Snow

by Orhan Pamuk

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist. —Robert Browning, “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”

After a lifetime in which every experience of love was touched by shame and suffering, the prospect of falling in love filled Ka with an intense, almost instinctive dread.

These sights spoke of a strange and powerful loneliness. It was as if he were in a place that the whole world had forgotten, as if it were snowing at the end of the world.

He passed a park in Yusuf Paşa that was full of dismantled swings and broken slides; next to it was an open lot where a group of teenage boys were playing football. The high lampposts of the coal depot gave them just enough light, and Ka stopped for a while to watch them. As he listened to them, shouting and cursing and skidding in the snow, and gazed at the white sky and the pale yellow glow of the streetlights, the desolation and remoteness of the place hit him with such force that he felt God inside him.

Ka, you see, was one of those moralists who believe that the greatest happiness comes from never doing anything for the sake of personal happiness. On top of that, he did not think it appropriate for an educated, westernized, literary man like himself to go in search of marriage to someone he hardly knew.

It was the Communists and their Tiflis Radio who spread tribal pride, and they did it because they wanted to divide and destroy Turkey. Now everyone is prouder—and poorer.”

“As for these Islamists, they go from door to door in groups, paying house visits; they give women pots and pans, and those machines that squeeze oranges, and boxes of soap, cracked wheat, and detergent. They concentrate on the poor neighborhoods; they ingratiate themselves with the women; they bring out hooked needles and sew gold thread onto the children’s shoulders to protect them against evil. They say, ‘Give your vote to the Prosperity Party, the party of God; we’ve fallen into this destitution because we’ve wandered off the path of God.’ The men talk to the men, the women talk to the women. They win the trust of the angry and humiliated unemployed; they sit with their wives, who don’t know where the next meal is coming from, and they give them hope; promising more gifts, they get them to promise their votes in return.

By now Ka was so ashamed of his wish for happiness, and so determined to punish himself for his insolence, that he imagined Ïpek uttering the cruelest truth of all: The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life. But when she spoke, Ïpek said something very different from what he had imagined. “I always knew you had it in you to be a good poet,” she said. “I’d like to congratulate you on your work.”

Later on this turned into a game; the object was to get people to denounce one another, particularly their political enemies, as police informers. It was the fear of police cars and the fear of being caught in a situation in which he’d be obliged to inform—forced to tell the police which houses to raid—that had put Ka off politics for good. Now here was Muhtar, running on the Islamist fundamentalist ticket, something he would have found despicable ten years earlier, and here was Ka, still making excuses for this and so much else.

It isn’t enough even to be a poet … that’s why politics still casts such a shadow over our lives. But even having said this, neither would find it in him to add what he could not admit even to himself: It’s because we failed to find happiness in poetry that we find ourselves longing for the shadow of politics.

But as neither man was ever going to admit to happiness at these things, they could not broach the big subject, the bitter truth that stood between them: They had both inured themselves to defeat and to the pitiless unfairness of life. Ka feared that both of them longed for Ïpek as a symbol of escape from this defeatist state of mind.

God wouldn’t even give me a child who might do all the things I had not done, who might release me from my misery by becoming the westernized, modern, self-possessed individual I had always dreamed of becoming.”

“Now here I was, climbing the sheikh’s staircase step by step, tears streaming from my eyes. Something was happening that I had secretly dreaded for a long time and that in my atheist years I would have denounced as weakness and backwardness: I was returning to Islam. Those caricatures you see of sheikhs with their long robes and their round-trimmed beards—the truth is, I found them frightening, and so even as I climbed those stairs of my own free will I began to cry. The sheikh was kind. He asked me why I was crying. Of course, I was not about to say, I’m crying because I’ve fallen among reactionary sheikhs and their disciples.

“I felt such awe before this august man with his saintly expression that I kissed his hand. Then he did something that shocked me greatly: He kissed my hand too. A feeling of peace spread through me; I had not felt this way for years. I immediately understood that I could talk to him about anything, tell him all about my life, and he would bring me back to the path I had always believed in, deep down inside, even as an atheist: the road to God Almighty. I was joyous at the mere expectation of this salvation. Meanwhile, they had found my key.

One night I decided to disclose my sorrow to the sheikh but he knew nothing of modernist poetry, René Char, the broken sentence, Mallarmé, Joubert, the silence of an empty line. “This undermined my confidence in my sheikh. After all, he hadn’t been offering me anything new for some time, just Keep your heart clean, and God’s love will deliver you from oppression and eight or ten other lines like that. I don’t want to be unfair, he is not a simple man; it’s just that he had a simple education. It was at this point that some devil within—half utilitarian, half rationalist, a remnant of my atheist days—began to goad me. People like me find peace only when fighting for a cause in a political party with like-minded people.

It was in such a metro car that Ka met up with Ruhi, who had once been so critical of his leftist friends for their refusal to engage with psychology; Ka found out that Ruhi was now working as a test subject in a study measuring the effectiveness of an advertising campaign for a new type of lamb pastrami pizza marketed to Turkish workers in the lowest income bracket.

“The idea of a solitary westernized individual whose faith in God is private is very threatening to you. An atheist who belongs to a community is far easier for you to trust than a solitary man who believes in God. For you, a solitary man is far more wretched and sinful than a nonbeliever.”

“This thousand-year-old story comes from Firdevsi’s Shehname. Once upon a time, millions of people knew it by heart—from Tabriz to Istanbul, from Bosnia to Trabzon—and when they recalled it they found the meaning in their lives.

But now, because we’ve fallen under the spell of the West, we’ve forgotten our own stories. They’ve removed all the old stories from our children’s textbooks. These days, you can’t find a single bookseller who stocks the Shehname in all of Istanbul! How do you explain this?” Both men fell silent. “Let me guess what you’re thinking,” said Blue. “Is this story so beautiful that a man could kill for it? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” “I don’t know,” said Ka. “Then think about it,” said Blue, and he left the room.

The sight of snow made her think how beautiful and short life is and how, in spite of all their enmities, people have so very much in common; measured against eternity and the greatness of creation, the world in which they lived was narrow. That’s why snow drew people together. It was as if snow cast a veil over hatreds, greed, and wrath and made everyone feel close to one another.

Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent.

Happiness and poetry can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterward either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.

“What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?” “Be yourself,” said Ïpek.

Ka also sensed that much as Turget Bey worried about his daughters’ unhappiness, he worried even more that his habits and his world might disintegrate. This wasn’t a political anxiety but the anxiety of a man who more than anything feared losing his place at the table, whose only pleasure was spending his evenings with his daughters and his guests, arguing for hours about politics and the existence or nonexistence of God.

Ka whispered to the girls that Kars was an extraordinarily quiet city. “That’s because we’re afraid of our own voices,” said Hande. “That,” said Ïpek, “is the silence of snow.”

As he held hands with Ïpek under the table, it occurred to Ka that if he spent his days doing nothing much at all, and his evenings holding hands with Ïpek and watching satellite television, he would live in bliss until the end of his life.

As he hurried through the giant snowflakes, Ka remembered that he was an outsider in Kars, and for a moment he felt sure he’d forget this city just as soon as he left it—but the feeling didn’t last long. Now suddenly he had intimations of destiny. He could see that life had a secret geometry on which his rational mind had no purchase, but even as he was overcome with a desire to subdue his reason and find happiness, he also sensed that—for the moment, at least—his desire for happiness was not strong enough.

But unlike those in most deserted cities, these empty streets did not inspire fear. Ka marveled at the snow-laden branches of the oleanders and the plane trees, at the icicles hanging down from the sides of the electric poles feeding the pale orange light of the streetlamps, and the dying neon bulbs behind the icy shop windows. The snow was falling into a magical, almost holy silence, and aside from his own almost silent footsteps and rapid breathing, Ka could hear nothing. Not a single dog was barking. He had arrived at the end of the earth; the whole world was apparently mesmerized by the falling snow. As he watched the snowflakes fall through the halo of light, he saw how some fell heavily earthward while others wheeled around to fly back up into the darkness.

“You’re very intelligent, so intelligent you know that intelligence is not everything,” said Necip.

Just at those times when I realized my belief in my beautiful God sustained me, I would sometimes ask myself, just as a child would wonder what would happen if his parents died, ‘What if God didn’t exist, what would happen then?’ At those times a vision would appear before my eyes: a landscape. Because I knew this landscape was made by God’s love, I felt no fear and looked at it; I wanted to look at it carefully.”

“My unhappiness protects me from life,” said Ka. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Looks like I’m not the only one who’s had too much to drink tonight,” Ka muttered. “They drink because they’re unhappy,” said Necip. “But you got drunk so you could resist the hidden happiness rising inside you.”

“These letters are all I care about: I can’t live without being passionately in love with someone or something beautiful. Now I have to find love and happiness elsewhere. But first I have to get Kadife out of my head.” He gave the letters to Ka. “Shall I tell you who it is I plan to love with all my heart after Kadife?” “Who?” Ka asked, as he put the letters into his pocket. “God.”

For a time they stood there dumbstruck, as if witnessing a miracle, watching the endless stream of snowflakes sailing silently through the night. “How beautiful the universe is!” Necip whispered. “What would you say is the most beautiful part of life?” Ka asked. There was a silence. “All of it!” said Necip, as if he were betraying a secret. “But doesn’t life make us unhappy?” “We do that to ourselves. It has nothing to do with the universe or its creator.”

you’ll discover that you can actually become a good person while appearing to be shameless and evil. But you know this may have terrible consequences. Because what I feel under my trembling hand is …” “What’s that?” “You’re very bright, and even at this age you know what I’m talking about. That’s why I want you to tell me first.” “Tell you what?” “The reason why you feel so guilty about the misery of the poor.

“You’re not saying—God forbid—that I will no longer believe in God?” said Necip. “If that’s what you mean, I’d rather die.” “It’s not going to happen overnight, the way it did to that poor director in the elevator! It’s going to happen so slowly you’ll hardly even notice. And because you’ll have been dying so slowly, having been in this other world so long, you’ll be just like the drunk who realizes he’s dead only after he’s had one raki too many.” “Is that what you’re like?”

“No, I’m just the opposite. I must have started believing in God years ago. This happened so slowly, it wasn’t until I arrived in Kars that I noticed it. That’s why I’m so hap...

“Some people do know the future,” said Ka. “Take Serdar Bey, owner of the Border City Gazette—he printed the story of this evening way in advance.” Ka fished his copy of the paper from his pocket and together they read, “The entertainments were punctuated by enthusiastic clapping and applause.” “This must be what they mean by happiness,” said Necip. “We could be the poets of our own lives if only we could first write about what shall be and later enjoy the marvels we have written.

Ka asked Necip to tell him quickly about “that landscape.” “I’ll tell you now,” said Necip, “but you have to promise not to tell anyone else. They don’t like my fraternizing with you.” “I won’t tell anyone,” Ka said. “Tell me what you see.” “I love God a lot,” said Necip, in an agitated voice. “Sometimes, when I ask myself what would happen if, God forbid, God didn’t exist—I do this sometimes without even meaning to—a terrifying landscape appears before my eyes.” “Yes.” “I see this landscape at night, in darkness, through a window. Outside there are two blind white walls, as tall as the walls of a castle. Like two castles back to back! There is only the narrowest passageway between them, which stretches into the distance like a road, and when I look down this road I am overcome with fear.

I do look again, and the tree at the end of the world starts burning red once more. This goes on until morning.” “What is it about this landscape that scares you so much?” “I can’t help thinking that it’s the devil making me think such a landscape could be of this world. But if I can make something come to life before my eyes, the source must be my own imagination. Because if there really were a place like this on earth, it would mean that God—God forbid—didn’t exist. And since this can’t be true, the only possible explanation is that I myself don’t believe in God. And that would be worse than death.”

the word atheist comes from the Greek athos. But athos doesn’t refer to people who don’t believe in God; it refers to the lonely ones, people whom the gods have abandoned. This proves that people can’t ever really be atheists, because even if we wanted it, God would never abandon us here. To become an atheist, then, you must first become a Westerner.”

“A man could be at the coffeehouse every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment when they aren’t exploding into laughter, he could spend every hour of the day chatting with his intimates, but if that man has been abandoned by God, he’d still be the loneliest man on earth.” “It might be of some consolation to have a true love,” said Ka. “But only if she loved you as much as you loved her.”

he bolted the door again, lit a cigarette, and watched the wondrous snow still falling outside. He thought about Necip’s landscape—he could remember his description word for word, as if it were already a poem—and if no one came from Porlock he was sure he would soon be writing that poem in his notebook.

Anyone who knows anything about English poetry will remember the note at the start of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” It explains how the work is a “fragment of a poem, from a vision during a dream”; the poet had fallen asleep after taking medicine for an illness (actually, he’d taken opium for fun) and had seen, in his deepest sleep, sentences from the book he’d been reading just before losing consciousness, except that now each sentence and each object had taken on a life of its own in a magnificent dreamscape to become a poem. Imagine, a magnificent poem that had created itself, without the poet’s having exerted any mental energy! Even more amazing, when Coleridge woke up he could remember this splendid poem word for word.

In the second scene, when the woman made her grand gesture of independence, launching herself into enlightenment as she removed her scarf, the audience was at first terrified. Even the most westernized secularists in the hall were frightened by the sight of their own dreams coming true. Fear of the political Islamists was so great they had long ago accepted that their city must remain as it had always been. I say dreams, but not even in their sleep could they have imagined the state forcing women to remove their head scarves as it had done in the early years of the Republic; they were prepared to live with the practice, “so long as the Islamists don’t use intimidation or force to make westernized women wear scarves as we’ve seen in Iran.”

At times like these he had felt most guilty; all he’d wanted was to forget about Turkey and everything in it and go home and read books.

the authorities had granted a daylong amnesty for everyone to surrender all weapons; Koran instruction had been suspended and so had all political activity—and as she told him all this he looked at her arms, he looked into her eyes, he admired the fine color of her long neck, and he admired the way her brown hair brushed against her nape. Did he love her? He tried to imagine them together in Frankfurt, walking down the Kaiserstrasse, going home after an evening at the cinema. But dark thoughts were taking over his soul. All he could see was that this woman had cut the bread into thick slices just as they did in the poorest houses, and, even worse, that she had arranged these thick slices in a pyramid, in the manner of fishermen’s soup kitchens.

“I’m going up to my room now,” said Ka. “Come up in a little while and hold my head between your hands? Just for a while—no more than that.” Before he had even finished speaking, he could tell from Ïpek’s frightened eyes that she wasn’t going to oblige, so he got up to leave. She was a provincial, a stranger to him, and he had asked her for something no stranger could understand. He could have spared himself this woman’s uncomprehending look; he ought to have known better than to make this asinine request. As he ran up the stairs, he was full of self-reproach for having made himself believe he loved her.

He thought of his mother, who had so wanted him to have a normal life and tried so hard to keep him away from poetry and literature; if she could have known his happiness depended on a woman from Kars who helped out in the kitchen and cut bread in thick slices, what would she have said? What would his father have said to learn that Ka had knelt before a village sheikh and talked with tears in his eyes about his faith in God? Outside, the snow had started falling again; the snowflakes he could see from his window were large and dreary.

The animated disorder was typical of so many Turkish offices. It made Ka think of courthouse corridors, gates to football stadiums, bus stations. But there was also a whiff of iodine and hospitals, terror and death. Somewhere very close to where he was standing, someone was being tortured; the very thought made him feel guilty. Fear gripped his soul. As he climbed the same stairs he had climbed with Muhtar the day before, instinct told him to follow the example of the men in charge, so he did his best to adopt an air of authority.