The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

  Jahan was surprised to hear the anger in his voice. He, the most revered artist in Rome, was competing with a ghost. It occurred to Jahan that perhaps sculpture suited Michelangelo’s temperament more than architecture. He didn’t say this. Instead, having seen an exquisite drawing of a horse he remarked, ‘You like animals.’

  ‘I study them.’ Michelangelo explained that he dissected corpses and goitrous animals to see the muscles, the nerves, the bones.

  ‘I’ve a white elephant,’ Jahan said proudly. ‘We work on construction sites.’

  ‘Your master employs an elephant? Maybe I should have one, too.’

  He asked them about the Suleimaniye Mosque, commending Sinan on his work. Where did Michelangelo’s knowledge come from, Jahan wondered. He was searching for some delicate way to inquire when the artist lifted his hand and said, ‘Altro non mi achade.’*

  They left quietly.

  That same week they set off for Istanbul, making the journey on two stallions. Fond as he was of his mount, Jahan missed Chota. He could not help but worry that the tamer who had replaced him had not done his job properly or, even if he had, the animal had refused to eat, as elephants sometimes did, when they felt lonely or forlorn. But the closer they got to Istanbul the more distraught he felt. In Rome he had managed not to think about Mihrimah but now the memory of her came back with a vengeance, like rapids smashing the barrier that had trapped them.

  When they stopped to rest and relieve themselves, Jahan noticed that Davud looked pensive. As he knew his companion was an orphan and had been raised by his grandfather, he asked him about his childhood. ‘What is there to tell?’ said Davud gently. He had been a lost, angry boy until Master Sinan had found him, educated him and changed his destiny.

  Afterwards they made their way to Adrianople wordlessly, each drawing into his own thoughts. Darkness descended; they galloped. Only when their backs could take no more and the horses were foaming at the mouth did they slow down. There was an inn nearby and that was where they decided to spend the night.

  Inside, it was teeming. The dining hall was ample, though with ceilings so low that unless you sat you had to stoop. In one corner, in a fireplace hollowed out of stone, a cauldron blackened with soot simmered. At the long, wide wooden tables customers were perched – men of every age and religion.

  The instant Jahan and Davud entered every head turned in their direction, and the noise slackened. Nobody welcomed them. Spotting an empty place at the end of one table, they squeezed in. Jahan glanced around. To his left sat a gaunt and greying man, perhaps a scribe, since his fingers were stained with ink. Across from them was a Frank with hair the colour of straw, warming his hands over a steaming bowl. He doffed his hat towards them as though in salute.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Jahan asked Davud.

  ‘How could I know anyone in this hole?’

  A dwarf passed by carrying a tray of drinks. As he purposefully made his way, somebody tripped him. He fell down, the cups rolling along the floor. Peals of laughter erupted. The dwarf stood up, blushed but calm; the customers went back to their food, as if it had been someone else howling a moment ago.

  They ate in silence. After supper Davud went upstairs for the evening prayer. Jahan decided to stay a bit longer. A kind of tranquillity such as he had never encountered before came over him. He was lonely as an abandoned lighthouse, yet in that moment he felt in company, though of what or whom he could not tell. For the first time the aching over Mihrimah’s wedding stopped.

  ‘Your friend’s gone?’

  Lifting his head, Jahan saw the man with the straw-coloured hair gazing at him.

  ‘May I sit?’ he asked, and without waiting for an answer did so. With a flick of his fingers he signalled to the dwarf. A minute later they had a jug on the table between them.

  ‘Let’s drink!’ the stranger said.

  The wine tasted of tree bark and roses left to dry. The traveller, whose name was Tommaso, struck Jahan as an intelligent man. An Italian, he said he was going east, as he was dying to see the Hagia Sophia. Glasses were renewed. Then the jug. They talked amicably, though afterwards Jahan would not remember half of what was said.

  ‘Our master sent us to Rome,’ said Jahan. Tipsy as he was he was careful not to mention the letter they were carrying. ‘He wanted us to expand our knowledge.’

  Like a man who had not spoken for a few days, Jahan talked about the things he was bent on achieving. Words dripping with wine. Since he had heard of Mihrimah’s marriage, something in him longed to climb up fast.

  Tommaso regarded him over the brim of his cup and said, very slowly, ‘Does what we do in life matter so much? Or is it what we don’t do that carries weight?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jahan after he knocked back his drink.

  ‘Say you are passing through the woods and you see this woman. All alone. You could have her there, but you don’t. That shows what kind of a man you are. A man swears at you. You could land a punch on his nose. If you don’t, that is who you are.’

  Jahan said, ‘So not doing something is a feat, then?’

  ‘True,’ Tommaso said with a smile. ‘You build with wood, stone, iron. You also build with absence. Your master knows this well.’

  Jahan got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘Everybody knows your master,’ said Tommaso as he stood up and threw the dwarf a coin. ‘Need to go, my friend.’

  Secretly, Jahan was glad that Tommaso had paid. He would have felt guilty if he had had to spend his master’s money on wine.

  Tommaso said, ‘If you want to thrive, that’s fine. God bless you either way. Just don’t become one of those wretched souls.’

  Upstairs, Jahan found Davud sleeping among a dozen travellers. He tottered over to a window and opened it. A cricket chirruped outside. An owl hooted. It was an enchanting evening, the moon a golden sickle. Stretching out before him like a fan was a garden lined with stone-edged beds, wafting a smell so delicious he could have gobbled it up. As he was inhaling that sweet smell he remembered. Only then. Those words came to him. He had read them before. They were from Dante. Inferno. Don’t be one of those wretched souls who live without blame or without praise.

  The next morning, when Jahan and Davud woke up, they discovered they had been robbed. Their boots, the coins left in their purses, the silver pin, the crystal ball and the sack where they kept their drawings – all had vanished. So had Jahan’s leather-bound diary and the ring he had hidden inside. Every sketch they had meticulously made throughout the journey had been carried off. Gone, too, was Michelangelo’s letter.

  ‘What kind of bandits would steal architectural drawings?’ Jahan protested.

  ‘They must have mistaken them for valuables,’ Davud said sadly.

  Oddly, nothing had been stolen from the other travellers. The thief, whoever he was, had targeted only Sinan’s apprentices. They sobbed and wailed like children. They searched again and again. It was no use. Worried, mortified and broken, they left the inn. Each was accusing himself: Jahan for drinking the night before and Davud for falling asleep so early and so heavily.

  They would never get to know what Il Divino had written to their master. The correspondence between the Chief Architect of Rome and the Chief Royal Architect of Istanbul was severed, and not for the first time. The apprentices arrived at the house of Sinan with nothing to offer him. It was as though nothing remained from their long journey, except the ache in their limbs and the memories of San Pietro, already withering away.

  Captain Gareth arrived, an acrid smell of salt, sweat and liquor clinging to him. He seemed to pass through the palace walls as easily as a ghost. Nobody liked him, but nobody dared to upset him either. As a result, everyone gave him a wide berth – exactly what he wanted.

  Jahan noticed the man didn’t look well. His skin, which usually was a shade of bright pink not found among Ottoman men, had turned sallow. His lips were chapped, his cheeks sunken. Jahan suspe
cted he might have contracted a disease on one of his voyages. Either that or treason had finally started to poison his soul.

  ‘Well, well. It’s been a long while. The other day I said to myself, I should go to visit the fake mahout and give him a piece of my mind. I get here and what do I hear? Oh, no, they say, he’s in Rome! Rome? What a lucky lad you are. So how was it in the brothels? Would love to have a taste myself. Alas! Nobody sends me to Rome! Where’s my compensation? Tell me, what did you bring for an old friend?’

  ‘We have been robbed on our way back to Istanbul,’ Jahan said.

  ‘Oh, yeah? I love trumped-up stories.’

  To shut him up, Jahan gave him the sapphire rosary he had stolen at the opening of the Suleimaniye Mosque. He had planned to sell it and buy a present for Mihrimah. What a dolt he had been.

  One glance at the booty and the man’s face fell. ‘Is this all, you sluggard?’

  It wasn’t. Buried deep under the same tree, Jahan had another box: silver cutlery from the imperial kitchens, a pearl that had fallen off from the hem of Mihrimah’s gown, a gold-nibbed pen, a jar of honey from the royal pantry and a hairpin that belonged to Hesna Khatun. The nursemaid had been giving him another roasting when she’d had an asthma attack and had bent forward so close to Jahan’s fingertips it would have been a sin not to snitch the hairpin. Jahan hadn’t intended to hand any of these things to Captain Crazyhead. He had wanted to keep them to himself in case something went wrong and he needed to take flight.

  But the Captain was no fool. ‘I’m losing patience. Pity, you’re still young. When they learn what kind of lies you’ve been telling, they’ll skin you alive.’

  Jahan shuddered at the thought, but he was also aware that the man had neither given him a drubbing nor pulled a dagger on him. Something was making him hesitate.

  ‘Your Princess is miserable, they say. Poor thing. She has all the riches in the world but no love to cuddle her.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in a while,’ Jahan said uncomfortably.

  ‘Oh, you will, I’m sure. Since she dotes on the white elephant …’

  Jahan understood. Captain Gareth had heard that Princess Mihrimah was unhappy in her marriage. He had learned, just as the entire city had, that she spent many afternoons crying on her own in her beautiful, lonely house. Knowing that she was fond of Chota, and perhaps of the mahout, too, the Captain had guessed that it wouldn’t take her too long to reappear in the menagerie. Jahan was the goose that would lay golden eggs for him. He didn’t wish to butcher him too soon.

  Suddenly Jahan felt heartened. With a grin he said, ‘You should go now. The Chief White Eunuch might come by at any moment. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if he finds you here.’

  Captain Gareth’s bottom lip sagged, unsure what to say. Jahan added hastily, ‘Go! When I have something to show you, I’ll send word.’

  Although the man gave him an icy stare, he didn’t object. For the first time he took his leave without uttering threats. And thus Jahan discovered something about wretches like him – that, as scary as they were, they thrived upon other people’s weaknesses. If Jahan was determined to survive in the seraglio, he decided, he had to build an internal harem and put under lock and key every fear, worry, secret and heartbreak that had marred his soul. He would be both the Sultan and the eunuch of that harem. He would not allow anyone to take a peek inside. Including his master.

  The Dome

  Jahan would always remember 1562 as the year of happiness. Everyone had one such year in their lives, he believed. It grew, it blossomed, and, just as he started to think it would always be like this, it was over. His time of joy started when they set out to build a mosque for Mihrimah. Now that her father had given her vast lands and ample revenues, she had become the richest woman in the empire – and the most commanding. People were frightened to upset her. Including the apprentices. Even Master Sinan was rather uncomfortable in her presence. She sent everyone into a cold sweat. Except Jahan. He was too besotted with her to remember to fear her.

  Thus, while the other apprentices were timid and reluctant to say anything new, Jahan was bursting with ideas. He worked so hard that, even though he was still no more than an apprentice, his master valued his eagerness. Sinan began to take Jahan with him whenever he visited the Princess to inform her about their progress.

  All throughout those early months, no matter what Jahan did or where he was, he thought about the layout that Sinan had drawn so neatly. At night in bed he racked his brains to figure out how to perfect it. Even in his sleep he carried stones to Mihrimah’s mosque. Then one day, overstepping a boundary, he drew a porch of seven domed bays and handed it to the Chief Royal Architect.

  ‘You put aside my layout and drew your own,’ said Sinan, sounding more incredulous than upset.

  ‘Master, forgive me, I meant no disrespect. I believe the entrance to the mosque should be overwhelming, unexpected.’

  Sinan could have scolded him then and there. He didn’t. Instead he inspected the sketch and asked, ‘Why seven?’

  Jahan had already thought of an answer. ‘It is the number of the layers of earth. And the circles a pilgrim makes around the Kaaba. It’s a holy number.’

  Sinan remained thoughtful for a moment. Then he rolled up the scroll and said, ‘Come back with new designs. Do a better job, if you want me to take you seriously.’

  Jahan did. He kept drawing, measuring, dreaming. At no stage did he confess to himself that he wanted the mosque to remind Mihrimah of the day they had met. When she was still a girl escaping from a wasp. When she had worn a necklace with seven pearls. In his plans he chose the lightest marble and granite for the columns, the colour of her dress and veil. Four towers would support the dome, as they had been four in the garden that afternoon: the Princess, Hesna Khatun, the mahout and the elephant. And a single minaret would stand high, slender and graceful, just like her. Her mosque would have lots of windows, both on the dome and in the prayer hall, to reflect the sunshine in her hair.

  After weeks of this frenzy, Sinan pulled Jahan aside and said, ‘I have been watching you toil away. Although you are not fully ready, I believe you have the strength and the grit. I’m going to give you more responsibility for Princess Mihrimah’s mosque. I’ll let you make those changes.’

  Jahan kissed his master’s hand, put it on his forehead. Whatever life had been like for him until then, it would never be the same afterwards. On no other construction site would he work this hard, exhausting himself with every detail.

  Meanwhile, Jahan’s tireless dedication was a source of irritation for the other apprentices, although this he wouldn’t realize until it was too late.

  As they neared the end of Mihrimah’s Mosque, the master and the apprentices found themselves in a quagmire. For some time now the ancient aqueducts had been in need of repair. Lined up like defeated giants, they loomed over the city, aged and drained. As the population of Istanbul grew, so did the demand for water. Deep under hospitals, inns, slaughterhouses, hamams, mosques, churches and synagogues, holy springs percolated through the soil – except, it was not enough any more.

  Sinan was ready to embark on the task. He did not just want to restore what had been done back in the days of the infidels: his intentions were bigger, more daring. He yearned to bring water to the entire city by building a succession of stone bridges, sluiceways and subterranean tunnels. Cisterns – open and covered – would supply provisions for dry summer seasons. It was a major venture and one that earned him adversaries aplenty – but none was powerful as Rustem Pasha: the royal groom, the new Grand Vizier and Mihrimah’s husband.

  Rustem had opposed Sinan’s plan from the beginning. Fresh water meant fresh migrants – more congestion, more hovels, more pestilence. Istanbul was crowded enough and could do without new settlers, each of whom would arrive with a bundle of dreams and disappointments.

  Many sided with Rustem, though for reasons of their own. Rival architects who begrudged Sinan his talent did not
wish him to undertake such a colossal commission for fear that he might succeed. Laymen insisted no mortal could fetch water from the mountains – unless he was Ferhad bursting through Mount Bisutun to carry milk to Shirin. Preachers said the earth should be left undisturbed, lest the djinn awaken and heap calamities on mankind. While everyone sniped, Sinan went on working as if there were nothing to fret about. How he held on to his faith amid treachery and remained quiet in the face of malicious gossip was beyond Jahan’s grasp. Not even once had the master returned slander with slander. He reminded Jahan of a turtle that, upon being prodded by children, retreats into its shell, waiting for the madness to pass. Yet the turtle that was Sinan kept working, working, all the time that he remained still.

  Nikola and Jahan were to assist the master in the water scheme. It was their responsibility to take the measurements, calculate the angles of the slopes, perfect the designs, and inspect where the Byzantine waterways had failed and how they could be improved. Once they had all this information, they would present their findings to the Sultan.

  Entrusted with a task this big, Nikola and Jahan were thrilled and anxious in equal measure. Of all the jobs they had undertaken over the years, this was by far the hardest. Even so, they slogged away less to impress the Sultan or to defeat the Grand Vizier than to avoid embarrassment for their master. One by one they detected the springs and boreholes, creeks and streams, well-heads and reservoirs, marked them on the map and ruminated on how to connect them through channels both above and below the ground. Finally, one Thursday afternoon, the master and the two apprentices, spruce and spirited, headed to the palace, laden with designs and hopes.