Istanbul Orhan Pamuk Quotes

The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.

Life can't be all that bad,' i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.

Hüzün does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Instanbul, it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.

If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too.

We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart

For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I’ve spent my life either battling with this melancholy or (like all İstanbullus) making it my own.

And before long, the music, the views rushing past the window, my fathers voice and the narrow cobblestone streets all merged into one, and it seemed to me that while we would never find answers to these fundamental questions, it was good for us to ask them anyway.

Benim için kitap okurken hala önemli olan anlamaktan çok, okuduğum şeye uygun düşler kurmaktır.

It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.

In the beginning the point was not to have a point, to escape the world in which everyone had to have a job, a desk, an office.

My fear was not the fear of God but, as in the case of the whole Turkish secular bourgeoisie, fear of the anger of those who believe in God too zealously(...) I experienced the guilt complex as something personal, originated less from the fear of distancing myself from God than from distancing myself from the sense of community shared by the entire city .

When you see a beautiful woman in the street, don’t look at her hatefully as if you’re about to kill her and don’t exhibit excessive longing either; just give her a little smile, avert your eyes, and walk on [1974]. Taking

Zengin olmak belki de sürekli bir "gibi yapmak" haliydi.(s.188)

Pour elle, aimer, c'était prendre tous les risques et donner notre vie pour quelqu'un, oui, l'amour était une chose de cet ordre. Mais dans la vie, cela ne se produisait qu'une seule fois.

With the engine stalled, we would notice the deep silence reigning in the park around us, in the summer villa before us, in the world everywhere. We would listen enchanted to the whirring of an insect beginning vernal flight before the onset of spring, and we would know what a wondrous thing it was to be alive in a park on a spring day in Istanbul.

I told him just so he wouldn’t be fooled by the bright lights of Istanbul into thinking that life was somehow easy.

Tužna projekcija života za pjesnika je primamljivija od samog života.

Whenever I find myself talking of the beauty and the poetry of the Bosphorus and Istanbul’s dark streets, a voice inside me warns against exaggeration, a tendency perhaps motivated by a wish not to acknowledge the lack of beauty in my own life. If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too. A

To be able to see the Bosphorus, even from afar—for İstanbullus this is a matter of spiritual import that may explain why windows looking out onto the sea are like the mihrabs in mosques, the altars in Christian churches, and the tevans in synagogues, and why all the chairs, sofas, and dining tables in our Bosphorus-facing sitting rooms are arranged to face the view.

Conrad,Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination however, requires that I stay in the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.

After a time, my hand had become as skilled as my eyes. So if I was drawing a very fine tree, it felt as if my hand was moving without me directly it. As I watched the pencil race across the page, I would look on it in amazement, as if the drawing were the proof of another presence, as if someone else had taken up residence in my body. As I marveled at his work aspiring to become his equal, another part of my brain was busy inspecting the curves of the branches, the placement of mountains, the composition as a whole, reflecting that I had created this scene on a blank piece of paper. My mind was at the tip of my pen, acting before I could think; at the same time it could survey what I had already done. This second line of perception, this ability to analyse my progress, was the pleasure this small artist felt when he looked at the discovery of his courage and freedom. To step outside myself , to know the second person who had taken up residence inside me, was to retrace the dividing line that appeared as my pencil slipped across the paper, like a boy sledding in the snow.

hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter’s day. Steamed-up windows make me feel hüzün, and I still love getting up and walking over to those windows to trace words on them with my finger. As I shape words and figures on the steamy window, the hüzün inside me dissipates and I can relax; after I have done all my writing and drawing, I can erase it all with the back of my hand and look outside. But the view itself can bring its own hüzün. It is time to come to a better understanding of this feeling that the city of Istanbul carries as its fate.

The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner—the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques—inflict heartache on all who live among them. These

I’ve never left Istanbul, never left the houses, streets, and neighborhoods of my childhood.

Masumiyet Müzesi, İstanbul'da öpüşecek bir yer bulamayan âşıklara sonsuza kadar açık kalacaktır.

In our household doubts more troubling than these were suffered in silence. The spiritual void I have seen in so many of Istanbul's rich, Westernised, secularist families is evident in these silences. Everyone talks openly about mathematics, success at school, football and having fun, but they grapple with the most basic questions of existence - love,compassion, religion, the meaning of life, jealousy, hatred - in trembling confusion and painful solitude. They light a cigarette, give their attention to the music on the radio, return wordlessly to their inner worlds.

Just after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (who later won the Nobel Prize) observed, in Istanbul, the ordinary and peaceable inhabitants of the city displaying great joy at the collapse of the Twin Towers. What was the explanation? ‘It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries.

To travel along the Bosphorus, be it in a ferry, a motor launch, or a rowboat, is to see the city house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, and also from afar as a silhouette, an ever-mutating mirage.

...i have in all honesty believed that two people with similar names must have similar characters, that an unfamiliar word - be it Turkish or foreign - must be semantically similar to a word spelt like it, that the soul of a dimpled woman must carry something of the soul of another dimpled woman i knew before, that all fat people are the same, that all poor people belong to a fraternity about which i know nothing, that there must be a link between peas and Brazil - not just because Brazil is Breziliya in Turkish and the word for pea is bezelye but also because the Brazilian flag has, it seems, an enormous pea on it....

Writers like Pierre Loti, by contrast, make no secret of loving Istanbul and the Turkish people for the opposite reason: for the preservation of their eastern particularity and their resistance to becoming western.

As in many other cities, money no longer had any value in Istanbul. At the time I returned from the East, bakeries that once sold large one-hundred drachma loaves of bread for one silver coin now baked loaves half the size for the same price, and they no longer tasted the way they did during my childhood.

Köpekler bizden olmayanı sezer, anlar. Onlarda bu haslet Allah vergisidir. Bu yüzden Avrupalıları taklit etmek isteyenler köpeklerden korkar. Osmanlı’nın belkemiği Yeniçerileri katlederek Batılılar’a bizi ezdiren II. Mahmut İstanbul’un köpeklerini de katletmiş, öldüremediklerini Hayırsızada’ya sürgün etmişti.

Whenever I think of these writers together, I am reminded that what gives a city its special character is not just its topography or its buildings but rather the sum total of every chance encounter, every memory, letter, color, and image jostling in its inhabitants’ crowded memories after they have been living, like me, on the same streets for fifty years.

After becoming engaged to my grandfather, and before marrying him, she did something rather brave in Istanbul in 1917—she went out with him to a restaurant.

Although everyone knew it as freedom from the laws of Islam, no one was quite sure what else westernization was good for.

Çünkü benim gibilerin daha sonra yaşayabileceği ikinci hayat, elindeki kitaptan başka bir şey değildir.

My fear, which I shared with everyone in the Turkish secular bourgeoisie, was not of God but of the fury of those who believed in Her too much.

Don’t let rich people make you feel ashamed. The only difference between us and them is that they got to Istanbul first and started making money before we did.

I've accepted the city into which I was born in the same way I've accepted my body and my gender.

We might call this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private.

Okul denen yerin aslında temel soruları cevaplamadığını, yalnızca onları hayatın gereği olarak benimsememize yardım ettiğini çıkarmıştım.

Evet, bütün dünya Türk’ün düşmanıdır, ama Türk’ün en büyük düşmanı Türk’ün kendisidir.

..These exhibitions, and the stories behind them, should also in due course have their own catalogs and novels. As visitors admire the objects and honor the memory of Füsun and Kemal, with due reverence, they will understand that, like the tales of Leyla and Mecnun or Hüsn and Așk, this is not simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul.

This was a far cry from the meritocratic Ottoman period, when only by dint of an education could a man of humble background hope to rise through the ranks, get rich, and become a pasha.

Why should we expect a city to cure us of our spiritual pains? Perhaps we cannot help loving our city like a family. But we still have to decide which part of the city we love and invent the reasons why.

I amused myself with mental games in which I changed the focus, deceived myself, forgot altogether what had been troubling me or wrapped in a mysterious haze. We might call this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather than private. Offering no clarity; veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a tea kettle has been spouting steam on winters day. Steamed-up windows make me feel hüzün, and I still love getting up and walking over to those windows to trace words on them with my finger. As I trace out words and figures on the steamy window, the hüzün inside me dissipates, and I can relax; after I have done all my writing and drawings, I can erase it all with the back of my hand and look outside. But the view itself can bring its own hüzün. The time has come to move towards a better understanding of this feeling that the city of Istanbul carries as its fate.

Like most Istanbul Turks I had little interest in Byzantium as a child. I associated the word with spooky, bearded, black-robed Greek Orthodox priests, with the aqueducts that still ran through the city, with the Hagia Sophia and the red brick walls of old churches. To me, these were remnants of an age so distant there was little need to know about it. Even the Ottomans who conquered Byzantium seemed very far away.

If we’ve lived in a city long enough to have given our truest and deepest feelings to its prospects, there comes a time when—just as a song recalls a lost love—particular streets, images, and vistas will do the same.

Eso que llaman familia cada día que pasaba me parecía más como un grupo de personas que aparentan ser felices acallando por un rato sus demonios interiores para que creer que son amadas y para sentirse tranquilas, cómodas y seguras

İstanbul'da, ağırlığı biraz değişse de, milyonlarca kişinin yarım yüzyıldır katık olarak yalnızca bu ekmeği yediğini hatırlatmak ve hayatın bir tekrar olduğuna, ama sonra her şeyin acımasızlıkla unutulduğuna işaret etmek de istiyorum.

Melling’s is an insider’s eye. But because the İstanbullus of his time did not know how to paint themselves or their city—indeed, had no interest in doing so—the techniques he brought with him from the West still give these candid paintings a foreign air. Because he saw the city like an İstanbullu but painted it like a clear-eyed Westerner, Melling’s Istanbul is not only a place graced by hills, mosques, and landmarks we can recognize, it is a place of sublime beauty.

The Istanbul in which they lived was a city littered with the ruins of the great fall, but it was their city. If they gave themselves to melancholic poems about loss and destruction, they would, if discovered, find a voice all their own.

My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for prosperity, and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives. To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half-smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at that very same moment to see a picture of him to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so that we could weave them into the present.When, in the tones ordinarily preserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tables and the walls, it seemed that she, like me, was pulled in two direction , wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savouring the ordinary life but still honouring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas-if you plucked a special moment from life and framed it, were you defying death, decay and the passage of time, or were you submitting to them? - I grew very bored with them.

In every garden, on every street, we see mothers holding tightly to their children’s hands (fifty years later, Théophile Gautier posited that Melling preferred painting women with children, finding them less unsettling and more deserving of respect than women walking alone).

Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Istanbul and write on its walls. It was both his public and his private view; it was what his heart intended as much as what his words had always meant to say. He said it to himself: “I have loved Rayiha more than anything in this world.

There are three types of buildings in Istanbul,” he used to say: (1) those full of devout families where people say their daily prayers and leave their shoes outside, (2) rich and Westernized homes where you can go in with your shoes on, (3) new high-rise blocks where you can find a mix of both sorts.

ESAELP GNITTIPS ON This mysterious decree would incite me to defy it and spit on the ground at once, but because the police were stationed two steps away in front of the Governor's Mansion, I'd just stare at it uneasily instead. Now I began to fear that spit would suddenly climb out of my throat and land on the ground without my even willing it. But as I knew, spitting was mostly a habit of grown-ups of the same stock as those brainless, weak-willed, insolent children who were always being punished by my teacher. Yes, we would sometimes see people spitting on the streets, or hawking up phlegm because they had no tissues, but this didn't happen often enough to merit a decree of this severity, even outside the Governor's Manson. Later on, when I read about the Chinese spitting pots and discovered how commonplace spitting was in other parts of the world, I asked myself why they'd gone to such lengths to discourage spitting in Istanbul, where it had never been popular.

Boo-zaa,” he cried when he was back out on the street. As he walked toward the Golden Horn, down a road that felt as if it were descending into oblivion, he remembered the view he’d seen from Süleyman’s apartment. Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Istanbul and write on its walls. It was both his public and his private view; it was what his heart intended as much as what his words had always meant to say. He said it to himself: “I have loved Rayiha more than anything in this world.

But it is these four heroes, whom I will discuss from time to time in this book, whose poems, novels, stories, articles, memoirs, and encyclopedias opened my eyes to the soul of the city in which I live. For these four melancholic writers drew their strength from the tensions between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to call East and West; they are the ones who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and western literature with the culture of the city in which I live.

Svako leto krajem avgusta i početkom septembra preko Prinčevskih ostrva preleću jata roda koja stižu sa severozapada, sa Balkana, spuštajući se na jug da tu provedu zimu. I sada sam izlazio u baštu dok su preletala jata roda kao u mom detinjstvu i zadivljen posmatrao odlučno i misteriozno putovanje "hodočasnika", čiji se lepet krila mogao čuti u tišini. Kad sam bio dete, dve nedelje po prolasku jata roda, s tugom bismo se vraćali brodom u Istanbul. Dok bih kod kuće čitao tri meseca stare vesti u novinama okačenim na prozore i požutelim od letnjeg sunca, osećao bih se opčinjen i razmišljao koliko vreme sporo prolazi.

Until I was ten, I had a very clear image of God; ravaged with age and draped in white scarves, God had the featureless guise of a highly respectable woman. Although She resembled a human being, She had more in common with the phantoms that populated my dreams: not at all like someone I might run into on the street. Because when She appeared before my eyes, She was upside down and turned slightly to one side. The phantoms of my imaginary world faded bashfully into the background as soon as I noticed them, but then so did She; after the sort of elegant rolling shot of the surrounding world that you see in some films and television commercials, Her image would sharpen and She would begin to ascend, fading as She rose to Her rightful place in the clouds. The folds of Her white head scarf were as sharp and elaborate as the ones I’d seen on statues and in the illustrations in history books, and they covered Her body entirely; I couldn’t even see Her arms or legs. Whenever this specter appeared before me, I felt a powerful, sublime, and exalted presence but surprisingly little fear. I don’t remember ever asking for Her help or guidance. I was only too aware that She was not interested in people like me: She cared only for the poor.

Come sapete la domanda che più spesso viene posta a noi scrittori, la domanda preferita è: perché scrive? Io scrivo perché sento il bisogno innato di scrivere! Scrivo perché non posso fare un lavoro normale, come gli altri. 
Scrivo perché voglio leggere libri come quelli che scrivo. 
Scrivo perché ce l'ho con voi, con tutti. Scrivo perché mi piace stare chiuso in una stanza a scrivere tutto il giorno.
 Scrivo perché posso sopportare la realtà soltanto trasformandola.
 Scrivo perché tutto il mondo conosca il genere di vita che abbiamo vissuto, che viviamo io, gli altri, tutti noi a Istanbul, in Turchia.
 Scrivo perché amo l'odore della carta, della penna e dell'inchiostro.
 Scrivo perché credo nella letteratura, nell'arte del romanzo più di quanto io creda in qualunque cosa. 
Scrivo per abitudine, per passione.
 Scrivo perché ho paura di essere dimenticato. 
Scrivo perché apprezzo la fama e l'interesse che ne derivano. Scrivo per star solo. Forse 
scrivo perché spero di capire il motivo per cui ce l'ho così con voi, con tutti. 
Scrivo perché mi piace essere letto.
 Scrivo perché una volta che ho iniziato un romanzo, un saggio, una pagina, voglio finirli. 
Scrivo perché tutti se lo aspettano da me.
 Scrivo perché come un bambino credo nell'immortalità delle biblioteche e nella posizione che i miei libri occupano negli scaffali. 
Scrivo perché la vita, il mondo, tutto è incredibilmente bello e sorprendente. 
Scrivo perché è esaltante trasformare in parole tutte le bellezze e ricchezze della vita. 
Scrivo non per raccontare una storia ma per costruirla. 
Scrivo per sfuggire alla sensazione di essere diretto in un luogo che, come in un sogno, non riesco a raggiungere. 
Scrivo perché non sono mai riuscito ad essere felice. 
Scrivo per essere felice.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

It was not Orhan and Şevket locked in deadly combat but my own favorite hero or soccer player versus my brother’s.

if you wanted to buy anything from Ligor, you’d lower a basket from your floor and then shout

down your order.

am sometimes hard-pressed to explain why I’ve stayed, not only in the same place but in the same building.

distinguish hearsay from what we’ve seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we “remember” our earliest life experiences, our cradles, our baby carriages, our first steps, all as reported by our parents, stories to which we listen with the same rapt attention

the hüzün the boy has carried with him since birth will lead the story into melodrama.

Beautiful though it is, I find the language of epic unconvincing, for I cannot accept that the myths we tell about our first lives prepare us for the brighter, more authentic second lives that are meant to begin when we awake. Because—for people like me, at least—that second life is none other than the book in your hand. So pay close attention, dear reader. Let me be straight with you, and in return let me ask for your compassion.

But as nothing, western or local, came to fill the void, the great drive to westernize amounted mostly to the erasure of the past; the effect on culture was reductive and stunting, leading families like mine, otherwise glad of republican progress, to furnish their houses like museums.

Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul’s fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.

This book is concerned with fate.

Taking our inspiration from an article on the proper way to walk in a city that appeared recently in the celebrated Parisian magazine Matin, we too should make our feelings clear to people who have yet to learn how to conduct themselves on the streets of Istanbul and tell them, “Don’t walk down the street with your mouth open” [1924]. It

After I made it my business to find out how much money people have been squandering on these frivolous and insanely ostentatious fireworks displays we’ve seen in every corner of Istanbul every night this summer, I had to ask myself if the people celebrating at those weddings might not have been happier—bearing in mind that we are now a city of ten million people—if the money had been spent on educating the children of the poor. Am I right or wrong [1997]? Especially

Tıpkı, daha oluşumunu tamamlamakta olan bir gezegenin yüzeyi gibi, üzeri beton, taş, kiremit, ahşap ve pleksiglas ve kubbeyle kaplı inişli çıkışlı şehir parçacıkları, sanki ağır ağır aralanacaklar ve karanlığın içinden esrarlı yeraltının alev rengi aydınlığı sızacaktı.

Eskiden İstanbul daha fakir, daha küçük, daha mutluydu deseler inanmazdım belki, ama kalbim böyle diyordu. Çünkü arkamda bıraktığım sevgilimin evi yerli yerinde ıhlamur ve kestane ağaçlarının içindeydi, ama kapıdan sordum bir başkası oturuyordu artık orada.

insanların yüzlerine baktıkça görüyorum ki ellerine daha cinayet işleme fırsatı geçilmemiş oldukları için pek çok kişi masum zannediyor kendini. Bu küçük talih ve kader meselesi yüzünden, insanların çoğunun benden daha ahlaklı ya da iyi olduğuna inanmak zor. Olsa olsa henüz cinayet işlemedikleri için biraz daha aptal suratlı oluyorlar ve bütün aptallar gibi iyi niyetli gözüküyorlar. Gözünde bir zekâ ışıltısı, yüzünde ruhundan yansıyan bir gölge gördüğüm herkesin gizli bir katil olduğunu anlamam için o zavallıyı öldürdükten sonra, İstanbul sokaklarında dört gün yürümem yetti. Yalnızca aptallar masumdur.

Yine de ama katilliğe alışmak zor. Evde duramıyorum, sokağa çıkıyorum, sokakta duramıyorum, öteki sokağa yürüyorum, sonra o sokaktan sonrakine yürüyorum ve insanların yüzlerine baktıkça görüyorum ki ellerine daha cinayet işleme fırsatı geçilmemiş oldukları için pek çok kişi masum zannediyor kendini. Bu küçük talih ve kader meselesi yüzünden, insanların çoğunun benden daha ahlaklı ya da iyi olduğuna inanmak zor. Olsa olsa henüz cinayet işlemedikleri için biraz daha aptal suratlı oluyorlar ve bütün aptallar gibi iyi niyetli gözüküyorlar. Gözünde bir zekâ ışıltısı, yüzünde ruhundan yansıyan bir gölge gördüğüm herkesin gizli bir katil olduğunu anlamam için o zavallıyı öldürdükten sonra, İstanbul sokaklarında dört gün yürümem yetti. Yalnızca aptallar masumdur.

Street vendors are the songbirds of the streets, they are the life and soul of Istanbul, he said.

The story spoke to them in just the same way that Oedipus’ murder of his father and Macbeth’s obsession with power and death speak to people throughout the Western world. But now, because we’ve fallen under the spell of the West, we’ve forgotten our own stories. They’ve removed all the old stories from our children’s textbooks. These days, you can’t find a single bookseller who stocks the Shehname in all of Istanbul! How do you explain this?

Life can't be all that bad. Whatever happens, I can always take along the Bosphorus.

If you know how to swim and manage to find your way up to the surface, you'll notice that for all it's melancholy, the Bosphorus is very beautiful, no less than life.

... to ''discover'' the city's soul in it's ruins, to see these ruins as expressing the city's ''essence'', you must travel down a long, labyrinth path strewn with historical accidents.

... what is important or a painter is not a thing's reality but it's shape, and what is important for a novelist is not the course of events but their ordering, and what is important for a memorist is not the factual accuracy of the account, but it's symmetry.

Bizim askerler Başbakan Menderes’i daha o zamanlar asmamıştı; o da sabah akşam İstanbul’da Kadillak arabasıyla geziyor ve yolunu kesen bütün eski evleri ve konakları yıktırıp geniş caddeler açtırıyordu.

Here among the old stones and the old wooden houses, history made peace with it's ruins; ruins nourished life, and gave new life to history.

Se spune ca vestitul scriitor francez Victor Hugo obisnuia sa urce de cele mai multe ori la etajul de sus al omnibuzelor cu cai de la Paris, colindand astfel orasul de la un capat la altul si studiind comportamentul concetatenilor sai. Ieri am facut si eu acelasi lucru si am ajuns la concluzia ca foarte multi dintre concetatenii nostri istanbulezi circula pe strazi foarte neglijent, izbindu-se necontenit unii de altii, ca obisnuiesc sa arunce pe jos bilete, cornete de inghetata ori coceni de porumb, ca pietonii circula pe sosele, iar masinile pe trotuare si ca toti locuitorii orasului sunt foarte prost imbracati, nu atat din saracie, cat din lene si ignoranta. Daca vom circula pe strazi ori prin piete respectand regulile de circulatie, la fel ca in Occident, nu asa cum ne trece prin minte ori cum ne vine noua, vom scapa de haosul care domneste in jur. Daca o sa ma intrebati insa cate persoane din acest oras cunosc regulile de circulatie, asta este alta poveste.

Mevlut had been in Istanbul for twenty years. It was sad to see the old face of the city as he had come to know it disappear before his eyes, erased by new roads, demolitions, buildings, billboards, shops, tunnels, and flyovers, but it was also gratifying to feel that someone out there was working to improve the city for his benefit. He didn’t see it as a place that had existed before his arrival and to which he’d come as an outsider. Instead, he liked to imagine that Istanbul was being built while he lived in it and to dream of how much cleaner, more beautiful, and more modern it would be in the future.

Каждый раз, когда я начинаю рассказывать о красоте Стамбула, Босфора и его темных улиц, некий внутренний голос говорит мне: ты, подобно писателям предыдущих поколений, преувеличиваешь красоту своего города, чтобы скрыть от самого себя изъяны собственной жизни. Если город представляется нам красивым и необыкновенным, значит, и наша жизнь такова. ...я каждый раз думаю, что неповторимым и уникальным город делает не его топография, не здания и не людские представления о нем, возникающие по большей части случайно, а совокупность случайных встреч его обитателей, живущих, как я, пятьдесят лет на одних и тех же улицах, их воспоминаний, слов, цветов и образов, накопленных их памятью. Говоря об источниках стамбульской печали – бедности и чувстве поражения и утраты, возвращаюсь к тому значению, в котором слово «хюзюн» употребляется в Коране. Но печаль для Стамбула – не «болезнь, от которой можно вылечиться» и не «беда, из которой нужно выбраться». Это выбор, сделанный по доброй воле. Печаль не только парализует волю стамбульца, но и даёт ему замечательное оправдание. Большинство из них приобрели капиталы не благодаря уму, способностям или трудолюбию, а в результате счастливого стечения обстоятельств или какого-нибудь мошенничества, о котором им хотелось бы за быть. Они понимали, что ихбудущее зависит не от них самих, а от того, на сколько сохранны будут их сбережения. Находясь в обществе людей, по лучивших, как и они сами, высокое положение в обществе исключительно благодаря деньгам, они чувствовали себя увереннее и спокойнее. Возможно, в этом и было моё счастье — когда любящие меня люди подавляли своих внутренних демонов, и я мог позволить вовсю резвиться своим.

تظهر مدينة المرء احيانا وكأنها مكان غريب. ستغير الشوارع التي كانت تشبه البيت لونها فجأة ؛ سأتأمل الحشود الغامضة التي تحتشد بجانبي وأتذكر فجأة انهم كانوا يسيرون هنا منذ مئات الأعوام . تصبح هذه المدينة بحدائقها الموحلة ‘وساحاتها الخربة‘ وأعمدتها الكهربائية ‘ ولوحات الإعلانات في ميادينها ‘ ومبانيها الخرسانية الرهيبة مكانا خاويا -خاويا حقا- مثل روحي. قذارة الشوارع الجانبية ‘ الرائحة العفنة المنبعثة من صناديق القمامة المفتوحة ‘ المطالع و المنازل وحفر الأرصفة ؛ كل هذا الاضطراب والفوضى ؛ الشد والجذب اللذان يجعلان هذه المدينة بهذه الصورة - وأترك لأتساءل في حيرة ان كانت هذه المدينة تعاقبني لأنني أضيف الى قذارتها ‘ لأنني هنا عموما . حين تبدأ سوداويتها تتسرب الي ومنى اليها‘ ابدأ في الإعتقاد أنه ليس لدي ما أقوم به ؛ أنتمي مثل المدينة‘ للميت الحي‘ أنا جثة ما زالت تتنفس ‘ حكم علي بالسير في شوارع وارصفة لا تذكرني الابقذارتي وهزيمتي

لماذا يجب ان نتوقع من مدينة ان تعالجنا من الامنا الروحية ؟ ربما لأننا لا نستطيع إلا أن نحب مدينتنا مثلما أحببنا عا ئلتنا . ولكن يجب علينا أن نقرراي جزء من المدينة نحبه ولماذا نحبه

هناك كثيرون في اوروبا اصبحو فنانين لأنهم اعتزوا بأنفسهم وكانوا جديرين بالإحترام . إنهم في اوروبا لا يعتبرون الفنان حرفيا أو نشالا ‘ انهم يعاملون الفنانين كأشخاص متميزين . لكن هل تعتقد حقا انك تستطيع ان تكون فنانا في بلد مثل هذا وتظل محتفظا باعتزازك بنفسك؟ أن يتقبلك هنا أناس لا يفهمون عن الفن ‘ وان تجعل هؤلاء الناس يشترون أعمالك ‘ سيكون عليك أن تتملق الدولة والأثرياء ‘ بل والأسوا من كل هؤلاء ‘ الصحفيين انصاف المتعلمين . هل تعتقد انك على استعداد لذلك؟

لماذا كنت اجد متعة ‘ في تلك اللحظات من التعاسة والغضب ‘ في الجولات الليلية في الشوارع المهجورة في صحبة احلامي وحدها؟ لماذا فضلتُ ‘ بدلا من مشاهدة اسطنبول الغارقة في الشمس على البطاقات البريدية التي أحبها السائحون كثيرا ‘ الأماكن شبه المظلمة في الشوارع الخلفية والأمسيات والليالي الشتوية الباردة و أشباح الناس الذين يمرون في ضوء المصابيح الشوارع الخافتة ‘ مشاهد الحصى ووحدتها؟

وفي تلك الفترة انتهت طفولتي ‘ واكتشفت أن العالم أعقد وأصعب وأو سع بشكل مزعج مما توقعت . قضيت طفولتي كلها مع عائلتي المتشابكة داخل منزل ‘ في شارع ‘ في حي كان بالنسبة لي ولكل من عرفتهم مركز العالم . وإلى أن التحقت بالليسيه لم يفعل تعليمي شيئا ليحررني من وهم مفهوم أن قلب عالمي الشخصي و الجغرافي وضع ايضا المعايير لبقية العالم . واكتشفت في الليسيه أنني في الواقع لم أعش في مركز العالم و أن المكان الذي عشت فيه - وكان ذلك أكثر إيلاما - لم يكن منارة العالم . وبعد أن اكتشفت هشاشة مكاني في العالم واكتشفت اتساع العالم في الوقت نفسه ‘ أحسست أنني أكثر وحدة وضعفا مما كنت

كانت الجمهورية الجديدة ‘ حين سقطت الإمبراطورية العثمانية ‘ واثقة من هدفها إلا أنها لم تكن واثقة من هويتها ؛ وقد اعثقد مؤسسوها أن الطريق الوحيد للإنطلاق بها هو إنشاء مفهوم جديد للتركية ‘ وكان هذا يعني نطاقا معينا يفصلها عن بقية العالم . كانت هذه نهاية العصر الإمبراطوري ‘ اسطنبول العظيمة متعددة الثقافات واللغات ؛ ركدت المدينة وخلت وصارت بلدة احادية اللغة مملة بالأبيض والأسود

Had I been told Istanbul used to be a poorer, smaller and happier city, I might not have believed it, but that’s what my heart told me.

I thank Allah that, I the humble tree before you, have not been drawn witch such intent. And not only because I fear that if I'd been thus depicted all the dogs in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.

It is no more possible to take pride in these neglected dwellings, in which dirt, dust and mud have blended into their surroundings, than it is to rejoice in the beautiful old wooden houses that as a child I watched burn down one by one.

Losing myself inside my reflections came to be the ''disappearing game'' and perhaps I played it to prepare myself for the thing I dreaded most... I knew or sure that, one day, my mother would disappear too.