Orhan Pamuk Quote

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streetsreturning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to desertedstations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and oneeye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch fromone ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; ofthe barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of thechildren who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered womenwho stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as theywait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; ofthe teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding upand down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunkentourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; ofthe 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 peekingthrough their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in theevening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils inthe 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 ferrieson winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of themarkets 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 thepelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearoldmansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides ofthe Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of thesmell 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 awoman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlledbrothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of theyoung girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holymessages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that aremissing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed andblackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum piecesin any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrowalleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whoselead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem likegateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of anevening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streetswho try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one evernotices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the OttomanEmpire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days wheneveryone 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 andeveryone sits at home fearfully awaiting the oϫcials; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE