When our winter was weirdly warm, last month, it was delightful, but in that doomed sort of way, where you know that you are taking pleasure from something that is just wrong and you are bound to suffer from later. Like eating fried food. And indeed, I feel much more comfortable now that the weather is bitterly cold and I am miserable, and the natural order of February is restored. And although it’s horrible now, we did have that gorgeous ice storm to set the season off, followed by days of soft white snow drifting down like cottony confetti. So beautiful, and so peaceful.
It seemed like the right time to start reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow (In Turkish, Kar). Orhan Pamuk is one of those writers whom I can't read much of the time; to enjoy his work, I need a particular convergence of mind state, weather, other activities, and patience. But what better time than in the snow to read Snow?
What attracted me to this book, other than the weather and my general turcophilia, was the fact that it takes place in the forlorn Anatolian city of Kars, over a few days of snowbound isolation, trapped in this city to the far eastern edge of Turkey.
I am not sure I understood the novel, but I truly did understand why Pamuk chose to set it in melancholy Kars. I have been to Kars. I went there because—and this is the only reason foreigners travel there—it is the closest town to the abandoned medieval city of Ani, a beautiful ruined place of crumbling Armenian churches, caravanserai, and mosques that was a stop on the fabled Silk Road.
Ani sits on a bluff, below which a chilly river winds, and across the river is another country—now Armenia, but when I was there, it was still the Soviet Union, and for that reason it was necessary to request police authorization to visit the site, and to be accompanied by a licensed guide. No cameras were permitted there, no eating, no staring across the river, and no pointing. My companion George and I stood quietly and admired the tiny stone churches, and surreptitiously glanced at the other side of the river, where soldiers with rifles kept an eye on us from wooden watchtowers. The fields on the other side were glowing green and the river rushed deep below in the gorge, and I felt I had come to the very end of the earth and there was no farther for me to go.
After visiting Ani, we planned to move on, but I fell ill with some sort of flu, and we were stuck there in our tiny hotel room for several more days. I had a fever and felt almost delirious. George searched the city and somehow managed to find the only jar of Vicks Vap-O-Rub in all of eastern Anatolia. I got better, and we left for Ararat, which seemed oddly staid after Kars in delerium.
I understood Kars, and I also understood the snow. Falling snow creates an otherworld that is intimate and restful, but that keeps us distant. Like great beauty, it is for looking at and admiring, but not for being. Snow insulates and tucks us in, and makes us feel safe inside; it exhilirates when we go out, but soon it grows dangerous; there is always the siren call of warm sleep, which in the soft snow leads to death.
I was once on a fishing ship at night in winter in Alaska. One night, I watched as snow fell gently into the tiny island of the ship, appearing suddenly in the light from the black sky in white drifting flakes, sparkling as it fell. Some of it chanced to rest on the railings and riggings of the ship. But most of it danced and drifted on into the black, black sea that surrounded the ship, and was melted in an instant.
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