When you love a city

 

" When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy,perhaps stirred by a light falling ever so sorrowfully, you’ll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories." 


This was a sentence I came across as I was reading a historical book for the turkish Nobel Prize winner , Orhan Pamuk, called " My Name is Red". The main characters in the novel are miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire. The events revolve around the murder of one of the painters. Pamuk follows a very unique style of changing the narrator with every chapter. Not just this, Orhan uses different unexpected voices, like the coin , or satan...All these events take place during the 16th century in the city of Istanbul in Nine snowy days.

I dont want to elaborate more on the novel.. I just wanted to express my thoughts about the lines that I posted at the beginning.One of the things that are good about not having a car or driving is that I memorize the streets of Beirut by heart. Orhan Pamuk have said it right.


It is true when you love a city, your whole being drives you to the most place you like, to the place you find yourself, to the most place you feel alone and at the same time you feel you have the whole world in your hands. Such a special place, that you wish you can live in it forever, but you know deeply you can't. There are other places waiting for you but this place will be in your heart forever.