendi will invite me to finish our book. But meanwhile my more honest (what was honesty if not fear?) and prudent side continued to tell me that the monster I’d murdered and tossed into a well was truly a slanderer. And if this were the case, I hadn’t killed him for naught, and Enishte, who no longer had anything to hide with respect to the book he was making, would most certainly invite me back to his home.

As I watched Black walking before me, however, I knew with utmost certainty that none of this would happen. It was all illusion. Black Effendi was more real than I. It happens to us all: In reaction to being overly logical we’ll feed fantasies for weeks and years on end, and one day we’ll see something, a face, an outfit, a happy person, and suddenly realize that our dreams will never come true; thus, we come to understand that a particular maiden won’t be permitted to marry us or that we’ll never reach such-and-such a station in life.

I was watching the rise and fall of Black’s shoulders, his head and his neck-the incredibly a

We were two men in love with the same woman; he was in front of me and completely unaware of my presence as we walked through the turning and twisting streets of Istanbul, climbing and descending, we traveled like brethren through deserted streets given over to battling packs of stray dogs, passed burnt ruins where ji

I AM DEATH

I am Death, as you can plainly see, but you needn’t be afraid, I’m just an illustration. Be that as it may, I read terror in your eyes. Though you know very well that I’m not real-like children who give themselves over to a game-you’re still seized by horror, as if you’d actually met Death himself. This pleases me. As you look at me, you sense that you’ll soil yourselves out of fear when that unavoidable last moment is upon you. This is no joke. When faced with Death, people lose control of their bodily functions-particularly the majority of those men who are known to be brave-hearted. For this reason, the corpse-strewn battlefields that you’ve depicted thousands of times reek not of blood, gunpowder and heated armor as is assumed, but of shit and rotting flesh.

I know this is the first time you’ve seen a depiction of Death.

One year ago, a tall, thin and mysterious old man invited to his house the young master miniaturist who would soon enough illustrate me. In the half-dark workroom of the two-story house, the old man served an exquisite cup of silky, amber-scented coffee to the young master, which cleared the youth’s mind. Next, in that shadowy room with the blue door, the old man excited the master miniaturist by flaunting the best paper from Hindustan, brushes made of squirrel hair, varieties of gold leaf, all ma

“Now then, draw Death for me,” the old man said.

“I ca

“You do not always need to have seen an illustration of something in order to depict that thing,” objected the refined and enthusiastic old man.

“Yes, perhaps not,” said the master illustrator. “Yet, if the picture is to be perfect, the way the masters of old would’ve made it, it ought to be drawn at least a thousand times before I attempt it. No matter how masterful a miniaturist might be, when he paints an object for the first time, he’ll render it as an apprentice would, and I could never do that. I ca

“Such a death might put you in touch with the subject matter,” quipped the old man.

“It’s not experience of subject matter that makes us masters, it’s never having experienced it that makes us masters.”

“Such mastery ought to be acquainted with Death then.”

In this ma

“Is the measure of a miniaturist’s talent the ability to depict everything with the same perfection as the great masters or the ability to introduce into the picture subject matter which no one else can see?” said the sure-handed, stu