Forgetting all else, I greedily reached for the water.

He pulled the glass back: “Denounce the Prophet Muhammad as a liar,” he said. “Deny all that he has said.”

It was Satan. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t even afraid of him. Since I never once believed that painting amounted to being duped by him, I waited confidently. I dreamed of the endless journey that awaited me and of my future.

Meanwhile, as I was approached by the illuminated angel whom I’d just seen, Satan vanished. Part of me knew that this glowing angel who had caused Satan to flee was Azrael. But another rebellious part of my mind remembered that in the Book of the Apocalypse it was written that Azrael was an angel with one thousand wings spanning East and West and that he held the whole world in his hands.

As I grew more confused, the angel bathed in light approached as if coming to my aid, and yes, just as Gazzali had stated in Pearls of Magnificence, he sweetly said:

“Open your mouth so that your soul might leave.”

“Nothing but the besmele prayer ever leaves my mouth,” I answered him.

This was just one last excuse however. I knew I could no longer resist, that my time had now come. For a moment I was embarrassed at having to leave my bloodied and ugly body in this miserable condition for my daughter, whom I’d never see again. But I wanted to leave this world, shedding it like some tight-fitting garment that pinched.

I opened my mouth and abruptly all was color just as in the pictures of Our Prophet’s Miraj journey, during which he visited Heaven. Everything was flooded in exquisite brightness as if generously painted with gold wash. Painful tears flowed from my eyes. A strained exhalation passed from my lungs through my mouth. All was subsumed in wondrous silence.

I could see now that my soul had left my body and that I was cupped in Azrael’s hand. My soul, the size of a bee, was bathed in light, and it shuddered as it left my body and continued to tremble like mercury in Azrael’s palm. My thoughts were not of this, however, but of the unfamiliar new world I’d just been born into.

After so much suffering, a calm overcame me. Death did not cause me the pain I’d feared; on the contrary, I relaxed, quickly realizing that my present situation was a permanent one, whereas the constraints I’d felt in life were only temporary. This was how it would be from now on, for century upon century, until the end of the universe. This neither upset nor gladdened me. Events I’d once endured briskly and sequentially were now spread over infinite space and existed simultaneously. As in one of those large double-leaf paintings wherein a witty miniaturist has painted a number of unrelated things in each corner-many things were happening all at once.

It was snowing so hard that snowflakes occasionally passed right through my veil into my eyes. I picked my way through the garden covered in rotting grass, mud and broken branches, then quickened my pace once I’d exited onto the street. I know you’re all wondering what I’m thinking. How much do I trust Black? Let me be frank with you, then. I myself don’t know what to think. You do understand, don’t you? I’m confused. This much, however, I do know: As always, I’ll fall into the routine of meals, children, my father and errands, and before long my heart, without even having to be asked, will whisper the truth to me of its own accord. Tomorrow, before noon, I’ll know whom I am to marry.

I want to share something with you before I arrive home. No! Come off it, now, it’s not about the size of that monstrosity Black showed me. If you want we can talk about that later. What I was going to discuss was Black’s haste. It’s not that he seems to think only of satisfying his lust. To be honest, it’d make no difference if he did. What surprises me is his stupidity! I suppose it never crossed his mind that he could frighten and abduct me, play with my honor and put me off, or open the door to even more dangerous outcomes. I can tell from his innocent expression how much he loves and desires me. But after waiting twelve years, why can’t he play the game according to the rules and wait another twelve days?

Do you know I have the sinking feeling I’ve fallen in love with his incompetence and his melancholy childlike glances? At a time when it would’ve been more appropriate to be irate with him, instead, I pitied him. “Oh, my poor child,” a voice inside me said, “you suffer such torment and are still so utterly incompetent.” I felt so protective of him that I might’ve even made a mistake, I might’ve actually given myself to that spoiled little boy.

Thinking of my unfortunate children, I quickened my steps. Just then, in the early darkness and blinding snow, I thought a phantom of a man would run right over me. Ducking my head, I slipped by him.

Upon entering through the courtyard gate, I knew that Hayriye and the children hadn’t yet returned. Very well then, I’d come back in time, the evening prayers hadn’t yet been called. I climbed the stairs, the house smelled of orange jam. My father was in his darkened room with the blue door; my feet were freezing. I entered my room to the right beside the stairs holding a lamp, and when I saw that the cabinet had been opened, that the cushions had fallen out and the room had been ransacked, I assumed it was the naughty work of Shevket and Orhan. There was a silence in the house, not unusual, yet unlike the usual silence. I donned my house clothes and sat alone in the darkness, and as I gave myself over to momentary daydreaming, my mind registered a noise coming from below, directly below me, not from the kitchen but from the large room next to the stable, used in summertime as the illustrating workshop. Had my father gone down there, in this cold? I didn’t remember seeing the light of an oil lamp there; suddenly, I heard the squeak of the front door between the stone walkway and the courtyard, and afterward, the cursed and ominous barking of the pesky dogs roaming past the courtyard gate-I was alarmed, to put it mildly.

“Hayriye,” I shouted. “Shevket, Orhan…”

I felt a cold draft. My father’s brazier must be burning; I ought to sit with him and warm up. As I went to be with him, holding an oil lamp aloft, my thoughts weren’t with Black any longer, but with the children.

I crossed the wide hall diagonally, wondering if I should set water to boil on the downstairs brazier for the gray mullet soup. I entered the room with the blue door. Everything was in shambles. Without thinking, I was about to say, “What has my father done?”

Then I saw him on the floor.

I screamed, overcome with horror. Then I screamed again. Gazing at my father’s body, I fell silent.

Listen, I can tell by your tight-lipped and cold-blooded reaction that you’ve known for some time what’s happened in this room. If not everything, then quite a lot. What you’re wondering about now is my reaction to what I’ve seen, what I feel. As readers sometimes do when studying a picture, you’re trying to discern the pain of the hero and thinking about the events in the story leading up to this agonizing moment. And then, having considered my reaction, you’ll take pleasure in trying to imagine, not my pain, but what you’d feel in my place, had it been your father murdered like this. I know this is what you’re so craftily trying to do.

Yes, I returned home in the evening to discover that someone had killed my father. Yes, I tore out my hair. Yes, as I would do in my childhood, I hugged him with all my might and smelled his skin. Yes, I trembled and I couldn’t breathe. Yes, I begged Allah to raise him up and have him sit silently in his corner among his books as he always did. Get up, Father, get up, don’t die. His bloodied head was crushed. More than the torn papers and books, more than the breaking and tossing about of the end tables, paint sets and inkpots, more than the wild destruction of cushions, worktables and writing boards, and the ransacking of everything, more even than the anger that had killed my father, I feared the hatred that had destroyed the room and everything within it. I was no longer crying. A couple passed down the street outside, laughing and talking in the blackness; meanwhile, I could hear the infinite silence of the world in my mind; with my hands I wiped my running nose and the tears off my cheeks. For a long long time I thought about the children and our lives.