We met with Professor Muhittin Şimşek at the İSAM Library, which he describes as “the place where I breathe in Istanbul.” His love for pens is well known to almost everyone who knows him. When he realized that we would be talking about pens, his eyes lit up as he began to describe them.He opened his bag and gently showed us dozens of his pens, caressing them as he presented each one. He was very happy—truly happy—while talking about them.
“This one,” he says, “is the gold Cross pen that the late Turgut Özal never let go of during the ‘İcraatın İçinden’ program. Thanks to Mrs. Semra, it was given to us. And this pen here belongs to the late Professor Necmettin Erbakan…”
The professor kept listing them one by one. Each of them were pens used by statesmen who had held important positions and signed significant projects. He was holding another pen—one he was even hesitant to show us. With a childlike shyness, he said, “This pen… this is my most valuable one.”We became curious and asked. He replied, “It was given by our President, R. Tayyip Erdoğan.” Because what makes it valuable is the decisions made and the signatures placed with its tip. It was clear that Professor Muhittin collected pens that had witnessed history…We asked him how his “passion for pens” began. And he told us.
Professor, when did your first encounter with the pen begin, and how did this passion develop?
My introduction to the pen goes back a long time. I wasn’t even in primary school yet. My father used to sharpen my older brother’s pencils with a razor blade. As he did so, I would watch him with great admiration and wish to grow up quickly and start school.One day, I secretly took my brother’s pencil from his bag. With a razor blade, just like my father, I began sharpening it. One, two, three… on the fourth attempt, the blade slipped from my hand. The index finger of the hand holding the pencil was covered in blood. It was a serious cut.I was too afraid to tell anyone, but the bleeding was so intense that I went to my late mother. She panicked at first, but with a mother’s instinctive ability to find a solution, she quickly made a salted dough, pressed it onto my wound, and wrapped it. The scar from that injury is still on my finger today.That’s how my relationship with the pen began. But this small accident didn’t make me dislike pens—on the contrary, I grew even more fond of them.
When I started primary school, the compartment of my bag filled with colorful pencils and the wonderful wooden scent of my writing tools drew me in even more. I can still sense that same scent today from Ayşe’s school bag.
My acquaintance with the pen—indeed, my relationship with it—became more conscious in my second year of high school. I had come first in a knowledge competition I participated in that year. At the award ceremony, the late Minister of Culture at the time, Rıfkı Danışman, presented me with a “Scriks” fountain pen as a gift.I immediately went to a stationery store and bought ink. Then I sat down and began writing on an unlined sheet of paper placed over lined paper. This was the first letter I ever wrote to my father using a fountain pen.
After graduating from university and starting my professional life, my passion for pens continued. My first salary was sixty thousand TL. I went straight to Çınaraltı and bought myself a pen (Waterman). From there, I walked to a small street next to the main post office in Sirkeci, where there were pen repair shops. I stopped by and bought a black fountain pen from there as well (my first Montblanc).
Every time I received my salary, I would go to Çınaraltı. Nearly a quarter of my assistant salary went to pens. This continued for many years. Over time, I had quite a number of pens of my own. With the support of friends around me, I eventually built a considerable collection.
What do pens and writing mean to you?
Pen and writing have found a significant place in our culture. There is a saying about this: “The Holy Qur’an was revealed in Mecca, recited in Cairo, and written in Istanbul.” The transformation of writing into an art form began with Ottoman culture. It was valued so highly that writing and the pen were almost sanctified; writing is considered sacred.Why? Because in the Holy Qur’an, while almost no objects are mentioned, the pen is referred to four times. In fact, an entire chapter is dedicated to it—the Surah Al-Qalam.
Calligraphers, both in the Ottoman period and today, have always shown great respect for the pen, because beautiful things are written with it. The thoughts of a person flow from the mind, pass through the intellect, and are transferred to paper—and to future generations—through the hand of the pen. It happens by means of the pen.Out of this respect, calligraphers would collect the shavings of the reed pens they carved throughout their lives and leave a will saying: “When I die, let the water for my funeral be boiled with these.” Such is the reverence for the pen.And when a calligrapher begins their journey, they visit the grave of the master of calligraphers, Şeyh Hamdullah Efendi, offer their prayers there, and leave the first pen they used at his grave. This is a tradition, a ritual.
Now, when I get a pen in my hand, I take it, cherish it, and don’t let it go for three days. It stays in my hand for those three days. In fact, once I fell asleep with a pen and it broke under me—I was very upset. Because there are pens all over the house, I often argue with my spouse about it.
Which pens do you prefer more? Fountain pens, ballpoint pens, or pencils?
The king of pens is the fountain pen. I have always found ballpoint pens somewhat unappealing. You can’t form an emotional bond with them; they are used and then thrown away once finished—just like a tissue.In the past, artists such as Bekir Sıtkı Sezgin, Umm Kulthum in Egypt, and Müzeyyen Senar would go on stage with silk handkerchiefs. The handkerchief was that important—but today, that culture has disappeared. Just as that tradition has faded, the same has happened with pens. Pencils, like ballpoint pens, are like tissues—erase, use, and discard.But a fountain pen is not like that. You build a connection with it. You develop a kind of affection, even love for it. I use a fountain pen for all my writing.
What kind of collection do you have?
Today, I can say that I have a considerable pen collection. More accurately, what I have goes beyond collecting—it is a source of joy and personal pleasure. However, one thing should be clarified: building a pen collection should not necessarily mean owning expensive pens that are as valuable as jewels. For example, creating one working pen out of two old, non-functioning ones, or owning a pen that is no longer in production, makes me much happier.
Do you have any contact with other pen collectors?
Of course! For example, Prof. Dr. Nabi Avcı is, I would say, one of the most passionate pen enthusiasts. Conversations with him—both about national matters and about pens—are truly delightful.Nabi Abi also has a wonderful trait. He taught me how to give. A true pen enthusiast would rather lose a finger than give away their pen. But Nabi Abi taught me not to become attached to things. How? Every time he sees me, he gives me a pen, because he always carries at least ten pens with him.For instance, once we started a conversation about pens on a flight, and it continued even after we landed. He had come from Germany. He took out an old pen from his bag—a 1954 Montblanc fountain pen… He had bought it as a birthday gift for our President, but I must have looked at it in such a way that he felt compelled to give it to me as a gift.
Professor Nabi, Mr. İbrahim Kalın, Doğan Hızlan, and many others… There are people devoted to the pen, people of the pen, and those who simply love pens. Not many people know this, but our former Minister of National Education, Nabi Avcı, has an extraordinary passion for pens. He carries five or six pens in each pocket.Whenever Nabi Avcı and I meet, he takes out a pen and gives it to me, and I take one out and give it to him. This is the “exchange.” Then the pens are laid out, bags are opened—this is the “showing.”Mr. İbrahim Kalın has revived something we had forgotten: writing letters. He writes letters to his friends with a fountain pen. We write to him as well. It’s something truly pleasant…
What about pencils?
I have always felt a bit sorry for it. A pencil’s life is very short—like that of a butterfly. It is true, it is beautiful; it has its own ritual, like sharpening it. But its lifespan is short. You can’t form a deep emotional bond with it. A fountain pen, however, is not like that. With a fountain pen, you develop a connection, a certain beauty.Every four or five months, I go and buy myself a pen. But there’s also this: I don’t have a claim to buying very luxurious pens. For example, there is a passage in Ankara, and underneath it there is an antique dealer. Nabi Avcı introduced me to him. I go there, and he collects pens in a box. Some of them don’t work, some are broken. I buy 50–60 of them for 200–300 lira.Then, among them, one might have a damaged nib while another has a good one; one may have a faulty filling mechanism while another’s is intact. I combine their parts and create a working pen. That is what gives me the most pleasure. Because these pens are on the verge of “dying”; some almost seem to ask for euthanasia. They have worked for many years, they are out of breath, their ink no longer flows. And I bring them back to life through a kind of “organ transplant.”This kind of love is something else. There are places in Istanbul—Üsküdar, Horhor—we go there, collect pens from those places, and bring them together like this.
You published a book that may be the first of its kind in Turkey, perhaps even in the world—a book that tells the story of the pen, paper, and writing. You titled it “The Sixth Finger.” How did this work come about, and why did you choose the name “The Sixth Finger”?
Let’s start with the title. It’s very simple—each of our hands has five fingers, and the sixth is the pen. That’s why it was named that way.
For the past ten years, I have been collecting documents related to pens. Then, I decided to write the history of the pen—and I did. At first, it examined the history of the pen in chronological order. However, when I evaluated the result from a reader’s perspective, I found it too academic.Yet, it needed to be a work that was both academic and literary. I wasn’t satisfied with the second version either—something was missing. Eventually, I realized what it was: the “spice” was missing. The work had to be such that it would tell the history of paper and pen, not bore the reader, and also include “love,” the very essence around which everything revolves.It had to include everything that could be related to the pen.
However, the elements that make it what it is should not be overlooked. Its tip, the ink—which is its lifeblood—its varieties, what those devoted to writing think about it, its beloved paper, the eraser that tries to remove what it writes, the sharpener that prepares its tip, the inkwell from which it drinks its fill, and so on.
The work is a first in its field and was written with my fountain pens—across seven notebooks, each consisting of one hundred sixty pages. It was then sent for typesetting.
…And thus, the book we named “The Sixth Finger” came into being.
In addition, a work I titled “Two Lovers Since Eternity: The Pen and the Paper” was adapted by TRT into a four-episode documentary series under the name “Companion of the Hidden City.”
25.11.2019