Love this title because it’s so creative, the second part belongs to me or in another word it’s me. While the first part which so akin to mine is chapter number 10 of Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel Snow. First, let me say something about my part which needs more attention referred to Ka the protagonist in Snow. Kaka in Kurdish means brother and a respectful way to call some body. But whenever there is a French speaker we have to be careful of using that. I mean the sound of Kaka not the word itself. I myself don’t care much about that, because French is not all languages on the earth and being a Kurd, Kaka doesn’t irritate them. My frustration is about the small countable numbers of writers like Pamuk among Arabs, Turks, and Persians whose ears receive the sound of Kaka as a musical lovely word. The bothering F from that frustration can make from each illiterate Kaka a shrewd Kafka. Just by putting that F like a sharp dagger in their heart, middle of Kaka. So by naming his protagonist a half Kaka, Pamuk deals with a missing identity of the other Ka in order to complete the full Kaka. In fact, Kaka is an identity for a Kurdish male I, Kaka, you, Kaka, and every Kurd, kaka. Let us make it more mathematical.          

         2                       2                                 2
I, (Ka)      You, (Ka)    Every Kurd, (Ka)

    In Snow Ka is a poet lives in Germany as a political exile; after the death of his mother and to attend her funeral he decides to go back to his home country Turkey. Where he witnesses firsthand clash between radical Islam and Kamalists also he faces other hot and hidden issues in this rectangular red country. Since releasing the book thousands of reviews have been written, all of them enliven reader to read Snow. My experience of knowing this Turkish novelist goes to that day when I was searching in the Burnaby’s public library for novels by each the Kurdish Yashar Kamal, Italian Umbeto Echo, Croatian-Serbian Ivo Indric, Albanian Ismail Kadri and many others whom I loved to read their work in English. There all of sudden on the shelf and, where I was standing Pamuk’s name hooked my attention like a pamuk(cotton) like cloud. Without thinking I chose My Name Is Red, The New Life, and Black Book. I read the first one and the second, while reading the third one was interrupted and postponed because of releasing Marquez’s autobiography after long time of waiting. That one is 700 page hard cover book took me almost a moth to finish it while I was working full time; so by the time I was finished with Marquez’s enlivening autobiography there was cold snow on the ground and a hot one in the book stores. I booked my name with lady in the desk and then waited 21 days till they phoned me to pick up the book. The first edition one was hard cover and coasts $40 which was enough money to go out twice with a close friend and have a roast lamb in a Greek restaurant. Before I start reading this book I pondered at its cover. It was very attractive to me, especially, the image of unknown man on the cover of Snow and his slow way of walking in snow. I saw myself in that image and I started to read this book with a great passion. And choosing a white novel like Snow rather than Black Book was easy decision. Black in the beginning paranoid me with its title, for when Snow was in my lap I was so delighted.  me

  In most novels Pamuk has a character in shadow called Orhan which is his first name too, that makes readers to be so close to him and introduce to some hints about the great personality of real Orhan. However, there is another fascinating style that Orhan uses to choose characters of his novels. For example, Ka, the protagonist of Snow carries a lot. While reading the first 100 pages of the book Ka seemed to be a broken Kaka whose identity broken in the middle and lost between choosing the mutlu Turkish one, or resist with original one, the unhappy Kurd. So many coincidences happened to me while I was reading Snow, beside that the on it cover looks like me in many ways. In the novel Ka experiences the beauty of Kar (snow in Turkish) in a secluded city called Kars. Selecting (Ka, Ka, Kars) as a path to narrate a wonderful political story in a natural witty way is the power of Pamuk’s imagination. Ka is similar to all those Kakas whose life is fall apart between the loneliness and the colours of western cultures in one side, and the busy anxious white and black life in the Kurdish land. I was feeling Ka’s sorrows when he couldn’t travel to see his mother for the last time. And all of sudden, I saw myself in the same setting of Ka’s when he travel to east where Kurds live. I saw myself, the double Ka in a convenient bus in Turkey traveling from Diarbakir to Van. Also through the windows of that Mercedes German made bus I was seeing the kind of snow that Ka sees them in the Snow. Before I did return the book to the Burnaby’s Public Library, I was again two Kas, one is unhappy to leave the book unfinished, contrary the second one so happy for travelling to Turkey and then passing the border meet two beloved women after long and short absence. Unlike Ka I didn’t stayed long in hotel, walk in the streets, and meet official and none official people, my journey was transition one. But I felt all the details from a hundred and something pages of Snow, the creative novel.

   Flying back to my own chosen exile tired from seeing the extraordinary beauty of a very expensive city, I decided to move toward north to a flat snowy city where a close friend, a Kaka poet lived. That day I was in deep grief of loosing my mom and unlike Ka couldn’t go back for the funeral. He opened his heart with a dignity of poet. He was a new Jack London for us hands full of lovely words. It was forty below and snow spinning like a mad white dust.  So in front of a cozy fire place it was so beautiful pondering snow and hearing its blow. On a snowy evening while we were talking in a coffee shop  about literature, politic, philosophy and many other things in short brief details the novel came too my mind. I was lucky my friend had already planed to buy this book so he drove his car through unbearable snow to buy Snow. He kindly lent the novel to me. And Like me he had hundred of books in mind before deciding which one would be first to read.

  I started reading Snow from the beginning like it was a first time.   Following Ka’s foot steps on snow as same as        the detective,who was following Ka. And soon when I‘d got into it I preferred to be Ka instead; despite his tragic fate. I’m not going to retail Ka’s story in Kar in Kars as much as reviving my own Ka inside me. My friend, the Poet beside the book gave a winter coat in which I loved the white cold snow as platform to walk in especially in the long nights of September 2004. Those days when my mother’s coffin was still white as snow, calling me from a tomb in a very faraway land. Ahhhhh! It is so tragic pain and grievous when a mother dies, so this time my reading to Ka story was full of sympathy and felt his pains so close. However, I wasn’t lucky like him to attend the funeral of my mom. I read these pages twice one when my mom was alive and the other when she wasn’t. Again I was a double Ka or a real Kaka who felt to be so lonely.

  Ka’s real name was Kerim Alakusoglu, so his new name is a short initial. Before my hastened trip to Turkey I knew why Pamuk named his passionate protagonist Ka. Since my last was Karim and also was the first name of the director of the company in which I was working, for me Ka’s real name wasn’t something difficult to forget. So when I held Snow for a second time to read it in a heavy snowy city, I told Ka “Look after being a little bit in your situation, now I’m back to you. And my mother died too.” Also I continued “Oh! My poet friend, your name was also Karim”

      The strange coincident occurred while reading those pages in which Ka is changing his name. After Pamuk introduced all his characters to my mesmerizing eyes, Ka always was a center point. Something inside me was telling me that this character is really missing a missing part from his name. I met all people in his short life the old mistress and university class mate Ipek, and her pretty radical Islamist Kadifa with her lover Blue, Najib and Fazel, Sunay Zaim and his wife, Demirkol, and others. That snowy cold morning after I breakfasted, I picked up Snow and went out to catch the early morning bus. Exciting, in my waiting for the bus and then to sit down continuing my reading. In that very morning that snow blanketed the whole city, I was holding Snow in my hand like a piece of fire from a Nowrozean day. That I was going to change my name Karim, a soon as I found my seat I opened my book and started to read in the bus as often I do. Astonishingly, I reached to those pages in which Ka too is going to change his name from Karim. So I took a deep sigh and I spoke to myself “Oh God! Why we are doing this simultaneously.”

“Is Ka is me, Or I, Ka.”

  I closed my book sinking in deep thoughts and then I come out with this conclusion. Ka and I are same and together we resemble unhappy Kaka.

 So I have to live, in order to recognize the killers of Ka!