11. The Feast of the Sacrifice

"The essence of this box is guilt. Indecision, on the other hand, was the feeling that reigned when Füsun donned a red coat, and she and Kemal wandered around a sleety Istanbul on the first day of the Feast of the Sacrifice, February 27, 1969. It isn't the tour itself but its memory that evokes a sense of guilt. Had the lamb not come in place of the child, the prophet Abraham would have killed his own son. Would he have felt guilty about it afterward?
Writing a novel sometimes involves remembering objects and images from bygone days and putting them together to create something new; setting up this museum evoked similar emotions in me. Our aim is not to find an exact image of the past. We want to say something about the substance and structure of our present lives through the objects of the past. This is how I “remembered” Füsun and Kemal’s tour. Sometimes we experience the present as if we are remembering the past. And sometimes we live it with the knowledge that one day in the future we will recall today, and so our sense of history at that moment is similar to what we feel in museums.
Giving away what we most love without expecting anything in return, as the prophet Abraham and Füsun did, is an act that requires extraordinary strength and carries with it the equally strong suggestion that some day in the future we will remember the here and now. Remembering the past always comes with an image or a view attached." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)