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amy copies orhan pamuk
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....that I'm currently liking.
paragraphs 1-4
We were sailing from Venice to Naples when the Turkish fleet appeared. We numbered three ships all told, but the file of their galleys emerging from the fog seemed to have no end. We lost our nerve; fear and confusion instantly broken out on our ship, and our oarsmen, most of them Turks and Moors, were screaming with joy. Our vessel turned its bow landward, westward, like the other two, but unlike them we could not gather speed. Our captain, fearing punishment should he be captured, could not bring himself to give the command to whip the captives at the oars. In later years I often thought that this moment of cowardice changed my whole life.
But now it seems to me that my life would have been changed if our captain had not suddenly been overcome by fear. Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences. And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable. I have reached that moment now, as I sit at an old table writing my book, visualizing the colours of the Turkish ships appearing like phantoms in the fog; this seems the best of times to tell a tale.
Our captain took heart when he saw the other two ships slip away from the Turkish vessels and disappear into the fog, and at last he dared to beat the oarsmen, but we were too late; even whips could not make the slaves obey once they had been aroused by the passion for freedom. Cutting the unnerving wall of fog into waves of colour, more than ten Turkish galleys were upon us at once. Now at last our captain decided to fight , trying to overcome, I believe, not the enemy, but his own fear and shame; he had the slaves flogged mercilessly and ordered the cannons made ready, but the passion for battle late to flame, was also quick to burn out. We were caught in a violent broadside volley - our ship would surely sink if we did not give up at once - we decided to raise the flag of surrender.
While we waited on a calm sea for the Turkish ships to draw alongside, I went to my cabin, put my things in order as if expecting not arch-enemies who would change my whole life, but a few friends paying a visit, and opening my little trunk rummaged through my books, lost in thought. My eyes filled with tears as I turned the pages of a volume I'd paid dearly for in Florence; I heard shrieks, footsteps rushing back and forth, an uproar going on outside, I knew that at any moment the book would be snatched from my hand, yet I wanted to think not of that but of what was written on its pages. It was as if the thoughts, the sentences, the equations in the book contained the whole of my past life which I dreaded to lose; while I read random phrases under my breath, as though reciting a prayer. I desperately wanted to engrave the entire volume on my memory so that when they did come, I would not think of them and what they would make me suffer, but would remember the colours of my past as if recalling the cherished words of a book I had memorized with pleasure.
...and then he becomes a slave in 17th century Istanbul. the book seems to be about how intellectual knowledges and capacities are retained crossculturally. engineering, i suppose. with any luck, I will finish the book, my reading skills have been better than ever, of late.
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amy copies orhan pamuk
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I finished it... considering that I worked a whole bunch too, it didn't take me very long. see that? I got dumber and then I got smarter. once upon a time, i was a slow, careful reader.
as for the book, it was about a very interesting relationship between two men. i lost interest somehow when one or the other of them (their identities were somewhat confused) was appointed Imperial Astrologer. it then seemed to be about war and the Turkish court. perhaps I would like a longer version of the book!
a final passage:
We were hunting again; a nearby village had been evacuated, the locals were spread out through the forest, beating tin pots to drive boar and deer with all this clamour towards the spot where we waited with our horses and weapons. Yet by noon we had not seen even one animal. To relieve our weariness and the discomfort of teh midday heat, the sovereign ordered Hoja to tell them some of those tales that made him shiver at night. We were moving very slowly, listening to the barely perceptible roar of the tin pots coming from far away when, coming upon a Christian village, we halted. It was then I saw Hoja and the sultan point to one of the empty houses in the village and cajole a skinny old man stretching his head out of the door to come forward. A little earlier they had been talking about 'them' and the insides of their heads and now, when I saw the fascination on their faces and heard Hoja ask the old man a few things through the interpreter, I came closer, dreading the prospect. Hoja was questioning the old man, demanding he answer at once without thinking: what was his greatest transgression, the worst thing he had done in his life? The villager, in a Slav dialect the translator had difficulty interpreting for us, mumbled hoarsely that he was a blameless, innocent old man; but Hoja insisted with a peculiar vehemence that the old man should tell us about himself. Only when he saw that the sovereign was as attentive as Hoja did the old man confess that he had sinned: yes, he was guilty, he too should have left his house along with the rest of the village, he should have joined the hunt with his brothers and sisters as they chased the animals, but he was sick, he had an excuse, he was not healthy enough to run around in the forest all day, and when he gestured to his heart, asking forgiveness, Hoja became angry and shouted that he was asking about his real sins, not about that. The villager however could not understand the question our translator kept on repeating, he sorrowfully pressed his hand upon his heart, at a loss for anything else to say. They took the old man away. When the nest one they brought said the same things, Hoja flushed bright red. He told this second villager about my childhood transgressions, the lies I'd told in order to be loved more than my brothers and sisters and the sexual indiscretions I'd committed while studying at the university, as if he were describing the crimes of an unnamed sinner, giving examples of wickedness and vice to prompt the villager, while I listened, remembering with revulsion and shame those days we spent together during the plague but which I recall now with longing as I write this book. When the last villager they brought forward, a cripple, confessed in a whisper that he had secretly spied on women bathing in the river, Hoja calmed down a bit. Yes, you see, this was how they behaved when confronted with their sins, they were able to face up to them; but we, who supposedly understood by now what took place in the recesses of the mind, etc., etc. (ibid) I wanted to believe the sultan was not impressed.
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