We reminisced about winter mornings when we would wake early, light the stove in the largest room of the workshop and mop the floors with hot water. We recalled an old “master,” may he rest in peace, who was so uninspired and cautious that he could draw only a single leaf of a single tree during the span of a single day and who, when he saw that we were again looking at the lush green leaves of the springtime trees through the open window rather than at the leaf he drew, without striking us, would chastise us for the hundredth time: “Not out there, in here!” We recalled the wailing, which could be heard throughout the entire atelier, of the scrawny apprentice who walked toward the door, satchel in hand, having been sent back home because the intensity of the work caused one of his eyes to wander. Next, we imagined how we watched (with pleasure because it wasn’t our fault) the slow spread of a deadly red seeping from a bronze inkpot that had cracked over a page three illuminators had labored on for three months (it depicted the Ottoman army on the banks of the Kınık River en route to Shirvan, overcoming the threat of starvation by occupying Eresh and filling their stomachs). In a refined and respectful manner, we talked about how the three of us together made love to and together fell in love with a Circasian lady, the most beautiful of the wives of a seventy-year-old pasha who-in consideration of his conquests, strength and wealth-wanted ceiling ornamentation in his home made in imitation of the designs in Our Sultan’s hunting lodge. Then, we longingly recalled how on winter mornings we would have our lentil soup on the threshold of the yawning door so its steam wouldn’t soften the paper. We also lamented being separated from workshop friends and masters when the latter compelled us to travel to distant places to serve as journeymen. For a time, the sweetness of my dear Butterfly in his sixteenth year appeared before my eyes: He was burnishing paper to a high gloss by rubbing it quickly with a smooth seashell as the sunlight, coming through an open window on a summer’s day, struck his naked honey-colored forearms. For a moment he stopped what he was so absentmindedly doing and carefully lowered his face to the page to examine a blemish. After making a few passes over the offending spot with the burnishing shell using different motions, he returned to his former pattern, moving his hand back and forth as he stared out of the window into the distance, losing himself in daydreams. I shall never forget how before looking outside again, he briefly gazed into my eyes-as I would later do to others. This dolorous look has only one meaning, which all apprentices know quite well: Time doesn’t flow if you don’t dream.

I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER

You’d forgotten about me, hadn’t you? Why should I conceal my presence from you any longer? For speaking in this voice, which is gradually getting stronger and stronger, has become irresistible for me. At times, I restrain myself only with great effort, and I’m afraid that the strain in my voice will give me away. At times, I let myself go completely unchecked, and that’s when those words, signs of my second character, which you might recognize, spill from my lips; my hands begin to tremble, beads of sweat collect on my forehead and I realize at once that these little whispers of my body, in turn, will furnish new clues.

Yet I’m so very content here! As we console ourselves with twenty-five years of memories we’re reminded not of the animosities, but of the beauties and the pleasures of painting. There’s also something in our sitting here with a sense of the impending end of the world, caressing each other with tear-filled eyes as we remember the beauty of bygone days, that recalls harem women.

I’ve taken this comparison from Abu Said of Kirman who included the stories of the old masters of Shiraz and Herat in his History of the sons of Tamerlane. Thirty years ago, Jihan Shah, ruler of the Blacksheep, came to the East where he routed the small armies and ravaged the lands of the Timurid khans and shahs who were fighting among themselves. With his victorious Turkmen hordes, he passed through the whole of Persia into the East; finally, at Astarabad, he defeated Ibrahim, the grandson of Shah Ruh who was Tamerlane’s son; he then took Gorgan and sent his armies against the fortress of Herat. According to the historian from Kirman, this devastation, not only to Persia, but to the heretofore undefeated power of the House of Tamerlane, which had ruled over half the world from Hindustan to Byzantium for half a century, caused such a tempest of destruction that pandemonium reigned over the men and women in the besieged fortress of Herat. The historian Abu Said reminds the reader with perverse pleasure how Jihan Shah of the Blacksheep mercilessly killed everyone who was a descendant of Tamerlane in the fortresses he conquered; how he selectively culled women from the harems of shahs and princes and added them to his own harem; and how he pitilessly separated miniaturist from miniaturist and cruelly forced most of them to serve as apprentices to his own master illuminators. At this point in his History, he turns his attentions from the shah and his warriors who tried to repel the enemy from the crenellated towers of the fortress, to the miniaturists among their pens and paints in the workshop awaiting the terrifying culmination of the siege whose outcome was long evident. He lists the names of the artists, declaring one after another how they were world-renowned and would never be forgotten, and these illuminators, all of whom, like the women of the shah’s harem, have since been forgotten, embraced each other and wept, unable to do anything but recall their former days of bliss.

We too, like melancholy harem women, reminisced about the gifts of fur-lined caftans and purses full of money that the Sultan would present to us in reciprocation for the colorful decorated boxes, mirrors and plates, embellished ostrich eggs, cut-paper work, single-leaf pictures, amusing albums, playing cards and books we’d offer him on holidays. Where were the hardworking, long-suffering, elderly artists of that day who were satisfied with so little? They’d never sequester themselves at home and jealously hide their methods from others, dreading that their moonlighting would be found out, but would come to the workshop every day without fail. Where were the old miniaturists who humbly devoted their entire lives to drawing intricate designs on castle walls, cypress leaves whose uniqueness was discernible only after close scrutiny and the seven-leaf steppe grasses used to fill empty spaces? Where were the uninspired masters who never grew jealous, having accepted the wisdom and justice inherent in God’s bestowal of talent and ability upon some artists and patience and pious resignation upon others? We recalled these fatherly masters, some of whom were hunched and perpetually smiling, others dreamy and drunk and still others intent upon foisting off a spinster daughter; and as we recollected, we attempted to resurrect the forgotten details of the workshop as it had been during our apprentice and early mastership years.

Do you remember the limner who stuck his tongue into his cheek when he ruled pages-to the left side if the line he drew headed right, and to the right side if the line went left; the small, thin artist who laughed to himself, chortling and mumbling “patience, patience, patience” when he dribbled paint; the septuagenarian master gilder who spent hour upon hour talking to the binder’s apprentices downstairs and claimed that red ink applied to the forehead stopped aging; the ornery master who relied on an unsuspecting apprentice or even randomly stopped anyone passing by to test the consistency of paint upon their fingernails after his own nails were completely filled; and the portly artist who made us laugh as he caressed his beard with the furry rabbit’s foot used to collect the excess flecks of gold dust used in gilding? Where were they all?