“Let’s not discuss that point yet,” said Black. “First describe how you murdered Elegant.”

“This deed,” I said, recognizing that I couldn’t use the word “murder,” “I committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the entire workshop. Elegant Effendi knew he posed a powerful threat. I prayed to Almighty God, begging him to give me a sign showing me how despicable this scoundrel really was. My prayers were answered when I offered Elegant money. God had shown me how wretched he really was. These gold pieces came to mind, but by divine inspiration, I lied. I said the gold pieces weren’t here in the lodge, but I’d hidden them elsewhere. We went out. I walked him through empty streets and out-of-the-way neighborhoods without any consideration for where we were going. I had no idea what I would do, and in short, I was afraid. At the end of our wandering, after we’d come to a street we’d passed earlier, our brother Elegant Effendi the gilder, who devoted his entire life to form and repetition, grew suspicious. But God provided me with an empty lot ravaged by fire, and nearby, a dry well.”

At this point I knew I couldn’t go on and I told them so. “If you were in my shoes, you would’ve considered the salvation of your artist brethren and done the same thing,” I said confidently.

When I heard them agree with me, I felt like crying. I was going to say it was because their compassion, which I hardly deserved, softened my heart, but no. I was going to say it was because I again heard the thud of his body hitting the bottom of the well wherein I dropped him after killing him, but no. I was going to say it was because I remembered how happy I was before becoming a murderer, how I’d been like everybody else, but no. The blind man who used to pass through our neighborhood in my childhood appeared in my mind’s eye: He’d take a dirty metal water dipper out of his even dirtier clothes, and would call out to us neighborhood kids who watched him from a distance, there by the local water fountain, “My children, which of you will fill this blind old man’s drinking cup with water from the fountain?” When no one went to his aid, he’d say, “It’d be a good turn, my children, a pious deed!” The color of his irises had faded and they were nearly the same color as the whites of his eyes.

Agitated by the thought of resembling that blind old man, I confessed how I did away with Enishte Effendi hurriedly, without savoring any of it. I was neither too honest nor too insincere with them: I found a medium consistency, such that the story wouldn’t trouble my heart too much, and they’d be assured I hadn’t gone to Enishte’s house to murder him. I wanted to make clear that it wasn’t a premeditated murder, which intent they gathered when I reminded them of the following while trying to absolve myself: “Without harboring bad intentions, one never goes to Hell.”

“After surrendering Elegant Effendi to the Angels of Allah,” I said thoughtfully, “what the dearly departed expressed to me in his last moments started to gnaw at me like a worm. Having caused me to bloody my hands, the final painting loomed larger in my mind, and so, resolving to see it, I went to your Enishte, who no longer summoned any of us to his house. Not only did he refuse to reveal the painting, he behaved as if nothing were the matter. There was, he sniffled, neither a painting nor anything else so mysterious that it called for murder! To preempt further humiliation, and to get his attention, I thereupon confessed that I was the one who killed Elegant Effendi and tossed him into a well. Yes, then he took me more seriously, but he continued to humiliate me all the same. How could a man who humiliates his son be a father? Great Master Osman would become irate with us, he’d beat us, but he never once humiliated us. Oh my brothers, we’ve made a grave mistake by betraying him.”

I smiled at my brethren whose attention was focused upon my eyes, listening to me as though I lay on my deathbed. Just as a dying man would, I saw them growing increasingly blurry and moving away from me.

“I murdered your Enishte for two reasons. First, because he shamelessly forced the great Master Osman into aping the Venetian artist, Sebastiano. Second, because in a moment of weakness, I lowered myself to ask him whether I had a style of my own.”

“How did he respond?”

“It seems I am possessed of a style. But coming from him, of course, this was not an insult. I remembered wondering, in my shame, if this were indeed praise: I considered style to be a variety of rootlessness and dishonor, but doubt was eating at me. I wanted nothing to do with style, but the Devil was tempting me and I was, furthermore, curious.”

“Everybody secretly desires to have a style,” said Black smartly. “Everybody also desires to have his portrait made, just as Our Sultan did.”

“Is this affliction impossible to resist?” I said. “As this plague spreads, none of us will be able to stand against the methods of the Europeans.”

No one was listening to me, however. Black was recounting the story of a sad Turkmen chieftain who was sent off on a twelve-year exile to China because he’d prematurely expressed his love for the daughter of the shah. Since he didn’t have a portrait of his beloved, of whom he dreamed for a dozen years, he forgot her face amid the Chinese beauties, and his lovelorn suffering was transformed into a profound trial willed by Allah.

“Thanks to your Enishte, we’ve all learned the meaning of ”portrait,“” I said. “God willing, one day, we’ll fearlessly tell the story of our own lives the way we actually live them.”

“All fables are everybody’s fables,” said Black.

“All illumination is God’s illumination too,” I said, completing the verse by the poet Hatifi of Herat. “But as the methods of the Europeans spread, everyone will consider it a special talent to tell other men’s stories as if they were one’s own.”

“This is nothing but the will of Satan.”

“Unhand me now,” I shouted. “Let me look upon the world one last time.”

They were terrified, and a new confidence rose within me.

“Will you take out the final picture?” Black said.

I gave Black such a look that he was quick to understand I’d do so and he released me. My heart began to beat rapidly.

I’m certain you’ve long ago discovered my identity, which I’ve been trying to conceal. Even so, don’t be surprised that I’m behaving like the old masters of Herat, for they would conceal their signatures not to hide their identities, but out of principle and respect for their masters. Excitedly, I walked through the pitch-black rooms of the lodge, oil lamp in hand, making way for my own pale shadow. Had the curtain of blackness begun to fall over my eyes, or were these rooms and hallways truly this dark? How many days and weeks, how much time did I have before going blind? My shadow and I stopped among the ghosts in the kitchen and lifted up the pages from the clean corner of a dusty cabinet before quickly heading back. Black had followed me as a precaution, but he’d neglected to bring his dagger. Would I, perchance, consider taking up that dagger and blinding him before I myself went blind?

“I’m pleased that I will see this once again before going blind,” I said with pride. “I want you all to see it as well. Look here.”

Under the light of the oil lamp, I showed them the final picture, which I’d taken from Enishte’s house the day I killed him. At first, I watched their curious and timid expressions as they looked at the double-leaf picture. I circled around and joined them, and I was ever so faintly trembling as I stared. The lancing of my eyes, or perhaps a sudden rapture, made me feverish.

The pictures we made on various parts of the two pages over the past year-tree, horse, Satan, Death, dog and woman-were arranged, large and small, according to Enishte’s albeit inept new method of composition, in such a way that the dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s gilding and borders made us feel we were no longer looking at a page from a book but at the world seen through a window. In the center of this world, where Our Sultan should’ve been, was my own portrait, which I briefly observed with pride. I was somewhat unsatisfied with it because after laboring in vain for days, looking into a mirror and erasing and reworking, I was unable to achieve a good resemblance; still, I felt unbridled elation because the picture not only situated me at the center of a vast world, but for some unaccountable and diabolic reason, it made me appear more profound, complicated and mysterious than I actually was. I wanted only that my artist brethren recognize, understand and share in my exuberance. I was both the center of everything, like a sultan or a king, and, at the same time, myself. The situation fed my pride as it increased my embarrassment. Finally these two feelings balanced each other, and I was able to relax and take dizzying pleasure in the picture. But for this pleasure to be complete, I knew every mark on my face and shirt, all of the wrinkles, shadows, moles and boils, every detail from my whiskers to the weave of my clothes and all their colors in all their shades had to be perfect, down to the minutest details, as much as the skill of Frankish painters would allow.