JoanPThank you for posting the pictures of Seville. The entire region of Andalucia is scenic. It would be wonderful if we could view also Tarragona and Granada to complete our virtual tour of the sites mentioned in the book. There are good pictures of the legendary Alhambra, the huge fortress the Moors built.
Gum special thanks for that glorious poem.
For you it's already Friday morning; sorry my birthday wishes are a day late.
"A White Hair" is a fascinating chapter. GB has given free rein to her marvelous imagination.
The chapter begins with a painter who has been "in the service of a Jew" for years and tells us "We do not feel the sun here. Here, the stone and tile are cool always, even at midday. Light steals in among us like an enemy, ... It is hard to do my work in such light."
Except for that, there is an atmosphere of tranquility and harmony. This is all the reader gleans from the first 1-1/2 pages. Then there's a flashback to the time when, the painter was fourteen, the world changed.
The valued child of an important man was sold into bondage by traders, blind-folded, and taken to "the pavilion of the book". The blindfold is taken off. This otherwise undefined building contains a studio for calligraphers, a studio for painters, a workshop with rows of seated figures none of whom turns around. The master is a man called "Hooman" who sneers, "So you claim to be a
mussawir?" A test is set : to paint a garden with foliage and flowers
on a corn of rice within two days.
Another quick flashback informs us of the past; family life; devotion to the father, Ibrahim al-Tarek, an expert in plants for their medicinal value, pioneer in applying them for healing; apprenticeship and growing expertise in drawing plants.
(This reminded me of our discussion of the novel
My Name is Red by Nobel Prize winner Orham Pamuk about Persian art, and especially miniaturists.)
Having failed the test, the young painter is sent to the "preparers of the ground" = a group of painters and calligraphers impaired by weakening eye sight or unsteady hands. After three months there is blow-up with an old man, an iconoclast, which ends that stage of learning.
There's a new beginning, personal attention from Hooman, hints and observations on what hair makes the finest brushes, and personal tutelage in portrait painting in his private studio. The work our painter produces is so good that Hooman has high hopes and plans for him. "An unexpected opportunity has presented itself", he says one day, concerning an appointment by the emir, "and I believe you are suitable, but such a person must, of course be cut ". Our painter faints and is discovered to be a young woman.
But she doesn't have a name, yet.
There is a great deal more before we learn (on pg. 312), at the end of the chapter, that the doctor, her friendly master, had
given her the name Zahra, and that she was well pleased.
In "Saltwater" GB had presented Ferdinand and Isabella and the infamous Inquisitor Torquemada himself.
Now, in "A White Hair", is the emira, Nura, the young queen Isabella of Castile?
And isn't it even more exciting and auspicious to learn that Zahra was invited to celebrate the feasts with the doctor and his wife, and that she painted the scene? The very one in the haggadah?