by Orhan Pamuk
“Why?”
“What woman wouldn’t want her older sister to be happy?”
In his entire life, Ka had never known a pair of siblings who didn’t feel deep hatred for each other; even if they seemed to get along, there was something oppressive about their solidarity, something to indicate that they were just going through the motions. But that wasn’t why Ka dismissed Kadife’s claim; what inclined him to doubt her was the way her left eyebrow shot up almost of its own accord and the way she pouted her half-open lips like a child about to cry—or, rather, like a Turkish film actress simulating innocence. Nevertheless, when Kadife looked at her watch again and said that the horse-drawn carriage was arriving in seventeen minutes, and if he promised immediately to accompany her to see Blue, she would tell him everything, Ka agreed without hesitation. “But first you have to tell me why you’re willing to put this much trust in me.”
“You’re a dervish; Blue says so. He believes God has graced you with lifelong innocence.”
“Okay, then,” said Ka hurriedly. “Is Ïpek also aware of this special gift from God?”
“Why should she know? This is Blue’s view.”
“Please tell me everything Ïpek thinks about me.”
“Actually, I’ve already told you everything.” Seeing that she was breaking Ka’s heart, Kadife thought for a few moments, or else made as if to think—Ka was too upset by now to tell the difference—and then she said, “She thinks you’re fun. You’ve just arrived from Germany and whatnot. You have so much to talk about.”
“What do I have to do to convince her to trust me?”
“It may not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has a clear idea of who he is, or at least who he might be for her, and her heart of hearts has already told her whether or not she’s going to fall in love with him. But her head needs time to understand what her heart has decided. If you ask me, there’s very little a man can do at this point except wait for time to take its course. If you really love her, all you have to do is tell her all the beautiful things you feel about her: why you love her, why you want to marry her.”
Ka said nothing. When Kadife saw him gazing out the window like a dejected child, she told him she could already imagine Ka and Ïpek living happily together in Frankfurt—and how happy her sister was to put Kars behind her! She could even see the two of them smiling on some Frankfurt street as they walked to the cinema of an evening. “Just give me the name of a cinema you might go to if you were in Frankfurt,” she said. “Any name.”
“Filmforum Hochts,” said Ka.
“Don’t they have theaters with names like the Alhambra, the House of Dreams, or the Majestic in Germany?”
“They do. The Eldorado!”
As they watched the snowflakes swirling aimlessly above the courtyard, Kadife told him about a part she’d been offered when she was in the university drama society; it was a German-Turkish production in which the cousin of a classmate had some involvement. They’d wanted someone to play a covered girl and she refused; now she was hoping that Ïpek would find happiness with Ka in that same German-Turkish world, because really her sister was meant to be happy; the problem was she didn’t realize it, and so until now she’d been unhappy. Being unable to have a child had destroyed her too, but her main source of anguish was in not understanding why—being beautiful, refined, thoughtful, and straightforward—why she should be so unhappy. Sometimes she even wondered whether her unhappiness was not owing precisely to her having so many fine qualities (here Kadife’s voice began to crack). She went on to say that throughout her childhood and her teenage years, she had looked up to her sister, trying to be as good and as beautiful as she was (here her voice cracked again), but when she compared herself to Ïpek she felt evil and ugly; her sister was aware of this and so had tried to hide her beauty, hoping to make things easier for Kadife.
By now she was crying. Between tearful gasps, she told him in a trembling voice about when she was in middle school. (“We were in Istanbul then, and not so poor,” said Kadife, whereupon Ka took the opportunity to point out that they weren’t so poor now either, but Kadife promptly closed this parenthesis by snapping, “But we live in Kars!”) Anyway, one morning when she arrived late for her first class, Mesrure Hanιm, her biology teacher, asked, “Is your brilliant sister late too?” and then she added, “I’ll let you off this time because I’m so fond of your sister.” But of course, Ïpek wasn’t late.
The horse-drawn carriage entered the courtyard. It was a typical old rig, with red roses, white daisies, and green leaves painted on its wooden sides. The tired old horse stood behind a cloud of frozen breath, the edges of its nostrils covered with ice. The driver was broad-shouldered and slightly humpbacked; a light blanket of snow covered his hat and coat. When Ka saw another blanket of snow on the tarpaulin, his heart began to beat faster.
“Please don’t be afraid,” said Kadife. “I’m not going to kill you!”
Ka saw a gun in Kadife’s hand, but he didn’t seem to realize that she was pointing it at him.
“I’m not having a nervous breakdown, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Kadife. “But if you try anything funny, believe me, I’ll shoot you.… We don’t trust journalists who go to Blue looking for quotes—or anyone else for that matter.”
“But you invited me,” said Ka.
“You’re right, but even if you don’t think so, the MİT people could have guessed we were planning this visit and might be listening in. I’m suspicious because you wouldn’t take off your beloved coat just a moment ago. Now take it off and leave it on the bed—quick!”
Ka did as she asked.
Kadife passed her little hands, which were as small as her sister’s, over every corner of his coat. Finding nothing, she said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but now you have to take off your jacket, your shirt, and your undershirt. These people strap microphones to people’s backs and chests. There are probably about a hundred people wandering around Kars with these microphones on them any time of the day or night.”
Ka removed his jacket and lifted up his shirt and his undershirt, like a child showing his stomach to a doctor.
Kadife gave him a look. “Now turn around,” she said. There was a silence. “That’s fine, then. My apologies for the gun.… But when people are wearing a wire, they won’t let us do a search; they won’t keep still at all.” She was still holding the gun. “Now listen to me,” she said, in a menacing voice. “You are to tell Blue nothing about our conversation or our friendship.” She sounded like a doctor scolding a patient after an examination. “You are not to mention Ïpek or let him know you’re in love with her. Blue doesn’t take kindly to filth like that. If you insist on talking about it, and he doesn’t burn you for it, rest assured that I will. He reads minds better than a genie; he might try to coax you into saying something. If he does, you’re to act as if you’ve seen Ïpek once or twice but that’s it. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Make sure you show Blue respect. Whatever you do, don’t try to put him down by playing the conceited, foreign-educated, European sophisticate. And if you let this sort of foolishness slip out by accident, don’t even think of smiling. Don’t forget: The Europeans you admire and imitate so slavishly couldn’t care less about you … and they’re scared to death of people like Blue.”
“I know.”
“I’m your friend, be frank with me,” said Kadife, assuming a pose from a second-rate Turkish film.
“The driver’s removed the tarpaulin,” said Ka, looking out the window.
“You can trust this driver. His son died last year in a clash with the police. Enjoy the journey.”
Kadife was first to go downstairs. When she reached the kitchen, Ka saw the horse-drawn carriage move under the arch that divided the old Russian courtyard from the street, and then he went downstairs as planned. When he saw no one in the kitchen, he had a moment of panic, but then he saw the dr
iver standing in the doorway that led into the courtyard. Without a word, he lay down next to Kadife among the empty propane canisters.
The journey, which he knew at once he would never forget, lasted only eight minutes, but to Ka it seemed much longer. As he wondered where in the city they were, he listened to the people of Kars commenting on the creaking carriage moving past them, and he listened to Kadife’s steady breathing as she lay quietly next to him. A gang of boys caught the tail of the carriage and were pulled along with them for a little while. He liked the sweet smile Kadife gave him; it made him as happy as those boys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It Is Not Poverty That Brings Us So Close to God
BLUE’S STATEMENT TO THE WEST
As the wheels of the horse-drawn carriage rolled over the snow, rocking Ka like a baby, the first lines of a new poem came to him; but when the carriage mounted a pavement he was jolted back to the present. They creaked to a stop and a silence followed, long enough for Ka to receive a few more lines of the poem. Then the driver lifted the tarpaulin and Ka saw they were in an empty snow-covered courtyard lined with auto repair and welding shops and also harboring a broken tractor. In the corner was a dog on a chain; when they emerged from under the tarpaulin, he greeted them with a few barks.
They went through a walnut door. As they continued through a second door, Ka could see Blue gazing down at the snow-covered courtyard; once again, Ka was struck by the red highlights in his brown hair, the freckles on his face, and his midnight-blue eyes. When he walked into yet another threadbare room filled with a number of familiar items (the same hair dryer as yesterday, the same half-open suitcase, and the same plastic ashtray with the Ottoman figures running along the edges and the logo ERSIN ELECTRIC) it didn’t take Ka long to guess that Blue had moved the night before. But from his cold-blooded smile Ka could tell that he’d already adjusted to the new situation and was pleased with himself for having eluded the authorities.
“One thing’s for sure,” said Blue. “You can’t write anything about the suicide girls now.”
“Why not?”
“Because the military doesn’t want anything written about them either.”
“I’m not a spokesman for the military,” Ka said carefully.
“I know that.”
For a long tense moment, the two stared at each other.
“Yesterday you told me that you had every intention of writing about the suicide girls in the Western press,” said Blue.
Remembering his little lie, Ka felt embarrassed.
“Which Western newspaper did you have in mind?” Blue now asked. “At which of the German papers do you have contacts?”
“The Frankfurter Rundschau,” said Ka.
“Who?”
“It’s a liberal German newspaper.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hans Hansen,” Ka said, and hugged his coat.
“I have a statement for Hans Hansen. I intend to speak up against the coup,” said Blue. “We don’t have much time. I want you to start writing it down this instant.”
Ka opened to the back page of his poetry notebook and began to take notes. Blue began by saying that at least eighty people had been killed so far (the actual death toll, including those shot at the theater, was seventeen); numerous schools and houses had been raided, and tanks had destroyed nine shanties (the real figure was four); after claiming that some students had died under torture, he alluded to some street skirmishes that Ka had not heard anyone else mention; passing rather quickly over the sufferings of the Kurds, he slightly exaggerated those visited on the Islamists; it was, he now said, to provide a pretext for this coup that the state had arranged for the mayor and the director of the Institute of Education to be assassinated. The reason for all this, he said, was to prevent the Islamists from winning the elections. The banning of all political parties and associations proved his point, he said.
As he went into more detail, Ka looked straight into Kadife’s eyes; she hung on Blue’s every word. In the margins of these pages he would later tear out of his poetry notebook, he made a number of drawings and doodles that proved he was thinking about Ïpek: a slender neck, a head of hair, a child’s house with childish smoke rising out of a child’s chimney.… Many years before, Ka had explained to me that when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was, he said, this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.
Ka appreciated some of Blue’s pronouncements enough to record them in his notebook word for word.
Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings us so close to God; it’s the fact that no one is more curious than we are to find out why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world.
Instead of explaining the source of this curiosity and revealing mankind’s purpose on earth, Blue’s final words posed a challenge to the West:
Will the West, which takes democracy, its great invention, more seriously than the word of God, come out against this coup that has brought an end to democracy in Kars? [He stopped here to make a grand gesture.] Or are we to conclude that democracy, freedom, and human rights don’t matter, that all the West wants is for the rest of the world to imitate them like monkeys? Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them? I have something to say to all the other nations that the West has left behind: Brothers, you’re not alone.
He paused for a moment. “Can you be sure that your friend at the Frankfurter Rundschau is going to print all this?”
“He takes offense when people discuss the West as if it’s a single person with a single point of view,” Ka said carefully.
“But that’s how it is,” Blue said, after another pause. “There is, after all, only one West and only one Western point of view. And we take the opposite point of view.”
“The fact remains that they don’t live that way in the West,” said Ka. “It’s not as it is here; they don’t want everyone thinking alike. Everyone, even the most ordinary grocer, feels compelled to boast of having his own personal views. If we used the term Western democrats instead of the West, you’d have a better chance of pricking people’s consciences.”
“Fine, do what you think best. Must we make more corrections to get this published?”
“Although this began as a news item, it’s become more interesting, more like a proclamation,” said Ka. “They might want to put your name to it … and maybe even include a few biographical details—”
“I’ve prepared those already,” said Blue. “All they need say is that I’m one of the most prominent Islamists in Turkey and perhaps the entire Middle East.”
“Hans Hansen is not going to print this as it stands.”
“What?”
“If the social-democratic Frankfurter Rundschau were to print a statement from a single Turkish Islamist, it would seem as if they were taking sides,” Ka said.
“I see. When something doesn’t serve Mr. Hans Hansen’s interests, he has a way of slithering away,” said Blue. “What do we need to do to convince him?”
“Even if the German democrats come out against a military coup in Turkey—and it has to be a real coup, not a theatrical one—they’ll still be very uneasy if the people they’re defending are Islamists.”
“Yes, these people are all terrified of us,” said Blue.
Ka could not tell if he was boasting or merely feeling misunderstood.
“Well,” he said, “if you included the signatures of a liberal ex-Communist and a Kurdish nationalist, you’d have no trouble getting this announcement into the Frankfurter Rundschau.”
“Come again?”
“If we could find two other people in this city to come in on this, we could get started on a joint announcement immediately,” Ka said.
“I’m not going to drink wine just to make Westerners like me,” s
aid Blue. “I’m not going to flutter around imitating them just so they can stop fearing me long enough to understand what I’m doing. And I’m not going to abase myself at the door of this Westerner, this Mr. Hans Hansen, just to make the godless atheists of the world feel pity for us. Who is this Mr. Hans Hansen anyway? Why is he laying down so many conditions? Is he a Jew?”
There was a silence. Sensing Ka’s rebuke, Blue glared at him with hatred. “The Jews are the most oppressed people of our century,” he said, by way of recovery. “Before I change a word of my statement, I want to know more about this Hans Hansen. How did you meet him?”
“Through a Turkish friend who told me that the Frankfurter Rundschau was going to publish a news analysis on Turkey and that the commentator wanted to speak to someone familiar with the background.”
“So why didn’t Hans Hansen take his questions to this friend of yours? Why did he need to speak to you as well?”
“That particular Turkish friend didn’t have as much background knowledge of these things as I did.”
“Let me guess what these things might be,” said Blue. “Torture, brutality, foul prison conditions, and various other things that make us look even worse.”
“Perhaps around that time some religious high school students in Malatya had killed an atheist,” said Ka.
“I don’t remember hearing about any such event,” said Blue. He was watching Ka carefully. “It is deplorable when Islamists go on television to boast about killing just one poor atheist, but it is just as appalling when Orientalists seek to vilify the Islamists by running news reports that augment the death toll to ten or fifteen. If Mr. Hans Hansen is one of these people, let’s forget him.”
“All Hans Hansen did was ask me a few questions about the EU and Turkey. I answered his questions. A week later he called me up and invited me to his house for dinner.”
“Just like that—without giving any reason?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very suspicious. What did you see while you were in his house? Did he introduce you to his wife?”
