Down a winding lane in Istanbul’s blue collar Cukurcuma neighbourhood lies a tiny museum which packs a big clout. This is the Masumiyet Musezi (Museum of Innocence), the brainchild of probably the most famous Turk, author Orhan Pamuk. In May, it was honoured with the Museum of the Year award by the European Museum Forum.

Pamuk is a divisive figure in Istanbul. Many Istanbullus I know consider him a conceited, over-westernised, attention-seeker who delights in saying negative things about Turkey. “Isn’t there anyone else the New York Times can interview?” asked an annoyed Turkish friend. But there are also many who think he is one of the few public figures to stand up to a tyrannical regime.

A bold man

In 2005, after Pamuk commented on the mass genocide of Kurds and Armenians during the Ottoman empire, charges of insulting Turkishness were brought against him. The charges were eventually dropped, but Pamuk continues to receive harsh criticism. Still, most agree he has courage. When he received his award, he dedicated it to the 301 miners killed in the Soma mining tragedy.

The Museum of Innocence is a mixture of quiet charm and extreme narcissism. Much of it makes sense only if you have read Pamuk’s book of the same name, about a pair of doomed lovers in fifties Istanbul. The museum mirrors the events and characters in the book. If you buy the book, you get a free ticket to the museum. Just as the hero Kemal pilfers the objects belonging to his lover Fusun to remember her by, Pamuk spent nearly a decade combing junkshops to collect the objects in this museum, spending most of his Nobel prize money on it.

Enter, and you see a collage of cigarette butts, some with lipstick smears, like a striking piece of modern art. These represent the 4,213 cigarettes Fusun smokes in the book. There are 83 boxes, many designed by Pamuk, representing the 83 chapters in the novel. In the attic, Pamuk has displayed all his handwritten notes for the book, with an occasional barked comment to his typist in the margin, “Dikkat, Husnu!” ( Attention!)

In detail

What does make the museum more than just an exercise in egoism is the painstaking detail with which it reflects fifties Istanbul. There are saltshakers, teaspoons, typewriters, gramophones, pillboxes, shoes, clothes and photographs of old Istanbul by the famed Turkish photographer Ara Guler, all beautifully arranged, like Dutch still-life portraits.

But the most fascinating exhibit is photographs of women from newspapers, with black bands over their eyes. Pamuk speaks of this in the chapter, A Few Unpalatable Anthropological Truths’, on the shaming of girls who had sex before marriage. “In those days it was the custom for newspapers to run the photographs with black bands over the ‘violated’ girls’ eyes, to spare them being identified...,” he wrote, “Because the press used the same device in photographs of adulteresses, rape victims and prostitutes, to read a newspaper in those days was like wandering through a masquerade.”

When the museum was opened in 2012, Pamuk said he wanted to do something that represents the daily life of the city rather than the grandeur. In this, he has succeeded. This isn’t the kind of museum you go to for spectacular jewels, like those in the Topkapi. This is where you go if you want to return to a different time in a city that has become bolder, brasher and perhaps less interesting.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul and Bangalore

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