Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Mevlut already knew how the question was meant to be answered because he’d heard it answered before: the chosen guest was supposed to give a truthful account of how many times he’d prayed and given alms over the past few days, while admitting with regret that he still hadn’t done enough to fulfill his duties as a believer. The Holy Guide would then pardon any shortcomings and provide his supplicant with some words of comfort: “What matters is that you meant well.” But the devil must have been at it again, or perhaps Mevlut simply realized that the whole truth might not go down so well; in any event, he managed only a faltering response. He said that what mattered in the eyes of God was the heart’s intent, the very words Mevlut had often heard the Holy Guide himself say. But the moment they left his mouth, he knew that there was something unseemly about his repeating them like that.

“It does not matter whether your heart intends to pray; the most important thing is to truly pray,” said the Holy Guide. His tone was gentle, but those who knew him recognized it straightaway as the Holy Guide’s manner of scolding.

Mevlut’s boyishly handsome face went red.

“It is true that any act is judged according to the intent that lies behind it,” the Holy Guide went on. “THE IMPORT OF A CONTRACT LIES IN THAT WHICH IT MEANS AND INTENDS TO ACHIEVE.”

Mevlut sat motionless, his eyes downcast. “THE KEY IS EMOTION, NOT MOTION,” said the Holy Guide. Was he making fun of Mevlut for sitting so perfectly still? A couple of people laughed.

Mevlut said he’d attended midday prayers every day that week. This wasn’t true. He could tell that everyone knew it.

Perhaps because of Mevlut’s evident embarrassment, the Holy Guide now elevated the tone of the conversation. “Intentions come in two forms,” he said: “THAT WHICH OUR HEART INTENDS and THAT WHICH OUR WORDS INTEND.” Mevlut heard this very clearly and made sure to memorize it. The intentions of the heart were crucial. In fact, as the Holy Guide always said, they were fundamental to our whole understanding of Islam. (If our heart’s intent is what matters most, did that mean that the most important thing about Mevlut’s letters was that he’d meant them for Samiha?) But our faith taught that the intentions behind our words also had to be true. Our Holy Prophet had expressed his intentions through words as well. The Hanafi school of Sunni teaching may have considered it sufficient for the heart’s intentions to be pure, but as the holy Ibn Zerhani (Mevlut wasn’t sure he was remembering that name correctly now) had once declared, when it comes to city life, WHAT OUR WORDS INTEND WILL REFLECT WHAT OUR HEART INTENDS.

Or had the holy Ibn Zerhani actually said that they “should” reflect each other? Mevlut hadn’t really heard that part properly, because at that moment a car had started honking out on the street. The Holy Guide stopped talking. He glanced at Mevlut, looking right into his soul: he saw Mevlut’s embarrassment, his reverence for the teacher, and his wish to leave that room as soon as possible. “A MAN WHO HAS NO INTENTION OF PRAYING WILL NEVER HEAR THE CALL TO PRAYER; WE ONLY HEAR WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR, AND SEE WHAT WE WANT TO SEE,” he said. He’d addressed the whole room with a placid expression, and again, a few people had laughed.

Mevlut would spend the following days dwelling dejectedly over those words. Whom did the Holy Guide mean by “a man who has no intention of praying”? Had he been talking about Mevlut, who didn’t pray often enough and lied about it, too? Had he meant some rowdy rich man honking his car horn in the middle of the night? Perhaps it had been a reference to the wicked, pusillanimous multitudes who always meant one thing but then ended up doing the very opposite? And what had the people in the room been laughing at?

Thoughts about the intentions of our hearts and the intentions of our words continued to weigh on Mevlut’s mind. He could see that the distinction corresponded to Ferhat’s theory about the difference between private and public views, but thinking about “intentions” gave the whole matter a more humane dimension. The pairing of hearts and words seemed more meaningful to Mevlut than that of private and public opinions — perhaps because it was more serious, too.

One afternoon, Mevlut was standing outside the clubhouse watching the chestnut vendor and talking to a retired, elderly yogurt seller with some property to his name when the old man said, “We shall see what fate has in store — KISMET.” That word stuck in Mevlut’s mind like a billboard slogan.

He’d been hiding it away in a corner of his mind along with his memories of Ferhat, but now it was back, keeping him company on his nightly walks. The leaves on the trees twitched and spoke to him. It all made sense now: KISMET was the force that bridged the gap between what our heart intended and what our words intended. A person could wish for one thing and speak of another, and their fate, their kismet, was the thing that could bring the two together. Even the seagull over there who wanted to land on that pile of trash had started off with only the intention to do so, which it had then put into words of a sort through a series of squawks, but whether the wishes harbored in its heart and expressed in its calls could ever be realized depended on a set of factors that were governed by KISMET — things like wind speed, luck, and timing. The happiness he’d found with Rayiha had been a gift of KISMET, and he must remember to respect that. The Holy Guide’s words had upset him a little; but he was glad he’d gone to see him.

For the next two years, Mevlut worried about whether his elder daughter would be able to finish high school and go to college. He couldn’t help Fatma with her studies; he couldn’t even keep track of whether she was doing her homework properly. Yet he followed her progress in his heart, and every time he saw Fatma fall into a sullen silence, leaf listlessly through her textbooks and scowl at her homework, march around in anger, or just sit there quietly sometimes and stare out the window, he was reminded of his own anxious high-school self. But his daughter was anchored much more firmly to the world of the city. She was, he found, both sensible and beautiful.

When her sister wasn’t around, Mevlut liked to take Fatma out to buy books and school supplies, or even just to talk over a plate of shredded-chicken blancmange among the crowded tables of the famous Villa Pudding Shop. Unlike other girls, Fatma was never insolent, moody, or reckless in her relationship with her father. Mevlut very rarely told her off — not that she ever did anything deserving reprimand anyway. He could sometimes see that there was a sort of rage behind her determination and confidence. They always joked together, and Mevlut would tease her for the way she narrowed her eyes when she read, washed her hands a thousand times a day, and threw everything into her handbag haphazardly, but he never took the mocking too far. He truly respected her.

Whenever he caught a glimpse of the chaos inside his daughter’s handbag, Mevlut would realize that she’d forged a much stronger and deeper connection with the city, its people, and its institutions than he’d ever had himself, and that she must talk about all sorts of things with the many different kinds of people Mevlut had only ever encountered as a street vendor. There were so many things in that handbag: identification cards, scraps of paper, hairpins, small purses, books, notepads, entry passes, parcels, chewing gum, chocolates…Sometimes, the bag would emit a scent Mevlut had never smelled anywhere else in his life. It wasn’t the smell of her books, which he did sometimes pick up and sniff in front of her, half in earnest; yet it was a bookish smell. It reminded Mevlut of cookies, the gum his daughter chewed when her father wasn’t around, and an artificial scent of vanilla he couldn’t quite place: the combination made him feel as if she could easily start living a completely different life if she wanted to. Mevlut really wanted Fatma to graduate from high school and go to college, but occasionally he also caught himself wondering whom she would end up marrying. It wasn’t something he liked to think about; he sensed that his daughter was going to fly away from this house, gladly leaving behind the life she’d led here.