The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

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

But Istanbul is a city of easy forgettings.

but at the bottom of one of the hundreds of buildings that my master built rests hidden the centre of the universe.

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

Of three things in this life she expected no good: a man who had sold his soul to Sheitan; a woman proud of her beauty; and the news that could not wait till the morning to be delivered.

He wondered, for the thousandth time, how a city so rich in beauty could be crammed with houses so poorly built.

It occurred to him that you could live in a palace all your life but never see much of it.

Unasked questions in his mind, a perfume in his nostrils and a jolt in his chest he had never known before.

Whatever you do, she would have said, don’t hurt anyone and don’t let anyone hurt you. Be neither a heartbreaker nor heartbroken.’

‘Fare you well, my brother.’

Lions were fierce, tigers were regal, monkeys were smart, peacocks impressive – yet only an elephant could be all of those things at once.

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

‘In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.’

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

Grief was an indulgence only a few could afford. Death had to stop harassing the living for the dead to be properly mourned.

Easy to amuse, hard to please, the audience had changed little since the time of Constantine.

He had a wounded shoulder and aching limbs, yet he couldn’t tell where his pain came from.

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

That was the thing about colossal buildings. While they did not change, the people who ordered, designed, built and eventually used them constantly did.

It seemed to him that in that instant he had, unknowingly, come a step closer to the centre of the universe.

Its title was The Guide for the Perplexed, which Jahan thought was well suited to himself.

The innocence of childhood leaves all of us eventually.’

He said there were three fountains of wisdom from which every artisan should drink abundantly: books, work and roads. Reading, practising and travelling.

Rome, the city where memories were chiselled in marble.

Jahan would always remember 1562 as the year of happiness. Everyone had one such year in their lives, he believed.

You know what they say, where there are two Gypsies, there are three opinions.’

When one underwent a sudden change, one expected the world, too, to somehow have become different.

‘You know what they say: “Boys in the summer, wives in the winter to keep you warm.” ’

Her eyes had a distant look, as if in search of other, long-ago evenings.

Do you have any idea how annoying the sober are to the merry?’

The building that had goaded Justinian to exclaim with pride, ‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee!’

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.

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.

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?

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

Pray for the soul of one whose name was not discovered Loved by the Almighty, He hath known her always.

Perhaps, Jahan would conclude, with closeness came blindness and with a certain distance, awareness.

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

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.

She was born in spring and loved flowers in bloom.

Architect Nikola ascended to the skies like the towers he built May his soul rest in the vault of heaven And Saint Thomas be his companion

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

You are the witnesses to each other’s journeys. You will know, therefore, if one of you goes astray. Follow the path of the wise, the awakened, the loving, the hard working.

Centre of the universe was neither in the East nor in the West. It was where one surrendered to love. Sometimes it was where one buried a loved one.

a reckless curiosity for the world and a hidden wish to leave one’s place of birth in the belief that real life was elsewhere.

Whereas in the Abode of the Disfavoured it was the dreams that withered first, then, gradually, the dreamers.

The place where he had learned to love and learned never to trust love.

Those who grew up with stories of love that inevitably ended in rapture, revelry, chivalry or calamity could not fathom why for many people love amounted to naught, eventually.

Shah Jahan was a man who pledged his wrath in steel, his love in diamonds and his grief in white marble.

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.