I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Though I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what』s happeo me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below. As I fell, my head, which he』d smashed with a stone, broke apart; my face, my forehead and cheeks, were crushed; my bones shattered, and my mouth filled with blood.
For nearly four days I have been missing: My wife and children must be searg for me; my daughter, spent fr, must be staring fretfully at the courtyard gate. Yes, I know they』re all at the window, hoping for my return.
But, are they truly waiting? I 』t even be sure of that. Maybe they』ve gotteo my absence—how dismal! For here, oher side, ohe feeling that one』s former life persists. Before my birth there was infiime, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I hought of it before: I』d been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.
I was happy; I know now that I』d been happy. I made the best illuminations in Our Sultan』s workshop; no one could rival my mastery. Through the work I did privately, I earned nine hundred silver s a month, whiaturally, only makes all of this even harder to bear.
I was responsible for painting and embellishing books. I illumihe edges of pages, c their borders with the most lifelike designs of leaves, branches, roses, flowers and birds. I painted scalloped ese-style clouds, clusters of overlapping vines and forests of color that hid gazelles, galleys, sultans, trees, palaces, horses and hunters. In my youth, I would decorate a plate, or the back of a mirror, or a chest, or at times, the ceiling of a mansion or of a Bosphorus manor, or even, a wooden spoon. In later years, however, I only worked on manuscript pages because Our Sultan paid well for them. I 』t say it seems insignifit now. You know the value of money even when you』re dead.
After hearing the miray voice, you might think, 「Who cares what you earned when you were alive? Tell us what you see. Is there life after death?
Where』s your soul? What about Heaven and Hell? What』s death like? Are you in pain?」 You』re right, the living are extremely curious about the Afterlife.
Maybe you』ve heard the story of the man who was so driven by this curiosity that he roamed among soldiers in battlefields. He sought a man who』d died auro life amid the wouruggling for their lives in pools of blood, a soldier who could tell him about the secrets of the Otherworld. But one of Tamerlane』s warriors, taking the seeker for the enemy, cleaved him in half with a smooth stroke of his scimitar, causing him to clude that in the Hereafter mas split in two.
Nonsense! Quite the opposite, I』d even say that souls divided in life merge in the Hereafter. trary to the claims of sinful infidels who』ve fallen uhe sway of the Devil, there is indeed another world, thank God, and the proof is that I』m speaking to you from here. I』ve died, but as you plainly tell, I haven』t ceased to be. Granted, I must fess, I haven』t entered the rivers flowing beside the silver and gold kiosks of Heaven, the broad-leaved trees bearing plump fruit and the beautiful virgiioned in the Glorious Koran—though I do very well recall how often ahusiastically I made pictures of those wide-eyed houris described in th