My Name is Red Read Online Free PDF Page A

realize there’s a stranger making faint sounds as he creeps about the blackness of the room! Imagine that the intruder wields a dagger in one hand as he strangles you with the other. Every detail, the finely wrought wall, window and frame ornamentation, the curves and circular designs in the red rug, the color of the silent scream emanating from your clamped throat and the yellow and purple flowers embroidered with incredible finesse and vigor on the magnificent quilt upon which the bare and vile foot of your murderer mercilessly steps as he ends your life, all of these details serve the same purpose: While augmenting the beauty of the painting, they remind you just how exquisite are the room in which you will soon die and the world you will soon leave. The indifference of the painting’s beauty and of the world to your death, the fact of your being totally alone in death despite the presence of your wife, this is the inescapable meaning that strikes you.
    “This is by Bihzad,” the aging master said twenty years ago as we examined the book I held in my trembling hands. His face was illuminated not by the nearby candle, but by the pleasure of observation itself. “This is so Bihzad that there’s no need for a signature.”
    Bihzad was so well aware of this fact that he didn’t hide his signature anywhere in the painting. And according to the elderly master, there was a sense of embarrassment and a feeling of shame in this decision of his. Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
    Fearing for my life, I murdered my unfortunate victim in an ordinary and crude manner. As I returned to this fire-ravaged area night after night to ascertain whether I’d left behind any traces that might betray me, questions of style increasingly arose in my head. What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
    I could’ve located this place even without the brilliance of the falling snow, for this spot, razed by fire, was where I’d ended the life of my companion of twenty-five years. Now, snow covered and erased all the clues that might have been interpreted as signature, proving that Allah concurred with Bihzad and me on the issue of style and signature. If we actually committed an unpardonable sin by illustrating that book-as that half-wit had maintained four days ago-even if we had done so unawares, Allah wouldn’t have bestowed this favor upon us miniaturists.
    That night, when Elegant Effendi and I came here, the snow hadn’t yet begun to fall. We could hear the howling of mongrels echo in the distance.
    “Pray, for what reason have we come here?” the unfortunate one had asked. “What do you plan to show me out here at this late hour?”
    “Just ahead lies a well, twelve paces beyond which I’ve buried the money I’ve been saving for years,” I said. “If you keep everything I’ve explained to you secret, Enishte Effendi and I will see that you are happily rewarded.”
    “Am I to understand that you admit you knew what you were doing from the beginning?” he said in agitation.
    “I admit it,” I lied obligingly.
    “You acknowledge the picture you’ve made is in fact a desecration, don’t you?” he said innocently. “It’s heresy, a sacrilege that no decent man would have the gall to commit. You’re going to burn in the pits of Hell. Your suffering and pain will never diminish-and you’ve made me an accomplice.”
    As I listened to him, I sensed with horror how his words had such strength and gravity that, willingly or not, people would heed them, hoping that they would prove true about miserable creatures other than themselves. Many rumors like this about Enishte Effendi had begun to fly due to the secrecy of the book he was making and the money he was willing to pay-and because Master Osman, the Head Illuminator, despised him. It occurred to me that