The sufi poets often compare their love for God to that of legendary lovers like Laila-Majnu and Heer-Ranjha for each other. This love which is just a painful longing (all those love stories are of star crossed lovers) for something worth annihilating oneself for - is called 'Huzun'. Despite its being melancholic, they still prefer having it - having an unrequited love is better than having none.


Writers, the ones I like, often have little such love for God. Some of them seem to searching for such subjects aimlessly. Some seem to attach it to places and times - the best examples in this regard are One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in times of Cholera by Marquez (both yearning for a Latin America of older times) Midnight's children (India) and Shalimar the Clown (Kashmir) by Salman Rushdi and Watermark (Venice) by Joseph Brodesky.

Pamuk's Istanbul is now added to the list. As he looks back longingly to his childhood memories, he finds it paralleled in Istanbul's longing for older times. A city that seems to be proud of its ruins and is yet desperate for modernisation, Istanbul has the paradoxical life of many other cities of East.

Besides being a memoir, this book is also a very experimental travel guide which doesn't describe the big monuments but describes what it is to live in it - the beautiful views it sometimes creates and the forgotten streets.