47. My Father's Death

"The photograph above, a memento from compulsory military service which Kemal’s father carefully preserved in his drawer and which depicts him drinking rakı with high-ranking officers, was taken during the Second World War, and reveals how in those years, Turkey was very much a rural society governed by an excessively authoritarian military.
This was still very much the case thirty years later when the novel is set. Kemal’s love for this photograph of his father (who can be seen sitting to the right of the tree trunk) and the particular way in which the high-ranking officers are holding their rakı glasses, has affected our museum.
Our love for our fathers and our fear of their authority is inevitably reflected in how we perceive their belongings. My father, just like Kemal’s, had a cabinet with all sorts of objects in it.
The Museum of Innocence is based on the assumption that objects used for different purposes and that evoke disparate memories can, when placed side by side, bring forth unusual emotions and thoughts.
Kemal’s father, just like mine, spent most of his time at home, lying on the sofa in the living room reading the entire newspaper. Whenever he came across a piece of news he didn’t like, he ripped out the page he was reading and threw it on the floor; someone would then pick up the discarded sheets and put them back in order." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)