My Name is Red Read Free

claimed to be descended from Our Glorious Prophet Muhammad, had made a name for himself during this period of immorality, inflation, crime and theft. This hoja, who was from the small town of Erzurum, attributed the catastrophes that had befallen Istanbul in the last ten years-including the Bahçekapı and Kazanjılar district fires, the plagues that claimed tens of thousands, the endless wars with the Persians at a cost of countless lives, as well as the loss of small Ottoman fortresses in the West to Christians in revolt-to our having strayed from the path of the Prophet, to disregard for the strictures of the Glorious Koran, to the tolerance toward Christians, to the open sale of wine and to the playing of musical instruments in dervish houses.
    The pickle seller who passionately informed me about the cleric from Erzurum said that the counterfeit coins-the new ducats, the fake florins stamped with lions and the Ottoman coins with their ever-decreasing silver content-that flooded the markets and bazaars, just like the Circassians, Abkhazians, Mingarians, Bosnians, Georgians and Armenians who filled the streets, were dragging us toward an absolute degradation from which it would be difficult to escape. I was told that scoundrels and rebels were gathering in coffeehouses and proselytizing until dawn; that destitute men of dubious character, opium-addicted madmen and followers of the outlawed Kalenderi dervish sect, claiming to be on Allah’s path, would spend their nights in dervish houses dancing to music, piercing themselves with skewers and engaging in all manner of depravity, before brutally fucking each other and any boys they could find.
    I didn’t know whether it was the melodious sound of a lute that compelled me to follow, or if in the muddle of my memories and desires, I could simply no longer endure the virulent pickle seller, and seized upon the music as a way out of the conversation. I do, however, know this: When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you’ll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories.
    This was how I happened to leave the Farrier’s Market and ended up watching the snow as it fell into the Golden Horn from a spot beside the Süleymaniye Mosque: Snow had already begun to accumulate on the rooftops facing north and on sections of the dome exposed to the northeasterly breeze. An approaching ship, whose sails were being lowered, greeted me with a flutter of canvas. The color of its sails matched the leaden and foggy hue of the surface of the Golden Horn. The cypress and plane trees, the rooftops, the heartache of dusk, the sounds coming from the neighborhood below, the calls of hawkers and the cries of children playing in mosque courtyards mingled in my head and announced emphatically that, hereafter, I wouldn’t be able to live anywhere but in their city. I had the sensation that my beloved’s face, which had escaped me for years, might suddenly appear to me.
    I began to walk down the hill and melded into the crowds. After the evening prayer was called, I filled my stomach at a liver shop. In the empty shop, I listened carefully to the owner, who fondly watched me eat each bite as if he were feeding a cat. Taking his cue and following his directions, I found myself turning down one of the narrow alleys behind the slave market-well after the streets had become dark-and located the coffeehouse.
    Inside, it was crowded and warm. The storyteller, the likes of whom I had seen in Tabriz and in Persian cities and who was known thereabouts as a “curtain-caller,” was perched on a raised platform beside the wood-burning stove. He had unfolded and hung before the crowd a picture, the figure of a dog drawn on rough paper hastily but with a certain