My Name is Red

by Orhan Pamuk

Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time.

Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to “See”! To know is to remember that you’ve seen. To see is to know without remembering.

painting is the act of seeking out Allah’s memories and seeing the world as He sees the world.”

If I believed, heaven forbid, the way these infidels do, that the Prophet Jesus was also the Lord God himself, then I’d also hold that God could be observed in this world, and even, that He could manifest in human form; only then might I accept the depiction of mankind in full detail and exhibit such images. You do understand that, eventually, we would unthinkingly begin worshiping any picture that is hung on a wall, don’t you?”

Hell. Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, ‘creator’ is one of the attributes of Allah. It is Allah who is creative, who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with Him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does, who claim to be as creative as He.”

Perhaps you’ve understood this long ago: Death is not the end, this is certain. However, as it is written everywhere in books, death is something painful beyond comprehension.

Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness.

My beloved Allah please help me. Love isn’t suffering for the sake of suffering, but a means to reach You, is it not?

As is recorded in books and confirmed by scholars, the soul dwells in four realms: 1. the womb; 2. the terrestrial world; 3. Berzah, or divine limbo, where I now await Judgment Day; and 4. Heaven or Hell, where I will arrive after the Judgment.

Painting brings to life what the mind sees, as a feast for the eyes. LAM: What the eye sees in the world enters the painting to the degree that it serves the mind. MIM: Consequently, beauty is the eye discovering in our world what the mind already knows.

“Despite knowing what it takes to be content, a man might still be unhappy,”