The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

I wish I could look back and say that I have learned to love as much as I loved to learn.

It’s odd how faces, solid and visible as they are, evaporate, while words, made of breath, stay.

Only two things are solid, the servants taunted: Taras the Siberian and the misery of love. Everything else perishes . . .

Prayer should be a declaration of love, and love should be stripped of all fear and expectation,

‘Sometimes, for the soul to thrive, the heart needs to be broken, son.’

‘When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.’

Fear turned into resentment; resentment into rage. And rage was a ball of flame you could not hold in your hands for too long; it had to be thrown at someone.

‘Resentment is a cage, talent is a captured bird. Break the cage, let the bird take off and soar high. Architecture is a mirror that reflects the harmony and balance present in the universe. If you do not foster these qualities in your heart, you cannot build.’

While Jahan was made of wood, and Davud of metal, and Nikola of stone, and Yusuf of glass, Sinan was made of flowing water. When anything blocked his course, he would flow under, around, above it, however he could; he found his way through the cracks, and kept flowing forward.

If not put to use, iron rusts, woodwork crumbles, man errs, Sinan said. Work we must.

Little did he know, back then, that the worth of one’s faith depended not on how solid and strong it was, but on how many times one would lose it and still be able to get it back.

In that moment Jahan understood that life was the sum of the choices one did not make; the paths yearned for but not taken.

Centre of the universe was neither in the East nor in the West. It was where one surrendered to love.

What my master did inside the dome of the Shehzade Mosque, our first major construction – where there were no accidents, no betrayals, and we were as one – I shall do inside the dome of the Taj Mahal. I will hide somewhere a detail for Mihrimah, which only the knowing eye will recognize. A moon and a sun, locked together in a fatal embrace – such is the meaning of her name.