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Alth ough Z Dermikol cannot provide İpek and Blue’s latest conversation,
what he has been telling Ka obviously changes Ka’s mind as well as his destiny. Only a few hours after this painful revelation, a group of soldiers raids Blue’s
hiding place and kills him Snow, 389. Blue’s demise turns out to be Ka’s fate
four years later. As tragic as it may seem, Ka’s death however freed him from all
his lamentation: the state of exile either in Kars or Frankfurt, the crushing pain of his jealousy to Blue, and his solitude in Kars.
Ka’s death is his portal to free himself from all of his predicaments. As Hallaj
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had sung, “In my being killed is
my life.”
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4. Conclusion
From the preceding discussion, it can be seen that the three novels in this study show that in their journey the lovers have to encounter several stages to gain
wholeness as the ultimate end of their journey. This wholeness or unity arrives through process of transformation. This transformation will only gain through
separation that leads the lovers forward.
This state of separation or disconnectedness, the lovers also ‘embrace’ connectedness as previously
mentioned in the beginning of the discussion. Separation is fruitful as the lovers gain purification. After
Galip’s separation from his wife, Rüya, this state leads him to unite with his other self in
Celâl. Rüya’s banishment becomes Galip’s
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Mansur Al Hallaj, the martyr of love par excellence in Sufi’s tradition, who was sentenced to
death because of his saying ana al-Haqq “I am the Absolute Truth”, something people at the time
found offensive and could not understand. His hands and feet were cut off and his body were burned and the ashes thrown into the Tigris. He was a legendary Iranian Sufi master who lived
between 858-922 in present day Iraq. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975: 66-73.
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Rumi, Diwan i kabir 1735 18202.
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media to discover that he has a ‘hole’ in his life to complete. This hole is filled by writing Celâl’s columns and securing its place in magazine. Similar to Galip’s
case, Kemal’s separation from Füsun leads him to collect Füsun’s belongings and launches himself as an ethnographer for his love life and his culture. Ka, who
forever encounters separation either in Frankfurt or Kars, also embraces union in these
two different ‘worlds’. His solitude life and identity crisis in Frankfurt lead him to visit Kars and discover his muse. In Kars, Ka unites with his muse and
makes him a modern dervish who writes his poems based on the “voice” inside that dictates the poem.
Each of the lovers in this study eventually reaches the ultimate end of their journey. They re-unite with their beloved after their separation. However, this re-
union is not simple as it is ambiguous in nature. This re-union bears another separation and tensions as well. Unlike the separation in the first stage of the
journey, the tension in this stage is not causing the same level of distress since the lovers have been transformed.
Galip is no longer searching for Rüya. In the end Rüya is the image that leads him to unite with his other self. The supreme purpose
of his search is eventually wholeness of his self that he discovers in Celâl. Similar tone is shared by Kemal. His re-union with Füsun represented by Füsun death is
different from the separation he encounters in his early journey. Being physically separated from Füsun for the rest of his life, Kemal somehow lives as Füsun.
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CHAPTER IV THE MYSTICAL STAGES IN TURKEY IDENTITY QUEST
Part of me longed, like radical Westernizer, for the city to become entirely European. But another part of me yearned to belong to the Istanbul I had grown
to love, by instinct, by habit, and by memory- Pamuk
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This chapter will uncover the second question of the study, which is how the Sufi framework of identity formation indirectly influences Pamuk
’s three novels under study. This chapter will be divided thematically into two subchapters: the
first sub- chapter will deal with a brief highligh t on Turkey’s history of the
transition from the late Ottoman era to the Era of Republic. By providing a historical account on the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of
Turkey, this first sub-chapter is meant to provide a better understanding of the contemporary identity predicament of Turkey and to demonstrate how the denial
of the Ottoman past turned Turkey ’s identity into a fragmented one.
The following sub-chapter will examine the concept of identity quest that Pamuk offers in his three novels studied. The concept is presented in the quest of
identity that reveals the keys of unio mystica or the ultimate point of identification with the Divine in Sufi tradition.
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Thus this chapter will have four sub headings in response to the three stages of mystical quest in Sufi framework.
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Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul Memories and the City, trans. Maureen Freely New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2004, 323.
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Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun Gita Govinda Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008, 47.
