FOURTY-SEVEN

LAM

In Herat and Shiraz, when a master miniaturist nearing the end of his days went blind from a lifetime of excessive labor, it would not only be taken as a sign of that master’s determination, but would be commended as God’s acknowledgment of the great master’s work and talent. There was even a time in Herat when masters who hadn’t gone blind despite having grown old were regarded with suspicion, a situation that compelled quite a few of them to actually induce blindness in their old age. There was a long period during which men reverently recalled artists who blinded themselves, following in the path of those legendary masters who’d done so rather than work for another monarch or change their styles. And it was during this age that Abu Said, Tamerlane’s grandson from the Miran Shah line of descent, introduced a further twist in his workshop after he’d conquered Tashkent and Samarkand: The practice of paying greater homage to the imitation of blindness than to blindness itself. Black Veli, the old artisan who inspired Abu Said, had confirmed that a blind miniaturist could see the horses of God’s vision from within the darkness; however, true talent resided in a sighted miniaturist who could regard the world like a blind man. At the age of sixty-seven he proved his point by dashing off a horse that came to the tip of his brush without so much as a glance at the paper, even as his eyes remained all the while open and fixed on the page. At the end of this artistic ceremony for which Miran Shah had deaf musicians play lutes and mute storytellers recite stories to support the legendary master’s efforts, the splendid horse that Black Veli had drawn was compared at length with other horses he’d made: There was no difference whatsoever among them, much to Miran Shah’s irritation; thereafter, the legendary master declared that a miniaturist possessed of talent, regardless of whether his eyes are open or closed, will always and only see horses in one way, that is, the way that Allah perceives them. And among great master miniaturists, there is no difference between the blind and the sighted: The hand would always draw the same horse because there was as yet no such thing as the Frankish innovation called “style.” The horses made by the great master Black Veli have been imitated by all Muslim miniaturists for 110 years. As for Black Veli himself, after the defeat of Abu Said and the dispersal of his workshop, he moved from Samarkand to Kazvin, where two years later he was condemned for his spiteful attempts to refute the verse in the Glorious Koran that declares, “The blind and the seeing are not equal.” For this, he was first blinded, then killed by young Nizam Shah’s soldiers.

I was on the verge of telling a third story, describing to the pretty-eyed calligrapher’s apprentice how the great master Bihzad had blinded himself, how he never wanted to leave Herat, why he never painted again after being taken forcibly to Tabriz, how a miniaturist’s style was really the style of the workshop in which he worked and other tales I’d heard from Master Osman, but I became preoccupied with the storyteller. How had I known that he was going to tell Satan’s story tonight?

I had the urge to say, “It was Satan who first said “I!” It was Satan who adopted a style. It was Satan who separated East from West.”

I closed my eyes and drew Satan on the storyteller’s rough sheet of paper as my heart desired. As I drew, the storyteller and his assistant, other artists and curious onlookers giggled and goaded me on.

Pray, do you think I have my own style, or do I owe it to the wine?