Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Congratulations to Orhan Pamuk on winning this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. As we wrote earlier this year: "For those who find the atavistic mindset that seeks to burn embassies — institutions that promote international co-operation — too alien to comprehend, Orhan Pamuk's brave and brilliant novel Snow is recommended."

Early in "Snow", the central character Ka is confronted with what now claims to speak for God. Ka is sitting in the New Life Pastry Shop in the east Anatolian city of Kars when an Islamic extremist shoots the director of The Education Institute, who had barred headscarf-wearing girls from attending class. Because the victim was carrying a concealed tape-recorder, Ka is later able to get the transcript of the fatal conversation from his widow. In this excerpt, the killer pours out his murderous idealism:

"Headscarves protect women from harassment, rape and degradation. It's the headscarf that gives women respect and a comfortable place in society. We've heard this from so many women who've chosen later in life to cover themselves. Women like the old belly-dancer Melahat Sandra. The veil saves women from the animal instincts of men in the street. It saves them from the ordeal of entering beauty contests to compete with other women. They don't have to live like sex objects, they don't have to wear make-up all the day. As professor Marvin King has already noted, if the celebrated film star Elizabeth Taylor had spent the last twenty years covered, she would not have had to worry about being fat. She would not have ended up in a mental hospital. She might have known some happiness."

Upon hearing this absurdity, the director of the Education Institute bursts out laughing. Pamuk describes the end of the transcript:

"Calm down my child. Stop. Sit down. Think it over one more time. Don't pull that trigger. Stop."
(The sound of a gunshot. The sound of a chair pushed out.)
"Don't my son!"
(Two more gunshots. Silence. A groan. The sound of a television. One more gunshot. Silence.)

No fiction writer in recent years has come near Orhan Pamuk in his depiction of the spiritual fragility of the Islamic world and its rage against the "godless West".