Snow in the Desert

Perhaps it is all the beautiful flakes floating through the crisp winter air that makes it so easy to get entranced by the story of Snow. I easily relate to Ka, the main character, possibly because of the uncertainty surrounding his life and his being. His lack of faith in the unknown and his frustration in his lack of faith is a tiring cycle from which he sought relief. Ka worked his whole life to disassociate himself the poor and primitive image of the East, but found himself coming back in search of the things that he knew deep down inside were missing from his life. There was something preventing him from being happy and slowly he starts to toy with the idea of religion. The curiosity of a higher power manifested itself when a poem "came to him" from a source outside himself. The poem came after flashbacks of innocent childhood days in Kars which were brought about by the diversity of the individual flakes of snow.

The silence of the snow seems to enhance his own fear and desperation, yet allowed him to channel the energy that was to be his poetry. I think that he was confused by the sudden inspiration and like many other fools, accredited it to physical human love, giving but a small thought to the possibility of Divine intervention. I believe that it was the blatant struggle of everyday life in a poor economy like Kars that brought such emotion pouring from our hero. He became the object through which beauty could be produced; whether the poems were a gift from God, or a the passion of a man, I know not, nor am I sure I will ever be able to answer such questions.