The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

 

With only a few days left for his engagement with Sibel, an educated young modern girl, the rich boy Kemal happens to meet his distant cousin Fusun, a lower middle-class student working part time as a salesgirl, and starts an affair with her. This affair kicks off a chain of events that shatters the lives of all three involved, leaving an obsessed and love-lorn Kemal in a long and arduous wait to win back Fusun. His only respite was the possession of petty articles that Fusun contacted, with which he could nurse her memories. Years later, these articles enabled him to build a museum dedicated to his love affair with Fusun.

The Museum of Innocence is a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk that is both a love story and, at the same time, an exploration of the connection between articles and the memories their presence evokes. Reading it reminded me of many other books that I had read before for several reasons. The loving portrayal of ordinary items that we use and discard without realising their emotional connection reminded me of Chilean poet Neruda's collection Odes to Common Things, in which the poet writes lovingly about common articles that we take for granted. The awkwardness of its love story reminded me of Marquez's magnum opus, Love in the Time of Cholera. The theme of collecting articles to remember a certain period in the past reminded me of the novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, which won the International Booker Prize in 2023.

"It was the happiest moment of my life, though I did not know it". With this opening sentence, Pamuk gives two warnings to his reader. Firstly, the novel that begins with the happiest moment of its protagonist's life guarantees that we are in for a long, gloomy ride of tragic happenings. Second, the protagonist realises the happiest moment in hindsight, and the story is told in flashback. These realisations, along with Orhan Pamuk's fabulous writing, helped me navigate the 700 pages of plot that developed inside the mind of the most obsessive, awkward, and politically incorrect protagonist I have ever read in a fictional book. (In nonfiction, some autobiographies did the job.)

As Pamuk explained in an interview, this novel is an experiment, and the author has established an actual museum in Istanbul that exhibits various articles explained in the novel. His intention is to show the importance of ordinary items in daily life that we tend to forget and how everyday items induce memories in our minds due to the emotional connection that is established in the process of interacting with them. In the novel, the protagonist explains the Aristotelian principle that time is nothing but a line that connects different moments that we experience. He wants the artefacts of the museum to be that line that connects the spectators with the past moments and makes them appreciate the life story of Kemal and Fusun in a new light.

In the love story that he describes in the novel, Pamuk ensures that the reader too gets to experience this emotional connection with the lives of Kemal and Fusun through a detailed explanation of their everyday experiences. Pamuk describes Kemal's wretched condition in all its pathetic glory with painstaking detailing of his everyday interactions with his family, friends, and society, and with his obsession to get his love back. His fascination with the items that elicit Fusun's memories is also similarly enumerated. Though we hear the story from Kemal's point of view, the writer cleverly shows us the error of his ways and how his lack of judgement clearly ruins his and his loved ones' lives. The character of Fusun, who for most of the story remains just an ideal of Kemal's obsessive mind, takes on human form by the end, revealing her wants and aspirations.

The third important aspect of the novel is the conflict that the traditional mindset of its characters has with the European sensibilities they aspire for. Most of the time, they are all stranded in a limbo between tradition and modernity, which causes many decisions to be made by several characters in the plot. As an Indian reader, I was able to relate to this aspect of the story. Istanbul at the end of the twentieth century has a lot of similarities with the society that I grew up in. It is also interesting to observe that the book doesn't detail most of the political turbulence of the time. Though there are some mentions of the coups and the resultant curfews, except for a few mentions, the novel chooses to be apolitical. Instead, it chose to focus on the east-west conflict and Western aspirations of the community.

The Museum of Innocence may not display the ambitious storytelling of Pamuk's previous novels that I read. But it succeeds tremendously in its intentions: to portray the social and cultural structure of Istanbul in the last decades of the twentieth century; to tell a powerful love story of an unlikeable couple, for whom we feel sympathetic by the end; and to assert that it is the small events and articles that constitute the entire life. It tells us to celebrate them and relish in the memories they elicit.

Orhan Pamuk’s Snow: Tiring But Insightful

In Orhan Pamuk’s acclaimed novel Snow, a middle aged writer on political exile returns to his home country only to find that everything that was once familiar to him is changed. The novel set in Kars, a border town in Turkey, is a multilayered story dealing with subjects as varied as the conflict between East and West, religion, belief, God, secularism,love, art and power. The book has a snail-like pace, but rewards the patient reader with several profound insights about the topics it deal with. It makes us think about real people living and dealing with issues in a world where the gap between politics and religion is getting narrow by the day. Ka reaches the border city of Kars (Snow) as a journalist to investigate the suicide of several young girls and also to report on the mayoral elections. The previous mayor was killed and this time Muhtar Bey, of an Islamic party is the popular candidate expected to win the election. Radical Islam is slowly getting popular in a nation governed by seculars. The secular government has banned girls coming to educational institutes wearing head scarves. Political Islamists claim this as the reason for suicides. Ka has one more personal agenda to fulfill- returning to Germany with his old lover Ipek, ex-wife of Muhtar. Heavy snowfall blocks the road for three days and there occurs a chain of events that change the life of everyone in Kars. Ka witness the death of an official and a drama troupe with the help of secret police and ex-military personnel conducts a coup. These events makes everyone involved introspect and find what is really important to them in life. More than the plot, it is the characterization that makes this novel interesting. Each person in the story is integral to the plot. Every one of the characters is strong willed and has their own value system according to which they act. Some of them like Blue, the enigmatic terrorist and Sunoy, the actor who leads the coup, pronounce their belief outright. But some of them like Ipek or Kadife, her sister reveals it through their actions. Snow that falls incessantly and blocks all the exits to Kars is also an integral character in the drama. Sometimes Snowfall is contributes to solitude, sometimes to happiness and many other emotions according to the occasions. Ka gets back his ability to write poems in Kars and later he organizes his poems that ‘come to him’ in Kars in the shape of a snow flake.Orhan Pamuk’s Snow is a profound novel that can be tiring but also insightful to readers who are ready to invest their time and effort.

Blast from past

I don't know by what quirk of fate, I bought two books, Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence and Orhan Pamuk's My name is Red from a book vendor. I was fascinated by Rushdie's Midnight's Children before and that was the precise reason I bought his novel. Orhan Pamuk's novel I selected because the vendor suggested it. "Sab forenwalein yahi book lethe hain". How could I ignore such an expert opinion. I ended up buying two novels that are quite different from each other in style and plot but have quite a few similarities also. Both are stories happening in two different parts of the world at the same period, around 1580 AD. Both are exotic recreation of a splendid era of two powerful nations of the same period... And both are fabulous reads... 

Enchantress of Florence is the story of  the life of a Mughal princess who was lost at the time of Babar and how  her arrival after two generations changes the fate of a city made by wealthiest emperor of Hindustan, Akbar. A handsome foreigner arrives at the darbar of  Akbar, pausing as the messenger of Queen of England, murdering the real messenger on the way. The reason for his arrival is to tell a tale... of the beautiful Mughal  princess and a Turk warrior of Italian origin (It seems Rushdie has an obsession depicting people with a multiple cultural background) spanning a hundred years and three continents. And through the tale, the princess comes alive... As in Midnight's children, Rushdie weaves the story by using fictional and real characters, like Akbar, Amerigo Vespucci, Birbal and Thansen... And another queer depiction is of the fictional queen, Jodhabai, a figment of imagination of Akbar, who lives as a shadow in the palace of Fatehpur Sikri, respected and envied by all, including the other queens (real of course) till the other princess, Qara Koz, comes alive in the Emperor's imagination dethroning Jodha. I wonder how people will react to the theme of an imaginary Jodha after watching Aishwarya Rai as Jodha in the Bollywood extravaganza Jodha Akbar. I think, it will be fine considering the shadowy acting of Mrs Bachchan. The novel starts with the image of a lonely traveller arriving near a lake and imagining it to be filled with golden water, a mirage created by setting sun. But Enchantress of Florence, is no mirage... it is true gold, thanks to the splendid plot setting, larger than life characters, and non linear mode of story telling... 

Next novel, Orhan Pamuk's My name is Red, tells the story of a murder mystery happening around the same time, but in Turkey.  A miniaturist working on illuminating a secret and controversial book commissioned by Sultan is murdered. The murder opens a Pandora's box... Several questions are asked on politics, religion, art and the relation between them, an old love is rekindled, much to the worry of others who don't want it to happen for various reasons, an all out war between traditional and modern thinking is started and the only solution... lies in the identification of murderer and his motive. Thus Black Effendi, who is brought back from exile for completing the book after the murder, starts a journey into the magical world of books and paintings to get some clue about the murderer.... This book is not as extravagant or exotic as former, requiring great attention from the reader. Many pages are dedicated to the style and history of Ottoman illustration and book making, and discussions on religion and art. The narration of each chapter is done by different characters of the novel, including the dead man and the murderer (without revealing the identity of course). Even non human elements like Dog, Satan, Death and coin narrates some part of the story. But if you are dedicated to read through all these hurdles... I assure that you will have a great read...