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“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. If 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, ca
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 ji
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 i
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.
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 i
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 si
“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 si