Pamuk = Cotton

Bookstores are some of the most soothing public places. Quiet, unhurried atmosphere. Human contact with rarely any agenda. I don’t do it to be a bastard but I love stretching out my legs into the aisle while I sit and browse through a potential buy. Without looking away from the text, I feel a part of some world as others carefully step around me. It’s not that I enjoy being in their way, it’s just the mutual respect; they let me have my space and comfort without disturbing my reading, I’m thankful for their cooperation. Especially if they’re a woman with nice legs in a skirt. Peripheral vision is the bomb.

A few days ago I chanced into the Indigo books at the Yonge-Eglinton centre after dropping my cousin off at work. Browsed for a bit and, having heard his name recently, started leafing through Orhan Pamuk’s Snow.

The words were gentle, caressing the brain like a small girl would a puppy. Or a cotton shirt your skin after a shower when you’re tired. The protagonist, Ka, lonely like Kafka’s K., was more palatable than his near-namesake. Less of a lost cause. Less bewildered. The snow, the book’s earliest, wasn’t as sharp as The Castle’s. If the snow could be dangerous, it promised of a melancholy lulling into death. Not a quick frostbitten freeze. I read the first chapter, only a few pages, and bought the book.

I’m still at the point where the story is slowly being set up.

Pamuk is the Turkish word for cotton. I know this by chance, it’s used as a loanword in Serbian. Like most proper Canadians, I’m from elsewhere; Serbia as it may be.

Origins of English