Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul'

DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT READ AND PLAN TO READ ORHAN PAMUK's CLASSIC 'ISTANBUL'



The superb dramatic ending of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. To get the full effect, you have to read the book. Nevertheless, the context is that the young Pamuk is a very talented painter but gives it up temporarily after a painful breakup with his lover and muse. Meanwhile he drops out of architecture school and is having huge frequent fights with his mother who is adamant that there is no future or career for a painter in Turkey and that he must finish his architecture degree. Often he would leave the house in a rage after one of these fights and wander the streets all night:

"On my way up to Taksim, I'd stop for a moment to look at the lights of Galata in the half dark view, and then I'd head for Beyoglu to spend a few minutes browsing through the bookstalls at the beginning of Istiklal Avenue, and after that I'd stop for a beer and vodka in one of those beer halls where the television drowned out the noisy crowd, and smoke a cigarette, as everyone else was doing (I'd look around me to see if there happened to be any famous poets, writers or artists sitting nearby) and when I felt I was attracting too much attention from all those mustachioed men - because I was looking around me, and alone and had a child's face - I would go out again to mingle with the night. After walking down the avenue for a little I'd head into the back streets of Beyoglu and when I had reached Cukurcuma, Galata, Cihangir, I would pause to gaze at the holos of the streetlamps and the light from a nearby television screen flickering on the wet pavements, and it would be while peering into a junk shop, a refrigrator that an ordinary grocer used as a window display, a pharmacy still displaying a mannequin I remember from my childhood, that I would realize how very happy I was. The sublime, dizzying, pure anger I felt at this moment, after listening to my mother, would leave me after an hour of wandering around Beyoglu - or Uskudar, or the back streets of Fatih - wherever I went, as I got colder and colder, I'd be warmend by the furious flame of my brilliant future. By then my head would be light from the beer and the long exertion, and the mournful streets would seem to flicker as in an old film, a moment I would want to freeze and hide away - the way I used to hide a precious seed or a favourite marble in my mouth for hours on end - and at the same moment, I'd want to leave the empty streets and return home to sit down at my desk with pencil and paper to write or draw."

And then one day, the insight that resolves everything ...

"The streets of Beyoglu, their dark corners, my desire to run away, my guilt - they were all blinking on and off like neon lights in my head. I knew now that tonight my mother and I wouldn't have our fight, that in a few minutes I would open the door and escape into the city's consoling streets; and having walked away half the night, I'd return home and sit down at my table and capture their chemistry on paper.
"I don't want to be an artist", I said. "I'm going to be a writer".