Butterfly and Black arrived in the middle of the night; they spread the pictures on the floor before me, and asked me to tell them who』d made which illustration. It reminded me of the game 「Whose Turban」 we used to play when we were children: You』d draw the various headdresses of a hoja, a cavalryman, a judge, aioner, a head treasurer aary and try to match them with the corresponding names written on other facedows.
I told them I』d made the dog myself. We』d told its story to the storyteller. I said that geterfly, who held a dagger to my throat, must』ve drawh, over which the light of the lamp wavered pleasantly. I remembered that Olive had rendered Satan with great enthusiasm, whose story uirely by the dearly departed storyteller. I』d started the tree whose leaves were drawn by all of us who came to the coffeehouse that night. We came up with the story as well. So it was with Red, too: Some red ink had splattered onto a page and the stingy storyteller asked if we could make a picture of it. We dribbled some more red ink onto the page, then each of us sketched the image of something red in a er and told the story of his image so the storyteller might ret it. Olive made this exquisite horse here—praised be his talent—and I think it was Butterfly who drew the melancholy woman. Just then Butterfly removed the dagger from my throat and told Black that, yes, he now remembered how he』d drawn the woman. We all tributed to the gold in the bazaar, and Olive, a desdant of Kalenderis himself, drew the two dervishes. The sect of the Kalenderis is based on buggering young boys and begging and their sheikh, Evhad-üd Dini Kirmani wrote the sect』s sacred book 250 years ago, revealing in verse that he』d seen God』s perfeaed iiful faces.
I asked the fiveness of my master artist brethren for the disheveled state of our house, the excuse that we』d been caught unprepared, and I told them how sorry I was that we could offer them her fragrant coffee nor sweet es because my wife was still asleep in the inner room. I said this so they wouldn』t barge in there and I wouldn』t have to wreak bloody havoc upon them when they didn』t find what they were looking for among the vas, drawstring cloth, summer sashes of Indian silk and fine muslin, Persian prints and dolmans in the baskets and trunks they eagerly rummaged through, uhe carpets and cushions, among the illuminated pages I』d prepared for various books, and within the pages of bound volumes.
heless, I must fess that it gave me a certain pleasure to behave as if I were afraid of them. An
artist』s skill depends on carefully attending to the beauty of the present moment, taking everything down to the mi detail seriously while, at the same time, stepping back from the world, which takes itself too seriously, and as if looking into a mirror, allowing for the distand eloquence of a jest.
Accly, upon their asking, I said that, yes, when the Erzurumis began their raid, there was, as on most evenings, a crowd of about forty in the coffeehouse, whicluded, besides myself, Olive, Nas 1r the Limner, Jemal the calligrapher, two young assistant illustrators, the young calligraphers who were now spending their days and nights with them, Rahmi the apprentice of unsurpassed beauty, other handsome novices, six or seven men belonging to the lot of poets, drunks, hashish addicts and dervishes and others who ingly charmed the proprietor into allowing them to join this mirthful and witty group. I explai