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.

Yet I remember the promises we made, and then failed to keep, every single one of them. It’s odd how faces, solid and visible as they are, evaporate, while words, made of breath, stay.

only two kinds of people would be awake now: those who were praying and those who were sinning.

they walked separate paths while their shadows met and mingled in knots.

Thus a sin for which no one took the blame, yet to which everyone contributed, lived on.

beneath the surface of colours and contrasts, she carried a fretful soul,

don’t hurt anyone and don’t let anyone hurt you. Be neither a heartbreaker nor heartbroken.’

He was a man of mesmerizing contrasts:

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

Blissful days these were – though, as too often happens with blissful days, they would be appreciated only when they were no more.

That was the one thing he understood well – the loneliness that came with being different.

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.

‘If you wish to excel at your craft, you have to convince the universe why it should be you rather than someone else.’

How soon things changed and how low people fell and from what heights. Even those whom he thought untouchable. Or, perhaps, especially those.

Let me give you two pieces of advice. If you don’t know what to do with an answer, don’t ask the question,’ Balaban said. ‘What’s the second?’ asked Jahan.

Decisions are sheep; habits, the shepherd.’

‘Does what we do in life matter so much? Or is it what we don’t do that carries weight?’

It was after this incident that Jahan understood his master’s secret resided not in his toughness, for he was not tough, nor in his indestructibility, for he was not indestructible, but in his ability to adapt to change and calamity, and to rebuild himself, again and again, out of the ruins. 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.

a man who believed that words, like money, should be used sparingly.

If they moved between gloom and glee with such ease, did this mean they could pass from love to hatred just as effortlessly?

day. For one to exist the other had to perish.

It was lonely enough to make you love your own shadow and crowded enough to leave you gasping for air.

with closeness came blindness and with a certain distance, awareness.

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.

‘Every man is given his own kismet, for God never repeats the same fate twice.’

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