54 pages • 1 hour read
Orhan PamukA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
At the crowded meeting, the many factions, including Kurdish nationalist youths, old-wave Marxists, Islamist militants, and secret MIT informers, can’t agree on what the joint statement should say. Turgut Bey poses a question: “If a big German newspaper gave you personally two lines of space, what would you say to the West?” (273). As people answer, they discuss Turkey and its relationship to the West, Islam, modernity, and poverty. Kadife threatens to remove her headscarf, but Fazıl, Necip’s best friend, stops her, saying he will kill himself if she removes it because he loves her. Everyone signs the statement.
Following the secret meeting, Fazıl meets Ka at a teahouse to fill him in on what happened. He also tells Ka that he didn’t mean it when he threatened suicide at the meeting and that he’s embarrassed that he proclaimed his love for Kadife in front of everyone. Fazıl believes “Necip’s soul is now living inside [his] body” (285). He tells Ka that he feels guilty because he loved Kadife even before Necip died. He also feels guilty because he’s doubting God’s existence.
While Ka is talking with Fazıl, he receives a note from Kadife and İpek proposing to meet him at the pastry shop. Ka excuses himself, meandering towards the meeting and stopping to write a poem on the way. When he arrives at the pastry shop, İpek explains that Blue was angry when he left the meeting at the Hotel Asia and has now gone missing. İpek and Kadife are distraught and ask Ka to investigate by visiting several teahouses. He does so but learns nothing about Blue’s whereabouts.
As Ka leaves one teahouse, he encounters Muhtar Bey, who shows Ka an article that is set to print the next day in the Border City Gazette: It claims Ka is an atheist and Western agent. Ka is terrified that he will be shot, so he goes to the newspaper office to try to stop Serdar Bey from printing it. Serdar Bey isn’t there, but Ka finds him later when he returns to the hotel for dinner with İpek and her family; Serdar is also there and explains that he was ordered to run the article. Nevertheless, he promises he won’t print it, to Ka’s relief. During dinner, Turgut Bey, Serdar Bey, and İpek discuss the murders that Z Demirkol and his cronies have committed over the past two days. Ka still feels blissful beside İpek.
Ka spends the night with İpek, but she is gone the next morning. When Ka wakes up, he receives a message from Sunay Zaim ordering him to come to headquarters. When Ka arrives, Sunay tells him that they have captured Blue. Sunay Zaim tells Ka that he will free Blue if Kadife takes off her headscarf in his play that evening, which will be broadcasted on Kars’s local station. To pressure Ka, Sunay reveals that (despite Serdar’s promises and likely on Sunay’s orders) Serdar Bey has printed the defamatory article about Ka in the newspaper. Ka is worried about his safety, so Sunay promises Ka protection from Islamist fundamentalists in exchange for Ka acting as a mediator between himself and Blue and for helping to convince Kadife.
Ka returns to the hotel. He struggles to persuade Kadife to uncover her head in exchange for Blue’s release, but she eventually agrees.
The MIT agents put a hidden microphone on Ka and send him to visit Blue in his cell at the military compound. Blue rejects Ka’s negotiation: He scornfully calls Ka an agent of the West and refuses his freedom if it means Kadife taking off her headscarf. Blue shows Ka a letter that he wrote in preparation for his execution that gives more information about his past. Ka confesses his love for İpek to Blue. Blue suddenly changes his mind and agrees to the plan.
The lively and meandering conversation during the secret meeting at Hotel Asia captures a fleeting sense of fellowship that all these differing factions feel as they unite against Sunay Zaim’s coup. Fazıl tells the narrator much later that during the meeting there was a feeling “as if [they] were all brothers suddenly, as if [they] were closer to one another than [they]’d ever been before” (274). The coup has the unintended effect of uniting groups with extremely different beliefs, values, and goals, if only for a moment. The extended dialogue, which includes jokes, bad poetry, and serious commentary on poverty and religion, captures the fervor of political action and the sense of anger, frustration, and desire for change that the people of Kars feel.
This “festive and intimate” mood lends the meeting a special symbolic significance (277), capturing the moment when the people stand up against the unjust and violent coup. One young Kurdish man says, “[W]e are not stupid, we are just poor” (275). His fiery and intelligent comments suggest that the young people of Kars are aware of their plight, and he connects this to ideas of “humiliation” and “pride” prevalent in this section, especially as Ka attempts to make a deal with Kadife and Blue. Another Kurdish youth recites a long poem, which reflects the intimate connection between art and real life; in Kars, poetry is never far away from politics.
Ka explicitly states that he has no desire to be heroic: “[H]eroic dreams are the consolation of the unhappy” (308), he tells Sunay Zaim. In stark contrast, Blue argues that he is standing up to the West because he is “an individual” (324); he calls Ka “a Western agent” and says that “like all true slaves” Ka doesn’t even know that he is one (324). Blue’s sense of pride is rooted in his desire to gain fame as a legend who sacrificed himself in the name of the cause. Ka disagrees with Blue’s argument, pointing out that the cemeteries where all the martyrs were buried have been destroyed. The imagery of cemeteries being “razed” in “one night” highlights the contrasting priorities of Ka and Blue (323). Ka is focused on seeking immediate happiness because he is all too aware of his own mortality. In contrast, Blue is seeking fame after death in the form of martyrdom.
Ka expresses mixed emotions towards poets and writers who have been murdered for their writings or who suffered political persecution. His youthful admiration for those who die for a political cause contrasts with his more jaded middle age; his belief now is that “the smartest thing to do [is] retreat into a corner and try to find some happiness” (297). The relationship between happiness and freedom comes to the fore when Blue alludes to a film called Burn! and says that Ka is tempting him with freedom to deter him from his cause. Blue does not notice the irony: that he is alluding to a European film as inspiration for his anti-Western cause.
Ka is so overjoyed when Blue agrees to allow Kadife to uncover her head onstage that he does not notice Blue’s quick shift in demeanor after he tells Blue about his love for İpek. Ka states that when he is holding İpek in his arms, the happiness he feels is like holding “the whole world” (326). Ka’s poetic, fanciful language expresses the childlike bliss he feels. Blue’s disguised hatred foreshadows the later revelation that breaks Ka’s heart: İpek was in love with Blue and they had an affair. Blue’s anger and jealousy in the cell suggest emotional undercurrents that Ka is not aware of yet. Ka is so blinded by love that he does not think to suspect Blue’s sudden choice to go along with the plan. Blue’s threatening words to Ka when Ka leaves his cell—“Don’t let anyone kill you” (327)—add to the atmosphere of danger that the narrator creates, as well as underscoring Ka’s obliviousness to the danger surrounding him.
By Orhan Pamuk