Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

I shall now describe my death. 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. It was as if not only my shattered skull and brain but every part of me, merging together, was burning and racked with torment. Withstanding this boundless suffering was so difficult that a portion of my mind reacted-as if this were its only option-by forgetting the agony and seeking a gentle sleep.

Before I died, I remembered the Assyrian legend that I heard as an adolescent. An old man, living alone, rises from his bed in the middle of the night and drinks a glass of water. He places the glass upon the end table to discover the candle that had been there is missing. Where had it gone? A fine thread of light is filtering from within. He follows the light, retracing his steps back to his bedroom to find that somebody is lying in his bed holding the candle. “Who might you be?” he asks. “I am Death,” says the stranger. The old man is overcome by a mysterious silence. Then he says, “So, you’ve come.” “Yes,” responds Death haughtily. “No,” the old man says firmly, “you’re but an unfinished dream of mine.” The old man abruptly blows out the candle in the stranger’s hand and everything vanishes in blackness. The old man enters his own empty bed, goes to sleep and lives for another twenty years.

I knew this was not to be my fate. He brought the inkpot down onto my head once again. I was in such a state of profound torment that I could only vaguely discern the impact. He, the inkpot and the room illuminated faintly by the candle had already begun to fade.

Yet, I was still alive. My desire to cling to this world, to run away and escape him, the flailing of my hands and arms in an attempt to protect my face and bloody head, the way, I believe, I bit his wrist at one time, and the inkpot striking my face made me aware of this.

We struggled for a while, if you can call it that. He was very strong and very agitated. He laid me out flat on my back. Pressing his knees onto my shoulders, he practically nailed me to the ground while he raved on in a very disrespectful tone, accosting me, a dying old man. Perhaps because I could neither understand nor listen to him, perhaps because I took no pleasure in looking into his bloodshot eyes, he struck my head once more. His face and his entire body had become bright red from the ink splattering out of the inkpot, and I suppose, from the blood splattering out of me.

Saddened that the last thing I’d ever see in this world was this man who would be my enemy, I closed my eyes. Thereupon, I saw a soft, gentle light. The light was as sweet and enticing as the sleep I thought would straightaway ease all my pains. I saw a figure within the light and as a child might, I asked, “Who are you?”

“It is I, Azrael, the Angel of Death,” he said. “I am the one who ends man’s journey in this world. I am the one who separates children from their mothers, wives from their husbands, lovers from each other and fathers from their daughters. No mortal in this world avoids meeting me.”

When I knew death was unavoidable, I wept.

My tears made me profoundly thirsty. On the one hand there was the stupefying agony of my face and eyes drenched in blood; on the other hand there was the place where frenzy and cruelty ceased, yet that place was strange and terrifying. I knew it to be that illumined realm, the Land of the Dead, to which Azrael beckoned me, and I was frightened. Even so, I knew I couldn’t long remain in this world that caused me to writhe and howl in agony. In this land of frightful pain and torment, there was no place for me to take solace. To stay, I’d have to resign myself to this unbearable torment and this was impossible in my elderly condition.

Just before I died, I actually longed for my death, and at the same time, I understood the answer to the question that I’d spent my entire life pondering, the answer I couldn’t find in books: How was it that everybody, without exception, succeeded in dying? It was precisely through this simple desire to pass on. I also understood that death would make me a wiser man.

Nonetheless, I was overcome with the indecision of a man about to take a long journey and unable to refrain from taking one last glance at his room, at his belongings and his home. In a panic I wished to see my daughter one last time. I wanted this so badly I was prepared to grit my teeth for a while longer and endure the pain and my increasing thirst, to wait for Shekure’s return.

And thus, the deathly and gentle light before me faded somewhat, and my mind opened itself up to the sounds and noises of the world in which I lay dying. I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the cabinet, rifling through my papers and searching intently for the last picture. When he came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my paint set and kick the chests, boxes, inkpots and folding worktable. I sensed that I was groaning now and then and making odd twitching gestures with my old arms and tired legs. And I waited.

My pain was not abating in the least. I grew increasingly silent and could no longer stand to grit my teeth, but again, I held on, waiting.

Then it occurred to me, if Shekure came home, she might encounter my ruthless murderer. I didn’t want to even think about this. At that instant, I sensed that my murderer had exited the room. He’d probably found the last painting.

I’d become excessively thirsty but still I waited. Come now, dear daughter, my pretty Shekure, show yourself.

She did not come.

I no longer had strength to withstand the suffering. I knew I would die without seeing her. This seemed so bitter I wanted to die of misery. Afterward, a face I’d never seen before appeared to my left, and smiling all the while, he kindly offered me a glass of water.

Forgetting all else, I greedily reached for the water.

He pulled the glass back: “Denounce the Prophet Muhammad as a liar,” he said. “Deny all that he has said.”

It was Satan. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t even afraid of him. Since I never once believed that painting amounted to being duped by him, I waited confidently. I dreamed of the endless journey that awaited me and of my future.

Meanwhile, as I was approached by the illuminated angel whom I’d just seen, Satan vanished. Part of me knew that this glowing angel who had caused Satan to flee was Azrael. But another rebellious part of my mind remembered that in the Book of the Apocalypse it was written that Azrael was an angel with one thousand wings spanning East and West and that he held the whole world in his hands.

As I grew more confused, the angel bathed in light approached as if coming to my aid, and yes, just as Gazzali had stated in Pearls of Magnificence , he sweetly said:

“Open your mouth so that your soul might leave.”

“Nothing but the besmele prayer ever leaves my mouth,” I answered him.

This was just one last excuse however. I knew I could no longer resist, that my time had now come. For a moment I was embarrassed at having to leave my bloodied and ugly body in this miserable condition for my daughter, whom I’d never see again. But I wanted to leave this world, shedding it like some tight-fitting garment that pinched.

I opened my mouth and abruptly all was color just as in the pictures of Our Prophet’s Miraj journey, during which he visited Heaven. Everything was flooded in exquisite brightness as if generously painted with gold wash. Painful tears flowed from my eyes. A strained exhalation passed from my lungs through my mouth. All was subsumed in wondrous silence.

I could see now that my soul had left my body and that I was cupped in Azrael’s hand. My soul, the size of a bee, was bathed in light, and it shuddered as it left my body and continued to tremble like mercury in Azrael’s palm. My thoughts were not of this, however, but of the unfamiliar new world I’d just been born into.