All language subtitles for Orhan Pamuk A Strange Mind BBC Imagine 2018 720p HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

This programme contains scenes which
some viewers may find upsetting

VOICE SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE

"He asked if it were possible to
make up a story that had no moral or

"meaning.

"We discussed how the ideal story
should begin innocently,

"like a fairy tale..."
DISTANT SIREN

"..be frightening like a nightmare
in the middle and conclude sadly,

"like a love story ending in
separation."

"Somewhere in the streets of
Istanbul, there lived another Orhan,

"so much like me that he could pass
for my own twin.

"I'm nothing but a corpse now.

"A body at the bottom of a well.

"Though I drew my last breath long
ago and my heart has stopped

"beating, no-one apart from that

"vile murderer knows
what's happened to me."

Orhan Pamuk is one of the few Turks
known far beyond their country,

along with the moderniser Ataturk
and today's iron fist,

President Erdogan.
CHORAL MUSIC

Pamuk was thrust to fame by two
momentous events.

SHOUTING

He was put on trial for speaking out

about the fate
of Turkey's Armenians...

..and he won the Nobel Prize
for Literature.

APPLAUSE

You have made your native city an
indispensable literary territory,

equal to Dostoevsky's St Petersburg,
Joyce's Dublin or Proust's Paris,

a place where readers from all
corners of the world can live
another life

just as credible as their own.

Pamuk's own sense of leading a
double life, and the tensions he

lives under, spill over into a
museum he's created,

a museum of history,
mystery and longing.

CROWS CAW

This is the story of a writer's love
affair with his changing city.

"In a city, you can be
alone in a crowd.

"In fact, what makes the city a city
is that it lets you hide the

"strangeness in your mind
inside its teeming multitudes."
CATS MEOW

DOOR KNOCKER

Oh, hello! Hello!
LAUGHTER

Very nice to see you. Great to see
you. Great to be here.

Please, come in. Thank you.

My God, what a view!

But it's not sharp today.

I like Istanbul's winter
better than summer.

Why? Probably because of my
childhood.

I like the black and white Istanbul,
the melancholic Istanbul.

Around early 2000, this was only
an office, then...I was married

then, and I used to walk here, just
like every man had an office,

come to the office, go back.

But after political pressures,
death threats,

the Turkish security police
advised me,

why don't I live in the same place
where I write?

Which I also believe
good police advice,

because if you write in the same
space that you have your sleep,

then your dreams
are combined with the texts.

Which I'm...
HE LAUGHS

That is, that's
such an Orhan line,

"the dreams are combined with the
texts"!

Yeah, or intertwined with the texts.

I like it when you're dreaming, and
I wake up always after...

..like my father, after the age
of 50, I never have eight hours of
sleep,

I wake up in the middle of the
night, and with my pyjamas on,

I tick, tick, tick,
sit at my table.

And then I have also this.

What's the name of that building?
Cihangir Mosque.

Before this,
there was a monastery here.

Istanbul was only there.

The Topkapi is there, of course.

Then there was not even a road - you
come from there with a boat.

Our conservative government,
although they're conservatives,

they are destroying a lot of old
buildings,

they are destroying our history.

But the only thing they're
preserving are the mosques.

But they don't care about the rest.

They don't think that history,
our identities,

are related to old neighbourhoods,
old architecture.

But I don't want to complain.
Look at this.

You don't want to complain,
but you ARE complaining.

This is very contradictory. Yes.

This is your way. Yes, this is
the balance of truth in my life!
LAUGHTER

I want to capture
the beauty of the life,

but how can you not complain when

you see they are
destroying that beauty?

What is the novel
you're currently writing?

I'm writing a historical novel that
takes place in 1900,

and there is plague, Ottomans,
Europeans, imposition of quarantine.

There is also boys and girls and
love and the richness,

complexity of life
in my part of the world.

Quarantine is a horrible thing.

People come to your house - "Just
leave your house, we're burning

"this, we're burning that!"
A Turkish doctor would want

quarantine, so that he saves the
lives of his people,

while the people DON'T want that.

I like these ironies.

Saving the lives of people who hate
you, who don't want you,

who don't want your ideas,
your science.

And this is the decline
of Ottoman Empire -

even the normal person in Ottoman
Empire understood that the empire

would not live long.
So, also, this feeling of

decline, death,

Europe is doing so much and we
cannot produce or this or that...

These are my subjects.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

"An old pharmacist was suffering
from insomnia and memory loss.

"He invented a drug he hoped would
cure him of his affliction.

"And it did.

"This caused a certain furore -

"naturally people were excited at
the idea that a Turk had finally

"invented something.

"But we were never to know if,
having cured himself of insomnia,

"he also found his way back to the
heavenly garden of memory,

"for the old pharmacist slept on
and on, never to wake again."

In my early years,
I trashed Ottoman culture,

till I went to New York and I was

influenced by the vast
American museums,

university libraries.

Then I began to ask myself,
"Well, what is my identity?"

You grew up here in this
extraordinary city,

and yet you have to go to America to
discover that there is a history.

Yes.

After that, I paid attention to old
culture and avant-garde literature

as well.

A person who was, say, reading
TS Eliot and also Ottoman poetry

was the ideal for me.

Pamuk's early book, The White
Castle, was about just this -

the meeting and merging of east and
west, Ottoman and European.

A Western slave has an Eastern owner
who wants to learn all he knows

about science.
They gradually swap roles.

There are no Eastern persons,
there are no Western persons,

there are no secular persons,

there are no heavily fundamentalist
or religious persons -

we all have it in our hearts.

In his breakthrough book, My Name Is
Red, Pamuk blends Ottoman history,

the murder mystery and the
post-modern.

In the 16th century, the Sultan's
painters at the palace illustrate

books with jewel-like stylised
miniatures, like these.

This is one of the scene of scenes
that is imitated all the time,

all the time. They feel threatened
but intrigued by the new art

infiltrating from the West, with its
realism and perspective.

The Venetian artist Bellini was sent
to the Sultan's court.

Bellini does a painting of a scribe.

Ottoman miniaturist.
Look at that painting.

And then they do
a Muslim version of Bellini.

They put them together and copied -
look at the hand.

They added something here, right?
Yeah. What have they added?

They added a miniature.

"If, under the influence
of the Franks, we paint, embracing

"our individuality, we might
resemble ourselves,

"but we won't be ourselves."

TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS

So, this is the outer wall of
Topkapi Palace.

Yeah.

I remember the first time that I was
around here,

because it was something
interesting and strange.

Maybe I liked the "otherness".

"Death occupied my mind -

"the silence of death -

"but as I passed through the gate
where countless pashas had been

"executed, the guards acted as if
they didn't even see us.

"My parents bought some
basic pocket books,

"one of which was about Ottoman art,

"and I used to copy the Ottoman
miniatures.

"When I was 13, I could tell the
difference between 16th century and

"18th-century miniatures."

A murder scene.

Between the ages of seven and 22, I
thought that I would be a painter.

The desire to paint never stopped.

But I killed, in a way, killed the
painter in me, and started writing.

"You will examine books that no-one
else has seen,

"you will gaze upon incredible
pictures and pages of gold, and like

"hunters, you will track the spore
of your prey - the murderer."

I'll show you the places that matter
to me for my novel. Yeah.

"I am a tree and I am quite lonely.

"I weep in the rain.

"For the sake of Allah, listen to
what I have to say.

"I don't want to be a tree,
I want to be its meaning."

This was built in...

It's never one century.
Everyone adds something.

But what counts is these
courtyards - the more you go in,

the more you're at the heart
of the palace.

In 1995, I'm writing My Name Is Red.

I came here. I was not that famous
then, and a guy said,

"Aren't you Orhan Pamuk?"
I was not that famous.

"Yes." "Oh, are you going to write a
book set here?"

And I said a bit nervously, a bit
feeling upset about it, and I said,

"Yes!"
HE LAUGHS

That day, I entered the Treasury,
because, in my book,

they also entered that place.

"We fearfully and silently,
as in a dream, passed the Treasury."
CLOCK TICKS

"I felt that I'd seen this place
before and knew it well.

"Yes, I was in the presence of the
head treasurer -

"he was gazing upon the
illustrations that rested on a

"reading table, where the clerk had

"placed them after
taking them from me."

CLOCK CHIMES

"The pictures remained
with the head treasurer,

"and I passed through
the Gate of Salutation,

"which had earlier felt like the
gate of Heaven."

It's problematic, displaying
miniatures -

once they're exposed to light,

they die, they fade away.

This place always
motivates my imagination.

I like old things.

And not because old things
represent, for me, national

identity, national past - but they

evoke other worlds, other places,

and also places that I feel I have
strong affinity to,

but I don't know why.
And my novels are also about that.

My flat is there,
right at Cihangir Mosque.

As I showed Topkapi from my flat,

now I'm showing you
my flat from Topkapi.

SHIP HORN BLOWS

"Just as the doors of houses are
closed of an evening and the city is

"left to darkness,
painting was also abandoned.

"It was mercilessly forgotten that
we'd once looked upon our world

"quite differently.

"The miniaturists did not
grow angry and revolt,

"but like old men who quietly
succumbed to an illness,

"they gradually accepted the

"situation with humble grief
and resignation."

Freud says, what is repressed
comes back in disguise.

I am the past of Turkey coming back

in postmodern clothes.

Living in this city for 60 years is
seeing everything change,

everything change,
everything change.

Especially in our neighbourhoods,

we used to play with
my brother, this game.

"So, what was this shop before?"
"Something, a sandwich shop."

"But before that?" You know,
"A shoe shop."

"Before that?" "A bank."
"What about before that?"

"Oh, yes, that...!"

Living in a city, after a while,
you learn everything,

and that's your life.

MELANCHOLY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

Pamuk's secular,
upper-middle-class family saw

themselves as looking to the future
and to Europe.

They were followers of Turkey's
modernising leader, Ataturk,

and sent their children to
westernised schools.

They all lived in this upmarket area
of Istanbul, Nisantasi.

It's unrecognisable now from those
days - though their house still

stands. Welcome! Hello!

I'm here to greet you
in your own home!

This is my daughter. Hello. Very
nice to meet you, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.

We are now in front of the family
apartment.

I lived here a lot of years,
maybe 30 years. But it's...

..it has, full of so many memories.

Isn't it strange to have a building
named after you?

OK, it's a bit embarrassing, but let
me explain,

that's the tradition here.

The family name was put in front of
the apartment building as a sort of

address. This is a very posh area,
very upmarket area, isn't it?

Yes. Yes, that's one of the reasons
that I'm not living here.

The spirit of the place is lost.

It used to be old two-storey and
three-storey-high buildings.

A lot of consulates, too,
here, gardens...

There used to be wooden houses here,

then those houses
were all torn down.

What's your memories
of this building?

During my childhood, we lived in
another apartment building, just one

street away. We visited relatives

here and I knew that it was very
central to my father's work,

especially for
The Museum Of Innocence,

and The Black Book.

"Memories you thought you'd lost
forever came flooding back into your

"mind - memories you'd
forgotten you forgot.

"It's like being a child again and
pulling out an old cabinet to find

"behind it all these coloured
pencils,

"combs and lavender marbles you'd
forgotten you lost."

This is probably my
first photo in my life.

This is my father.
HE CHUCKLES

These are all you, yeah? Yes!

This is my mother and my brother.

I'm not jealous of their intimacy,
Alan. Really?!
LAUGHTER

This is at the balcony
of Pamuk Apartments,

and one of these...these buildings
are still there.

"We lived on the fourth floor, but I
had the run of the entire building

"from the time I was old enough to
climb off my mother's lap,

"and can recall that on each floor
there was at least one piano.

"When my last bachelor uncle put his
newspaper down long enough to get

married and his new wife moved into
the first-floor apartment from which

"she was to spend the next
half-century gazing out of the

"window, she brought
her piano with her."

Who is that? This is me.

"No-one ever played on this piano,
or any of the others.

"I assumed pianos were places
for exhibiting photographs."

My grandfather died early.

My grandmother was the powerful
person carrying a set of keys and

shouting at everyone and scolding,

although she never left the
apartment building.

But she was controlling
the whole population,

and her cook was the cook
for the whole family.

He would shout,
"The dinner is ready!"

And then you would hear all the
uncles, cousins, various floors,

would hear that the family's
gathering for dinner.

I loved that!

This was family life, normal life.
Family life is always, for me,

fighting, arguing, shouting.

These photos that I'm showing you
are actually taken, were taken

in the years when family were
troubled in business.

My father and my uncles were losing
a lot of money, and my grandmother

was crying all the time.

But it also...

..but they continued the sort of
fancy family life we had.

And my mother tells me that I am
always an optimistic person,

open to the world, that's how I was.

And after so many intimidations
and drama,

I'm still in a happy morning day,

open to the world and happy, and

frankly believe that
everything will be fine.

This is the sad Orhan -
probably there are some worries,

I know what's in my head.
I still have this chemistry, angry,

"I'll have revenge," "I'll show
you, I'll show you!" I'm saying.

I know what I'm thinking.
I'm sometimes like that now!

Shall we go upstairs?

"I'll give you something back!

"Agh...!"

So, this is my archive...
Your archive.

Then we go here.

My cousins, my grandfather,

my father, uncles, all had
mathematical minds.

I was terrorised with my uncle
asking me mathematical quizzes,

even when he catches
me in the stairs.

Maybe I wanted to be an artist to
run away from the terrors of

mathematics. For me, a house is

where you should have
access to your library.

"Sitting rooms where not meant to be
places where you could hope to sit

"comfortably."
CLOCK TICKS

"They were little museums designed
to demonstrate to a hypothetical

"visitor that the
householders were westernised."

His Museum Of Innocence is both a
novel about obsessive love and a

real museum in Istanbul,

which displays all the objects which
the characters in the novel touch,

see and hear.

It's a collection of
objects of desire.

When I was making the museum, every
day with my bodyguard behind me,

I walked this 11-minute walk.

And that was a happy period of my
life, because I was not writing,

I was working with a group, group of
artists, to finish the museum.

I didn't feel guilty
about not writing.

I was happy in that I have an aim,
an artistic aim,

I am accomplishing something and
doing with other people.

I like working with other people.
In the end, I like being in crowds.

He put the money from winning the
Nobel Prize into the museum.

OK, here we are -
Museum Of Innocence, aha!

CLOCK TICKS

As if in a dream, the museum merges
Orhan's own early life,

the lives of the thwarted lovers
in his novel,

and that of Turkey in the
20th century.

"It was the happiest moment of my
life, though I didn't know it.

"Had I known,
had I cherished this gift,

"would everything have turned out
differently?

"Yes - if I had a recognised this
instance of perfect happiness,

"I would have held it fast and never
let it slip away."

LIVELY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

"While I waited for my mother to
notice me,

"I would sit at her dressing table
and fiddle with her perfume bottles,

"lipsticks, fingernail polish,

"Colognes, rose water
and almond oils.

"I would rummage through the
drawers, play with the assortment of

"tweezers, scissors, nail files,
eyebrow pencils, brushes,

"combs and various other sharp,
pointed instruments.

"I'd look at the baby photographs of
me and my brother that she had slid

"under the pane of glass
on the table."

My uncle had an American Dodge.

D-O-D-G-E.

And he would give the key of the car
to my father,

and my father would put us in the
car and we would go to Bosporus,

every Sunday, and my father
would take a camera.

My love of Bosporus
comes from this.

It's a happy family day,
we stop and buy fish,

we listen to, Sunday,
some music some place.

I loved it when he cracked jokes,
and he was smarter than any of us.

And, in fact,
I wanted to be like him.

These are photos that I shot.

I was happy about this picture
because very rare my mother

embraced, touched my father like
this. A romantic photo.

There is a sadness with my
mother and with my family,

first because my father
was disappearing.

He was not around.

And the reason for this, that, erm,
he ran away with other woman,

to tell the truth.

And then my mother was left
with my father's side.

So my mother was living with my
grandmother, with my paternal

cousins,
with my father's brothers,

with my father's sisters,
while the father was absent.

My mother and father sometimes
would intensely argue.

Tensions upset me. I preferred that
when the tensions express,

they had a fight, and then one of
them disappears and then we are left

with the other. Though I want this
person, my father or my mother,

back, they would treat us better
when they had a fight!

LAUGHTER

They would go to different places
and leave us with my grandmother.

Sometimes they would
even separate us.

And then I wanted to return back to
our house and dream of the other

Orhan who was left there.

It was the idea of my double, which
is in German called doppelganger.

ATMOSPHERIC CHORAL MUSIC

"On winter evenings, walking through
the streets of the city,

"I would gaze into other people's
houses through the pale orange light

"of home, and dream of happy,

"peaceful families living
comfortable lives."
DOG BARKS

"Then I would shudder to think that
the other Orhan might be living in

"one of these houses.

"I've never left Istanbul,
never left the houses,

"streets and neighbourhoods
of my childhood.

"I poured my soul into the
city streets, and there it still
resides."

VOICE YELLS IN OWN LANGUAGE

"The city has no centre
other than ourselves.

"For me, it's always been a city of
ruins and end-of-empire melancholy.

"The people of Istanbul simply carry
on their lives amongst the ruins."

MELANCHOLY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

There was a gulf, of course, between
the Nisantasi set and the poor.

And the chasm, even back then,
was religion.

"Our maid, bored of being at home,
carried me there,

"and I liked that place, with its
floors carpeted just like at home."

The family attended this, their
local mosque, mainly for funerals.

"We reduced religion to a strange
and sometimes amusing set of rules

"on which the lower classes
depended.

"My fear, which I shared with
everyone in the secular Turkish

"bourgeoisie, was not of God, but of

"the fury of those who believed in
Her too much."

This, what's being said on these...?

Names of people.

Someone is in love with Begum. Um...

"What if hopes are finished?"

"We want a miracle."

"I'm bored."
ALAN CHUCKLES

"From the moment I learned
how to read,

"the imaginary world inside my head
was adorned with constellations of

"letters.

"They did not convey meaning or even
tell a story, they just made sounds.

"Walking home from school, even
if I was very tired,

"my eyes would find words."

This is almost Dickensian, this...

..these streets! Yes, you're right!
THEY LAUGH

"The automatic reading machine
installed itself in my head.

"At the same time, my mother had
begun to instruct us in the dos and

"don'ts of life outside."

VENDOR SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

"Not to buy food from the dirty
vendors on quiet streets."

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

This grocery shop is titled Huzur -
a very sophisticated word,

implying inner peace.

I care about names of apartment

buildings and names
of small streets.

Grocery shop names -
they are all poetic somehow.

And if you put them together -
reading them, walking, reading them,

walking - I used to do that when I
was a child and I'm still doing it.

CROW CAWS

I always wanted to live in a
neighbourhood where children play in

the streets.

Instead, Orhan was in his house,
full of pianos and carpets,

sparring with his elder brother.

He was strong, my brother.

And sometimes father was not around.

We were left to each other many,
many times.

He used to bully me, and then this
is normal in my part of the world.

I was crying and fighting back and
being physical all the time, and my

mother would, "Don't fight! Enough!"

MARTIAL MUSIC PLAYS

Below in the street,
things were hotting up.

The first of many military coups
came in 1960.

In a country where human rights were
violated so much, and in the '60s,

'70s, '80s, if you're a leftist,

there's no way that you can evade
government torture.

In the '60s, '70s, if you're
doing military service,

you would definitely get - if you're
not a university graduate,

an officer - you would
definitely get beaten.

In a country where there
was so much physicality,

in an upper middle-class family -

a westernised, secular, civilised

family, we were also struggling and

pushing around, maybe too much.

MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYS

When I was here at the university,
in the '70s,

left-wingers and right-wingers would
shoot each other in these streets.

And most of the time,
university was boycott,

or some group will control it and

would not allow
the others to come here.

It was the nationalist
gangs who used gun.

In order to survive, you either have
to belong to one group,

or keep your opinions to yourself.

Oh, right! So, this was the 1970s?

Yes, this was the subject of
Silent House, and also Black Book.

"The barber was washing somebody's
head under the tap.

"He looked at us in the mirror.

"'I'll take two tickets, guys,'
he said.

"'You could have ten,' said Mustafa.
'You could sell them here.'

"'Leave two, that's enough,'
said the barber.

"'Two?!' I suddenly lost it.

"'No, not just two!
You'll take ten!'"

How does Turkey resolve these,
how can someone from...?

I think political problems
are resolvable,

and you have to have more...

..less authoritarian,
more democratic

leadership and more
engagement with Europe.

"The people who lived in those old
wooden houses in the city's outlying

"neighbourhoods were all
waiting for a saviour.

"As was the rest of the city in
those days -

"as they are even today.

"They sincerely believed
that if the army stepped in,

"the price of bread would go down,

"that if sinners were tortured, the
gates of Heaven would fly open."

At this radical, turbulent time,
Pamuk was studying architecture.

One of his tasks was to advise on
the preservation of the old Ottoman

houses.

It was a losing battle.

Many buildings like that in my
childhood, and I've seen all burning

down, all burning down, one by one.

ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC PLAYS

In the 1970s,

lazy professors would send us
students around to central Istanbul,

where there were
so many wooden houses.

They said, "Look at the old map and
mark this as an old building.

"Once your building is marked, you
cannot destroy it."

So they hated us in those
neighbourhoods.

This building is now preserved.

The regulations in the '60s were
such that you burn it down and the

government says, "OK, you can do a
building."

Then everyone burned their
buildings.

Now they are tougher - if you burn
it down,

you can only rebuild it like this.

They could have done a six-floor
apartment building here.

MAN SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

See, they are destroying the history

and making...only to make money,
he's complaining, rightfully.

You read his books. Yeah. What do
you think of his books?
HE ANSWERS IN OWN LANGUAGE

He's saying my sentences are long.
Too long!

LAUGHTER

He could be your editor! Yes!
LAUGHTER

It's a Unesco preservation?
Yes. When I used to come here,

there was nothing like this 25 years
ago, so they're improving!

Except it's not being given much
respect, has it? Look!

Yes.
THEY LAUGH

The problem is that we all want
to preserve the past because we also

want to have a glamorous
identity - Ottoman sophistication -

but on the other hand, we also want
the comforts of modernity,

and then it's very hard
to reconcile these.

Turkey's golden age of architecture
was long gone.

Young Orhan felt despair at what he
would now be expected to build,

the city it would produce.

This is when he gave up painting and
dropped out of architecture -

a God that had failed.

"It was as if my soul were the
pristine pages of a notebook.

"I had learned what was necessary,
as well as what was unnecessary,

"and I had arrived at the end of all
the adventures,

"voyages and mysteries I could
possibly invent for myself."

Pamuk no longer presumed
to design his city.

Instead, he would dream it,

chronicle it,
construct it out of words.

"In this wretched land of ours,

"what other path is open to us
except to write?"

For seven years, he would live alone
with his mother, writing away.

Many of his early books would be

based in his eccentric
extended family.

"As he climbed the stairs, Galip
steeled himself for what lay ahead,

"his mind racing through the scenes
with the practised impatience of a

"reader leafing through a book he's
already read too many times to
count.

"Uncle Melih will be in
grandfather's chair,

"reading the newspaper he's brought
down from his own apartment.

"He will say the usual - 'That boy's
never going to pull himself
together. Never!'"

I think he's a great model
for young writers.

He was my idol,

not because he was successful or
brave or he knew Ottoman history or

modernist literature,
but because he was patient.

He could devote

all his hours to writing,
to forging sentences,

and that's the kind of devotion that
I wanted in my life,

and I think that's why he inspires
so many Turks, young Turks,

because of his devotion,

like a monk.

We want novelists to be wise men and
women who come out of their caves

maybe every five years
and deliver us the book.

But it didn't down go down so well
with Orhan's family.

I was a disappointment
for my mother.

My brother went to
best American university,

while I am a university dropout.

I'm saying, "I'm going to be a
novelist."

No-one trusts that.

Is there anyone successful as a
novelist in this poor country in the

1970s?

My mother once said about me...

there was no prospect
of a good life for me,

and I also felt guilty about that.

These were the saddest years
of my life.

My cousins, my friends,
were getting married.

And I wouldn't want to go to that
wedding because there I was, almost

30, 29, and everyone would ask me,

"Orhan, what do you do?"

And my answer was,

"I'm writing a novel, and it's not
even published, and I'm doing that

"for six years." And everyone would
think, "My God, this guy is lost!"

So I would be embarrassed to go
there,

and stay at home and work and work
and hope for success!

CROWD CHANTS

He looked down on a world in chaos.

This led to another
military coup in 1980.

It would haunt his books.

This is the time that he began, in
earnest, his pacing around the back

streets of the city.

"If my fast-extinguishing love of
painting could no longer save me,

"then the city's poor neighbourhoods

"seemed prepared in any event to
become my second world."

The streets had a consoling power.

Streets somehow answered my
sentiments of sadness, loneliness,

thinking that if you go in, that
inner richness matters.

There was another impulse, too.

As a novelist, Pamuk wanted to
understand the people of Turkey,

not just the people
of his own class.

Normally, the Turkish intellectuals
who want to defend secularism,

modernity, all the things that they
think define themselves,

their approach towards the working
class is, they want to educate them,

they want to enlighten them,

they want to show them
what's wrong with them.

But Pamuk is not like that, Pamuk
wants to be like them,

maybe only in his books, but in his
books he wants to be like them.

SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS

Something designed by Salvador Dali
for Alfred Hitchcock.

He wants to imagine
their lives in detail.

So, when I met Pamuk, I realised he

had this constant way of
questioning.

"How do you spend your day?"

"When does your girlfriend
leave the house?"

"When do you start working?"

"What's your favourite
hour during the day?"

I was like a character to him.

And I can imagine him getting
excited by a seller on the street or

by a well-digger.

That's the Pamuk project.

So he's building a language in
which to communicate the grand story

of Turkey to readers who are
outside of his class.

In Turkey, books are printed just
2,000 copies,

because that's the readership,

but he wants to be read by 200,000.

How many cigarette butts are here?

4,213 cigarettes.

These are actually smoked
by the beloved,

and she was a bit intense and

expressed herself through the way
she crushed...

So, the way she stubbed her
cigarettes?

Yes, stubbed. Kemal, in the book of
The Museum Of Innocence,

falls in love with his distant
relative, Fusun, a shop assistant.

They separate, but he obsesses about
her for the rest of his life,

collecting every cigarette that
she'd smoked.

MATCH IS STRUCK

Kemal not only collected them, also
wrote a note about her moods.

That lover's attention to beloved is
very much like the novelist's

attention to the world.

Now, here, there are images of
Fusun's hand.

I shot them, I'm proud to say.

This is my first attempt
as a video artist.

And did you audition a lot of
people...?

I identify with Kemal.

He falls off from his class. Yeah.

He falls off because
of his love story,

which makes him a bit ridiculous.

I fell off my class because I
wanted to be an honest writer.

I wrote about my country and then,
of course, politics is inevitable.

Is there a sense of guilt, of...

You were brought up
in a privileged environment,

so much of your work is reaching out
to a different class, to...

To readers, yeah.

Yes, there was a feeling of guilt

because, exactly as you said,

I came from a privileged family
in a very poor country.

This was strong in me.

The clash with his own class came to
a head with his novel Snow.

It's set in the 1990s in Kars,

meaning snow,
in the Far East of Turkey.

The religious right
was now on the rise.

Snow's main character, Ka,
is not unlike Orhan,

but the book tries to get inside the
heads of ordinary believers, too.

Women are committing suicide over
being forced

to remove their headscarves.

My mother said to me,
my friends are saying,

"Why do you pay so much attention to
the problems of headscarved women?"

The state was not allowing women
into universities

if they were headscarved.

65% of women, by nature, by
tradition, wear headscarves.

In a way, that was making
discrimination for women.

And that led to the popularity of
Erdogan,

because he took them to
universities.

I mean, this is very complex...
Yes. ..the politics you're talking
about.

It was read like you were
taking a position.

DOG BARKS

My character, Ka,
wants two things which contradict.

He was out in Europe,

now he wants to belong to Turkey and
goes to the poorest parts of Turkey,

just to have a sense
of having a community.

He also still cherishes European

ideals of egalitarianism,

respect for women's rights
and, more strongly, secularism,

but these ideas definitely
contradict in that part of Turkey.

Just four years later, things got
even more political for Pamuk.

SHOUTING

Nationalists were outraged, and
Pamuk was charged

with denigrating Turkishness.

"The case that was opened against
me, and the political quandaries in

"which I then found myself,
turned me into a far more political,

"serious and responsible person
than I wanted to be."

Because of your views about what had
happened to the Armenians,

you became a target for the
nationalists and you went on trial.

How did you feel about that?
It felt bad. I, I confess that it's

not something that I want
to talk about too much.

I don't also want to pose
as a victim.

One day, I'll write about these
things in a tender, thoughtful way,

but I don't want to shout
too much about that.

They were bad days.
Thank God I survived.

Very happy, survived, back at home,

and still operating here, with my
bodyguard, but it's OK.

That's the life,
I'm happy to be here.

The worst disaster is to be
an exile, for me.

I knew what it was to be an exile
because, for a while,

I could not return, or I return like
a rat, you know, hiding.

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

The case was dropped, but it
resurfaced in 2011,

when Pamuk had to pay compensation
to the nationalists who'd complained

against him.

Now the nationalists are helping
Erdogan's authoritarian and

religious party to stay in power.

His message about internal security
pours out of every TV set.

Turkey had changed immeasurably
since Pamuk started to write.

On the outskirts of Istanbul, green
fields had given way to shanty

towns, to house the millions of
newcomers from the east.

These in turn were swept away and
replaced by high-rises.

"Don't let rich people
make you feel ashamed.

"The only difference between us and
them is that they got to Istanbul

"first and started making money
before we did.

"Mevlut saw transmission towers,

"trucks on the asphalt roads and new
concrete bridges,

"and read them as signs that the
country was growing and developing.

"Istanbul had changed so much

"that his memories now
seemed like fairy tales.

"The city was growing
inexorably out of his reach."

"When the time came
for his own one-room house,

"Mevlut felt his heart breaking.

"He observed his whole childhood -
the food he'd eaten,

"the homework he'd done, the way
things had smelled,

"the sound of his father
grunting in his sleep -

"hundreds of thousands of memories
all smashed to pieces in a single

"swipe of the bulldozer shovel."

I'm not a political person.

I look at this texture and try to
find beauty in it.

Walk, walk, walk.

Look around, enjoy humanity.

But the art of the novel, by
definition, is political.

And middle-class writer spends six
years to identify

with a street vendor.

First, you have to get the details
right.

You interview a lot of people.
You talk, talk, talk.

I want to see how people live here.

I was here in this cafe,
sitting here,

almost 22 or 23 years ago
as we are talking.

These places are intertwined
with your memories.

Oh, I was looking at this street,
down to see, and I was terribly in

love and so sad.

The next time you look at that view,
you remember your sadness.

Or you remember this building
or that square

when you learn about some military
coup or major incident,

someone drop a bomb there, and you
remember that you saw that.

These demolitions are hard to endure
because you understand that you're

losing your memories.

I travel around. I go to China, I go
to Korea, I go to India.

They always ask, "So, we also want
to keep our heritage and we also

"want to be modern and prominent in
the world. What do we do?"

And there's no... It's the most

popular question
and there's no answer.

The only answer to that -
don't be hard on, you know...

pay respect to both sides. Yeah.

CLOCK TICKS

CROW CAWS

"He was uncomfortable talking about
sex, but not about kissing.

"During one of our late-night
raki drinking sessions,

"I found out that he sometimes
associated kissing with visions of a

"mother seagull putting food into
her impatient chicks' open beaks."

WINGS FLUTTER
"On one of these nights,

"he had me smell the Spleen perfume
Sybil had bought in Paris.

"It smelled of night-time
and eternity."

VENDOR CALLS OUT IN OWN LANGUAGE

"The first thing Mevlut would do
when he stepped out into the cold

"was shoulder the yoke he'd been
using for 25 years to carry his

"plastic jugs of boza -

"the traditional drink made of
fermented wheat.

"Like a soldier about to step on
to the battlefield,

"he would set out on his
night's endless walk.

"He would shout, 'Boza!'

"and feel he was really
calling out to his own past."

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

VENDOR CALLS OUT IN OWN LANGUAGE

Oh, my God!

I'm happy with friends and I'm
writing what they talk about.

For example,
"What do you expect from life?"

Not necessarily these people are
talking. Yeah. If you don't do these

beautiful things in this country,
you get mad.

Erm... You pick up.

OK, that green one.
That green one. Why, why green?

No idea. Wow. This is, for example,
ideas for The Red-Haired Woman.

Ah! You know, I had an interview
with a well-digger,

and it tells a lot that
went into the novel.

And then it's sort of a shy
self-portrait.

Mmm. You don't look too happy,
though.

Yes. OK, this is...

Yeah, this is myself.

My name in the family was Crow,
because I was skinny.

The desire to paint
never, never stopped.

Many years later, I
resurrected the painter in me.

LIVELY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
I like that one.

I am happier when I paint,
when I draw.

My mood when I paint is the mood of
the guy who's singing when he's

having his shower.
ALAN LAUGHS

While, when I write,
it's more like playing chess.

You love looking at
the world from above.

Above, or looking at the landscapes.

The landscape from my desk.

LAUGHTER

And this is the lady you have been
seeing around.

As she is now scolding me.
She's scolding you?

Yes! Again, the same lady.
LAUGHTER

Asli is reading.

Once,
she was exactly reading like this.
LAUGHTER

In some restaurants in Istanbul,
they show you the fish first,

before cooking it!
LAUGHTER

Anyway, I'm happy I'm showing them.

What did you think when you saw his
notebooks?

So creative.

He absorbs, and what he absorbs, he
would like to express it on paper.

It makes him so happy,

so seeing him like a child, playing
with his notebooks, pens, colours,

he's amazing.

I feel embarrassed because I feel as
if I'm an autistic child...

No, no. ..and the mother can't
stop talking about me!
LAUGHTER

It makes him very happy, really.
They're precious.

But she's always advising me,
"Don't publish your diaries."

And, "Darling, only the pictures,
but leave the text."

THEY PERFORM SONG IN OWN LANGUAGE

The history of my private life is,
in a way,

that crowd I enjoyed when I was
eight years old, ten years old.

50 years later, everyone was alone,

Old people died.

My uncles, father, everyone had
business fights with each other.

That crowd is a sort of
a nostalgia for me.

They disappeared.

That big umbrella of a big house,

where everyone gets together,

all that disappeared.

It's a sadness in my life.

THEY REACH A CRESCENDO

HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

This is a regular visit
to my mother's,

which I do on every Sunday,

and then we were going to take her
out to dinner, the three of us.

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

This teapot is probably 60 years

old, like everything
my mother is using.

Very old kitchen utensils.

Pottery in my mother's kitchen

actually should go to a museum.

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

What was he like as a little boy,
this one?

He was very naughty,

but he was scolded,

And then when he was 16,

he said, "You are scolding me all
the time and you don't scold my
brother."

Ah. Yeah. Ah-ha. He was jealous of
his brother?

Very jealous of his brother.

This cupboard is the spirit of
The Museum Of Innocence.

I spent a lot of time in my
childhood looking at this swan now

that is exiled and put in a prison.

I don't know what her mistake is!

But, you know, I was that kind of
child.

Impersonating them and making them
speak like,

in My Name Is Red,
where the objects' colours speak.

I live today to remember it
tomorrow.

That's why I'm keeping objects,
that's why I'm writing.

I'm a graphomaniac, in a way.

Like me, every Sunday, my father
used to visit his mother,

but he would not take her out to

dinner because she would rarely
leave the house.

The absence of my father,

not having a Freudian father who
would dominate you,

a sort of a liberation you may get

if your mind is
not oppressed too much.

The spirit of The Red-Haired Woman
is based on lack of my father.

The book secretly argues that a lack
of father, a lack of a centre,

a lack of power, a lack of an

authoritarian ruler
also confuses us.

Fathers lend us this liberating

feeling that you don't have to make

the main decisions,
you just follow his footsteps.

I am happy that I did not follow

anyone's footsteps in my life.

"Soldiers had first come for him the
night after the military coup.

"My mother was devastated.

"She told me that my father was a
hero, that I should be proud of him.

"When my father again disappeared,
seven or eight years after that,

"it was different. Upon his return,
after almost two years,

"my mother seemed not to care that
he had been taken away,

"interrogated and tortured.

"She was furious at him.

" 'What did he expect?' she said.

"So, too, after my father's final
disappearance,

"my mother seemed resigned.

"That's what made me think my father
didn't always disappear

"for the same reason.

"But what is this thing we call
thinking anyway?"

We have now a very
authoritarian system.

Democracy is disappearing.

My friends who are
writers, novelists,

are in jail, not because of their
novels - yes,

because of their journalism.

I am very much upset about that.

Our political problems are
not very sophisticated.

50,000 people are in jail,
150 journalists are in jail.

You don't need too much
sophisticated theory to feel angry

about that and also feel guilty at
home, writing your fancy novels.

That's the only thing I can do.

Turkey is a dangerous place
to be a writer,

but it can have its riches.

You might have thought that, for
Orhan Pamuk, this would be a vision

of Hell, but once again the
strangeness of his mind surprises.

I feel so privileged
in the history of humanity.

Are there many writers who see,
in 60 years,

their city grow from
two million to 17 million?

And all that change
and change and change.

And I was inside all the time.

Human anxiety about change and
desire about change,

conservatism and modernism,
and destroying, destroying,

destroying,
and making and making and making,

and I was chronicling.

I have stuck to this subject and
write about it, write about it,

write about it.

They all think that my Istanbul
is nostalgic Istanbul.

Yes, I wrote those early books,
but now I love this subject.

I want to explore it.

I want to see the human side of it.

This is what I like now.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS