I am not a corpse no ttom of a  breat opped beating, no one, apart from t vile murderer, kno c for my pulse and listened for my breato be sure I o tone, broke apart; my face, my foretered, and my mouth blood.

    For nearly four days I  be searcer, spent from crying, must be staring fretfully at tyard gate. Yes, I kno turn.

    But, are truly ing? I can’t even be sure of t. Maybe tten used to my absence—s t one’s former life persists. Before my birte time, and after my deatible time. I never t of it before: I’d been living luminously beternities of darkness.

    I ions in Our Sultan’s ely, I earned nine urally, only makes all of to bear.

    I ing and embellised t lifelike designs of leaves, branced scalloped Cyle clouds, clusters of overlapping vines and forests of color t ans, trees, palaces, ers. In my youte a plate, or t, or at times, ter years,  pages because Our Sultan paid  say it seems insignificant nohe value of money even when you’re dead.

    After  t you earned er death?

    about ’s deat, tremely curious about terlife.

    Maybe you’ve ory of ty t tlefields.  a man o life amid truggling for tell  ts of t one of tamerlane’s aking troke of ar, causing o conclude t in ter man gets split in two.

    Nonsense! Quite te, I’d even say t souls divided in life merge in ter. Contrary to t I’m speaking to you from  as you can plainly tell, I  ceased to be. Granted, I must confess, I  encountered trees bearing plump fruit and tiful virgins mentioned in ten and entically I made pictures of ter “t race of ter and  in t by visionary dreamers like Ibn Arabi. But I ention of tempting tfully t me declare t all I’ve seen relates specifically to my oances. Any believer tle knoer deat a malcontent in my state he rivers of heaven.

    In s, I,  Effendi, am dead, but I  been buried, and t completely left my body. traordinary situation, alturally my case isn’t t, ed al part of me. t feel my crusially submerged in ice-cold er, I do feel torment of my soul struggling desperately to escape its mortal coil. It’s as if tracting into a bolus of anguish.

    I can only compare traction to t during t of my deatantly understood t tced to kill me ruck me one and cracked my skull, but I didn’t believe  been aware of wween worksely

    to life eeto  bore you ails of t blows I received.

    t of departure; my arrival to t ticed. I closed my eyes as if I o sleep, and I gently passed over.

    My present complaint isn’t t my teets into my bloody mout my face ion, or t I’ve been abandoned in t’s t everyone assumes I’m still alive. My troubled soul is anguis my family and intimates, rivial dealings some delay, pray for me and have me buried. Above all, find my murderer!

    For even if you bury me in t magnificent of tombs, so long as t clessly in my grave, ing and infecting you all  son-of-a-ail just erlife—but knoer ,  be tortured by sloering eigen of ask by torturers and plucking out ing, oily rand by strand, so ime.

    ters. You say t, per one?

    In t case let me caution you: My deat our religion, our traditions and troyed me. Learn o you. One by one, everyted by t preac o ened, is coming to pass. Let me say also t if tuation into  of miniaturists could never o illustrate it. As ood—taggering pos being depicted. I doubt you’ve fully compre.

    Listen to me. ice, I too feared and trut sucters. But

    I’ve ended up in t could o you, be  to do but racing my stenco do but orture t some benevolent man  upon t beastly murderer once .