Now, let me draw your attention to something quite bizarre: When these Venetian infidels paint, it’s as if they’re not making a painting but actually creating the object they’re painting. When it comes to money, however, rather than making the real thing, they make its counterfeit.

We were loaded into iron chests, hauled onto ships and pitching to and fro traveled from Venice to Istanbul. I found myself in a money changer’s shop, in the garlicky mouth of its proprietor. We waited for a while, and a simple-minded peasant entered, hoping to exchange some gold. The master money changer, who was a genuine trickster, declared that he needed to bite the gold piece to see if it was counterfeit. So he took the peasant’s coin and tossed it into his mouth.

When we met inside his mouth, I realized that the peasant’s coin was a genuine Ottoman Sultani. He saw me within that stench of garlic and said, “You’re nothing but a counterfeit.” He was right, but his arrogant manner offended my pride and I lied to him: “Actually, my brother, you’re the one who’s counterfeit.”

Meanwhile, the peasant was proudly insisting, “How could my gold coin possibly be counterfeit? I buried it in the ground twenty years ago, did a vice like counterfeiting exist back then?”

I was wondering what the outcome would be when the money changer took me out of his mouth instead of the peasant’s gold coin. “Take your gold coin, I don’t want any vile Venetian infidel’s fake money,” he said, “have you no shame?” The peasant responded with some biting words of his own, then took me with him out the door. After hearing the same pronouncement from other money changers, the peasant’s spirit broke and he exchanged me as a debased coin for only ninety silver pieces. This is how my seven-year saga of endless wandering from hand to hand began.

Allow me to admit proudly that I’ve spent most of my time in Istanbul wandering from purse to purse, and from sash to pocket, as befits an intelligent coin. My worst nightmare is to be stored in a jug and languish for years beneath a rock, buried in some garden; not that it hasn’t happened to me, but for whatever reason, these periods have never lasted long. Many of the people who hold me want to be rid of me as soon as possible, especially if they discover I’m fake. Nonetheless, I have yet to come across someone who’ll warn an unsuspecting buyer that I’m counterfeit. A broker, not recognizing that I’m counterfeit, who has counted out 120 silver coins in exchange for me, will berate himself in fits of anger, sorrow and impatience as soon as he learns he’s been cheated, and these fits won’t subside until he rids himself of me by cheating another. During this crisis, even as he attempts to repeatedly swindle others, failing each time on account of his haste and anger, he’ll continue all the while to curse the “immoral” person who had originally conned him.

Over the last seven years in Istanbul, I’ve changed hands 560 times, and there’s not a house, shop, market, bazaar, mosque, church or synagogue I haven’t entered. As I’ve roamed about, I’ve learned that much more gossip has been spread, many more legends told and lies spun in my name than I’d ever suspected. I’ve constantly had my nose rubbed in it: Nothing’s considered valuable anymore besides me, I’m merciless, I’m blind, I myself am even enamored of money, the unfortunate world revolves around, not God, but me, and there’s nothing I can’t buy-all this is to say nothing of my dirty, vulgar and base nature. And those who know that I’m fake are given to even harsher judgments. As my actual value drops, however, my metaphorical value increases-proof that poetry is consolation to life’s miseries. But despite all such heartless comparison and thoughtless slander, I’ve realized that a large majority do sincerely love me. In this age of hatred, such heartfelt-even impassioned-affection ought to gladden us all.

I’ve seen every square inch of Istanbul, street by street and district by district; I’ve known all hands from Jews to Abkhazians and from Arabs to Mingerians. I once left Istanbul in the purse of a preacher from Edirne who was going to Manisa. On the way, we happened to be attacked by thieves. One of them shouted, “Your money or your life!” Panicking, the miserable preacher hid us in his asshole. This spot, which he assumed was the safest, smelled worse than the mouth of the garlic lover and was much less comfortable. But the situation quickly grew worse when instead of “Your money or your life!” the thieves began to shout “Your honor or your life!” Lining up, they took him by turns. I don’t dare describe the agony we suffered in that cramped hole. It’s for this reason that I dislike leaving Istanbul.

I’ve been well received in Istanbul. Young girls kiss me as if I were the husband of their dreams; they hide me beneath their pillows, between their huge breasts, and in their underwear; they even fondle me in their sleep to make certain I’m still there. I’ve been stored next to the furnace in a public bath, in a boot, at the bottom of a small bottle in a wonderful-smelling musk seller’s shop and in the secret pocket sewn into a chef’s lentil sack. I’ve wandered through Istanbul in belts made of camel leather, jacket linings made from checkered Egyptian cloth, in the thick fabric of shoe lining and in the hidden corners of multicolored shalwars. The master watchmaker Petro hid me in a secret compartment of a grandfather clock, and a Greek grocer stuck me directly into a wheel of kashari cheese. I hid together with jewelry, seals and keys wrapped in pieces of thick cloth stowed away in chimneys, in stoves, beneath windowsills, inside cushions stuffed with rough straw, in underground chambers and in the hidden compartments of chests. I’ve known fathers who frequently stood up from the dinner table to check whether I was still where I was supposed to be, women who sucked on me like candy for no reason, children who sniffed at me as they stuck me up their noses and old people with one foot in the grave who couldn’t relax unless they removed me from their sheepskin purses at least seven times a day. There was a meticulous Circassian woman who, after spending the whole day cleaning the house, took us coins out of her purse and scrubbed us with a coarse brush. I remember the one-eyed money changer who constantly stacked us up into towers; the porter who smelled of morning glories and who, along with his family, watched us as if looking out over a stunning landscape; and the gilder, no longer among us-no need to name names-who spent his evenings arranging us into various designs. I’ve traveled in mahogany skiffs; I’ve visited the Sultan’s palace; I’ve hidden within Herat-made bindings, in the heels of rose-scented shoes and in the covers of packsaddles. I’ve known hundreds of hands: dirty, hairy, plump, oily, trembling and old. I’ve been redolent of opium dens, candle-makers’ shops, dried mackerel and the sweat of all of Istanbul. After experiencing such excitement and commotion, a base thief who had slit his victim’s throat in the blackness of night and tossed me into his purse, once back in his accursed house, spat in my face and grunted, “Damn you, it’s all because of you.” I was so offended, so hurt, that I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

If I didn’t exist, however, no one would be able to distinguish a good artist from a bad one, and this would lead to chaos among the miniaturists; they’d all be at each other’s throats. So I haven’t vanished. I’ve entered the purse of the most talented and intelligent of miniaturists and made my way here.

If you think you’re better than Stork, then by all means, get hold of me.