The Architect's Apprentice (32 page)

‘Your master wrote to the Sultan, and our Sultan, benevolent as he is, took his plea seriously. Look where it has brought us now.’

‘
Effendi
, aren’t these people to blame?’ Jahan asked. ‘They have unlawfully built around the Hagia Sophia and –’

‘Right,’ the Chief Kadi cut him off. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Don’t expect miracles.’

The apprentices left the kadi’s place demoralized. Jahan understood that the people who could help them would refrain from doing so, out of bitterness or laziness or jealousy of Sinan’s success.

Things might never have improved had it not been for the fatwa that was issued soon after. The Grand Mufti’s words rained on the city like hailstones, quenching all fires, small and large.

Question: There are those who say, on the subject of the repair of a holy mosque that was formerly a church, we are not leaving because an infidel’s building is bound to collapse, and it is not important if it collapses, and there are those who support them, saying that anyone who renovates an infidel’s temple is an infidel. What shall be done about such people and those who follow them?

Answer: Anyone who says such erroneous things is an infidel himself and shall be executed. Those who prevent the work will be punished. The restoration of the mosque shall proceed steadily, as befits the righteous sharia
.

From then on, things simmered down. There were no more mobs on the streets, though minor incidents occurred here and there – pilfering of equipment, mostly. Sinan returned to Adrianople with Yusuf to complete the Selimiye Mosque. Jahan didn’t like this. He would rather keep an eye on Yusuf. He still had not been able to question him about his secret meetings with Tommaso, and seeing him alone with the master made him uneasy.

Davud, Nikola and Jahan were left in charge of the work around the Hagia Sophia. Every few days they were to send their master a letter to keep him apprised of what they had accomplished. Gradually the letters dwindled away, a guilty silence filling the distance between the master and the apprentices.

This they never confessed to Sinan, but the apprentices who stayed in Istanbul were ill at ease. Every day they tried to forewarn the inhabitants of the hovels they were going to demolish, tried to give them enough time to remove their belongings. But the people were either too slow or reluctant, so time and again the same sorrowful scene erupted: entire families, amid tears and curses, dragging away what little they had – kitchen utensils, lamps, mats, toys, a cradle, a kilim, a bird in its cage.

Jahan began to wander around the quarter to clear his head, sometimes with another apprentice, more often alone. One such day, he and Nikola were passing through a grimy alley cramped with half-emptied ateliers when they saw two children coming towards them. A girl and a boy – sister and brother, given the resemblance – with sage-green eyes glittering over dark freckles, which gave them a look of mischief. They had close-cut hair, a precaution against lice. Both were barefoot.

Bending his knees, Jahan said, ‘Hey, little ones. You should not be here on your own. Where do you live?’

The girl pointed to a shed at the end of the alley. Nikola and Jahan exchanged a guilty glance. It was one of the places they would raze the next morning.

The boy grabbed his hand and began to pull with all his might. From under his large, frayed shirtsleeves, his wrists showed, two white sticks. Jahan understood, with terror, that the child wanted them to follow him to his house. He said, louder than he intended, ‘No, I can’t come with you.’

The children were adamant. While the boy beseeched with his large, liquid eyes, the girl tugged at Nikola. In the end the apprentices could not resist them.

A fusty odour of mildew and decay hit Jahan and Nikola as they
stepped into the hovel the children called home. Inside the first room, a sick man lay on the floor. He was attended by a woman covered from head to toe. When she saw them she left the room in a hurry.

‘My father,’ said the girl.

At the sound of her voice, the patient, who until then had been listless, turned his head. The stare he gave Jahan was one of pain. When he opened his mouth only a sibilant whisper came out. The girl, unshaken, leaned towards him, listened, nodded and said, ‘He asks if your name is Azrael.’

Jahan shuddered. The man was clearly having hallucinations, confusing him with the Angel of Death. A voice inside his head told him to leave. Instead he wished the man good health and followed quietly behind the children into the bowels of the house. Nikola limped alongside him. In the second room they saw twin babies sleeping in the same cradle, their mouths open, a sliver of sunlight over them. One of the babies had a malformed lip. Identical twins who would never look alike.

The children urged them to keep walking. Passing through a low-ceilinged, dim corridor they stepped into the backyard; the two apprentices were surprised to see how close they were to the Hagia Sophia. There was an empty chicken coop on one side. A rickety wooden door opened on to a patch of soil used as a toilet, its stench sharp. Beside that door was a brindled mother cat, her teats swollen, sprawled in a basket with five kittens of the same colour.

The girl took one of the kittens by the neck and pressed its nose against her skinny chest. The animal made no noise, smothered by love. Then, brusquely, she held the delicate creature up, and said, ‘Take it.’

‘Oh, no. I can’t do that.’

‘Yours,’ she repeated.

Jahan was equally stern. ‘I don’t want a kitten.’

Her face collapsed. ‘They will die here.’

Seeing his sister’s distress, the boy snatched the kitten and shoved it towards Jahan. The kitten, now panicking, scratched Jahan’s thumb. Jahan flinched, but suppressed a yelp, and said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s not in my hands to save your kitten.’

Shaken, the apprentices retraced their steps through the house and into the street, where a number of neighbours had gathered, having heard of their presence. Someone threw a stone, striking Nikola on his shoulder.

The apprentices started to run. In their confusion they took a wrong turn, dashing into a field, brambles tearing at their ankles. Their chests were heaving, their senses on the alert, waiting for someone to leap at them from behind the bushes. When they slowed down, Nikola gasped, ‘I don’t want to do this.’

‘Nor I,’ Jahan said.

Back on the construction site they found Davud working. When he saw them, a look of concern came over his face. ‘You well?’

Jahan told him what had happened. The sick man, the children, the babies …

‘Don’t let it affect you,’ said Davud. ‘They had no right to build that shed.’

‘But they had nowhere else to go.’

‘They’ll be compensated. Our Sultan said so.’

Jahan said, ‘You know as well as I do that it won’t be enough.’

‘What can we do?’ Davud murmured running his fingers down his beard. ‘Our master entrusted us with the task.’

‘Yes, and where is he now? Building the Sultan’s mosque while we have to deal with this mess.’ No sooner had the words left him than Jahan halted, shaken by his own anger. ‘Forgive me.’

‘I already have,’ said Davud with a brotherly smile.

That week they delayed writing to Sinan, none of them feeling up to the task. They avoided one another, as if the more time they spent together the more they were reminded of their guilt. Then came a letter from the master.

My diligent apprentices,

I would have been with you had I not been given the task of finishing our Sultan’s mosque without delay. The urgency of the Selimiye Mosque compelled me to leave you on your own. I did so knowing you were more than capable of taking care of the Grand Mosque of Hagia Sophia. Nonetheless, I’m aware that this is our hardest task. In our craft we seldom see people. We befriend stone quarries, converse with tiles, listen to marble.

This time, however, you are face to face with the people whose homes you must demolish. This is onerous. If I could, I would have moved each of those families to a safer home with plenty of land and trees. But this is beyond me. And it is beyond you.

Only remember that cities, too, are like human beings. They are not made of stones and wood, solely. They are of flesh and bone. They bleed when they are hurt. Every unlawful construction is a nail hammered into the heart of Istanbul. Remember to pity a wounded city the way you pity a wounded person.

May God grant you according to your desire and keep you balanced,

Sinan, the humble and lowly pupil of Seth and Abraham, the Patron Saints of Stonemasons and Architects

That autumn the apprentices razed the countless hovels to the ground. Fast as they worked, the newcomers were faster. Even as they pulled down structures and moved away the rubble, in other parts of the city new buildings were set up, equally unlawful, equally unsafe and ugly. The regulations that Sinan developed regarding the width of the streets and the height of the houses were once again disregarded. Jahan was dismayed. 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.

The dome – that was what everyone raved about. In his letters to his Chief Royal Architect, the Sultan demanded a dome bigger than that of the Hagia Sophia. His mosque would proclaim the triumph of Islam over Christianity and show the entire world who were the favourites in the eyes of God. All this talk made Jahan nervous. Much like their ruler, the people goaded the architects into a contest, pitting Sinan against Anthemius the mathematician and Isidorus the physicist, who had designed the infidel church in days of yore.

‘Is there something bothering you?’ asked Sinan. ‘You seem withdrawn.’

A fine film of sawdust covered their shoes and a thin veil of sweat shone on their foreheads. Although they were exhausted they kept working as if each day were their last. Jahan said, ‘I can’t wait to finish and go.’

‘We’ll be done in four weeks, Allah willing,’ Sinan said, his voice trailing off.

Even that was too long, yet Jahan did not object. He was ashamed of complaining when the master, over eighty years old, toiled from dawn to dusk. Despite their pleas he would not rest. Similar to a moth drawn to the fire, Sinan was attracted to the dust, dirt and drudgery of construction sites. His hands rough, his fingernails split, underneath the silk kaftans he wore for ceremonies he was a labourer to his core. It had an undeniable effect on his apprentices. The sight of him in the field, not unlike the sight of a commander at the battlefront, prompted everyone to keep working ever harder.

‘This mosque is wearing us out,’ Jahan said.

Sinan grew pensive. ‘You’ve noticed it.’

Not expecting his master to affirm his fears, Jahan stammered, ‘You know it.’

‘Think of a baby in the womb. She lives off her mother and tires
her. While we deliver a building, we are like the mother. Once the baby is born, we shall be the happiest souls.’

The comparison between building and giving birth made Jahan smile. Yet instantly he had another thought. ‘But I don’t understand. The Sultan doesn’t work with us. Why does it sap his strength?’

‘He is still attached to his mosque,’ said Sinan.

‘We’ve worked on other buildings. Bridges, mosques, madrasas, aqueducts … Why have I never felt this way before?’

‘You did, you just don’t remember. That, too, is in the nature of things. We forget how we felt the last time. Again, like a mother.’ Sinan paused, as though unsure whether to say the next thing. ‘But then some births are harder than others.’

‘Master … are you telling me that what we create can kill us?’

‘What we create can weaken us,’ said Sinan. ‘Rarely does it kill us.’

Three weeks later, the Sultan sent a letter informing them that he wished to come and personally supervise the final touches to his mosque. He would travel to Adrianople leading a royal cavalcade. For this he needed an elephant. Since Mahmood had fallen out of favour and not yet clambered his way back up, Chota was, once again, in demand.

With his master’s blessing, Jahan took Chota and returned to the palace. He enjoyed seeing his old friends at the menagerie while the elephant rested in the barn. The next morning they were ready to join the procession.

It was spectacular. The Janissaries, the elite guards and the archers – all were rigged out in bright colours. Several concubines accompanied the Sultan, seated inside heavily curtained carriages. There was excitement and pride in the wind. Underneath, however, there loomed disquiet, like dark clouds gathering in the distance on an otherwise bright and sunny day. The Christians, appalled by the loss of Cyprus and by their cathedrals being turned into mosques, had assembled a Holy League. They sought revenge. The forces of the Pope, the Spanish and the Venetians, overcoming ancient feuds, had united. As they were making ready to journey to Adrianople, a naval battle between
the Ottoman and Christian forces was under way in the Gulf of Corinth near Lepanto.

In an hour Sultan Selim strutted out, his face round and red. After saluting the soldiers he motioned towards his horse – a pure-bred black stallion. That was when the strangest thing happened. The horse, for no reason at all, lurched forward and tripped. A gasp rose from the audience. It could only be a sign – an ill omen.

Selim, visibly upset, ordered the horse to be taken back to the stable. He was not going to ride a jinxed animal. Swiftly, a substitute was found: Chota. Since the Sultan was bent on leaving the capital with grandeur and reaching Adrianople in much the same way, what better than an elephant to carry him? Jahan was ordered to prepare the howdah and the shiny, jingling headdress, which Chota disliked immensely.

The Sultan held on to the dangling ladder and, with difficulty, managed to ascend. He was about to sit inside the howdah when Chota, either because the headdress had made him itchy or some demon had poked him in the eye, swayed his body with such force that the sovereign lost his balance. His turban, that huge mound with plumes, slipped off and plummeted, landing right in front of Jahan down below. Grabbing it, the mahout scrambled up the ladder.

For the first time they were eye to eye: Jahan on the ladder, the Sultan inside the howdah. Jahan lowered his head. Still, for one fleeting instant, their gazes crossed.

‘My Lord,’ Jahan said, as he held on to the rope with one hand and offered the turban with the other.

‘Give it here,’ Selim said, his voice tinged with irritation.

The turban slipped from the Sultan’s hand, toppling over yet again. Below on the ground the servants scurried to pick it up. They handed it to Jahan and he to the Sultan. This time Selim took it carefully, wordlessly, his face as pale as a cadaver’s. He said, ‘You may go, mahout.’

Jahan hurried down the ladder, tapped Chota’s trunk. The animal hoisted him to his usual place on his neck. With prayers and praises
they set forward. The people lined up on either side of the road and stared with admiration. Still, despite the splendour, discomfort had descended upon everyone. Other than the beat of hooves, the rattle of cartwheels and the jingle of the bells on Chota’s headdress, there were no sounds. Jahan had never seen so many people making so little noise.

Their spirits lifted as they left Istanbul behind. But dark news welcomed them at the city gates of Adrianople. The entire Ottoman fleet had been lost in a humiliating, harrowing defeat. If
kiyamet
had another name it would have been Lepanto. Hundreds were drowned, killed, enslaved. People were shocked but that didn’t last. After perplexity came discontent, and after discontent, rage. Suddenly everyone was seething at the Sultan.

For the first time in years Jahan was afraid to walk on the streets. Once when Chota and he were out walking, someone threw a stone at them. Whizzing past Chota’s head it crashed into a tree trunk. Jahan looked around, searching for the culprit. He saw a few boys playing knuckle-bones, a hawker selling offal and pedestrians strolling along. It could have been any of them. In that moment he could not help thinking they were being held in contempt, for they were the Sultan’s elephant and the Sultan’s mahout.

The mood on the construction site, too, was sombre. What had started with hope had turned into gloom. Zeal and despair. Might and loss. Cyprus and Lepanto. The Selimiye, as though built upon an invisible pendulum, swung between opposites. And in the midst of everything was Master Sinan, unaffected, untouched, working.

They carried on. The minarets were slender, graceful and taller than any other they had seen or heard of. Four tiers of windows on three galleries brought in ample light, reflecting off the tile panels, rendering the mosque bright and cheerful despite the workers’ disposition. The sandstone facades were the colour of honey, warm and inviting. The space inside was massive, uninterrupted. Wherever one knelt one could see the
mihrab
, where the imam sat and led the prayer. Everyone was equally close to God.

Greek painters were brought from the island of Chios to help with the decoration. There was a Mohammedan artist, too, a dreamy man by the name of Nakkash Ahmed Chelebi. Such was his regard for the mosque that he would come at different times of the day just to see, to admire. While out in the open sea, islands were captured, fleets were sunk, Muslims killed Christians and Christians killed Muslims, in Sinan’s cocoon-like universe they worked side by side.

Supported by eight piers of marble and granite, displaying eight sides, the dome rested atop a square with semi-domes on each corner. As enchanting as it was, inside and outside, it was its size that everyone was curious about. Masters in the science of geometry joined forces with Takiyuddin, the Chief Royal Astronomer, and meticulously took measurements. They all wanted to know the answer: had their deep blue dome of heaven surpassed that of the Hagia Sophia?

It had. If one were to measure from the level of the dome’s base to the top, it was higher. The Selimiye Mosque’s round dome, with its higher apex, had outdone the flat dome of Justinian’s church. Yet it hadn’t. If one were to calculate the distance from floor level to the top, theirs was lower and the Hagia Sophia’s higher.

Higher and lower simultaneously. And Jahan wondered, though he never could bring himself to ask, if, amid the flurry of excitement and anticipation, that was exactly what Master Sinan had intended.