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variations.
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It goes without saying that almost all the symbolisms in the Sufi tradition always come in pair and reveal pair. This understanding establishes the
Divine as the point of departure and return, and all else between. The following discussion on Sufi symbolism will unfold that everything is always coming in
pairs; union and separation, real and illusory, departure and return, pleasure and pain, poison and anti-dote, etc.
1. Night Darkness
To begin with, this sub heading will discuss the setting of the three novels in question in its relations to the setting in Sufism. In Sufi tradition, night has a
significant meaning as it signifies unity. In the darkness of the night lies an invitation for the lovers to be closer to their beloved and to be united with them.
Prop het Muhammad’s accession to heaven to meet the Beloved which is famous
as miraj in the Muslim tradition took place at night. The Qur’an is revealed at the
night known as Laylatul Qadr, an extraordinary night which counts better than thousand ordinary nights.
Hafiz, the most celebrated thirteenth century of Persian mystic poet, “perceives with deep insight that union is hidden behind the darkness.” Hafiz
believes that “only in absolute darkness, in the dark night of the soul, can the sun
at midnight rises. ”
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As also stated in one of the hadith: Our Lord, blessed and exalted is He, descend every night to the
nearest heaven when the latter one-third night remains, and says, Is there anyone who calls upon Me so that I my accept him, who
110
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 59.
111
Ibid. 69.
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ask Me so that I may grant him, who seeks forgiveness of Me that I may forgive him.
In the context of Pamuk’s novels in this study, the darkness of the night is
the main setting in The Black Book. Almost all the activities in the novels take place when darkness has swallowed the day. Galip discovers that Rüya left him at
supper time. He searches for Rüya every night after he has done with his daily duties. His wandering on every corner of Istanbul while the lord of the darkness
embraces the rest of the city into its wings reveals his deep lamentation that unites with the mystery of the dark.
In Snow, snow keeps recurring from the very beginning of the novel. It sometimes falls at night or during the day. In addition to the image of snow, Sufi
tradition also acknowledges the important role of dream. Dream can be interpreted as a sign that God wants to reveal something to the one who dreams. The dream
itself also takes place at night. It can be seen from Sheikh S adettin’s invitation to
Ka “Last night I saw you in my dreams. It was snowing in my dream, and every snowflake that fell to the earth shone with divin
e radiance” Snow, 90. It was at night and it was snowing in S
heikh Saadettin’s dream. This fact shows that snow also signifies union or a longing for union. Snow, just like rain
symbolizes descent of grace. Rain is called rahmat , ‘mercy’.
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Whenever the snow falls, an indescribable emotion
embraces Ka’s soul.
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This peculiar
112
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam New York: Columbia UP, 1975, 217.
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A film entitled Baran Rain directed by Majid Majidi released by Miramax Film in 1999 obviously
provides perfect visualization on the issue of God’s decent grace. This best foreign language film winning in Montreal film festival is “deceptively simple” as New York Post
claimed, demonstrates that rain fall symbolizes barakah or God’s mercy that sends an invitation
for the lovers to fill the small leak in their heart. This image is beautifully depicted in the scene
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sensation embraces Ka with an intimate state of feeling that reminds him of God
:”The snow reminds me of God,” said Ka. “The snow reminded me of the beauty and mystery of creation; of the essential joy that is life
” Snow, 96. The image of snow leads Ka to feel empty or incomplete. Every time the snow falls,
Ka discovers that his heart cries for another missing thing in his life. This longing inside his heart heals whenever he sees the beauty of snow falling.
In Snow, Ka discovers an image whispering a longing for something that his heart desires. In the beginning of the novel when Ka travels by bus that will
take him to Kars, snow starts to fall as the night starts to envelop the sky. As the night gets darker and the snow falls thicker and heavier, it turns out to be a
blizzard. Yet for Ka, he sees it as “a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he had known, once as a chi
ld” Snow, 4. “The
extraordinary beauty of the snow that night” and the mystery of the night brought
him an extraordinary joy which was greater than any he had known before Snow, 4.
Although Ka has seen plenty of snow during his years in Frankfurt, this particular brand of snow; the snow of Kars,
of “the most forgotten part of the world,
” of İpek, and of the local Karsians’ twisted search for liberation, whether it is in their faith or political life somehow bring suffering for Ka in the most literal
when the hero recalls his Beloved presence as the rain starts to fall. The rain sends an invitation that reminds the hero about his Beloved and makes him realizes that he has a hole inside his heart
as a result of separation from his Beloved. The Beloved’s belonging also sends similar invitation to the hero about the Beloved’s existence and invites him to strive for union. Here, the hero keeps
his Beloved’s hairclip that he puts on his hat. The hairclip sends an invitation for him to seek his Beloved. For more discussion on the objects of the Beloved’s belonging refers to the third
subheading The Beloved’s Belonging and its Scent as Invitation for Union.
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sense. It sets off memories; bring him back of the reminiscence of the cold- winters of his Istanbulite childhood, this melancholic snow in Kars suggests the
oblivion forced by time, blanketed with deep melancholy and heart breaking lamentation. At another moment, it encourages an abrupt flow of religious
yearning: “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mesut asked, with some
annoyance. “Aren’t you an atheist too?” “I don’t know,” said Ka.
“Then tell me this: Do you or don’t you believe that God Almighty created the universe and everything in it, even the snow that is
swirling down from the sky?” “The snow reminds me of God,” said Ka.
“Yes, but do you believe that God created snow?” Mesut insisted. There was a silence… Snow, 83.
While the silence embraces Ka and the religious school boys he talks to, Ka hears the call deep inside him: the call he heard only at moments of inspiration,
the only sound that could ever make him happy, the sound of his muse. For the first time in four years a poem was coming to him; although he had yet to hear the
words, he knew it was already written; even as it waited in its hiding place, it radiated the power and beauty of destiny. Ka returns to his hotel room and
immediately writes down the poem in “the green notebook he had brought with him from Frankfurt.” He calls the poem “Snow,” and it serves as the overture to a
series of other poems- nineteen in all- that soon fill the green notebook Snow, 83- 86.
The other vital issues in this novel also take place at night. The waves of suicidal girls as a result of the headscarf banning at university take place at night.
The arrival of his poems occurs while he is having dinner with İpek, her family,
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and other new people he meets at Kars. This encounter signifies that night offers togetherness and intimacy among those closely related. In the night of Sunay
Zaim’s play at National theatre, after Necip shows his landscape, a place where God does not exist, Ka confesses
what he longs to become: “ I wanted to be a Westerner and a believer
” Snow, 142. His confession shows his longing for the possibility of two different poles to co-exist without the need to eliminate one of
them. Similar setting that symbolizes unity of the Sufi tradition in The Museum of
Innocence is night as well. The readers are taken into the sacred meeting between Kemal and Füsun that mostly takes place at night. In the time of Kemal
’s terrible illness for loosing Füsun after his engagement party, it is the thought of Füsun that
helps him secure a sound sleep at night. His search for Füsun every night at the old neighborhood between Fatih and the Golden Horn brings a bittersweet joy as
he confesses “As I walked these dark and muddy streets, my dreams of Füsun, painful as they were, still brought me happiness
” MoI, 211. Kemal’s wandering every night expresses
similar tone with Ka’s experience. If Ka discovers that the snow falling leads him to long for union, Kema
l’s longing to be united with Füsun intensified every night as he wanders the street of Istanbul hoping to locate Füsun.
After Kemal’s incurable pain caused by his separation from Füsun and his 339 painful days he spends in effort to locate her, Kemal unexpectedly receives a
letter from Füsun inviting him to have dinner with her parents. The reunion shattered Kemal’s elation as upon entering entering Füsun’s home he learns that
Füsun has been married to Feridun, a young and aspiring filmmaker. For
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approximately eight years, Kemal spends dinner with Füsun, her parents, and sometimes her husband as well in order to get closer to his beloved and to win her
back. In this new fact, Kemal encounters another frustrating effort to get him closer to Füsun. His first step is giving his financial support for Fü
sun’s husband to make a European- style art film that will not
merely ‘teach’ Turkish audience about a good film but also to raise Füsun into celebrity.
This so called film project provides Kemal with a decent reason for visiting Füsun and her family,
to have “business” talk and dinner with them. The dinner includes eating out in local restaurant or spending more times outside the house to
watch films. A little picnic over the Bosphorus Bridge following the meal showers Kemal with profound happiness to
heal his lovesick. “I had realized that seeing Füsun twice a week on the pretense of making a film was enough to assuage my
pain” MoI, 256. During their long and explicitly non- physical reconnection, he starts to squirrel away thousands of physical relics that Fusün has touched, or
which remind him of Fusün; a barrette, a salt shaker she once touched, her hairpins, pits of the olive she has eaten, more than 50 stubs of films seen with her,
her half eaten ice-cream cone, the tombala-set used for the eight consecutive New Years he spent at her house, the little china dog that sits on top of her familys
television and a total of 4,213 cigarette butts allegedly smoked by Füsun. Kemal’s fondness of filching has its genesis in The Silent House, Pamuk’s second
novel in 1983 and newly translated into English in 2012. Hasan the lovelorn in the novel once secretly look through the handbags of his beloved while she is
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swimming. Among her possessions; hair clips, cigarette, wallet, and suntan lotion, he swipes the green comb and keep it as memento for his unreturned love.
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The recurring images of darkness and snow in The Black Book conveyed by words such as “night,” “black”, “dark”, “blanket,” that speaks in a deep and
intense feeling talking about union and separation. In The Black Book the solitude of the night blankets
Galip’s heart and Galip’s state of feeling is intensified by the snow falling
“a sad heavy snow that seems to beckon him, that tugged his heart” BB, 53.
This snow that falls in the evening takes his heart to the “24 years old memory of life he’d missed” BB, 53. However, Galip primordial longing for
union takes place as he discovers that Rüya abandons him. In his search for his wife, Galip starts to realize that something is missing in his life and he has to fill
that part. His sole way to cure the emptiness inside him is to discover Celâl and live as Celâl. Galip first initial union with Celâl takes place one night at Celâ
l’s flat
when he starts to sleep at Celâl’s bed wearing Celâl’s pajamas BB, 245. Thus the setting of The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence
reveals the state of union as recognized in the Sufi tradition. The recurring image of night and darkness in the three novels in question is accompanied by the image
of snow particularly in The Black Book and Snow. The whiteness of the snow depicts the light that gives color to the blanket of darkness. It shows the harmony
of colors that represents black and white respectively. In Sufi tradition, black and white, light and darkness symbolize fana or the annihilation of the self and baqa,
114
See Orhan Pamuk, The Silent House, trans. Maureen Freely London: Faber and Faber, 2012.
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subsistence in the Divine Beloved or the Self.
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Theref ore “the existence is the
light, and thus when light makes its full appearance, all things disappear”
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2. Raki and The State of Drunkenness
