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Innocence. This issue is highlighted in the beginning of the novel, when Ka feels his resemblance on Necip, a young Islamist school boy who long to be a writer
and is preparing Islamic science f iction. Ka feels that this boy ‘steals’ his heart in
the first time he meets him. Yet, the longing of the lover to discover his Beloved is represented by Pamuk who takes a
part in this novel as Ka’s best friend. Pamuk visits Ka’s apartment in Frankfurt following his demises to collect Ka’s belonging
and “to find the thing I coveted the most” Snow, 257. In his visit Pamuk traces back Ka’s daily ‘ritual’ such as walking down the route Ka’s performs before his
death. Following Ka’s footsteps and visiting places he visits during his life,
Pamuk feels like he does not travel on Ka’s memory but his own: “I felt I was
looking at my own memories” Snow, 251. On the time he spends at Kars to retrieve Ka’s poems, Pamuk states that “There had been many moment when I felt
I was Ka” Snow, 411.
3. The Scent of the Beloved’s Belonging
As stated in the opening of this chapter, each novel in this study does not always present similar Sufi symbolism in terms of quality and quantity. The
memorabilia of the beloved that bears the beloved’s scent in these three novels
under study meets this qualification. The beloved’s belonging that is laden with
their scents depicted in the three novels of this study is not similar either in quality or quantity. It can be seen from the fore coming discussion that The
Museum of Innocence presents more mementos of the beloved compared to those presented in The Black Book or Snow. For this reason, The Museum of
Innocence will initiate the discussion in this sub heading. However, the three
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novels bear similar thing in common; each of the characters, Galip, Kemal, and Ka, they love collecting objects of memorabilia associating with their beloved.
These objects, beside laden with their beloved memories, intensify the lover ’s
longing for union with their beloved. The mementos of the beloved send an invitation for union to the lovers. Just like Jacob’s blind eyes are cured by the
scent of Joseph’s shirt which is “connected to the fragrance of morning breeze
which the lover hopes will b ring him news from the beloved”.
131
In Rumi’s word, the image of scent “makes the absent Friend present, and gives particular
information about him.
132
In The Museum of Innocence, Kemal breaks his words not to visit Merhamet
’s apartment. His banishment from the apartment does not provide him with an exit for his predicament. Instead, it makes his heart aching even deeper.
His heart wails trying to banish Füsun from his memory and his life is disrespectful for her and him. He believes he has betrayed Füsun, raison d etre
of his very existence. To pay for his betrayal he decides to think of her only and to live in the place nearest to where she was MoI, 177. In the apartment where
the affair took place, he begins collecting ordinary objects which remind him of her: “Sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed where I had made love to Füsun
forty- four times, and surrounded by all those memory- laden things three of which I display herewith, I spent a happy hour caressing them lovingly” MoI,
202.
131
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 74.
132
Ibid. 3.
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When he lies down like an animal listening helplessly to his last breath on the bed at Merhamet apartment, Kemal seizes upon objects of their common
memories that bore Fü sun’s essence: the bed, the pillows, and the sheets that still
carry Fü sun’s scent. Scent is another image familiar in Sufi tradition. Sufi
recognizes scent as a mystical symbolism that will eventually lead to the source of fragrance which is the Divine Beloved.
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Kemal discovers that these objects are
“palliative” for the “magnitude” of his anguish. Just by playing and rubbing these objects on his neck, his face, and forehead, he can transfer the charm and
the illusion of the radiating memory of his happiness with Füsun soothes his wounded heart MoI, 155-157. Inhaling Füsun scents that still remains in the
sheets, he feels as if he is trying to feel her inside him and he feels that he almost becomes her. When her scents grow fainter, Kemal desperately picks other
objects and looks for traces of the scent of her hands and sniffs deeply from the objects he finds instant relief in his nose and lungs MoI, 177.
Kemal’s way to heal his agony by searching and inhaling Füsuns scent is in a way reveals the image of musk deer in Sufi tradition where a musk deer
leaves fragrant trace that may indicate the path to find the Beloved.
134
The occurrences of scent are an essential element in Sufi tradition. Scent or fragrance
in Sufi tradition is a medium that offers some news on the Beloved even to those who have never seen them, as well as those who never apprehended that their
beauty is hidden behind cypress and roses, behind dark cloud and the jasmine
133
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 81.
134
Ibid. 81
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bush.
135
In Pamuk ’s tales, the beloved’s belonging and their fragrances have
become one of ingredients that keep recurring. In addition to The Museum of Innocence, Pamuk
’s novel that present fragrance and cologne as an element used by the characters in their daily ritual also occurs in The Silent House. In this
family saga, fragrance is represented by cologne and the characters depicted doing the ‘cologne rituals’ is Nilgun and Fatma, her grandmother. This cologne
ritual gets even thicker in The Museum of Innocence in which cologne is always present every night after supper during Kemal’s eight years’ visit to Fusun’s
family. They always rub the cologne on their faces, temples, or wrist and inhale the fragrance while enjoying the time they spend together after diner.
136
In The Black Book, Galip is described as someone who is able to “remember a smell just by recognizing the objects associates with it” BB, 241.
In doing so, Galip can recognize things associated with the smell. He will feel Celâl and Rü
ya’s presence just by smelling the remaining smell that still lingers in the objects associated with them. The object that invites Galip to heal his
longing for Ruya and Celâl is Celâ l’s green ballpoint pen. Whenever Galip’s
desires “to be with Celâl and Rüya rose so powerfully inside him”, he felt such a deep pain inside him and he missed Celâl and Rü
ya so desperately” BB, 325, 323, Galip takes refuge on Celâ
l’s green ballpoint pen. Galip uses this pen to correct the copy on Celâ
l’s column. Galip “remembered that when Celâl sat down at this desk wearing his blue stripped pajamas to correct his copy with the
135
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 81.
136
See Orhan Pamuk, The Silent House, trans. Robert Finn London: Faber and Faber, 2012.
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same green ballpoint pen […] he had a gut feeling that things were going well” BB, 251.
Snow celebrates fragrance as the trace of the Beloved in a slightly different way. Ka, the poet, whenever he is frustrated for his failure to maintain his state
of happiness with İpek, will lick his wound by inhaling the scent of their lovemaking that still lingers in his hotel room. Every time he feels desperately
alone and helpless, certain kind of smells that reminds him of his past will come back to him. Just like the smell of his father after he shaves. “And now the smell
come back to him” Snow, 86. Or the smell of his coat that “reminds [himself] of Frankfurt; for a few minutes he could see the city in full color and wished he
were there” Snow, 177. From the above discussion, it can be summarized that
Pamuk’s three novels in this study bear Sufi framework of meaning in terms of symbolism,
image, and metaphor. Although each novel has different quality in picturing Sufi framework of meanings, they are somehow enriching each other in a way that
every novel spoils the readers with different features of Sufi framework that Pamuk wishes to emphasize in the three novels in this study. Another trait of
Sufi structure is the journey of the lovers to reach the ultimate end of their love; union with their beloved. To achieve this supreme aim, the lovers have to endure
a quest that will lead them to their beloved. This love quest will deserve one chapter discussion in the following sub- chapter.
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B. The Traits of Love Quest in Orhan Pamuk’s Tales that Reflect the Stages of Sufi Mystical Union
In Sufi tradition, there are three stages that represent the journey from worldly love to Divine love. These stages are, namely, union, separation, and re-
union. In this respect, the themes of union, separation, and re-union in The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence portray the stages of this mystical
development. The most significant elements celebrated in Pamuk ’s The Black
Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence is the yearning of the lovers that seek to locate their Beloved. The lovers in these three novels are longing to find their
missing Beloved. “Where is my Beloved?” is the locus of Pamuk’s three novels in
question. Undoubtedly, he follows the trace of the Sufi poets that employs the entire universe in order to worship God.
137
Sanai
138
wrote Litany of the Birds, a beautiful poem in which every bird addresses God in their own language: the stark speaks with a constant lak lak,
attesting al-mulk, al-izz lak, “Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the Glory”, while the
dove is always asking the way toward the Friend
139
by calling kū kū , “Where?
Where? ”
140
137
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Dimension of Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 75.
138
Sanai was Persian poet who lived in Ghazni in present day Afganistan between 11
th
and 12
th
Century. He was the one to whom Rumi acknowledged as one of the two primary inspiration for him. Sanai died between 1131 and 1141.
139
In the Sufi tradition, they call God, the Real as the Beloved or the Friend.
140
Schimmel, As Through a Veil Mystical: Dimension of Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 75.
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These ideas taken up by Pamuk were represented by the characters on his The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence who constantly search
places to discover their Beloved and be united with them. Thus three stages endured by the lovers are a journey for them to get an answer to their own
question on the place where they can discover their Beloved, a question that does not solely raise their predicament but also becomes a medium leading them to
discover their true self.
1. The State of Initial Union
