Summary
Chapter 6
Ka heads towards the headquarters of the Prosperity Party to visit Muhtar. On the way, he looks for a telephone and stops in at a Society for Animal Enthusiasts (where ironically, a cockfighting ring resides). He also realizes that he is in love with Ipek and that the gravity of his love for her will define the rest of his life. Later, leaving the Society, he meets up with Muhtar and thinks about how he might induce Ipek to flee Kars with him. It has been 12 years since they last saw each other, and Muhtar is showing some clear signs of aging. Ka tells him about the scene he just witnessed at the café, and Muhtar tells Ka that he ought to call the police, lest it look suspicious that he went straight from the scene of a religiously motivated crime to the headquarters of the local religious party. Ka tells the police that he is with Muhtar, and they send a squad car to come pick him up, though Muhtar says they already knew where Ka was on account of their widespread surveillance.
After Ka speaks with the police, he realizes that he and Muhtar both are embittered by their failure to find happiness in poetry alone, and this is why they both yearn for Ipek, a symbol of their more joyful pasts. Muhtar then refers to their shared pasts as writers together as young adults, and he asks Ka if he has recently seen their mutual friend Fahir, a poet in Istanbul. Muhtar reflects that he used to want Fahir, a modernist and imitator of the West, to like his own writing, but he now says that, after coming to the neglected city of Kars and seeing how desolate things truly were in his own country, it felt wrong to continue to imitate far-off Westerners. Afterward, Muhtar fell into a deep and drunken depression, during which he almost took his own life by laying down in the snow one night. Just as he was about to fall asleep and die, however, a shaft of light came from a doorway. Following it, Muhtar discovered the secret religious ceremonies of a Sheikh, Saadettin Efendi. The Sheikh was compassionate towards Muhtar and helped him find the godliness within him. At this point, Muhtar decided to rededicate his life to religion, and kept his second life secret from Ipek. She confronted him about it eventually, and he had to confess. As a result, she was worried that he might make her wear a headscarf and follow Islamic teachings, but Muhtar claims that the discord in his marriage with Ipek was not what upset him the most. What did, he claims, is the fact that after finding God, he started to write again, and that Fahir never published any of his work.
Muhtar then claims that, over time, he started to feel discomfort with the Sheikh, who could never understand Muhtar's own concerns with the aesthetic and secular. As a result, Muhtar gradually moved towards religious politics in order to both find a religious community and ground himself in the material things he cared about so much. Just then, the lights go out, and Muhtar sits with Ka in silence.
Chapter 7
Ka and Muhtar continue their conversation in a more intimate way, talking primarily about the old acquaintances they shared who, like Ka, left Turkey. Ka recounts all of their fates one by one, then ends by saying that the happiest Turk he met in Germany seemed to be Ferhat, a Turkish separatist who Ka can only assume had been disappeared in some way fighting for what he believed in. Ka then turns the conversation to Muhtar's Sheikh and the snow around him, saying that it inspires feelings of godliness in him. In response, Muhtar says that Ka would like the religious fundamentalists in the country, since they are compassionate and do not instinctually patronize or despise the common poor. Ka then replies by saying that he feels thinking sublime thoughts about the divine is not enough: in order to be truly religious, Ka feels, he would need to join a religious community, something he as an intellectual and solitary humanist is unable to do. Muhtar then offers to take Ka to the Sheikh.
Just then, the police arrive, and Muhtar warns that they are going to arrest him. He tells Ka that he will just have a statement taken and be released, and he asks Ka to tell Ipek that he would like to remarry her. Muhtar also gives Ka a poem to bring back to Fahir in Istanbul. The police then enter, and they interrogate Ka while rifling through all of the cabinets and items in Muhtar's office. Ka and Muhtar try to ingratiate themselves with the police (Ka by telling them that the young girls are committing suicide out of unhappiness and Muhtar by retreating after letting on that he knows his phones are tapped), but they are eventually put down and brought into the station. Ka knows that Muhtar is going to be beaten, and Ka realizes that part of Muhtar actually wants a beating, in order to feel like his craving for power has been paid for in some way.
Ka is taken aside and asked to identify the assassin of Dr. Yilmaz from a series of photos of political Islamists from Kars and its surrounding areas. When he is unable to do so, he returns to find Muhtar beaten in the area where they were last together in the station. Ka is then taken away again in order to give his statement, and afterwards, he is released. He thinks about Muhtar's shift to radical Islam, and he also thinks to himself about his own hope that Ipek and her love will uplift him once more. Ka stops by the New Life Pastry Shop once more, and he is accosted by a teenaged boy. The boy, Necip, tells Ka that he has been sent to bring Ka to a visit with an important figure in Kars. Necip adds that the figure is in hiding and that Ka will have to agree to see the figure before Necip reveals who it is. Necip then reveals that it is Blue, the prominent Islamist that had earlier been mentioned by the police. He tells Ka that he will have to go to an Islamic bookstore first: there, he will be met by another Follower and brought to Blue. When Ka suggests to Necip that Blue is a violent Political Islamist, Necip tells him that "Political Islamists is only a name that Westerners and seculars give us Muslims who are ready to fight for our religion" (72). Necip then vanishes, leaving Ka to find his own way to Blue.
Chapter 8
Ka follows the man that Necip indicated from the Communication Bookstore, and he follows him through the abandoned streets all the way onto the tracks of a train station. There, the man turns to address Ka and tells him that the price for betraying Blue will be his own death. At this point, Ka reflects to himself on all he knows about Blue. He recalls that Blue has been accused of killing an effeminate TV personality when the man made a joke about the Prophet Muhammad. Blue was then invited on the show for ratings, and he seized the opportunity to issue even more violent threats against the TV personality. Later, a warrant was issued for Blue's arrest, and he vanished; later, the TV host was found strangled in a luxury hotel. Blue was implicated by the press, though he had an alibi. Here, the narrator tells us that more of Blue's side of the story is to come in Chapter 35, though he is not sure that Blue's own words can be trusted entirely. Going back to Ka, he thinks to himself about the fact that many lies have been told about Blue, but that it is still unclear what he is doing in Kars. Some say he is there to dispense of another irreverent TV host; others say he is there to repair relationships between the Islamist Kurds and Marxist-revolutionaries of the city; some even suggest that he is working as part of an international terrorist plot including Saudi agents. Blue, for his part, has denied none of these rumors: after all, the uncertainty feeds his ethos and his personal legendary status.
Ka then enters Blue's home and is searched by a servant of Blue's. He hears a baby crying and a mother trying to comfort it. Seeing someone in the hall and realizing that it is Blue, Ka then follows him into a room. Blue turns to face Ka, and Ka is shocked at how suave, urbane, and even European (his eyes are midnight blue) Blue appears. This is a far cry, Ka thinks, from the provincial terrorist clutching prayer beads that the Western media has painted him as. Blue then speaks, telling Ka that it was living in Europe that he became radicalized by learning to see himself through the eyes of others. He saw that Europeans viewed him as wretched and poor simply because he was a Turk, and this moved him to a great deal of hatred for the West and its sympathizers, like Ka himself and the former Muhtar.
Ka tells Blue that he is in Kars in order to report on the headscarf girls' suicides, and Blue tells him that doing this is wrong for two reasons. First, Blue says that suicide is a sin and that anyone who does it is not a true Muslim; saying that they committed suicide over their religion is thus a kind of blasphemy. Second, Blue tells Ka that reporting on the suicides will only inspire more girls to take their own lives. Ka says that this isn't so, and Blue insinuates that the state does nothing to stop religious suicides because it makes them happy. He also suggests that the whole thing with the director is a state plot, with Muslims being outcast on account of their treatment when wearing headscarves, as well as the Muslims taking the ultimate blame for Dr. Yilmaz's assassination.
Ka tries to get Blue to either deny or take responsibility for the killing, and in response, Blue tells Ka the story of Rüstem and Suhrab from the Persian Shahnameh. The story concerns a father and son who, in their love for each other, coincidentally end up on opposite sides of the battlefield. Rüstem kills his own son on the battlefield and struggles deeply to honor the codes that forbid him from respecting his enemies and the codes that bind him to his son in love. After finishing the story, Blue tells Ka that this story used to be recited all over Turkey, but is now forgotten and replaced with stories from the Western canon. Blue ends by asking Ka if this story is beautiful enough to kill for or fight for, and when Ka says that he is unsure, Blue tells Ka to "think about it" and leaves (85).
Chapter 9
As Ka leaves Blue's place, he retraces his steps and feels an intense sense of not belonging in Kars. Meanwhile, on his way back through the train station, he runs into Necip and two of his teenaged friends, Fazil and Mesut. They then tell Ka a moralistic tale about Western atheism—a story about a school director who has been turned into an atheist, unbeknownst to him. As a result, he becomes condescending and Western leaning, and when he realizes that his new atheistic life is lonely and empty, he develops a death wish. Coincidentally, the man who contagiously spread atheism to the director later kills him.
After telling this story, Mesut asks Ka whether or not he is an atheist and, if so, where he believes the divine majesty of the snow comes from. When Ka falters in saying that the snow reminds him of God, but that he does not necessarily believe in God, Mesut then asks Ka whether or not he is suicidal as a result of his atheism. When he says that he is never suicidal, Fazil and Mesut then fail to understand how anything but fear of betraying a divine rule or order can keep one from suicide. Ka is offended and begins to leave, but Necip interrupts him and explains that the three of them are in love with covered girls—Necip with Hicran, Mesut with Hande, and Fazil with the late Teslime. They are having a hard time squaring the faith of these girls with their suicidal impulses and passions, and Ka simply tries to explain that perhaps they do not know the objects of their affections as well as they thought they did. They, in return, suggest that Ka is scared to accept God into his heart. Necip then tries to do damage control by suggesting that atheists and Muslims can coexist, but Mesut reminds them all that they cannot be buried in the same cemeteries. Upon leaving, Ka then thinks to himself about his place in the world and the idea that all of one's life experiences and stories add up to a unified whole, like a snowflake. Finally, this image strikes Ka with a sense of divine inspiration, and he rushes back to his hotel to write a new poem.
Chapter 10
Ka returns to his hotel room and writes the poem, which he feels is perfect in every way. It covers images like the falling snow, a black dog he had seen earlier in the train station, childhood memories, and Ipek, among other things. The narrator then tells us that, much later, when Ka would think back on this poem, he would remember how the snowflake seemed to be a microcosm of life, and it served as the inspiration for the poems that this book (i.e., Snow) attempts to piece together.
Just then, Ipek arrives at Ka's door, causing him to forget the last two lines of the poem he had in mind. She hands him a letter, which he tosses aside without reading it. He compliments her and attempts to endear himself to her, but she explains that her mind is on Muhtar, who she has heard was beaten at the station. Ka confirms this, then tells Ipek about his meeting with Blue, which makes Ipek worry for Ka. Ka tells Ipek that he wants her to run away with him, and they share some tender embraces and kisses on the bed. Ipek cuts things off though, and says that she is not ready to get into another relationship; besides, she is unable to make love to someone with her father in the house. Instead, she urges Ka to read the letter, which invites him to meet with Muhtar's Sheikh, who claims he has seen Ka in his dreams and would like to meet him.
Ipek tries to get Ka to visit the Sheikh, but first Ka reads Ipek his poem. She finds it beautiful, but she is unable to articulate exactly why she finds it so beautiful. Ipek then continues trying to persuade Ka, saying that the Sheikh is very popular even among secular authorities in Kars. Ka says he has no need for religion at the moment, but Ipek tells Ka that the Sheikh will find Ka's weak points, exploit them, and convince him that he has seen divinity in himself. She says that, perhaps, if Ka accepts God like others, he can finally be happy. Ka tells her that he is not unhappy, then informs her of his storied past with Islam, where he was taken to a mosque as a child by a maid (although he has gradually forgotten all the prayers and customs). Ipek once again tells Ka that his poem is beautiful—although she does not know why—and they kiss again.
Chapter 11
Ka leaves the hotel with two happy visions in his head playing simultaneously like films—for one, a vision of his future with Ipek in Frankfurt, and on the other hand, words and pictures related to the last two lines of his new poem, entitled "Snow." On his way to the Sheikh's, he stops at the Green Pastures Café and downs a double raki. Upon arriving at the Sheikh's, Ka immediately senses that the man can sense all the apprehension and fear in Ka's heart. He welcomes Ka and kisses his hand, and Ka then confesses all his nascent thoughts on divinity and its relationship to snow to the Sheikh. He also asks why he was summoned, and the Sheikh replies that he was not; rather, after Ka's conversation with Muhtar, the Sheikh thought that Ka might like to open his heart before the Sheikh and those assembled at his home. Ka then admits that he is drunk.
When asked, Ka confesses that he loves the forward-looking parts of Turkey, and that he has always feared the religious because he felt that they were attempting to make the country less progressive. The Sheikh is shocked, but Ka explains that he was in a bourgeois house that admired Europeans and the West. In response, the Sheikh cleverly retorts by asking if they have a different God in Europe (104). Ka then crumbles, admitting that he wants to find God on his own, and that not even becoming provincial and forgotten like the residents of Kars will deter him from this path. The Sheikh then tells Ka that, though God has room in his heart both for the community of believers and solitary believers, all those who seek God alone end up alone, since pride is what got Satan expelled from Heaven. Ka then is told that he must learn humility if he truly wishes to accept God in his heart.
After this lesson from the Sheikh, Ka listens to the Sheikh talk to the others assembled about suicide and love, and he is then inspired by the provincial sadness of the scene to write yet another poem. Calling it "Hidden Symmetry," he includes in it elements of his conversation with the Sheikh, solitude, and whispers of the hidden symmetries of life that the Sheikh claims God looks out for. The narrator then tells us that, later, Ka would look at these poems written in Kars and realize that they came from some other source than his poetic imagination, so he placed this poem as the first along the "Reason axis," something we will understand later (107).
Chapter 12
Ka leaves the Sheikh and starts to walk through town alone. On his way, he sees many people out and about—teenagers, campaigners, and parents—and feels as if a new poem may be coming to him. He stops in at the nearest teahouse and sits to write, but he eventually finds that no poem is coming. Looking up, he then sees some lines written on the wall decrying the poverty and cold of Kars. Just then, Necip appears and joins Ka at the table. He apologizes for his friends' behavior earlier, saying that it was the first time they had confronted a non-believer. They had just snuck out of the religious high school's dorms in order to attend the play that night and see Ka read his work. Necip then asks Ka a question out of pure curiosity, and not to challenge him—if God was not real, how could Ka explain the suffering of the poor in this world (i.e., if it was not to be repaid in an afterlife)? Ka dodges the question and talks about how he is hoping to find God in Kars, and Necip instead changes the topic.
Necip tells Ka that he hopes one day to write an Islamic science fiction novel, and he reads to Ka from an excerpt of the novel. The novel concerns two friends, Fazil and Necip, who are blood brothers that can anticipate each other's thoughts. They make a pact among themselves that, when one dies, he will return from the afterlife and share his memories with whichever one outlives the other. When Fazil is murdered one night, Necip then marries Hicran, the virgin woman that Fazil loved, and they find physical and emotional happiness with one another. Fazil's ghost returns, however, and it forces Necip to confront the fact that he partially wanted Fazil to die so that he could have Hicran himself. Only until Necip and Hicran avenge Fazil by finding his real killer and killing him can they deliver themselves from the shame of this realization.
Ka is struck by the similarities between Necip's story and his real life. Is Necip the same as the Necip in his story, for example? Necip denies this and says that every name in the story is just an assumed name, just as he is using an assumed name in real life. Even so, he and Fazil are really as close as the two friends in the story. Ka then asks who Hicran really is, and Necip tells him that Hicran was once an infidel who came to the city to do a shampoo commercial that mocked the local covered girls. After observing their plight, however, Necip relates, Hicran was unable to remove another girl's hijab, found faith, and became the leader of the covered girls rather than return to Istanbul. Ka then asks Necip why, if he is so infatuated with Hicran, did he only describe her in his story as a virgin. A tense sorrow then follows, during which the narrator reveals that Necip is going to be killed in a matter of mere hours. Suddenly, Necip raises his eyes to look outside and tells Ka that Hicran is right outside.
Chapter 13
The young woman identified as Hicran enters the teahouse and walks right up to Ka. She reveals that she is Kadife, Ipek's sister, and she tells Ka that she has been sent to escort Ka to dinner with her family. When asked how she knew where Ka was, Kadife replies by saying that everyone in Kars always knows everything that is happening in Kars.
On their way back to the Snow Palace Hotel, Kadife and Ka discuss the weather. Kadife says that the government reports temperatures higher than the real temperatures to keep the people docile, but she also talks about the unifying power of snow, which seems to cast a blanket of uniformity over everyone and bring them closer together. They then fall silent, and the two walk past Sunay Zaim and his company drinking in a beer hall shortly before their performance. Kadife then breaks the silence, bringing up Teslime and talking about how she expects Ka to butcher her story in order to pander to a Western audience. Ka brings up the tension between faith and suicide mentioned by Necip and his friends, and Kadife replies only by saying that there is room for lost women who commit suicide to be loved by God. Ka questions this, and Kadife only replies by saying that she will not "discuss [her] faith with an atheist, or even a secularist" (121).
Ka is struck by Kadife's resolve, and he briefly wonders if he won't be falling in love with Ipek, but rather her while he stays in Kars. Ka then tells Kadife about the Hicran moniker, as well as the stories that Necip has told him about her salacious past. Kadife explains that none of that is true except the fact that she did first go to the covered girls to make fun of them. When she saw how much being forced to remove their scarves hurt them, however, she decided to wear a scarf herself as a kind of political statement. Being lumped in with the rest of them, especially with the history of political repression faced by her father, then moved Kadife to find faith and fight back against the state's authoritarian oppressions. She then mentions how, over time, her defiance made her father more and more uneasy: as long as it was done in defiance of the state, he supported her choice to go covered; when it became a matter of religion, however, he balked. She mentions how, nonetheless, she has tried to get him to support some of the other covered girls, including Hande, who is joining them for dinner. Hande was pressured by her parents to remove her scarf, but she has not agreed.
Kadife closes by saying that Turgut, her father, is reminded of the Communist plight by the current issue at hand. She says that there are two kinds of Communists—those who are arrogant and obsessed with power, and those who only wish to join the poor in suffering. She then brings up the fact that Ka has been to Blue and asks him if Blue said anything about their family. Ka says that he did not mention them, and Kadife mentions her family's fear of Blue. The two then discuss astrology, and Kadife says that the people of Kars have two diversions—talking about everything that happens to them, and watching television. Finally, they talk about Ka's love for Ipek, and Kadife agrees to keep it a secret.
Chapter 14
Ka and Kadife pass the National Theater, where a crowd is already milling about in anticipation of that night's performance. Ka feels that another poem may be coming, so they race back to the hotel, where he writes a poem quickly in his room. After finishing his work, he then goes to have dinner with Ipek's family, Serdar Bey, and Hande. In childish ecstasy, he stares at Ipek's face and imagines their future together in Germany. After a brief disagreement about what to put on the television, Hande then begins to tell a sad story about Teslime. Forty days after her friend's suicide, Hande reflects on the fact that Teslime was most devoted to their cause, despite facing pressure at school and at home. When her parents, who were very materialistic, wanted to marry Teslime off to a gray-eyed policeman who had been widowed, Hande suggested that Teslime threaten suicide, assuming that she was too devout to actually go through with it. She thus harbors an immense feeling of guilt and shame as a result of her friend's death. Later, Hande decided to take off her own headscarf in order to provide for her family and not be driven to suicide.
The channel is changed back to the National Theater, where the emcee announces the program for that evening, including Ka's reading of his new poem. Turgut brings up the fact that he has heard Ka does not plan to participate, and Ka confirms this. Hande then asks Ka how he goes about writing poems, and Ka replies that he does not know how, and that it is not by concentrating in any conventional sense. On the topic of concentration, Hande then mentions that she is unable to focus on an image of her going uncovered. She recalls a stylish woman from Ankara who came into their class and persuaded them to be more republican and secular, writing down all the answers they gave to a series of questions about patriotism. In Hande's imaginary, when she tries to picture herself without a scarf, she imagines herself as stylish as this woman, but if she is able to bring herself to imagine such a girl going into school with her hair uncovered, she is always shocked in her mind to discover that the girl is not, after all, her. Hande says this is what scares her most about going uncovered—not the Kurdish man she was in love with and engaged to who had been killed, but rather the idea that she will not be able to return to the person she once was.
Hande then asks Ka whether he has ever contemplated suicide or written any poetry about suicide, and when Ka returns that he is thankful for the divine inspiration he feels behind his poems, he suddenly jumps up as if a gun is trained on him. Apparently, to those gathered, he looks as if he is receiving sainthood in this moment, but he is in reality just achieving inspiration for yet another new poem. Ipek then takes Ka to another room, where he writes a new poem and is watched by Ipek as he does so. He confesses his love for her once more, and Ipek tells him that he is only in love with her because he knows next to nothing about her. Ka rejects this, and he tries to get Ipek to flee to Frankfurt with him. She asks what he used to do in Germany, and he mentions that he was primarily focused on his inability to write, and he claims that happiness and poetry cannot coexist for long. Ka then accuses Ipek of having lived in Kars for so long that she has forgotten what it means to desire something or someone. She then says that all she wants is for Ka to be himself. Kadife then appears and brings the couple back to the room with the whole family. Ka is interrogated about the poem he just wrote, and Ka tells those gathered that the poem is about his belief in all who he has met in Kars. Turgut Bey says that the Sheikh does not speak for the real God of Kars, but he is swiftly put down. Ka then thinks about Turgut's pleasure of being with his daughters and, in watching television with Ipek, thinks about how much bliss she would bring to his future if they were together.
Analysis
These chapters develop some of the tensions introduced in the novel's opening flight, and they also expose us to some other important thematic elements, primarily centered on the theme of religion and religious awakening. For example, it is here that a key question regarding faith is introduced—namely, whether one is able to truly accept God into their heart if they are not part of a religious community. Moreover, it is here that we begin to understand religion as plugged into a larger examination of the East-West dichotomy, rather than just as something used to drive a wedge between the central authority and rural areas of Turkey. Finally, as different opinions on religion are presented throughout the text, we call into question what the notion of a unified religious truth is, if one can be said to exist.
First, some notes on the idea of faith as a solitary enterprise or occupation. Ka, as a poet, is someone who likes to keep the world at a distance in order to fuel his creative ambitions. At the same time, when the script is flipped on him and he is immersed in an environment that is kept at a distance from the so-called earthly centers of power and culture (i.e., in Kars), he finds that his religious drive is fueled and that his creative drive is also spurred as a result. Together, these two pieces of information would seem to suggest that the individual and the divine can be successfully linked by the creative. At the same time, though, Ka rightly notes in the presence of the Sheikh and others that, in order to really be counted as a true believer in the Kars sense, he must join up with others as part of a religious community. This is because, as Ka himself admits, he sees the Westerner in himself, which leans towards individualism and humanism, and refuses to deny it out of fear of regressing into the provincialism of the Sheikh and other provincial Islamists. What Ka really points to, then, in his questioning of solitary faith, is twofold. First, Ka is addressing the potential for the lack of a true faith—that is, the idea that faith is something deeply individualistic that varies from person to person, without a necessarily correct way to practice it (more on this below). Second, Ka is implicitly acknowledging the larger, structural dichotomy between Eastern and Western cultures, something that is a key occupation of the novel as a whole.
To speak first to the latter point, it is here that we really begin to see a conflict between East and West as a seminal force in the novel's politics. This finds its most clear iteration in Ka's conversation with Blue, where Blue explains that it was only through viewing himself through the eyes of a Westerner that he was able to see the necessity of religious community and radicalism. In Blue's mind, the West looks at the East as an impoverished and backwards place, and it does so in order to both assuage its own insecurities, cover up its hypocrisies, and make the East a place ripe for repression and exploitation. This is deeply in line with the idea of Orientalism, a critical term explaining the institutionalized and corporatized projection of false shortcomings on the East by the West. Consider, for example, the fact that Blue points towards his mission not as religious but rather as a fight for the preservation of stories like the story of Rüstem. Blue may have chosen Islamist as the indigenous label he sports, but what he is really fighting is a war not of religion, but of philosophy and ideology. This is also reflected in the attempts by the secular government to silence dissent by breaking up the community of covered women in Kars. Just so, the Westerner in Ka is trying to keep him from falling "backwards" into the Eastern habit of Islamism, something that he feels stands against his own progressive values.
As we come to see through figures like Kadife, however, there are other ways to believe rather than pure atheism and religious fundamentalism. Where Necip and company are confused over Teslime's suicide and fail to square it with their vision of devout belief in Islam, Kadife holds space in her heart both for God and those who are forced to take their own lives out of desperation and sadness. This inclusive and expansive understanding of faith comes not out of Kadife's own selfishness but rather an understanding of how devastating suffering truly is, the very thing which moved her to take up faith and wear the hijab in the first place. Compare this to Necip's faith, for example, which still sees women through the lens of their virtue and virginity, or perhaps even to the faith of Blue, which is mostly reactionary and paints the West as a monolith that must be resisted. Kadife's, by comparison, seems all the more rational and grounded in reality, while still keeping room for the wonder of things like fresh snow or true love. Over the course of the text, we will see even more that Kadife's consideration of the plights of everyday people is essential to Pamuk's framing of virtue and a lack of "real" or "true" faith later on. The only faith that is true is the one which allows one to feel content, trust in their own happiness, and support those around them out of selflessness and piety.
This idea then directly plugs into the idea of snow as it is developed in these three chapters, a continuation of something we saw in the novel's introductory chapters. In earlier chapters, we saw how the ever expanding meanings and symbolisms of snow brought it closer and closer to a meaningful, if conflicted, image. Here, then, we get both additional meanings for snow and a poetic distillation of what this conflicted unity means or represents. To speak to the former, note here in Ka's conversation with Kadife that snow is seen as a unifying force, something which, in covering everything in the same white blanket, creates new intimacies and harmonies where there was once tension. To speak to the latter, note then how this image is taken by Ka to mean that human life is just the same combination of different and contradictory elements. It is in containing diverse multitudes that something really becomes human, but it is also in this divergence and symmetry that things move in different directions, some of which move people to conflict or rebellion. Snow is both the silence within us all that draws us together and the changing world before our eyes that moves us to fear and sorrow. Finally, just as faith is incomplete if it is too narrow-minded, so too does the snow become enriched in meaning and significance as it covers and draws more in from the ordinary world.
Finally, note some other elements that are maintained here from earlier in the text, like foreshadowing (as in the mention of Necip's impending death), irony (as in the revelation that Hicran is really Kadife), exploration of feminism and the conflicted thoughts of Islamic feminists, and parallelism (for example, the correspondence between Necip's life and his story). Each of these elements is continued later in the text, and each also continues to solidify our understanding not just of Kars' cultural milieu, but also the historicity of the text laid out by our narrator as he attempts to excavate and interrogate the last days of Ka's life and the poems he wrote during that time.
