The Red-Haired Woman 

  The volumen is entitled The Red-Haired Woman. The author, Orhan Pamuk. A city, Istanbul. A boy who want to be a writer. A welldigger and the Oedipus´s story. Part I.

  You know the plot: Oedipus is destined to kill his own father and marry his own mother. This is what the protagonist tells the experienced welldigger an evening. A story that is rejected by Master Mahmut on the spot, perhaps because it was a Greek who written it.

  I really love books with titles in relief and this one has even the writer´s name in capital letters which overhang over the cover. I love slip my fingertips drawing the “o”, the “r”, the “h”. . . Other sense more to add when I get a book in my hands.

  But don´t stray from our subject. There are countless and remarkable paragraphs that they make me to reflect on my father. This one can be for instance

«My father would never have paid so much attention to me. I would never have been able to spend the whole day with him as I did with Master Mahmut. But my father had never looked down on me. The only time I ever felt guilty on his account was when he was shut away in prison.»

  The main character´s father and my own father have common interests: they both are politically involved (my father was an active trade unionist), a high moral and a tight commitment with work. On the other hand, the protagonist couldn´t bear a whole day beside his father, mainly when he was adult (however it is said that it´s when you are a child the moment you need more your father). Master Mahmut tells many stories; quite the opposite, my father didn´t believe in cock-and-bull stories.

  The novel is about digging a well in a barren and dry plateau near Istanbul and the relationship between these two characters. The story could have been other story unless an enigmatic alluring member of a travelling theatre group, the Red-Haired Woman, wouldn´t had come on stage.

  We can read about the importance of water in the develop of a city, the importance of welldiggers and the respect showed by people for them.

  It is easy recognize Mr. Pamuk is an illustrated man for the string of quotations and similes he describes. One can discover hidden gems like

«God Himself would intervene to douse the faithful welldigger´s face with water, the first spray always as powerful as the arc of a baby boy´s urine.»

  This simile piss me off a little. Mr. Pamuk I´m starting to take pills for my prostate!

  Something more beautiful than the prime numbers?

«Another star fell. Maybe I was the only one who´d seen it. I thought: I exist. It was a good feeling. I can count the stars, and I can count the chirp-chirp-chirping of the cicadas. I am here: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31. . .»

  Can your first night of love make you love mathematics?

  On page 120, he writes

«I had forgotten how comforting it was to be surrounded by people. I felt like a savage who had returned to civilization.»

  Surrounded by people. This is a feeling we often lose.

  Or when he compares Master Mahmut, inside the well, like a fruitwarm burrowing its way through a gargantuan orange and I am seeing myself inside the hopper unblocking its hatchway of clinker stones in the factory.

From my Borstal.

LDR