Orhan Pamuk - Istanbul: Memories and the City

ALSO BY ORHAN PAMUK

The Red-Haired Woman

A Strangeness in My Mind

The Innocence of Objects

The Nave and the Sentimental Novelist

The Museum of Innocence

Other Colors

Snow

My Name Is Red

The New Life

The Black Book

The White Castle

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Translation copyright 2005 by Maureen Freely

Introduction translation copyright 2017 by Ekin Oklap

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Turkish as Istanbul Hatiralar ve ehir in 2003 and subsequently published with additional photographs in 2014 by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Istanbul, Turkey. Copyright 2003, 2014 by Orhan Pamuk. This translation, excluding the introduction, originally published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2005.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pamuk, Orhan, [date] author. | Freely, Maureen, [date] translator.

Title: Istanbul : memories and the city / Orhan Pamuk ; translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely.

Other titles: Resimli stanbulHatralar ve ehir. English

Description: First American deluxe edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017018070 | ISBN 9781524732233 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525519959 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Istanbul (Turkey)Description and travel. | Pamuk, Orhan, 1952 | Authors, Turkish20th centuryBiography.

Classification: LCC DR 723 . P 3613 2017 | DDC 949.61/803092dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018070.

Cover photograph Cengiz Kahraman

Cover design by Chip KIdd

Ebook ISBN9780525519959

v4.1

a

To my father,

Gndz Pamuk

(19252002)

The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy.

AHMET RASIM

Introduction

Taking and Collecting Family Photos

In 1962, my father bought me a camera. My brother had been given one already, two years before. His was like a camera obscura, a black, metallic, perfectly square box, with a lens on one side and a glass screen on the other, on which you could see projected the image inside. When my brother was ready to transfer that murky image onto the film inside the box, he would push on the leverclick!and as if by magic, a photograph would be taken.

Taking a photograph was always a special occasion. It called for preparation and ceremony. In the first place, film was expensive. It was important to know how many exposures would fit on a roll, and the camera kept a running tally of photographs taken. We spoke of rolls and exposure counts as if we were soldiers in some ragtag army running out of ammunition; we chose our shots carefully, and still wondered whether our photos were any good. Every photograph required a degree of thought and deliberation: Does this look right? It was around this time that I began to think about the significance of the photographs I tookand why I took them at all.