The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

He observed the churches, none of which were permitted to have bells, the synagogues with square courtyards, the mosques roofed with lead, and the mud-brick and wooden houses that leaned against each other as if for solace.

‘We are not destroying the buildings, son. We are destroying our desire to possess them. Only God is the owner. Of the stone and of the skill.’

It was as if there were two invisible arcs: with our deeds and words we ascended; with our deeds and words we descended.

If you don’t know what to do with an answer, don’t ask the question,’

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.

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.

No sooner were the new rules introduced, however, than people began to defy them. The fire had been a teacher, true. But Istanbul, where forgetting was easier than remembering, never learned its lesson.

Jahan thought of him as a flickering candlelight – nervous, erratic, awaiting the wind that would one day put him out.

Never before had he thought that among an architect’s tasks would be the protection of the city from its inhabitants and the protection of the past from the future.

It seemed to Jahan that, in truth, this world, too, was a spectacle. One way or another, everyone was parading. They performed their tricks, each of them, some staying longer, others shorter, but in the end they all left through the back door, similarly unfulfilled, similarly in need of applause.

The son of a man too dominant, the ruler of an empire too vast, the bearer of a soul too tender, the dreamer of poems too delicate,

What difference did it make whether they were hurt or happy, right or wrong, when the sun rose and the moon waned just the same, with or without them?

knowledge, ilm, was a carriage pulled by many horses. If one of the steeds began to gallop faster, the other horses, too, would speed up and the traveller in the carriage, the alim, would benefit from it. Improvement in one field backed improvements in other fields. Architecture had to be friends with astronomy; astronomy with arithmetic; arithmetic with philosophy; and so on.

I cannot prevent people from destroying. All I can do is keep building.’

What they raised in years, stone upon stone, could be destroyed in one afternoon.

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.

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

They prattled on about which craftsmen they preferred to work with and which ones they would rather shun, banter that swirled with no immediacy and no weight, like wispy balls of dust.

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

‘Every colossal mosque we built was raised thanks to the revenues from another conquest. On their way to the battleground the army would raze villages to the ground, kill more of my people. Our master never cared for these sorrows. He refused to see that, without bloodshed elsewhere, there would be no money, and without money there would be no building in the capital.’

Stone reflected in the water. God reflected in human beings. Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories.

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.