Once upon a time, not so very long ago yet not so recently, everything imitated everything else, and thus, if not for aging and death, man would’ve never been the wiser about the passage of time. Yes, when the worldly realm was repeatedly presented through the same stories and pictures, as if time did not flow, Fahir Shah’s small army routed Selahattin Khan’s soldiers-as Salim of Samarkand’s concise History attests. After the victorous Fahir Shah captured Selahattin Khan and tortured him to death, his first task in asserting his sovereignty, according to custom, was to visit the library and the harem of the vanquished khan. In the library, the late Selahattin Khan’s experienced binder pulled apart the dead shah’s books, and rearranging the pages, began to assemble new volumes. His calligraphers replaced the epithet of “Always Victorious Selahattin Khan” with that of “Victorious Fahir Shah” and his miniaturists set about replacing the late Selahattin Khan-masterfully portrayed on the most beautiful of manuscript pages-who was, as of that moment, starting to fade from people’s memories, with the portrait of the younger Fahir Shah. Upon entering the harem, Fahir Shah had no difficulty in locating the most beautiful woman there, yet instead of forcing himself upon her, because he was a refined man versed in books and artistry, and resolving to win her heart, he engaged her in conversation. Consequently, Neriman Sultan, the late Selahattin Khan’s belle of beauties, his teary-eyed wife, made but one request of Fahir Shah: that the illustration of her husband in a version of the romance Leyla and Mejnun, wherein Leyla was depicted as Neriman Sultan and Mejnun as Selahattin Khan, not be altered. In at least this one page, she maintained, the immortality that her husband had tried to attain over the years through books should not be denied. The victorious Fahir Shah bravely granted this simple request and his masters of the book left that one picture alone. Thereby, Neriman and Fahir immediately made love and within a short period, forgetting the horrors of the past, came to truly love each other. Still, Fahir Shah could not forget that picture in Leyla and Mejnun. Nay, it wasn’t jealousy that made him uneasy or that his wife was portrayed with her old husband. What gnawed at him was this: Since he wasn’t painted in the old legend in that splendid book, he wouldn’t be able to join the ranks of the immortals with his wife. This worm of doubt ate at Fahir Shah for five years, and at the end of a blissful night of copious lovemaking with Neriman, candlestick in hand, he entered the library like a common thief, opened the volume of Leyla and Mejnun, and in place of the face of Neriman’s late husband, drew his own. Like many khans who had a love for illustrating and painting, however, he was an amateur artist and couldn’t portray himself very well. In the morning, when his librarian opened the book on a suspicion of tampering and beheld another figure in place of the late Selahattin Khan, next to Neriman-faced Leyla, rather than identifying it as Fahir Shah, he announced that it was Fahir Shah’s archenemy, the young and handsome Abdullah Shah. This gossip provoked Fahir Shah’s soldiers and emboldened Abdullah Shah, the young and aggressive new ruler of the neighboring country, who, subsequently, in his first campaign, defeated, captured and killed Fahir Shah, established his own sovereignty over his enemy’s library and harem and became the new husband of the eternally beautiful Neriman Sultan.

The miniaturists of Istanbul recount the legend of Tall Mehmet-known as Muhammad Khorasani in Persia -mostly as an example of long life and blindness. However, the legend of Tall Mehmet is essentially a parable of painting and time. The primary distinction of this master, who, having begun his apprenticeship at the age of nine, illustrated for more or less 110 years without going blind, was his lack of distinction. I’m not being witty here, but expressing my sincere admiration. Tall Mehmet drew everything, as everyone else did, in the style of the great masters of old, but even more so, and for this reason, he was the greatest of all masters. His humbleness and complete devotion to illustration and painting, which he deemed a service to Allah, set him above both the disputes within the book-arts workshops where he worked and the ambition to become head miniaturist, though he was of appropriate age and talent. As a miniaturist, for 110 years, he patiently rendered every trivial detail: grass drawn to fill up the edges of the page, thousands of leaves, curly wisping clouds, horse manes of short repetitive strokes, brick walls, never-ending wall ornamentation and the slant-eyed, delicate-chinned tens of thousands of faces that were each an imitation of one another. Tall Mehmet was quite content and reserved and he never presumed to distinguish himself or insisted about style or individuality. He considered whichever khan’s or prince’s workshop he happened to be working in at the time his house and regarded himself as but a fixture in that home. As khans and shahs strangled one another and miniaturists moved from city to city like the women of the harem to assemble under the auspices of new masters, the style of the new book-arts workshop would first be defined in the leaves Tall Mehmet drew, in his grass, in the curves of his rocks and in the hidden contours of his own patience. When he was eighty years old, people forgot that he was mortal and began to believe that he lived within the legends he illustrated. Perhaps for this reason, some maintained that he existed outside time and would never grow old and die. There were those who attributed his not going blind-despite living without a home of his own, sleeping in the rooms or tents which constituted miniaturists’ workshops and spending most of his time staring at manuscript pages-to the miracle of time having ceased to flow for him. Some claimed that he was actually blind, and no longer had any need to see since he painted from memory. At the age of 119, this legendary master who’d never married and had never even made love, met the flesh-and-blood ideal of the beautiful slant-eyed, sharp-chinned, moon-faced boy he’d depicted for a century: a part-Chinese part-Croatian sixteen-year-old apprentice in Shah Tahmasp’s miniaturists’ workshop, with whom quite abruptly and understandably, he fell in love. In order to seduce this boy-apprentice of unimaginable beauty, as a true lover would do, he schemed and joined in power struggles between miniaturists; he gave himself over to lying, deception and trickery. At first, the master miniaturist of Khorasan was invigorated by his attempts to catch up to the artistic fashions he’d successfully avoided for one hundred years, but this effort also divorced him from the eternal legendary days of old. Late one afternoon, staring dreamily at the beautiful apprentice before an open window, he caught cold in the icy Tabriz wind. The following day, during a fit of sneezing, he went completely blind. Two days later, he fell down the lofty stone workshop stairs and died.

“I’ve heard the name of Tall Mehmet of Khorasan, but I’ve never heard this legend,” Black said.

He delicately offered this comment to show he knew the story was finished and his mind was occupied with what I’d related. I fell silent for a time so he could stare at me to his heart’s content. Since it bothers me when my hands are not occupied, just after beginning the second story, I started to paint again, picking up where I’d left off when Black knocked on the door. My comely apprentice Mahmut, who always sat at my knee and mixed my paints, sharpened my reed pens and sometimes erased my errors, silently sat beside me, listening and staring; from within the house the sounds of my wife’s movements could be heard.