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A review by diana_skelton
Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
3.0
"I felt as uneasy as anyone in the family about the devotion of deeply religious people. My fear, which I shared with everyone in the Turkish bourgeoisie, was not of God, but of the fury of those who believed in Her too much. … In the secular fury of Ataturk's new republic, to move away from religion was to be modern and Western; it was a smugness in which there flickered from time to time the flame of idealism. But that was in public. In private life, nothing came to fill the spiritual void."
"The fragility of people's lives in Istanbul, the way they treat each other, and the distance they feel from the centers of the West, make Istanbul a city that newly arrived Westerners are at a loss to understand, and out of this loss they attribute to it a 'mysterious air'. … In Istanbul the remains of a glorious past and civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept they are, no matter how neglected or hemmed in their are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner--the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques--inflict heartache on all who live amongst them."
"The fragility of people's lives in Istanbul, the way they treat each other, and the distance they feel from the centers of the West, make Istanbul a city that newly arrived Westerners are at a loss to understand, and out of this loss they attribute to it a 'mysterious air'. … In Istanbul the remains of a glorious past and civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept they are, no matter how neglected or hemmed in their are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner--the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques--inflict heartache on all who live amongst them."