Only in Istanbul: The Turkish delights of Orhan Pamuk

by Sarah Hassan

Thursday February 15, 2007

Orhan Pamuk is a writer obsessed with detail. His twisted prose is confined to a many layered labyrinth constructed out of an undying love for perfection. It’s no wonder then, that he has become a literary tour de force, a Turkish delight and admired on a global scale and propelled in the press for his adoration and disgust over the country he writes about in each of his novels. The 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, Pamuk has gone to great lengths to illuminate the city of his birth, playing equal parts the reverent poetic and sinister detective. In his most recent book, Istanbul, Pamuk finally tells his tale; recounting his childhood up until the moment he decided he would, in fact, become a writer. Accompanied by grainy black and white portraits of his family, the city and its people, the stories are full of longing and rich with heartache, testaments to a civilization believed dead when in fact, as Pamuk so describes, it is the very standard of survival in a world where everything has changed.

Event hough his novels read like never-ending puzzles, Pamuk proves to be an extraordinarily capable guide. It would appear that Istanbul would not be correctly seen without his eyes, that his is divulging the secrets known only to natives who navigate the streets with ease. The text mentions the things that any Westerner would expect: Topkapi palace, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the “Westernization” instilled by Ataturk, the scandalous harems, the religious devotees, the coffee, the bazaars and the Bosporus. But pamuk gives each its own freshness upon description. Its not just the Bosporus, it’s a dark entity inent on swallowing sailors and drunkard, of warning children of what happens when they get too close to the edge. And it is that very idea that drives the memoir.

An author no stranger to the palette, once a devoted painter whose skill has now translated to his titles (??The White Castle??, The Black Book, My Name is Red), Pamuk conducts his memory not just with words, but much deeper, a lush cross between ink and paint. His attention to detail when retelling his family’s history draws comparison to the miniaturists of the sultan’s palace, the central characters of his novel, My Name is Red.

“To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to the study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy and joy.” Taken from his Nobel lecture, I believe this statement proves that dedication is the main ingredient to any one of Pamuk’s novels, and he took no leave from it while writing his memoirs. He has become what every artist secretly desires becoming: an inextricable authority on the landscape he so describes. A singular voice that rises above the hustle and bustle of the seaside metropolis, Pamuk’s work is a living example of a loyalty to the place we call home and the seduction of a culture.