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A Boyhood On The Bosphorus
Noel Malcolm reviews
Istanbul: Memories of a City
by Orhan Pamuk
"Turkey Welcomes You!" proclaims the website of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. "It is Istanbul's endless variety that fascinates visitors. The museums, churches, palaces, grand mosques, bazaars and sights of natural beauty seem innumerable. You can see why Istanbul is truly one of the most glorious cities in the world." And indeed you can see why: the web page is illustrated with dazzling photographs of palaces and beauty-spots, all of them drenched in golden sunshine.
None of which, of course, is untrue; the photos have not been faked. But tourist-brochure images seldom convey the atmosphere of a city, and can give little idea of the texture of ordinary life. And if that is the case with cities that are dominated by their tourist industries (Venice or Florence, for example), how much truer it must be of a huge metropolis where tourism barely scratches the surface.
The prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul 53 years ago; with the exception of a brief stint in New York he has never lived away from the city, and today he still lives on the top floor of the building that was his childhood home. He is a passionately loyal Istanbullu (the suffix "-lu" or "-li" is like the "-er" in "Londoner"), and is never happier than when poring over old photographs of the city or reading the faded cuttings of local newspapers. In his new book - part childhood memoir, part extended essay on Istanbul life - he describes, with a marvellously painterly eye for detail, what it is that he loves so much about this city. This is not the sort of detail, however, that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism would have in mind.
"I am speaking", he writes, "of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment-house entrances, their façades discoloured by dirt, rust, soot and dust; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ships' horns booming through the fog; of the dervish lodges that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unflinching under the pelting rain; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passer-by; of the fruits and vegetables, garbage and plastic bags and wastepaper, empty sacks, boxes and chests strewn across abandoned street markets on a winter evening…" That is just an extract from a listing that meanders across six pages. Each detail on its own is humdrum and unexceptional, but the cumulative effect is one of lyrical intensity, the performance of a set of virtuoso variations on the themes of cold, decay, neglect, disappearance and abandonment. All these details are, he explains, things that give rise to hüzün - an untranslatable word for a collective feeling of melancholy and nostalgia.
Hasty or hostile readers (including, no doubt, the men from the Ministry) might prefer a less untranslatable term for Pamuk's frame of mind: nostalgie de la boue, a perverse wallowing in dirt. And if all he had produced had been a hymn of praise to decrepitude, they might have a point. But this book does much, much more than that. It sets his fascination with the tumbledown world of backstreet Istanbul in two contexts: that of his own discovery of the city as a child, and that of the cultural history of postOttoman Turkey.
There was nothing decrepit about Orhan Pamuk's own childhood home - at least, not in physical terms. His grandfather had made a fortune in business, and although this was gradually frittered away by Orhan's father and uncles, there was plenty of it to fritter. Orhan was brought up in the "Pamuk Apartments", a five-storey block built and owned by the family: all the other inhabitants were uncles and cousins, plus an assortment of maids, cooks and caretakers.
From this world of wellfurnished rooms - glass-fronted bookcases, grand pianos laden with silver-framed photographs, and so on - little Orhan would venture forth with his mother to the sweet shop, the bread roll-seller, or the toy shop; sometimes a boatman would row them up the Bosphorus, or sometimes they would ride on the tram. Everything fascinated the boy, whose visual sense was stimulated as much by crumbling stone and decaying wooden buildings as by the coloured lightbulbs on the minarets or the chocolates in silver foil.
In his teens, while attending an expensive private school, he thought of becoming a painter, and spent long hours walking these streets, studying the play of light and shade and the effect of those sudden glimpses of the Bosphorus through the gaps between the buildings. His schoolfriends, meanwhile (mostly the sons of the nouveaux riches), spent their time driving their fathers' Mercedes to cafés where they could drink Scotch whisky and listen to American music. Their aping of a foreign world drew him, by contrast, to cherish more strongly those aspects of Istanbul that they were most keen to reject.
A similar dynamic, though a subtler one, was at work in his relations with his own family. Unlike the coarser nouveaux riches, they valued culture and education; but having lost touch with their own Ottoman past, they could think of no content for that culture except a hand-me-down West European one. In this, Pamuk thinks, they were typical of a generation which, even though it benefited in many ways from Atatürk's Westernising campaign, was nevertheless culturally and spiritually stultified by it.
Some people might react to such a situation by longing for a neo-Ottoman cultural revival; but that is not a real option, given the degree to which all modern Turks are now separated from their past. (They cannot even read anything from before the 1920s, since the old Arabic script is unintelligible to them.) Others might turn instead to some form of Islam; this is a real option for many, especially for those who have only recently moved to the big city from village life. For millions of middle-class Turks, however, this solution has no appeal whatsoever.
Orhan Pamuk has taken a different path. He accepts the loss of Empire, the decay of grandeur, and the failure, in petty ways, even to imitate competently the Western practices that have become such unquestioned models. For him, this is the authentic Istanbul, and because it is authentic, it deserves to be loved and celebrated. The same is true of his family, which he loves for all its faults - the faults being, as this book delicately insinuates, the same, ultimately, as those of the city itself.
This evocative book succeeds at both its tasks. It is one of the most touching childhood memoirs I have read in a very long time; and it makes me yearn - more than any glossy tourist brochure could possibly do - to be once again in Istanbul.
(SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 9.4.2005)
Noel Malcolm reviews
Istanbul: Memories of a City
by Orhan Pamuk
"Turkey Welcomes You!" proclaims the website of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. "It is Istanbul's endless variety that fascinates visitors. The museums, churches, palaces, grand mosques, bazaars and sights of natural beauty seem innumerable. You can see why Istanbul is truly one of the most glorious cities in the world." And indeed you can see why: the web page is illustrated with dazzling photographs of palaces and beauty-spots, all of them drenched in golden sunshine.
None of which, of course, is untrue; the photos have not been faked. But tourist-brochure images seldom convey the atmosphere of a city, and can give little idea of the texture of ordinary life. And if that is the case with cities that are dominated by their tourist industries (Venice or Florence, for example), how much truer it must be of a huge metropolis where tourism barely scratches the surface.
The prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul 53 years ago; with the exception of a brief stint in New York he has never lived away from the city, and today he still lives on the top floor of the building that was his childhood home. He is a passionately loyal Istanbullu (the suffix "-lu" or "-li" is like the "-er" in "Londoner"), and is never happier than when poring over old photographs of the city or reading the faded cuttings of local newspapers. In his new book - part childhood memoir, part extended essay on Istanbul life - he describes, with a marvellously painterly eye for detail, what it is that he loves so much about this city. This is not the sort of detail, however, that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism would have in mind.
"I am speaking", he writes, "of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment-house entrances, their façades discoloured by dirt, rust, soot and dust; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ships' horns booming through the fog; of the dervish lodges that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unflinching under the pelting rain; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passer-by; of the fruits and vegetables, garbage and plastic bags and wastepaper, empty sacks, boxes and chests strewn across abandoned street markets on a winter evening…" That is just an extract from a listing that meanders across six pages. Each detail on its own is humdrum and unexceptional, but the cumulative effect is one of lyrical intensity, the performance of a set of virtuoso variations on the themes of cold, decay, neglect, disappearance and abandonment. All these details are, he explains, things that give rise to hüzün - an untranslatable word for a collective feeling of melancholy and nostalgia.
Hasty or hostile readers (including, no doubt, the men from the Ministry) might prefer a less untranslatable term for Pamuk's frame of mind: nostalgie de la boue, a perverse wallowing in dirt. And if all he had produced had been a hymn of praise to decrepitude, they might have a point. But this book does much, much more than that. It sets his fascination with the tumbledown world of backstreet Istanbul in two contexts: that of his own discovery of the city as a child, and that of the cultural history of postOttoman Turkey.
There was nothing decrepit about Orhan Pamuk's own childhood home - at least, not in physical terms. His grandfather had made a fortune in business, and although this was gradually frittered away by Orhan's father and uncles, there was plenty of it to fritter. Orhan was brought up in the "Pamuk Apartments", a five-storey block built and owned by the family: all the other inhabitants were uncles and cousins, plus an assortment of maids, cooks and caretakers.
From this world of wellfurnished rooms - glass-fronted bookcases, grand pianos laden with silver-framed photographs, and so on - little Orhan would venture forth with his mother to the sweet shop, the bread roll-seller, or the toy shop; sometimes a boatman would row them up the Bosphorus, or sometimes they would ride on the tram. Everything fascinated the boy, whose visual sense was stimulated as much by crumbling stone and decaying wooden buildings as by the coloured lightbulbs on the minarets or the chocolates in silver foil.
In his teens, while attending an expensive private school, he thought of becoming a painter, and spent long hours walking these streets, studying the play of light and shade and the effect of those sudden glimpses of the Bosphorus through the gaps between the buildings. His schoolfriends, meanwhile (mostly the sons of the nouveaux riches), spent their time driving their fathers' Mercedes to cafés where they could drink Scotch whisky and listen to American music. Their aping of a foreign world drew him, by contrast, to cherish more strongly those aspects of Istanbul that they were most keen to reject.
A similar dynamic, though a subtler one, was at work in his relations with his own family. Unlike the coarser nouveaux riches, they valued culture and education; but having lost touch with their own Ottoman past, they could think of no content for that culture except a hand-me-down West European one. In this, Pamuk thinks, they were typical of a generation which, even though it benefited in many ways from Atatürk's Westernising campaign, was nevertheless culturally and spiritually stultified by it.
Some people might react to such a situation by longing for a neo-Ottoman cultural revival; but that is not a real option, given the degree to which all modern Turks are now separated from their past. (They cannot even read anything from before the 1920s, since the old Arabic script is unintelligible to them.) Others might turn instead to some form of Islam; this is a real option for many, especially for those who have only recently moved to the big city from village life. For millions of middle-class Turks, however, this solution has no appeal whatsoever.
Orhan Pamuk has taken a different path. He accepts the loss of Empire, the decay of grandeur, and the failure, in petty ways, even to imitate competently the Western practices that have become such unquestioned models. For him, this is the authentic Istanbul, and because it is authentic, it deserves to be loved and celebrated. The same is true of his family, which he loves for all its faults - the faults being, as this book delicately insinuates, the same, ultimately, as those of the city itself.
This evocative book succeeds at both its tasks. It is one of the most touching childhood memoirs I have read in a very long time; and it makes me yearn - more than any glossy tourist brochure could possibly do - to be once again in Istanbul.
(SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 9.4.2005)