65. The Dogs

"Visiting the Western world’s smaller museums, I came to notice that in most of the world’s homes, there will be a china dog sitting on top of the television set that families gather to watch in the evenings." (The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk)

"All the little dog statues I have displayed here, most of which once sat in private homes, were produced outside of Turkey (with the exception of the dog at the bottom of this page, which was produced in Turkey by Kütahya Seramik). This must be in part because the laws of Islam discourage the art of sculpture. But a likelier reason is that it is not the domesticated house dogs that the people of Istanbul love, but the muddy, dirty, shabby street dogs. when I walked home from my writing studio around three or four a.m., I learned—as every Istanbul resident does—to be unafraid of the packs that roamed in the dark—or at least to hide my fear." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)