The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

They hurried to mosques, synagogues and churches to pray and repent, repent and pray. Their sins had brought the calamity, the ones they had committed and were sure to commit. It was God’s wrath. The flesh was weak. No wonder black roses bloomed on their bodies. Jahan listened to these words, his heart pulsing in the hollow of his throat, believing and disbelieving. Had God created humans, with their foibles, just so as to be able to punish them afterwards? ‘We trespassed,’ said the imams. ‘Sin entered the world,’ said the priests. ‘Repent we must,’ said the rabbis. And the people did, thousands of them. Many turned pious – none more so than the Sultan. Wine was forbidden, wine-makers punished; musical instruments were burned in bonfires, taverns were closed, brothels were sealed, opium dens remained as empty as discarded walnut shells. The preachers spoke only about pestilence and profanity and how they were intertwined, like the plait of an odalisque. Then, as if in unison, people stopped saying it was because of them. It was others who had brought this upon the city, others with their impiety and debauchery. 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.

‘Well, he doesn’t approve of me either,’ said Sinan, dropping his voice a notch. ‘Because of the bridge?’ ‘Because of defiance. He has not forgotten. He is used to having everyone worshipping his every word. Those who surround themselves with grovellers who praise everything they do will not forgive the honest man who tells the truth.’

Inferno. Don’t be one of those wretched souls who live without blame or without praise.

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

The four borders of the Taj Mahal are designed to be identical, as if there were a mirror situated on one side, though one can never tell on which one. Stone reflected in the water. God reflected in human beings. Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories. We live, toil and die under the same invisible dome. Rich and poor, Mohammedan and baptized, free and slave, man and woman, Sultan and mahout, master and apprentice . . . I have come to believe that if there is one shape that reaches out to all of us, it is the dome. That is where all the distinctions disappear and every single sound, whether of joy or sorrow, merges into one huge silence of all-encompassing love. When I think of this world in such a way, I feel dazed and disoriented, and cannot tell any longer where the future begins and the past ends; where the West falls and the East rises.

The painter Melchior and the ambassador Busbecq were historical characters who arrived in Istanbul around 1555, but I have fictionalized the moments of their arrival and departure. In several books I have come across allusions to a group of Ottoman architects in Rome, but what exactly they were doing there remains obscure. I imagined them as Sinan’s apprentices, Jahan and Davud. And there really was an elephant named Suleiman in Vienna, whose story has been beautifully narrated by José Saramago in The Elephant’s Journey. Finally, this novel is a product of the imagination. Yet historical events and real people have guided and inspired me. I benefited enormously from a great many sources in English and Turkish, from Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq’s Turkish Letters to Metin And’s Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century: The City, the Palace, Daily Life. ‘May the world flow like water,’ Sinan used to say. I can only hope that this story, too, will flow like water in the hearts of its readers.