The Architect's Apprentice Part 35

They helped me to climb up. I sat inside the howdah and looked at the workers toiling endlessly, building for G.o.d, building for the sovereign, building for their ancestors, building for a n.o.ble cause, building without knowing why, and I was so glad I was up there alone and not down there with them, because I could not stop the tears from streaming down my face and I sobbed like the frail old man I have become.

I am aware that I won't be around to see the completion of the Taj Mahal. If I don't die soon, it could only mean dada's curse still holds. Then I should abandon this land on my own. I have left instructions for Isa and my pupils, should they wish to follow my advice after all, with apprentices you never know who will continue your legacy, and who will let you down. It doesn't matter. With or without me, the building will be raised. What my master did inside the dome of the Shehzade Mosque, our first major construction where there were no accidents, no betrayals, and we were as one I shall do inside the dome of the Taj Mahal. I will hide somewhere a detail for Mihrimah, which only the knowing eye will recognize. A moon and a sun, locked together in a fatal embrace such is the meaning of her name.

We have been told to inscribe on pure marble: In this world this edifice has been made/To display thereby the glory of the Creator. I would have liked to add underneath: And the love of another human being ...

The four borders of the Taj Mahal are designed to be identical, as if there were a mirror situated on one side, though one can never tell on which one. Stone reflected in the water. G.o.d reflected in human beings. Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories. We live, toil and die under the same invisible dome. Rich and poor, Mohammedan and baptized, free and slave, man and woman, Sultan and mahout, master and apprentice ... I 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-encompa.s.sing love. 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.

Author's Note.

I am not sure whether writers choose their subjects or whether their subjects somehow come to find them. For me, at least, it felt like the latter with The Architect's Apprentice. The idea for this novel emerged for the first time on one sunny afternoon in Istanbul, while I was inside a cab that was stuck in traffic. I was looking out of the window and frowning, already late for an appointment, when my eyes moved across the road to a mosque by the seaside. It was Molla Celebi, one of Sinan's lesser known beauties. A Gypsy boy was sitting on the wall next to it, pounding on a tin box that was turned upside down. I thought to myself that if the traffic did not clear any time soon, I might as well begin to imagine a story with the architect Sinan and Gypsies in it. Then the car moved on and I totally forgot the idea, until a week later a book arrived by post. It was Gulru Necipolu's The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire, sent by a dear friend. Inside the book, one particular drawing caught my eye: it was a painting of Sultan Suleiman, tall and sleek in his kaftan. But it was the figures in the background that intrigued me. There was an elephant and a mahout in front of the Suleimaniye Mosque; they were hovering on the edge of the picture, as if ready to run away, unsure as to what they were doing in the same frame as the Sultan and the monument dedicated to him. I could not take my eyes off this image. The story had found me.

While writing this book I wanted to understand not only Sinan's world but also those of the chief apprentices, workers, slaves and animals who were there alongside him. However, when one is writing about an artist who has lived as long ago, and produced as much, as Sinan, the biggest challenge is the reconstruction of time. It took from seven to nine years to finish a mosque, and Sinan constructed more than 365 buildings of various sizes. So, in the interests of narrative pace, I decided to jettison a strict chronological order and to create my own timeframe, with actual historical events absorbed into the new timeline. For instance, in reality, Mihrimah got married at the age of seventeen, but I wanted her to marry later, to give her and Jahan more time together. Her husband, Rustem Pasha, died in 1561; yet, for the sake of the story, I wanted him around a bit longer. Captain Gareth is an entirely fictional character, but he is based both on European sailors who had joined the Ottoman navy, and on Ottoman sailors who had switched sides. Their stories have not yet been told.

It was a conscious decision to bring Takiyuddin into the story at an earlier point in history. In fact, he became the Chief Royal Astronomer at the time of Sultan Murad. But the trajectory of the observatory was important to me, so I shifted the date of Grand Vizier Sokollu's death. The painter Melchior and the amba.s.sador Busbecq were historical characters who arrived in Istanbul around 1555, but I have fictionalized the moments of their arrival and departure. In several books I have come across allusions to a group of Ottoman architects in Rome, but what exactly they were doing there remains obscure. I imagined them as Sinan's apprentices, Jahan and Davud. And there really was an elephant named Suleiman in Vienna, whose story has been beautifully narrated by Jose Saramago in The Elephant's Journey.

Finally, this novel is a product of the imagination. Yet historical events and real people have guided and inspired me. I benefited enormously from a great many sources in English and Turkish, from Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq's Turkish Letters to Metin And's Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century: The City, the Palace, Daily Life.

'May the world flow like water,' Sinan used to say. I can only hope that this story, too, will flow like water in the hearts of its readers.

Elif Shafak.

www.elifshafak.com.

Acknowledgements.

My heartfelt thanks to the following beautiful people: Lorna Owen for reading an earlier version of this novel and her wonderful comments; Donna Poppy for her clear-sighted suggestions and unique contribution; Keith Taylor for his wisdom and patience; Anna Ridley for her support and her smile; Hermione Thompson for her generosity; and the wonderful team at Penguin UK.

I am particularly obliged to my two main editors on both sides of the Atlantic: Venetia b.u.t.terfield and Paul Slovak. Working with you, feeling connected in mind and spirit, sharing the same pa.s.sion for stories and storytelling, have all been a pleasure, privilege and enrichment for me. A good editor is a true blessing for a novelist and I am blessed with two great editors.

My princ.i.p.al agent, Jonny Geller, is surely every author's dream. He listens, he understands, he encourages, he knows. Daisy Meyrick, Kirsten Foster and the World Rights team at the Curtis Brown Agency have been amazing. I also wish to thank Pankaj Mishra and Tim Stanley for their comments and conversations during the earlier phases of the novel, and Kamila Shamsie for helping me find the name of the white elephant. My grat.i.tude to Gulru Necipoglu, who has been of tremendous a.s.sistance both with her personal views on history and with her magnificent opus on Sinan's architecture. My special thanks to Ugur Canbilen (aka Igor) and Meric Mekik, who is like no other!

It is hard for me to express my grat.i.tude to Eyup, who knows what a terrible wife I am and most probably harbours no hopes for any improvement, and for reasons I can never comprehend is still by my side. Biggest thanks, of course, to Zelda and Zahir.

This novel was first published in Turkey, though it was written in English first. I owe a huge thank-you to readers from all walks of life who have commented on the story and the characters and, to my surprise, have embraced Chota like a long-lost face from the past.

Elif Shafak.

November 2014.

THE BEGINNING.

end.