“You shall visit Head Illuminator Master Osman,” said my Enishte. “Some say he’s gone blind, others that he’s lost his senses. I think he’s blind and senile both.”
Despite the fact that my Enishte didn’t have the standing of a master illustrator and that this wasn’t his field of artistic expertise at all, he did have control over an illustrated manuscript. This, in fact, was with the permission and encouragement of the Sultan, a situation that, of course, strained his relationship with the elderly Master Osman.
Thinking of my childhood, I allowed my attention to be absorbed by the furniture and objects within the house. From twelve years ago, I still remembered the blue kilim from Kula covering the floor, the copper ewer, the coffee set and tray, the copper pail and the delicate coffee cups that had come all the way from China by way of Portugal, as my late aunt had boasted numerous times. These effects, like the low X-shaped reading desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the stand for a turban nailed to the wall, the red velvet pillow whose smoothness I recalled as soon as I touched it, were from the house in Aksaray where I’d passed my childhood with Shekure, and they still carried something of the bliss of my days of painting in that house.
Painting and happiness. I would like my dear readers who have given close attention to my story and my fate to bear these two things in mind, as they are the genesis of my world. At one time, I was contented here, among these books, calligraphy brushes and paintings. Then, I fell in love and was banished from this Paradise. In the years I endured my amorous exile, I often thought how I was in fact deeply indebted to Shekure and my love for her, because they had enabled me to adapt optimistically to life and the world. Since I had, in my childlike naïveté, no doubt that my love would be reciprocated, I grew exceedingly assured and came to regard the world as a good place. You see, it was with this same earnestness that I involved myself with books and came to love them, to love the reading my Enishte required of me back then, my religious school lessons and my illustrating and painting. But as much as I owed the sunny, festive and more fertile first half of my education to the love I felt for Shekure, I owed the dark knowledge that poisoned the latter time to being rejected; my desire on icy nights to sputter out and vanish like the dying flames in the iron stoves of a caravansary, repeatedly dreaming after a night of love that I was plunging into a desolate abyss along with whichever woman lay beside me, and the notion that I was simply worthless-all of it was furnished by Shekure.
“Were you aware,” my Enishte said much later, “that after death our souls will be able to meet with the spirits of men and women in this world who are peacefully asleep in their beds?”
“No, I was not.”
“We take a long journey after death, so I’m not afraid of dying. What I fear is dying before I finish Our Sultan’s book.”
Part of me felt I was stronger, more reasonable and more reliable than my Enishte, and part of me was dwelling on the cost of the caftan that I’d purchased on my way here to meet with this man who’d denied me his daughter’s hand and on the silver bridle and hand-worked saddle of the horse which, soon after going downstairs, I’d take out of the stable and ride away.
I told him I’d apprise him of everything I learned during my visits to the various miniaturists. I kissed his hand and brought it to my forehead. I walked down the stairs, entered the courtyard, and sensing the snowy cold upon me, accepted that I was neither a child nor an old man: I joyously felt the world upon my skin. As I shut the stable door, a breeze began to stir. I led my white horse by the bridle over the stone walkway to the earthen part of the courtyard, and we both shuddered: I felt as if his strong, large-veined legs, his impatience and his stubbornness were my own. As soon as we entered the street, I was about to swiftly mount my steed and disappear down the narrow way like a fabled horseman, never to return again, when an enormous woman, a Jewess dressed all in pink and carrying a bundle, appeared out of nowhere and accosted me. She was as large and wide as an armoire. Yet she was boisterous, lively and even coquettish.
“My brave man, my young hero, I see you’re truly as handsome as they say you are,” she said. “Might you be married? Or might you be a bachelor? Would you deign to buy a silk handkerchief for your secret lover from Esther, Istanbul ’s premier peddler of fine cloth?”
“Nay.”
“A red sash of Atlas silk?”
“Nay.”
“Don’t go on piping ”nay“ at me like that! How could a brave heart like you not have a fiancée or a secret lover? Who knows how many teary-eyed maidens are burning with desire for you?”
Her body lengthened like the slender form of an acrobat and she leaned toward me with an elegant gesture. At the same time, with the skill of a magician who plucks objects out of thin air, she caused a letter to appear in her hand. I stealthily grabbed it, and as if I’d been training for this moment for years, I hastily and artfully placed it into my sash. It was a thick letter and felt like fire against the icy skin of my side, between my belly and back.
“Ride at an amble,” said Esther the clothes peddler. “Turn right at the corner, following the curve of the wall without breaking stride, but when you get to the pomegranate tree turn and look at the house you’ve just left, at the window to your right.”
She went on her way and vanished in an instant.
I mounted the horse, but like a novice doing so for the first time. My heart was racing, my mind was overcome by excitement, my hands had forgotten how to control the reins, but when my legs tightly gripped the horse’s body, sound reason and skill took control of my horse and me, and as Esther had instructed, my wise horse ambled steadily and, how lovely, we turned right onto the sidestreet!
It was then that I felt I might in truth be handsome. As in fairy tales, from behind every shutter and every latticed window, a coy woman was watching me and I felt I might burn once again with that same fire that had once consumed me. Is this what I desired? Was I succumbing anew to the illness from which I’d suffered for so many years? The sun suddenly broke through the clouds, startling me.
Where was the pomegranate tree? Was it this thin, melancholy tree here? Yes! I turned slightly to the right in my saddle. I saw a window behind the tree, but there was nobody there. I’d been duped by that wench Esther!
Just as I was thinking such thoughts, the window’s iced-over shutters opened with a loud burst, as if they’d exploded, and after twelve years, I saw my beloved’s stunning face among snowy branches, framed by the window whose icy trim shone brightly in the sunlight.
Was my dark-eyed beloved looking at me or at another life beyond me? I couldn’t tell whether she was sad or smiling or smiling sadly. Foolish horse, heed not my heart, slow down! I calmly twisted in my saddle again, fixing my desirous stare for as long as possible, until her gaunt, elegant and mysterious face disappeared behind the branches.
Much later, after opening her letter and seeing the illustration within, I thought how my visit to her at the window on horseback closely resembled that moment, pictured a thousand times, in which Hüsrev visits Shirin beneath her window-only in our case, there was that melancholy tree between us. When I recognized this similarity, oh how I burned with a love such as they describe in those books we so cherish and adore.