Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

When my father-in-law and Hasan grew dissatisfied with this arrangement and decided it was time for me to marry Hasan, it was necessary first to arrange for the witnesses to convince the judge of my husband’s death. Thus, if my missing husband’s closest kin, his father and brother, accepted his death, if there was no longer anyone who objected to declaring my husband dead, and if, for the price of a few silver coins, witnesses would testify that they’d seen the man’s corpse in the field of battle, the judge would also oblige. It would be most difficult to convince Hasan once I was declared a widow that I wouldn’t leave the household, demand my inheritance rights or ask for money to marry him; and moreover, that I’d marry him of my own free will. Naturally, I knew that to gain his trust in this regard, I’d have to sleep with him in a very convincing manner so he’d be completely assured I was giving myself to him, not to get his permission to divorce my husband, but because I was sincerely in love with him.

With some effort, I could’ve fallen in love with Hasan. He was eight years younger than my missing husband, and when my husband was at home, Hasan was like my little brother, and this sentiment endeared him to me. I liked his humble and passionate demeanor, his pleasure in playing with my children and even the way he desirously looked at me as though he were dying of thirst and I were a glass of cold sour-cherry sherbet. On the other hand, I also knew I’d really have to force myself to fall in love with a man who made me wash clothes and didn’t mind my having to wander through markets and bazaars like a common slave. During those days when I’d go to my father’s house and cry endlessly as I stared at the pots, pans, bowls and cups, during those nights when the children and I would sleep cuddled up together in solidarity, Hasan never gave me cause for a change of heart. He had no faith that I could love him or that this essential and mandatory precondition for our marriage would manifest itself; and because he had no confidence in himself, he acted inappropriately. He tried to corner me, kiss me and fondle me. He declared that my husband would never return, that he would kill me. He threatened me, cried like a baby and in his haste and fluster, never allowed time for a true and noble love to be born. I knew I could never wed him.

One night, when he tried to force the door of the room where I slept with the children, I rose immediately, and without a thought that I might frighten them, screamed at the top of my lungs that evil jinns had entered the house. This fit of jinn-panic and screaming awakened my father-in-law and thereby exposed Hasan, whose excited violence was still visible, to his father. Amid my ridiculous howls and inane rantings about jinns, the staid old man to his embarrassment acknowledged the awful truth: His son was besotted and had inappropriately approached his brother’s wife, a mother of two. My father-in-law made no reply when I said I wouldn’t sleep a wink till morning, keeping watch at the door to protect my children against “the jinns.” The following day, I announced that I’d be returning to my father’s home with my children for an extended stay to care for him in his time of illness; thus did Hasan accept his defeat. I returned to my father’s house, taking with me as mementos of my married life the clock with bells plundered from Hungarian lands by my husband (who’d never succumbed to the temptation to sell it), the whip made from the sinews of the most explosive of Arab steeds, the Tabriz-made ivory chess set whose pieces the children used to play war and the silver candlesticks (booty from the Battle of Nahjivan), which I’d fought so desperately to keep when money was short.

As I expected, quitting my absent husband’s house turned Hasan’s obsessive and disrespectful love into a hopeless inferno. Knowing full well that his father wouldn’t stand behind him, instead of threatening me, he sought my pity by sending me love letters in whose corners he drew forlorn birds, teary-eyed lions and sad gazelles. I won’t hide from you the fact that I’ve recently begun to read them anew, those letters that reveal Hasan’s rich imagination, of which I wasn’t aware when we lived together under the same roof-assuming he didn’t enlist one of his more artistic or poetic friends to write and embellish them. In his last letter, Hasan pledged that I would no longer be a slave to housework, and that he’d made a lot of money. This disclosure in his sweet, respectful and humorous tone, compounded by the endless fights and demands of the children, and my father’s complaints, turned my head into a veritable kettledrum. Indeed, it was in order to heave a sigh of relief to the world that I’d opened the shutters of that window.

Before Hayriye set the dinner table, I prepared a draught of bitters from the best Arabian date palm flower; I mixed in a spoonful of honey and a little lemon juice, then quietly entered my father’s company as he was reading the Book of the Soul , and like a spirit myself, placed it before him without making my presence known, as he preferred.

“Is it snowing?” he asked in such a faint and melancholy voice that I understood at once this would be the last snowfall my poor father would ever see.

I am a tree and I am quite lonely. I weep in the rain. For the sake of Allah, listen to what I have to say. Drink down your coffee so your sleep abandons you and your eyes open wide. Stare at me as you would at jinns and let me explain to you why I’m so alone.

1. They allege that I’ve been hastily sketched onto nonsized, rough paper so the picture of a tree might hang behind the master storyteller. True enough. At this moment, there are no other slender trees beside me, no seven-leaf steppe plants, no dark billowing rock formations which at times resemble Satan or a man and no coiling Chinese clouds. Just the ground, the sky, myself and the horizon. But my story is much more complicated.

2. As a tree, I need not be part of a book. As the picture of a tree, however, I’m disturbed that I’m not a page within some manuscript. Since I’m not representing something in a book, what comes to mind is that my picture will be nailed to a wall and the likes of pagans and infidels will prostrate themselves before me in worship. May the followers of Erzurumi Hoja not hear that I secretly take pride in this thought-but then I’m overcome with the utmost fear and embarrassment.

3. The essential reason for my loneliness is that I don’t even know where I belong. I was supposed to be part of a story, but I fell from there like a leaf in autumn. Let me tell you about it:

Forty years ago, the Persian Shah Tahmasp, who was the archenemy of the Ottomans as well as the world’s greatest patron-king of the art of painting, began to grow senile and lost his enthusiasm for wine, music, poetry and painting; furthermore, he quit drinking coffee, and naturally, his brain stopped working. Full of the suspicions of a long-faced, dark-spirited old geezer, he transferred his capital from Tabriz, which was then Persian territory, to Kazvin so it would be farther from the Ottoman armies. One day when he had grown even older, he was possessed by a jinn, had a nervous fit, and begging God’s forgiveness, completely swore off wine, handsome young boys and painting, which is proof enough that after this great shah lost his taste for coffee, he also lost his mind.

This was why the divinely inspired bookbinders, calligraphers, gilders and miniaturists, who created the greatest masterpieces in the world over a twenty-year period in Tabriz, scattered like a covey of partridges to other cities. Shah Tahmasp’s nephew and son-in-law, Sultan Ibrahim Mirza, invited the most gifted among them to Mashhad, where he served as provincial governor, and settled them in his miniaturists’ workshop to copy out a marvelous illuminated and illustrated manuscript of all seven fables of the Seven Thrones of Jami-the greatest poet in Herat during the reign of Tamerlane. Shah Tahmasp, who both admired and envied his intelligent and handsome nephew, and regretted having given his daughter to him, was consumed by jealousy when he heard about this magnificent book and angrily ousted his nephew from the post of Governor of Mashhad, banishing him to the city of Kain, before sending him off to the smaller town of Sebzivar in a renewed fit of anger. The calligraphers and illuminators of Mashhad thereupon dispersed to other cities and regions, to the book-arts workshops of other sultans and princes.