Istanbul, mon amour

Istanbul! The very sound of it is intoxicating. Fans of Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer who won the Nobel Prize for fiction in 2006, will know that there is no greater love in his life than Istanbul. As members of the Swedish Academy observed in their citation: “In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, (Pamuk) has discovered new symbols for the clash of interlacing cultures.” In his latest book, A Strangeness in My Mind: A Novel, Pamuk lays the burden of his intense engagement with Istanbul on the back of a Mevlut, an Anatolian street vendor who toils his way through the streets of this most Byzantine of cities through an entire lifetime. In a note at the beginning, the writer explains that this is “a Portrait of Life in Istanbul between 1969 and 2012 from Many Different Points of View.” (All the words in caps are in the text) This is a fair warning to the reader not to expect a quick trawl. The novel loops back and forth in arabesques like the meticulously painted tiles on the blue domes of the fabled mosques of the old city built by Istanbul’s famous architect Sinan. It reminds us that Pamuk was trained originally as an architect, though he gave it up to pursue some inner demon that had propelled him towards being a writer. There are moments of intense beauty when the city casts a spell on the young Mevlut. It has some of the spiritual exhilaration that the poet Wordsworth felt on gazing upon London spread before him from Westminster bridge in the early morning in the poem titled Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802. Or as Pamuk writes, describing Mevlut’s impressions:

Mevlut would see the city lights sparking from afar, the velvety night, and the neon lights of Istanbul Sometimes, you couldn’t see the city at all, but in the pale orange hued lights from the tens of thousands of tiny homes in the surrounding hills made the now familiar landscape more resplendent than it really was. And sometimes, the lights from the nearby hills would disappear in the mist, and from within the thickening fog, Mevlut would hear the sounds of dogs barking.

It is also a timeline for modern Istanbul, a city of a multiple identities that faces both East and West along the shimmering waters of the Bosphorus snaking into the Sea of Marmara. Just like its women with their bright helmets of dyed blonde hair defiantly blowing in the cold winds of change, Istanbul cannot decide on whether to smother itself in the headscarves of convention. Many of the younger generation, in seeking an authentic identity or trying to forge a new meaning for Turkishness — one not necessarily dependent on the Western model imposed upon them by the edicts of Kemal Ataturk, the patriarchal strong man of the early 20th century — have rebelled against it. Some of them are trapped in the existential contradictions that Jean Paul Sartre labelled “Being and Nothingness”; others seek the sanctity of the devout in Islamic dogma. Though he may fancy himself very much a “Turkish” writer in many of his works, Pamuk has been strongly influenced by the European tradition. This, of course, begs the question whether being Turkish is also being European — a step-child, perhaps, of the French and German writers, not to mention the Russians without their Judeo Christian guilt Pamuk is as long-winded as one of those itinerant storytellers who enthral their customers at a bazaar over a glass of cinnamon flavoured tea. He tells his story in small tight episodes and stops his narrative at a peak moment just so that the listener may come back for more. There are many characters who walk in parts and who disappear for long periods only to reappear later. They may identify themselves with a crooked neck, or a pair of beautiful shining eyes — like the woman Samiha, with whom Mevlut falls in love by a series of accidental mishaps, while eloping with her older sister Rayiha. Naturally, these chance events form part of the interweaving patterns that, like the designs on a carpet, can only be seen when the work is finally done. Just like Boza, the wheat-fermented drink that Mevlut carries on his shoulders every night, the first sip is enough to create that sense of enchantment with which a great writer can entice the reader. Mevlut is everyman. As he hoists his load of history and stomps through the darkness of a city, which could become ours too, the haunting cry of “Boo-zaa” becomes the sad cry of humanity reaching out for a listener. It could be you.

Geeta Doctor is a freelance writer based in Chennai