by Orhan Pamuk
But it didn’t happen. Instead, Ïpek wrapped her arms around him. First they just held each other, and then their friendly embrace turned to passion; they began to kiss, and soon they were lying side by side on the bed. His pessimism was no match for his sexual excitement. Soon he had given himself over to a boundless desire; soon, he dreamed, they would be taking off each other’s clothes and making love for hours and hours.
But Ïpek stood up. “I find you very attractive, and I too want to make love, but I haven’t been with anyone for three years and I’m just not ready,” she said.
I haven’t made love with anyone for four years, Ka said to himself. He was sure Ïpek could see these words on his face.
“And even if I were ready,” said Ïpek, “I could never make love with my father so near, in the same house.”
“Does your father have to be out of the hotel for you to be in bed with me naked?” Ka asked.
“Yes. And he hardly ever leaves the hotel. He doesn’t much like the icy streets of Kars.”
“All right, then, let’s not make love now, but let’s kiss a bit longer,” said Ka.
“All right.”
Ïpek leaned over Ka, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, for a long and serious kiss before permitting him to approach her.
“Let me read you my poem,” he said, when he felt sure the kiss was over. “Don’t you want to know how it goes?”
“Read this letter first. A young man delivered it to the door.”
Ka opened the letter and read it out in a loud voice.
“Ka, my dear son:
“If you’d prefer me not to call you my son, I offer my sincere apologies. Last night I saw you in my dreams. It was snowing in my dream, and every snowflake that fell to the earth shone with divine radiance. I asked myself if it was a sign, and then this afternoon I saw outside the same snow I’d seen in my dream falling right in front of my window. You walked past our humble home, number 18 Baytarhane Street. Our esteemed friend Muhtar, whom God Almighty has just subjected to a severe test, has explained to me the meaning you take from this snow. We are travelers on the same road. I am waiting for you, sir.
“Signed:
Saadettin Cevher”
“Sheikh Saadettin,” said Ïpek. “Go to him at once. Then you can come back and have dinner with my father this evening.”
“Am I supposed to pay my respects to every lunatic in Kars?”
“I told you to be afraid of Blue; don’t be so quick to dismiss him as a lunatic. The sheikh is cunning too, and he isn’t stupid.”
“I want to forget about all of them. Shall I read you my poem now?”
“Go ahead.”
Ka sat down at the little table and began to read in an excited but confident voice, but then he stopped. “Go over there,” he said to Ïpek. “I want to see your face while I’m reading.” When he was sure he could see her from the corner of his eyes, he began his poem again. “Is it beautiful?” he asked her a few moments later.
“Yes, it’s beautiful!” said Ïpek.
Ka read a few more lines aloud and then asked her again, “Is it beautiful?”
“It’s beautiful,” Ïpek replied.
When he finished reading the poem, he asked, “So what was it that made it beautiful?”
“I don’t know,” Ïpek replied, “but I did find it beautiful.”
“Did Muhtar ever read you a poem like this?”
“Never,” she said.
Ka began to read the poem aloud again, this time with growing force, but he still stopped at all the same places to ask, “Is it beautiful?” He also stopped at a few new places to say, “It really is very beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very beautiful!” Ïpek replied.
Ka was so happy that he felt (as he had felt only once before, early in his career, when he wrote a poem for a child) as if a strange and beautiful light were enveloping him, and seeing in a shaft of this light the reflection of Ïpek, he was even happier. Taking it as a sign that the rules were suspended, he began to embrace Ïpek again, but now she gently pulled away.
“Listen. Go to our esteemed sheikh at once. He counts as a very important person here, much more important than you think; many people in this city go to see him, even people who regard themselves as seculars, lots of army officers. It’s even said the governor’s wife goes there, and lots of rich people, lots of soldiers. He’s on the side of the state. When he said that the covered girls in the university should take off their head scarves, the Prosperity Party didn’t make a peep. In a place like Kars, when a man this powerful invites you over, you don’t turn him down.”
“Was it you who sent poor Muhtar to see him?”
“Are you worried that the sheikh will discover a God-fearing part of you and send you scurrying back into the fold?”
“I’m very happy right now, I have no need for religion,” said Ka. “And anyway, that’s not what brought me back to Turkey. Only one thing could have brought me back: your love.… Are we going to get married?”
Ïpek sat down on the edge of the bed. “Come on, go,” she said. She gave Ka a warm and bewitching smile. “But be careful, too. There’s no one better at finding the weak point in your soul, and like a genie he’ll work his way inside you.”
“What will he do to me?”
“He’ll speak to you, and then all of a sudden he’ll throw himself on the floor. He’ll take some ordinary thing you said and say how wise it is; he’ll insist you’re a real man. Some people even think he’s making fun of them at this point! But that’s His Excellency’s special gift. He does it so convincingly you end up believing that he really thinks what you’ve said is wise and that he believes as you do with all his heart. He acts as if there is something great inside you. After a while, you begin to see this inner beauty too, and because you have never before sensed the beauty within you, you think it must be the presence of God, and this makes you happy. In other words, the world becomes a beautiful place when you’re near this man. And you’ll love our esteemed sheikh because he’s brought you to this happiness. All the while, another voice is whispering inside you that this is all a game the sheikh is playing and you are a miserable idiot. But as far as I could figure out from what Muhtar told me, it seems you no longer have the strength to be that miserable idiot. You’re so wretchedly unhappy that all you want is for God to save you. Now, your mind—which knows nothing of your soul’s desires—objects a little but not enough; you embark on the road the sheikh has shown you because it is the only road in the world that will let you stand on your own two feet. Sheikh Efendi’s greatest gift is to make the wretch sitting before him feel special, even more as one with the universe than His Excellency himself. To most men in Kars this feels like a miracle, for they know only too well that no one else in Turkey could be as wretched, poor, and unsuccessful as they. So you come to believe, first in the sheikh and then in the long-forgotten teachings of your Islamic faith. Contrary to what they think in Germany and to the pronouncements of secularist intellectuals, this is not a bad thing. You can become like everyone else, you can become one with the people, and, even if it’s only for a little while, you can escape from unhappiness.”
“I’m not unhappy,” said Ka.
“In fact, someone that unhappy is not unhappy at all. Even the most miserable people have hidden consolations and hopes they secretly embrace. It’s not like Istanbul; there are no mocking nonbelievers. Things are simpler here.”
“I’m going now, but only because you want me to. Where is Baytarhane Street? How long should I stay there?”
“Stay there till your soul finds some solace!” said Ïpek. “And don’t be afraid of believing.” She helped Ka put on his coat. “Is your knowledge of Islam fresh in your mind?” she asked. “Do you remember the prayers you learned at primary school? You might embarrass yourself.”
“When I was a child, our maid used to take me to Teşvikiye Mosque,” said Ka. “It was more an occasion to get together with
the other women who worked as maids than it was to worship. They would have a good long gossip waiting for the prayers to begin, and I would roll around on the carpets with the other children. At school, I memorized all the prayers to ingratiate myself with the teacher—he helped us memorize the fatiha by hitting us, picking us up by the hair, squeezing our heads under the lids of our desks where the ‘religious book’ stood open. I learned everything they taught us about Islam, but then I forgot it. Now it’s as if everything I know about Islam is from The Message—you know, that film starring Anthony Quinn.” Ka smiled. “It was showing not long ago on the Turkish channel in Germany—but, for some strange reason, in German. You’re here this evening, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I want to read you my poem again,” said Ka, as he put his notebook into his pocket. “Do you think it’s beautiful?”
“Yes, really, it’s beautiful.”
“What’s beautiful about it?”
“I don’t know, it’s just beautiful,” said Ïpek. She opened the door to leave.
Ka threw his arms around her and kissed her on the mouth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Do They Have a Different God in Europe?
KA WITH SHEIKH EFENDI
Ka left the hotel at a gallop; a number of people told me later that they remember seeing him race through the snow under the long line of propaganda banners in the direction of Baytarhane Street. He was so happy that, just as in his most joyful moments of childhood, two films were running simultaneously in the cinema of his imagination. In the first, he was somewhere in Germany—though not his Frankfurt house—making love to Ïpek. This film ran in a loop, and sometimes the place where they were making love was his hotel room. On the second imaginary screen, he could see words and visions relating to the last two lines of his poem “Snow.”
He stopped first at the Green Pastures Café to ask for directions. There, inspired by the row of bottles on the shelf beside the picture of Atatürk and the Swiss vistas, he took a table and—with the decisiveness of a man in a great hurry—ordered a double raki and a plate of white cheese and roasted chickpeas. According to the announcer on television, preparations for Kars’s first ever live broadcast were almost complete despite the heavy snowfall; there followed a summary of local and national news. It seemed that in the interests of peace and avoiding any further trouble for the deputy governor, the authorities had phoned the station to bar them from mentioning the shooting of the director of the Institute of Education. While he was taking all this in, Ka downed his double raki like a glass of water.
After polishing off a third raki, he set off for the sheikh’s lodge; four minutes later, they were buzzing him in from upstairs. As he climbed the steep steps, he remembered that he was still carrying Muhtar’s poem, “Staircase,” in his jacket pocket. He was sure everything would go well here, but he still felt that spine-tingling chill that a child feels on his way to the doctor’s office, even when he’s sure he won’t be getting a shot. Having reached the top of the stairs, he was sorry he had come.
Ka could tell that the sheikh felt the fear in his heart the moment he appeared. But there was something about the sheikh that kept Ka from feeling ashamed. On the wall of the landing there was a mirror with a carved walnut frame. His first glimpse of Sheikh Efendi was in this mirror. The house itself was so crowded that the room was warm with breath and body heat. Scarcely a moment later, Ka found himself kissing the sheikh’s hand, before he’d had even time to take in his surroundings or look to see who else was in the room.
There were about twenty others, come to attend the simple ceremony held every Tuesday, to listen to the sheikh in conversation and to unburden their hearts. Five or six were tradesmen or teahouse or dairy owners who took every opportunity to spend time with the sheikh for the happiness it gave them; there was also a young paraplegic, a cross-eyed bus company manager, an elderly man who was the bus manager’s friend, a night watchman from the electricity board, a man who had been the janitor of the Kars hospital for forty years, and a few others.
Reading the confusion in Ka’s face, the sheikh bowed down to kiss Ka’s hand. There was something almost childish in the gesture; it was as if he were paying his respects. And although it was exactly what Ka had expected the sheikh to do, he was still astonished. Fully aware that everyone else in the room was watching them, the two men began to converse.
“May God bless you for accepting my invitation,” said the sheikh. “I saw you in my dream. It was snowing.”
“I saw you in my dream, Your Excellency,” said Ka. “I came here to find happiness.”
“It makes us happy to know that it was here in Kars that your happiness was born,” said the sheikh.
“This place, this city, this house … they make me afraid,” said Ka, “because you all seem so strange to me. Because I’ve always shied away from these things. I have never wanted to kiss anyone’s hand—or let anyone kiss mine.”
“It seems that you spoke most openly of the beauty within you to our brother Muhtar,” said the sheikh. “So tell us, what does this blessed snowfall remind you of?”
At the far end of the divan on which the sheikh sat, right next to the window’s edge, Ka now noticed Muhtar. There were a few bandages on his forehead and his nose. To hide the purple bruises around his eyes, he wore big dark glasses like those of old people who have been blinded by smallpox. He was smiling at Ka, but his expression was far from friendly.
“The snow reminded me of God,” said Ka. “The snow reminded me of the beauty and mystery of creation, of the essential joy that is life.”
He fell silent for a moment; all eyes in the crowded room were still on him. Seeing the sheikh looking as serene as ever, Ka was annoyed.
“Why did you summon me here?” he asked.
“Please don’t say such a thing!” cried the sheikh. “After Muhtar Bey told us what you had said to him, it seemed you might want to open your heart to us, talk to us, find a friend.”
“All right, let’s talk then,” said Ka. “Before I came here, I had three glasses of raki.”
“But why are you so afraid of us?” asked the sheikh, his eyes opening up very wide, as if he were surprised; he was just a sweet fat man. Everyone around him was wearing the same sincere smile. “Aren’t you going to tell us why you’re so afraid of us?”
“I’ll tell you, but I don’t want you to take offense.”
“We won’t take offense,” said the sheikh. “Please, come over here, sit next to me. It’s very important to understand why you’re afraid of us.”
The sheikh’s expression was half serious and half joking, ready to make his disciples laugh at a moment’s notice. Ka liked his demeanor, and as soon as he had taken his place next to the sheikh he was tempted to imitate it.
“I’ve always wanted this country to prosper, to modernize.… I’ve wanted freedom for its people,” Ka said. “But it seemed to me that our religion was always against all this. Maybe I’m mistaken. I beg your pardon. Maybe I’m just admitting this because I’ve had too much to drink.”
“Please don’t say such a thing!”
“I grew up in Istanbul, in Nişantaş, among society people. I wanted to be like the Europeans. I couldn’t see how I could reconcile my becoming a European with a God who required women to wrap themselves in scarves, so I kept religion out of my life. But when I went to Europe, I realized there could be an Allah who was different from the Allah of the bearded provincial reactionaries.”
“Do they have a different God in Europe?” asked the sheikh jokingly. He patted Ka’s back.
“I want a God who doesn’t ask me to take off my shoes in his presence and who doesn’t make me fall to my knees to kiss people’s hands. I want a God who understands my need for solitude.”
“There is only one God,” said the sheikh. “He sees everything and understands everyone—even your need for solitude. If you believed in him, if you knew he understood your need for solitude, you
wouldn’t feel so alone.”
“That’s very true, Your Excellency,” said Ka, feeling as if he were really speaking to everyone in the room. “It’s because I’m solitary that I can’t believe in God. And because I can’t believe in God, I can’t escape from solitude. What should I do?”
Although he was drunk and unexpectedly pleased to be speaking with such courage to a real sheikh, a part of him still knew that he was entering dangerous territory, so when the sheikh fell silent he was afraid.
“Do you really want guidance from me?” asked the sheikh. “We’re those people you just mentioned: bearded provincial reactionaries. Even if we shaved off our beards, there is no cure for provincialism.”
“I’m provincial too, and I want to become even more provincial. I want to be forgotten in the most unknown corner of the world under a blanket of snow,” said Ka.
He kissed the sheikh’s hand again. When he saw how easily he could do this, he felt pleased with himself. But one part of his mind still operated differently, in a Western manner, so he also despised himself.
“I hope you will forgive me, but before I came here I had something to drink,” he said again. “I felt guilty about having refused all my life to believe in the same God as the uneducated—the aunties with their heads wrapped in scarves, the uncles with the prayer beads in their hands. There’s a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in God. But now I want to believe in that God who is making this beautiful snow fall from the sky. There’s a God who pays careful attention to the world’s hidden symmetry, a God who will make us all more civilized and refined.”
“Of course there is, my son,” said the sheikh.
“But that God is not among you. He’s outside, in the empty night, in the darkness, in the snow that falls inside the hearts of outcasts.”
“If you want to find God by yourself, go ahead—walk out into the darkness, revel in the snow, use it to fill yourself with God’s love. We have no desire to turn you from this path. But don’t forget that arrogant men who think too much of themselves always end up alone. God doesn’t have any time for pride. Pride was what got Satan expelled from heaven.”
