Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

Black fell into a panic, as if they were taking the plume needle from his hand, as if we’d taken sides against him. There was another scuffle. All I could do was tilt my head upward to escape the struggle over the needle, which was happening perilously close to my eyes.

Everything occurred so fast that I couldn’t make out what happened at first. I felt a sharp but limited pain in my right eye; a passing numbness seized my forehead. Then everything was as it had been, yet a horror had already taken root within me. The oil lamp had been withdrawn, but I could still clearly see the figure before me decisively thrust the needle, this time into my left eye. He’d taken the needle from Black only moments before, and was more careful and meticulous now. When I understood that the needle effortlessly penetrated my eye, I lay dead still, though I felt the same burning sensation. The numbness in my forehead seemed to spread over my entire head, but ceased when the needle was removed. They were looking at the needle and then at my eyes in turn. It was as if they weren’t certain what had transpired. When everybody fully understood the misfortune that had befallen me, the commotion stopped and the weight upon my arms eased.

I began to scream, nearly howling. Not from the pain, but from the terror of comprehending fully what had been done to me.

At first, I sensed that my wailing put not only me at ease, but them as well. My voice brought us together.

Even so, as my screaming persisted, their nervousness increased. I could no longer feel any pain. All I could think was that my eyes had been pierced with a needle.

I was not yet blind. Thank goodness I could still see them watching me in terror and sorrow, I could still see their shadows moving aimlessly on the ceiling of the lodge. This at once pleased and alarmed me. “Unhand me,” I screamed. “Unhand me so I can see everything once more, I implore you.”

“Quickly, tell us,” said Black. “How did you meet up with Elegant Effendi that night? Then we’ll unhand you.”

“I was returning home from the coffeehouse. Poor Elegant Effendi accosted me. He was frenzied and very agitated. I pitied him at first. But leave me be now and I shall later recount it all. My eyes are fading.”

“They won’t fade right away,” said Black with determination. “Believe me, Master Osman could still identify the horses with cut-open nostrils after his eyes had been pierced.”

“Hapless Elegant Effendi said he wanted to talk to me and that I was the only person he could trust.”

Yet it wasn’t him I pitied, but myself now.

“If you tell us before the blood clots in your eyes, in the morning you can look upon the world to your heart’s content one last time,” said Black. “See, the rain has eased.”

“”Let’s go back to the coffeehouse,“ I said to Elegant, but sensed at once that he didn’t like it there, and even that it frightened him. This was how I first knew Elegant Effendi had broken from us completely and had gone his separate way after painting with us for twenty-five years. In the last eight or ten years, after he married, I’d see him at the workshop, but I didn’t even know what he was occupied with…He told me he saw the last picture, how it contained a sin so grave we’d never live it down. As a consequence, he maintained, we’d all burn in Hell. He was agitated and possessed by fear, overcome with the sense of devastation felt by a man who’d unwittingly committed heresy.”

“What heresy?”

“When I asked him this very question, he opened his eyes wide in surprise as if to say, You mean you don’t know? It was then I thought how our friend had aged, as have we all. He said unfortunate Enishte had brazenly used the perspectival method in the last picture. In this picture, objects weren’t depicted according to their importance in Allah’s mind, but as they appeared to the naked eye-the way the Franks painted. This was the first transgression. The second was depicting Our Sultan, the Caliph of Islam, the same size as a dog. The third transgression also involved rendering Satan the same size, and in an endearing light. But what surpassed them all-a natural result of introducing this Frankish understanding into our painting-was drawing Our Sultan’s picture as large as life and his face in all its detail! Just like the idolators do…Or just like the ”portraits’ that Christians, who couldn’t save themselves from their inherent idolatrous tendencies, painted upon their church walls and worshiped. Elegant Effendi, who learned of portraits from your Enishte, knew this quite well, and believed correctly that portraiture was the greatest of sins, and would be the downfall of Muslim painting. As we hadn’t gone to the coffeehouse, where, he claimed, our exalted Preacher Effendi and our religion were being maligned, he explained all this to me while we walked down the street. Occasionally, he’d stop, as though seeking help, ask me whether all of this was indeed correct, whether there wasn’t any recourse and whether we’d truly burn in Hell. He suffered fits of regret and beat his breast in remorse, but I was unpersuaded. He was an imposter who feigned regret.“

“How did you know this?”

“We’ve known Elegant Effendi since childhood. He’s very orderly, quiet, ordinary and colorless, like his gilding. It was as if the man standing before me then was dumber, more naive, more devout, yet more superficial than the Elegant we knew.”

“I hear he’d also become quite close to the Erzurumis,” said Black.

“No Muslim would ever feel such torment and regret for inadvertently committing a sin,” I said. “A good Muslim knows God is just and reasonable enough to consider the intent of His servants. Only pea-brained ignoramuses believe they’ll go to Hell for eating pork unawares. Anyway, a genuine Muslim knows the fear of damnation serves to frighten others, not himself. This is what Elegant Effendi was doing, you see, he wanted to scare me. It was your Enishte who taught him that he might do such a thing; and it was then I knew that this was indeed the case. Now, tell me in complete honesty, my dear illuminator brethren, has the blood begun to clot in my eyes, have my eyes lost their color?”

They brought the lamp toward my face and gazed at it, displaying the care and compassion of surgeons.

“Nothing seems to have changed.”

Were these three, staring into my eyes, the last sight I’d see in this world? I knew I’d never forget these moments until the end of my life, and I related what follows, because despite my regret, I also felt hope:

“Your Enishte taught Elegant Effendi that he was involved in some forbidden project by covering up the final picture, by revealing only a specific spot to each of us and having us draw something there-by giving the picture an air of mystery and secrecy, it was Enishte himself who instilled the fear of heresy. He, not the Erzurumis who’ve never seen an illuminated manuscript in their lives, was the first to spread the frenzy and panic about sin that infected us. Meanwhile, what would an artist with a clear conscience have to fear?”

“There’s much that an artist with a clear conscience has to fear in our day,” said Black smugly. “Indeed, no one has anything to say against decoration, but pictures are forbidden by our faith. Because the illustrations of the Persian masters and even the masterpieces of the greatest masters of Herat are ultimately seen as an extension of border ornamentation, no one would take issue with them, reasoning that they enhanced the beauty of writing and the magnificence of calligraphy. And who sees our painting anyway? However, as we make use of the methods of the Franks, our painting is becoming less focused on ornamentation and intricate design and more on straightforward representation. This is what the Glorious Koran forbids and what displeased Our Prophet. Both Our Sultan and my Enishte knew this quite well. This was the reason for my Enishte’s murder.”