My Name is Red (40 page)

We came across an incredibly beautiful illustration depicting the scene in which Ferhad, empowered by love, carries his beloved Shirin and her horse away on his shoulder. To convey the passion and woe of the lovers, the rocks on the mountain, the clouds and the three noble cypresses witnessing Ferhad’s act of love were drawn with a trembling grief-stricken hand in such agony that Master Osman and I were instantly affected by the taste of tears and sorrow in the falling leaves. This touching moment had been depicted-as the great masters intended-not to signify Ferhad’s muscular strength, but rather to convey how the pain of his love was felt at once throughout the entire world.

“A Bihzad imitation made in Tabriz eighty years ago,” Master Osman said as he replaced the volume and opened another.

This was a picture that showed the forced friendship between the cat and the mouse from
Kelile and Dimne
. Out in the fields, a poor mouse, caught between the attacks of a marten on the ground and a hawk in the air, finds his salvation in an unfortunate cat caught in a hunter’s trap. They come to an agreement: The cat, pretending to be the mouse’s friend, licks him, thereby scaring away the marten and the hawk. In turn, the mouse cautiously frees the cat from the snare. Even before I could understand the painter’s sensibility, the master had stuffed the book back beside the other volumes and had randomly opened another.

This was a pleasant picture of a mysterious woman and a man: The woman had elegantly opened one hand while asking a question, holding her knee with the other over her green cloak, as the man turned to her and listened intently. I looked at the picture avidly, jealous of the intimacy, love and friendship between them.

Putting that book down, Master Osman opened to a page from another book. The cavalry of Persian and Turanian armies, eternal enemies, had donned their full panoply of armor, helmets, greaves, bows, quivers and arrows and had mounted those magnificent, legendary and fully armored horses. Before they engaged one another in a battle to the death, they were arrayed in orderly ranks facing each other on a dusty yellow steppe holding the tips of their lances upright, bedecked in an array of colors and patiently watching their commanders, who’d rushed to the fore and begun to fight. I was about to tell myself that regardless of whether the illustration was made today or a hundred years ago, whether it’s a depiction of war or love, what the artist of absolute faith actually paints and conveys is a battle with his will and his love for painting; I was going to declare further that the miniaturist actually paints his own patience, when Master Osman said:

“It’s not here either,” and shut the heavy tome.

In the pages of an album we saw high mountains interwoven with curling clouds in a landscape illustration that seemed to go on forever. I thought how painting meant seeing this world yet depicting it as if it were the Otherworld. Master Osman recounted how this Chinese illustration might’ve traveled from Bukhara to Herat, from Herat to Tabriz, and at last, from Tabriz to Our Sultan’s palace, moving from book to book along the way, bound and unbound, finally to be rebound with other paintings at the end of the journey from China to Istanbul.

We saw pictures of war and death, each more frightening and more expertly done than the next: Rüstem together with Shah Mazenderan; Rüstem attacking Afrasiyab’s army; and Rüstem, disguised in armor, a mysterious and unidentified hero warrior…In another album we saw dismembered corpses, daggers drenched in red blood, sorrowful soldiers in whose eyes the light of death gleamed and warriors cutting each other down like reeds, as fabled armies, which we could not name, clashed mercilessly. Master Osman-for who knows how many thousandth time-looked upon Hüsrev spying on Shirin bathing in a lake by moonlight, upon the lovers Leyla and Mejnun fainting as they beheld each other after an extended separation, and a spirited picture, all aflutter with birds, trees and flowers, of Salaman and Absal as they fled the entire world and lived together on an isle of bliss. Like a true great master, he couldn’t help drawing my attention to some oddity in a corner of even the worst painting, perhaps having to do with an oversight on the part of the illuminator or perhaps with the conversation of colors: As might be expected, Hüsrev and Shirin are listening to a charming recital by her ladies-in-waiting, but see there, what kind of sad and spiteful painter had needlessly perched that ominous owl on a tree branch?; who had included that lovely boy dressed in woman’s garb among the Egyptian women who cut their fingers trying to peel tasty oranges while gazing upon the beauty of handsome Joseph?; could the miniaturist who painted İsfendiyar’s blinding with an arrow foresee that later on he, too, would be blinded?

We saw the angels accompanying Our Exalted Prophet during his Ascension; the dark-skinned, six-armed, long-white-bearded old man symbolizing Saturn; and baby Rüstem sleeping peacefully in his mother-of-pearl-inlaid cradle beneath the watchful eyes of his mother and nursemaids. We saw the way Darius died an agonizing death in Alexander’s arms, how Behram Gür withdrew to the red room with his Russian princess, how Siyavush passed through fire mounted on a black horse whose nostrils bore no peculiarity, and the woeful funeral procession of Hüsrev, murdered by his own son. As Master Osman rapidly picked out the volumes and set them aside, he would at times recognize an artist and show me, or winkle out an illustrator’s signature humbly hidden among flowers growing in the seclusion of a ruined building, or hiding in a black well along with a jinn. By comparing signatures and colophons, he could determine who’d taken what from whom. He’d flip through certain books exhaustively in hope of finding a series of pictures. Long silences passed wherein nothing but the faint susurrus of turning pages could be heard. Occasionally, Master Osman would cry out “Aha!” but I kept my peace, unable to understand what had excited him. At times he would remind me that we’d already encountered the page composition or arrangement of trees and mounted soldiers of a particular illustration in other books, in different scenes of completely different stories, and he’d point out these pictures again to jog my memory. He compared a picture in a version of Nizami’s
Quintet
from the time of Tamerlane’s son Shah Rıza-that is, from nearly two hundred years ago-with another picture he said was made in Tabriz seventy or eighty years earlier, and then go on to ask me what we could learn from the fact that two miniaturists had created the same picture without having seen each other’s work. He answered the question himself:

“To paint is to remember.”

Opening and shutting old illuminated manuscripts, Master Osman would sink his face with sorrow into the wondrous artwork (because nobody could paint this way anymore) and then become animated with joy before poorly executed pieces (for all miniaturists were brethren!)-and he’d show me what the artist had remembered, that is, old pictures of trees, angels, parasols, tigers, tents, dragons and melancholy princes, and in the process, what he hinted at was this: There was a time when Allah looked upon the world in all its uniqueness, and believing in the beauty of what he saw, bequeathed his creation to us, his servants. The duty of illustrators and of those who, loving art, gaze upon the world, is to remember the magnificence that Allah beheld and left to us. The greatest masters in each generation of painters, expending their lives and toiling until blind, strove with great effort and inspiration to attain and record the wondrous dream that Allah commanded us to see. Their work resembled Mankind recalling his own golden memories from the very beginning. Unfortunately, even the greatest masters, just like tired old men or great miniaturists gone blind from their labors, were only vaguely able to recollect random parts of that magnificent vision. This was the mysterious wisdom behind the phenomenon of old masters who miraculously drew a tree, a bird, the pose of a prince washing himself in the public baths or a sad young woman at a window in exactly the same way despite never having seen each other’s work and despite the hundreds of years that separated them.

Long afterward, once the red light of the Treasury had dimmed and it became evident that the cabinet contained none of the gift books that Shah Tahmasp had sent to Our Sultan’s grandfather, Master Osman revisited the same logic:

“At times, a bird’s wing, the way a leaf holds to a tree, the curves of eaves, the way a cloud floats or the laugh of a woman is preserved for centuries by passing from master to disciple and being shown, taught and memorized over generations. Having learned this detail from his master, the miniaturist believes it to be a perfect form, and is as convinced of its immutability as he is of the glorious Koran’s, and just as he memorizes the Koran, he’ll never forget this detail indelibly painted in his memory. However, never forgetting does not mean the master artist will always use this detail. The customs of the workshop wherein he extinguishes the light of his eyes, the habits and taste for color of the ornery master beside him or the whims of his sultan will, at times, prevent him from painting that detail, and he’ll draw a bird’s wing, or the way a woman laughs-”

“Or the nostrils of a horse.”

“-or the nostrils of a horse,” said a stone-faced Master Osman, “not the way it’s been ingrained in the depths of his soul, but according to the custom of the workshop where he presently finds himself, just like the others there. Do you understand me?”

From a page in Nizami’s
Hüsrev and Shirin
, quite a few versions of which we’d thumbed through already, in a picture depicting Shirin seated on her throne, Master Osman read aloud an inscription engraved on two stone plates above the palace walls: EXALTED ALLAH PRESERVE THE POWER OF THE VICTORIOUS SON OF TAMERLANE KHAN, OUR NOBLE SULTAN, OUR JUST KHAN, PROTECT HIS SOVEREIGNTY AND DOMAINS SO HE MAY FOREVER BE CONTENTED (the leftmost stone read) AND WEALTHY (the rightmost stone read).

Later, I asked, “Where might we find illustrations wherein the miniaturist has rendered a horse’s nostrils in the same way they were etched upon his memory?”

“We must locate the legendary
Book of Kings
volume that Shah Tahmasp sent as a gift,” said Master Osman. “We must revisit those glorious old days of legend, when Allah had a hand in the painting of miniatures. We have many more books yet to examine.”

It crossed my mind that, just perhaps, Master Osman’s main goal was not to find horses with peculiarly drawn noses, but to scrutinize as much as possible these spectacular pictures that had slept quietly for years in this Treasury safe from prying eyes. I grew so impatient to find the clues that would unite me with Shekure, who awaited me at the house, that I’d been loath to believe that the great master might want to stay in the icy Treasury as long as possible.

Thus did we persist in opening other cabinets, other chests shown us by the aged dwarf, to examine the pictures therein. Periodically, I’d get fed up with the pictures, which all looked alike, and wish never again to watch Hüsrev visit Shirin under the castle window; I’d leave the master’s side-without even a glance at the nostrils of the horse Hüsrev rode-and try to warm myself at the brazier or I’d walk respectfully and awestruck among the heaps of cloth, gold, weapons, armor and plunder in the adjacent rooms of the Treasury. At times, prompted by an abrupt cry and hand gesture by Master Osman, I’d imagine that a new masterpiece had been found or, yes, at last a horse with a curious nose, and running to his side, I’d look at the picture the master was holding with his hand slightly atremble as he sat curled up on an Ushak carpet dating from the time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, only to encounter an illustration, the likes of which I’d never before seen, depicting, say, Satan slyly boarding Noah’s ark.

We watched as hundreds of shahs, kings, sultans and khans-who’d ruled from the thrones of various kingdoms and empires from the time of Tamerlane to Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent-happily and excitedly hunted gazelles, lions and rabbits. We saw how even the Devil bit his finger and recoiled in embarrassment at the shameless man who stood upon scraps of wood tied to the back legs of a camel so he could violate the poor animal. In an Arabic book that had come by way of Baghdad, we watched the flight of the merchant who clung to the feet of a mythical bird as he spanned the seas. In the next volume, which opened by itself to the first page, we saw the scene that Shekure and I loved the most, in which Shirin beheld Hüsrev’s picture hanging from a branch and fell in love with him. Then, looking at an illustration that brought to life the inner workings of a complicated clock made from bobbins and metal balls, birds and Arabic statuettes seated on the back of an elephant, we remembered time.

I don’t know how much more time we spent examining book after book and illustration after illustration in this manner. It was as if the unchanging, frozen golden time revealed in the pictures and stories we viewed had thoroughly mingled with the damp and moldy time we experienced in the Treasury. It seemed that these illuminated pages, created over the centuries by the lavish expenditure of eyesight in the workshops of countless shahs, khans and sultans, would come to life, as would the objects that seemed to besiege us: The helmets, scimitars, daggers with diamond-studded handles, armor, porcelain cups from China, dusty and delicate lutes, and the pearl-embellished cushions and kilims-the likes of which we’d seen in countless illustrations.

“I now understand that by furtively and gradually re-creating the same pictures for hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of artists had cunningly depicted the gradual transformation of their world into another.”

I’ll be first to admit that I didn’t completely understand what the great master meant. But the close attention my master had shown to the thousands of pictures made over the last two hundred years from Bukhara to Herat, from Tabriz to Baghdad and all the way to Istanbul, had far exceeded the search for a clue in the depiction of some horse’s nostrils. We’d participated in a kind of melancholy elegy to the inspiration, talent and patience of all the masters who’d painted and illuminated in these lands over the years.