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crowded places where I might see her ghost; and eventually I would mark these places, too, on my map of Istanbul. Istanbul was now a galaxy of signs that
reminded me of her ” MoI, 167.
2.1 The Pain of Separation
The state of separation is characterized by the pain endured by the lover. The lamentation of the lover as a result from the disconnectedness from their
beloved is a phenomenon that will lead them to transformation. In mystical point of view separation is necessary for transformation. As believed in spiritual
tradition “apparent destruction is really a transformation.”
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In Schimmel’s words “The pain of separation will lead the lover to purification, as ‘the human soul can
mature only by through suffering ’.”
146
The pain is the result of the disconnectedness from the beloved, the longing to reunite again or the attachment
of the lovers to the beloved that detach them from their personal and social life. Just like the attachment of Nightingale,
147
the “ideal soul bird who spends his life longing for
the rose”.
148
If he ever loses sight from her “he would lose his reason
145
René Guénon, Fundamental Symbols: The Universal Language of Sacred Science, trans. Alvin Moore Jr. Rev Oxford: Quinta Esentia1995, 145.
146
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 137.
147
Nightingale and the rose are the epitome of the relations between lover and beloved. The image of rose and Nightingale is one of the most recurring image in most of Sufi’s poems especially
those written by Attar, Rumi, and Hafiz. To get a comprehensive story of how Nightingale singing his praises to the rose see Attar, The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afham Darbandi Dick Davis
London: Penguin 1984 and Hafiz, The Green Sea of Heaven Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz, trans. Elizabeth T. Gray, JR Oregon: White Cloud Press, 2002.
148
Schimmel. 1982, 76.
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and his song would fail”.
149
As the rose is protected by “innumerable thorn, makes
the Nightingale eloquent, his longing can never be fulfilled in this li fe”.
150
Therefore, the pain is necessary in the Sufi tradition as a ladder to achieve happiness. The lovers’ longing for the pain is the common feature in mystic
tradition of all religions for in the pain of love that the lovers will taste the greatest joy in life. Pain, thus becomes the most im
portant ingredients of love, as it “has been granted by the Beloved, who will appear as the physician to heal the
wound”.
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The pain of separation presented in the three novels in this study depicts different elements and intensify each element differently. Yet the differences do
not affect the atmosphere of mystical experience as they are essentially similar. Pamuk emphasizes different element in his works as each novel is rich in its own
unique trait. The predicament of the lovers is strengthened by the metaphor of mirage: an image produced by hot water, an oasis, which seems real yet does not
exist. Mirage is a mix between the real and the illusory. The “mirage” in the three
novels in this study is defined as a state of pleasure that will emerge through the lovers overwhelming pain from the state of separation. Hence, the lovers will
endure both pain and pleasure in an alluring mirage. Thus, as the Sufi tradition is familiar with, gain will be achieved as reward of pain.
149
Attar, The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afham Darbandi Dick Davis London: Penguin 1984, 17.
150
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982: 76-7.
151
Ibid. 71.
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In the Museum of Innocence, similar illustration of the real and the illusory is evoked in Kemal’s agony in his search for his lost beauty, Füsun. Every single
day after his engagement, Kemal comes to Merhamet apartment hopes that Füsun will keep her promise to meet him at the same time as before. Yet, she never
appears and her absence consumes Kemal in a profound agony. However, each new day Kemal still has a hope that his beloved will eventually arrive. This
“hopeful expectation would ease the pain, an excitement wreathing my head down to the tip of my nose even as my heart ached and my stomach cramped” MoI,
146. When his reason forces him to accept that Füsun is not coming, the deadly pain inside his heart breaks him that he cannot do anything but throw himself onto
a bed like an invalid MoI, 147. In his yearning to see his beloved, Kemal becomes increasingly desperate.
His lovesick emerges from his mind and soul and dissolves into his body. This pain aches terribly from the upper left hand of his stomach and spread to his entire
body. Whenever Füsun does not come as he expects, the pain becomes fatal and he ends up lying like a corpse on his bed MoI, 148-150. The worst is that no
matter how painful his heart and even though his pain grows more intense and harsher, a tiny hope of seeing Füsun again sustains his schedule to wait for Füsun
every day at his apartment. Kemal believes that only by giving over to the pain and surrendering to its full intensity that he can come closer to Füsun MoI, 155.
Kemal” had learned that until [he] could harvest the pleasure of an illusion there was no sense in dispelling it, at the expense of [his]
aching heart” MoI, 166.
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Being tired of his endless predicament that ‘consumes’ his soul and normal
life, Kemal believes he has to stop coming to Merhamet apartment and to forget Füsun. He bans himself from the street and places that are full of reminiscence
and a brief history with Füsun that might sink him into the well of agony. Kemal draws a psychological map to those places and streets where he forbids himself to
come as it will intensify his suffering. His efforts come out of belief that it will cure his illness no matter how slow the remedy is MoI, 165.
Sadly, Kemal’s banishment from the streets and places is so reminiscent of Füsun instead of curing his ailment, he starts to see Fü
sun’s ‘ghost’ in crowded streets and at parties. The image of Füsun that appears out of nothing sends a
wave of joy that creeping from Kemal ’s heart and spread out to his entire body.
When he discovers that Fü sun’s figure he is running toward is not Füsun, he is
stupefied. The mirage of Füsun keeps appearing in every street and place where no potential that be reminiscent of Füsun. Fü
sun’s mirage brings a brief consolation as well as bitterness. Although bewildered between the joy and
sorrow for finding Fü sun’s ghost, Kemal still strongly believes that he will find
Füsun, and this belief is what bounds his soul to his body MoI, 168. As he confesses:
Still, I could not live without the occasional sweet feeling, and so I began to frequent those crowded places where I might see her ghost;
and eventually I would mark those places, too, on my mental map of Istanbul. Those places where her ghosts had appeared most often were
the ones where I was most regularly to be found. Istanbul was now a galaxy of signs that reminded me of her MoI, 167.
Kemal starts seeing mirage of Füsun in every place is a result of his overwhelming lamentation for losing her. These mirages offer poison and the
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antidote at once: it appears through pain and it gives joy through it. Thus the lover endures pain and pleasure in an enchanting mirage.
In The Black Book, Gali p’s lamentation to search for his lost wife is
depicted through the way he memorizes all the best time he shares with Rüya and Celâl. To ease the sor
row of missing his wife, Galip’s makes up story of his own daily life with Rüya and lets everyone know that he has a perfect life. In his search
for Rüya, Galip pretends that he is working on a murder case therefore he needs to track down the murderer. When he is working with other people he will call home
and make conversation with Rüya to convince his surrounding that Rüya is at home waiting for him.
Galip sinks into a profound lamentation when the reminiscence of his bitter- sweet memories with Rüya engulfs his mind and memory. Married to a beautiful
lady bring him joy and sadness at once. The sorrow that pierces his heart is caused by his inability to
fully understand Rüya. Galip has no idea about Rüya’s feeling as Rüya herself never reveals what she feels inside to him. Galip does never really
understand Rüya yet never does he dare to ask Rüya about her true feeling as he is scared of the effect of his question that may harm his marriage. Galip has
encountered separation from Rüya even when he was still together with her as Rüya never let him know her secret live. Thus what Galip encounters is defined in
Sufi tradition as shab-i-hijrán or the “Night of Separation” and rúz-i-wasl or the
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“Day of Union” for every separation is great with imminent union and in every union prospectively conceals separation.
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Although Galip is married to Rüya and lives with her, this state of union also bears separation as Galip feels that there is a gulf between them that can be
wider if he attempts to cross over to get closer to Rüya. Rü ya’s garden of memory
or secret life that she never reveals to Galip shows the position of God in Sufi tradition as a hidden treasure. As the saying in one of hadidth qudsi
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, “kuntu kanzan makhiyan…”
“I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known, so I created the world
”
154
However the most hidden truth of God is never revealed to the
lover as know the essence will ruin the lover. Even Moses “swooned at the vision of only so much as the Burning Bush”
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So every time “he wants to ask
his wife about her secret life, he feared the gulf that might open up between them after the question” BB, 55. All that Galip can do to understand Rüya and to
know her better is by inventing Rü ya’s image he always wants her to be or by
recalling all the memories he shares with her. Yet he never manages to get closer to ‘the real’ Rüya or to”the garden of Rüya’s memories, it was closed to him”
BB, 54. Just like God’s “greatest Name is hidden and known only to the
152
HáfÍz, The Green Sea of Heaven Fifty Ghazals from the DÍwán of HáfÍz, trans. Elizabeth T. Gray, JR Oregon: White Cloud Press, 2002, 21.
153
Hadith qudsi “holy utterances” is a scriptural category intermediate between the Qur’an and Hadidth. They were related to the prophet himself and do not belong to the body of Quranic
revelation.
154
One of Prophetic saying or hadidh qudsi, directly given to prophet Muhammad without the go between which is done by the archangel Gabriel.
155
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 9.
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innermost circles of the initiated.”
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As Galip’s longing to know the deepest part of Rüya which is hidden from him, it is the separation from Rüya that will lead
him unveiling Rü ya’s secret.
The occurrences of garden in The Black Book, are represented a s Galip’s
garden of memory or Rü ya’s memory or Rüya’s garden. In the first page of The
Black Book, Galip is remembering how Celâl writes in one of his columns that “memory, is a garden” BB, 3. In Sufi tradition word for garden is jannah means
both garden and paradise. According to Nurbakhsh, the present leader of the Sufi Nimatullahi tariqa
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, paradise symbolizes the station of theophanies, whether of effects, acts, attributes, or the essence.
“The earthly garden is signifying a worldly reality, which in turn signifies a Divine reality.”
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The garden of memory which is the core in The Black Book shows the worldly reality that will lead the lover to discover the Beloved once he is able to
unlock the lost memorygarden. It is only when Galip succeed to reinvent Celâ l’s
garden of memory that he eventually discovers Celâl and Rüya. Although he loses his own memory he assumes a new life, a new identity, Celâl.
Another feature in the state of separation is that the lover has to abandon his ‘self’ and gain himself in the Beloved. This state is called as fana, annihilation of
the self in the Beloved. It signifies that everything but the Beloved will vanish. As
156
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam New York: Columbia University Press 1982, 28.
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Sufi order originating in Iran whose name is derived from its founder Shah Nimatullah.
158
Lalita Sinha, Unveiling The Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun Gita Govinda Indiana: World Wisdom 2008, 46.
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the Qu ranic verses state: “All that is on earth is passing away fan-in. There
remains but the Countenance of your Lord of Majesty and Munificence”.
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P amuk’s oeuvres deal intimately with the idea of fan-in by the constant
concurring of missing objects depicted in his works.
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P amuk’s The Black Book, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence along with
his other novels also present missing object in their plot. Each novel possesses certain object that missing; in The Black Book, Rüya loses her green ballpoint that
Celâ l’s gives her, in Snow, the green poetry notebook in which Ka writes his
nineteen poems during his visit at Kars is missing after his demise, and in The Museum of Innocence Kemal loses one of
Fusun’s earrings that falls during their lovemaking. These missing objects try to speak that nothing but the Beloved will
remain. The rest will undergo destruction. In Snow, the pain of separation endured by Ka, the solitary poet takes place
when he finally unfolds his writing block. The pain of Ka’s separation envelops
him when he discovers his muse.
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His longing to be happy and his yearning to
159
Qur’an 55: 26-27.
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In The Silent House, the missing object is represented by the losing manuscript of Dr. Selahattin. These manuscripts are the materials that will make up his encyclopedia. Working tires
sly for years without fruitless, as Ataturk’s Westernization agenda replaced the alphabet from Arabic into Latin. The encyclopedia finds no way to publish as they are burned into ashes by
Fatma. Faruk, Dr. Selahatin’s grandson who works as historian attempts to collect his grandfather half-finished encyclopedia manuscript, but his effort comes to no avail. Faruk ends up thinking
that his grandfather’s encyclopedia will forever lost without a single trace. In his masterpiece, My Name is Red, the missing object is represented by the lost of the most important page of miniature
that will put copy a portrait of His Highness, which had been commissioned from a Venetian employ the style of Venetian painter with the Sultan image in the center.
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In the Sufi tradition, the definition of everything always has a relative meaning depending on its context. On the one hand something
is considered as an ‘end’ in the context of “the end of union”. On the other hand it may be seen as the beginning I the context ‘the beginning of an end”. In
mystical process, union and separation are preconditions of each other: there is union in separation
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resolve an identity crisis that has left him isolated in Frankfurt unable to write Snow, 8 are eventually healed. The happiness he is searching for silently
embraces him in a snowstorm whose silence intimates the inner peace he has been yearning for years.
An inner peace that leads him to sleep: “cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe
himself at home in this world” Snow, 4. Finding that his writing block is unlocked, instead of rejoicing it
Ka’s soul is thorn between two poles: on the one hand he believes that happiness does not
belong to a poor country like Kars, on the other hand it is in Kars, “the poorest,
most forgotten, and most ignored part of Turkey” that he finds his muse and is able to resolve his writing block. He defines happiness as
“finding another world to live in, a world where you can forget all this poverty and tyranny Snow, 326.
He convinces İpek that once they leave for Frankfurt they will live in immense happiness for the rest of their life.
As what he imagines when “The giant snowflakes wafting slowly through the glow were the stuff of fairy tales, and as
Ka watched them continue to fall, he had a vision of himself with İpek in
Frankfurt” Snow, 27. Either in Frankfurt or in Kars, Ka separates from the happiness he is
desperately longing for. As an elite Westernized Turk, Ka grew up in Nisantasi, Istanbul among society people and when he moves to Frankfurt he feels that he is
a member of the Western intelligentsia who shares similar God with the rest of the intellectual people there, des
pite the Westerners’ indifference towards him. Ka
and a separation in union. See Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla Majnun Gita Govinda Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008, 81.
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bitterly confesses that: “I may belong to the intelligentsia in Turkey,’ said Ka.
‘But in Germany I’m a worthless nobody. I was falling apart there” Snow, 103. Ka indicates that his experience of God is more Western than Islamic. Ka states:
The idea of a solitary westernized individual whose faith in God is private is very threatening to you. An atheist who belongs to a
community is far easier for you to trust than a solitary man who believes in God. For you, a solitary man is far more wretched and
sinful than non believer Snow, 61.
In Kars, a place he believes as poor and backward, he doubts that he can “believe in the same God as the uneducated- the aunties with their heads wrapped
in scarves, the uncles with the prayer beads in their hands”Snow, 97. Even though he confesses that he comes to Kars to find happiness but the idea that God
in Muslim world against the idea of modernizing the people in Kars makes him believe the same God as the rest of the people. In answering the sheikh, Ka states:
“ I’ve always wanted this country to prosper, to modernize….I’ve always wanted the freedom for its people, but it seemed to me that our religion was always
agains t all this”Snow, 96.
Unfortunately, the Frankfurt happiness that he believes is waiting for him and İpek seems fictional and even delusional when he is caught and beaten by Z
Dermikol head of a “Special Operations team who persuades Ka to reveal Blue’s hiding place. As Ka insists to hide what he knows about Blue, Z Dermikol hits
him with a piece of history way more destroying than a physical blow: Blue and İpek were lovers, a disheartening news that pierces Ka’s soul into devastating pain
he can barely manage. His dream of p rofound happiness to have with İpek in
Frankfurt is eaten by “this crushing, soul-destroying pain” Snow, 373. “Jealousy
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and remorse were defeating his every effort to think logically; his mind was in total disarray” Snow, 373. As he “left the National Theatre in distress” Snow,
373, he decides to betray Blue’s hideout. “The house is raided and “they have killed Blue” Snow, 389.
Ka ’s separation from his muse leads him astray as he cannot grasp
happiness and is unable to write a single poem. However, this separation provides him another form of bliss that is an individual experience and logic; privilege that
is not possible for him to acquire in a communal society of Kars. It is remarkable however, that Ka’s poems do not come all the way from concentration but which
he feels” are not his own creation” Snow, 100. Ka’s poems emerge as he explores to the impulses of his religious and attachments feelings as a result of
his encounters with local hosts of Kars. His first poem arrives after four years of silence when three religious
devoted high schools boys provoking him with question about his feeling of being atheist. These boys: Fazil, Mesut, and Necip worry that Westernization may lead
them unknowingly to atheism. Necip tells Ka a story about a school director who lea
rns from a dervish that he has the disease of atheism: “It seems you’ve lost your faith in God,’ he said. ‘What’s worse, you don’t even know it, and as if that
weren’t bad enough, you’re even proud of not knowing it’ Snow, 81. The boys’ fear of unknowingly becoming atheist as the idea of suicide by
devout headscarf girls terrified them. For them, religious belief must be absolutely certain: anything else entails a desire for suicide. Their heart that have special
space for the suicidal girls conflicting with their religious tradition saying that
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those commited a suicide similar to an atheist and thus they will not be able to enter the door of heaven. Therefore they want to satisfy their hunger of curiosity
whether an atheist is unhappy and wants to kills himself: ” Are you an atheist?’, asked Fazil, with imploring eyes. “And if you
are an atheist, do you want to kill yourself?” “Even on the days when I’m most certain that I am an atheist, I feel
no urge to commit
suicide,” said Ka Snow, 85. Ka’s meeting with sheikh Sadettin Effendi and their tête-à-tête about God
and how the ideals of God in his Western’s image is not found in Kars yet God in Kars can provide him with “a beautiful snow [falling] from the sky” Snow, 97,
the snow that reminds him of God. As he states: “The snow reminded me of God. The snow reminded me of the beauty and the mystery of creations; of the essential
joy that is life” Snow, 96. Thus, Ka’s nineteen poems are “mapped” into the snowflake, which has three axes: memory, imagination, and reason Ka said that
he was inspired by Bacon’s tree of knowledge Snow,261, 376. The snowflake is an expression of cosmic order and also a reflection of the fluctuating extreme
reality that Ka experiences. Yet, it symbolizes the crystalline pattern of Sufi tradition. The entire
axis in Ka’s poems reveals one of the feautures applied by Sufi poets to deliver message that everything is always coming in pairs.
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The poems of order and happiness are on the reason axis that in opposition of
sufferring poems. He puts childhood memories and some events he experiences at kars on the axis of memory together with Necip’s fear of being an atheist and the
night of the coup. A poem of love is put nearby a poem of jealousy, whereas a
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Please refers to page 42 for the discussion of Sufi symbolisms that always comes or reveals pairs.
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poem of happiness bordering to a poem of suicide, all these poems belong to imagination axis.
His poems however, “seemed to be a poem someone else has written” Snow, 98-99. All of these poems come to him “as if someone were
whispering the poems into his ears; back in Frankfurt, he could hardly hear them at all Snow, 257.
Ka’s concept of happiness is described differently from Kemal and Galip, and his perspective makes his predicament even worse. Kemal and Galip believe
that after all the agony they are suffering from losing their beloved eventually they will find profane joy with them. Ka, however discovers that happiness is
impossible as he always believes that pain will immediately follow his happiness. Unlike others, he lives in his own
“polar extremities of existence” he believes that hate follows love, evil comes after good,
pain ‘eats’ happiness: Ka had always shied away from happiness for fear of the pain that might
follow, so we already know that his most intense emotions came not when he was happy but when he was beset by certainty that his happiness would
soon be lost to him….Love equaled pain….Heaven and hell were in the same place. In those same streets he had played soccer, gathered mulberries,
and collected those player trading cards you got with chewing gum; it was precisely because the dogs turned the scene of these childish joys into a
living hell that the joys so keenly Snow, 340- 41.
In the end, Ka forsakes the happiness he discovers in Kars as he fails to embrace the companions of Kars’ residents and to admit that his ‘Frankfurt
happiness’ is a mirage that is gone once he gets closer to it. Ultimately, Ka’s separation from his muse is
his union with his ‘Frankfurt happiness’ takes him back to Frankfurt, all broken and alone.
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3. The State of re-Union