Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

The pickle seller who passionately informed me about the cleric from Erzurum said that the counterfeit coins-the new ducats, the fake florins stamped with lions and the Ottoman coins with their ever-decreasing silver content-that flooded the markets and bazaars, just like the Circassians, Abkhazians, Mingarians, Bosnians, Georgians and Armenians who filled the streets, were dragging us toward an absolute degradation from which it would be difficult to escape. I was told that scoundrels and rebels were gathering in coffeehouses and proselytizing until dawn; that destitute men of dubious character, opium-addicted madmen and followers of the outlawed Kalenderi dervish sect, claiming to be on Allah’s path, would spend their nights in dervish houses dancing to music, piercing themselves with skewers and engaging in all manner of depravity, before brutally fucking each other and any boys they could find.

I didn’t know whether it was the melodious sound of a lute that compelled me to follow, or if in the muddle of my memories and desires, I could simply no longer endure the virulent pickle seller, and seized upon the music as a way out of the conversation. I do, however, know this: When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you’ll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories.

This was how I happened to leave the Farrier’s Market and ended up watching the snow as it fell into the Golden Horn from a spot beside the Süleymaniye Mosque: Snow had already begun to accumulate on the rooftops facing north and on sections of the dome exposed to the northeasterly breeze. An approaching ship, whose sails were being lowered, greeted me with a flutter of canvas. The color of its sails matched the leaden and foggy hue of the surface of the Golden Horn. The cypress and plane trees, the rooftops, the heartache of dusk, the sounds coming from the neighborhood below, the calls of hawkers and the cries of children playing in mosque courtyards mingled in my head and announced emphatically that, hereafter, I wouldn’t be able to live anywhere but in their city. I had the sensation that my beloved’s face, which had escaped me for years, might suddenly appear to me.

I began to walk down the hill and melded into the crowds. After the evening prayer was called, I filled my stomach at a liver shop. In the empty shop, I listened carefully to the owner, who fondly watched me eat each bite as if he were feeding a cat. Taking his cue and following his directions, I found myself turning down one of the narrow alleys behind the slave market-well after the streets had become dark-and located the coffeehouse.

Inside, it was crowded and warm. The storyteller, the likes of whom I had seen in Tabriz and in Persian cities and who was known thereabouts as a “curtain-caller,” was perched on a raised platform beside the wood-burning stove. He had unfolded and hung before the crowd a picture, the figure of a dog drawn on rough paper hastily but with a certain elegance. He was giving voice to the dog, and pointing, from time to time, at the drawing.

As you can doubtless tell, dear friends, my canines are so long and pointed they barely fit into my mouth. I know this gives me a menacing appearance, but it pleases me. Noticing the size of my teeth, a butcher once had the gall to say, “My God, that’s no dog at all, it’s a wild boar!”

I bit him so hard on the leg that my canines sank right through his fatty flesh to the hardness of his thighbone. For a dog, you see, nothing is as satisfying as sinking his teeth into his miserable enemy in a fit of instinctual wrath. When such an opportunity presents itself, that is, when my victim, who deserves to be bitten, stupidly and unknowingly passes by, my teeth twinge and ache in anticipation, my head spins with longing and without even meaning to, I emit a hair-raising growl.

I’m a dog, and because you humans are less rational beasts than I, you’re telling yourselves, “Dogs don’t talk.” Nevertheless, you seem to believe a story in which corpses speak and characters use words they couldn’t possibly know. Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a faraway land, a brash cleric from a provincial town arrived at one of the largest mosques in a capital city; all right, let’s call it the Bayazid Mosque. It’d be appropriate to withhold his name, so let’s refer to him as “Husret Hoja.” But why should I cover up anything more: This man was one boneheaded cleric. He made up for the modesty of his intellect with the power of his tongue, God bless it. Each Friday, he so animated his congregation, so moved them to tears that some would cry until they fainted or dried up and withered away. Don’t get me wrong, unlike other clerics with the gift of preaching, he himself didn’t weep. On the contrary, while everyone else cried, he intensified his oration without a blink as if to chastise the congregation. In all probability, the gardeners, royal pages, halva makers, riffraff and clerics like himself became his lackeys because they enjoyed the tongue lashing. Well, this man was no dog after all, no sir, he was a human being-to be human is to err-and before those enthralled crowds, he lost himself when he saw that intimidating throngs of people was as pleasurable as bringing them to tears. When he understood that there was much more bread to be made in this new venture, he went over the top and had the nerve to say the following:

“The sole reason for rising prices, plague and military defeat lies in our forgetting the Islam of the time of our Glorious Prophet and falling sway to falsehoods. Was the Prophet’s birth epic read in memory of the dead back then? Was the fortieth-day ceremony performed, where sweets like halva and fried dough are offered to honor the dead? When Muhammad lived, was the Glorious Koran recited melodically, like a song? Were the prayers called haughtily and pompously to show how close one’s Arabic was to an Arab’s? Was there such a thing as reciting the call to prayer coyly, with the flourish of a man imitating a woman? Today, people plead before gravesites, begging for amends. They hope for the intervention of the dead on their behalf. They visit the tombs of saints and worship at graves like pagans before pieces of stone. They tie votive pieces of cloth everywhere, and make promises of sacrifice in return for atonement. Were there dervish sectarians who spread such beliefs in Muhammad’s time? Ibn Arabi, the intellectual mentor of these sectarians, became a sinner by swearing that the infidel Pharaoh had died a believer. These dervishes, the Mevlevis, the Halvetis, the Kalenderis and those who sing the Koran to musical accompaniment or justify dancing with children and juveniles by saying ”we pray together anyway, why not?“ are all kaffirs. Dervish lodges ought to be destroyed, their foundations excavated to a depth of seven ells and the collected earth cast into the sea. Only then might ritual prayers be performed there again.”

I heard tell that this Husret Hoja, taking matters even further, declared with spittle flying from his mouth, “Ah, my devoted believers! The drinking of coffee is an absolute sin! Our Glorious Prophet did not partake of coffee because he knew it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia and sterility; he understood that coffee was nothing but the Devil’s ruse. Coffeehouses are places where pleasure-seekers and wealthy gadabouts sit knee-to-knee, involving themselves in all sorts of vulgar behavior; in fact, even before the dervish houses are closed, coffeehouses ought to be banned. Do the poor have enough money to drink coffee? Men frequent these places, become besotted with coffee and lose control of their mental faculties to the point that they actually listen to and believe what dogs and mongrels have to say. But those who curse me and our religion, it is they who are the true mongrels.”