Several weeks ago I was poised to write a post rhapsodizing about a newly discovered author.
Sorry Elif, I let life get in the way. Missing gravestones, long phone conversations and real letter-writing, impromptu work commitments... they are all fair game as excuses for procrastination.
As the year of the snake peters out along with my energy, I sense the year of the horse will require a bit more focus. Perhaps a year that, like its animal, requires some skill and concentration to harness its energy, and some applied mindfulness to diminish the fear of taking a fall and just enjoy the ride.
My means to focus, explore and express my mind has always been words: stories to read and stories to tell. I love art, but I cannot paint or draw adequately to use pictures as exploratory fingers to reach into the darkness of my wonder.
“Words,” says Elif Shafak, “ words matter in Turkey. Stories matter.” Novels are greedily shared amongst families and lent to friends in much the same way as her characters devour delectable feasts of Middle-Eastern delights. And these stories are “pirated, shared, underlined, books reach the nooks and crannies of our lives in ways that politics and politicians can’t.”
This is how Elif Shafak reached me. From a young Turkish woman who was obliged to attend English school with her father during her vacation. I teach many Turkish students, and the young women that can afford to study in the UK are usually the privileged daughters of successful businessmen, seemingly indifferent to the historical and cultural wonders that surround them. They want to go shopping and dancing. And pass their exams.
But this girl, I sensed, was a bit different - more interested in curling up with a good book than hitting the town. She was outspoken, yet modest, well-read and inquisitive, with an unusual bitter-sweet philosophy suffused with melancholy. I wonder what wounds smart beneath the surface. I hope she manages to heal them.
So it was she who presented me with her self-annotated copy of The Bastard of Istanbul and urged me to read it.
I admit, I was cautious. Non English language writers tend to get clumped together in the “International’ section as if simply being ‘foreign’ gives them something in common. What they can have in common is their approval by the literary intellectuals, the TLS contributors and readers, and for a potential reader swayed more by talk-show host recommendation than canonical integrity, the anticipated political, social or cultural themes - even the unfamiliar character names - can feel an impenetrable barrier.
But this is exactly the kind of mindset that Shafak is critical of. In her TED talk she says:
“ [In Turkey]...women like my grandma ... cover mirrors with velvet or hang them on the walls with their backs facing out. It’s an old Eastern tradition based on the knowledge that it’s not healthy for a human being to spend too much time staring at his own reflection. Ironically, [living in] communities of the like-minded is one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalised world. And it’s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettoes is through the art of storytelling. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our metal walls. And, through those holes , we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see.”
I have been to Turkey, but I have never visited Istanbul. Yet, I could smell the street food, the hot oily fug of congested traffic, the braying street vendors on the dirty rain-splattered streets and the salt-sweetened air roaring with the constant noise of this great and ancient city. I drew myself up to the table alongside Shafak’s micro-matriarchy, such arch practitioners of their own identity and sense of the feminine. I plunged a spoon into the rich depths of the ashure pudding and tasted a unique, unfamiliar flavour - but I liked it.
Yet, I was shocked that Elif Shafak made far more than an oblique reference to the Armenian question. Something that I would not dare to mention to a Turk, even on a close acquaintance. The question being: were Armenians subjected to genocide in the period following World War I?
Much evidence points to the answer being yes, and 22 countries have officially recognised the treatment of the Armenians by the Ottoman government as genocide. But there are still those who argue no, including the present Turkish government.
Thus, with the publication of The Bastard of Istanbul, with her cast of Armenian characters and their reflections on the past, Elif Shafak was cited for ‘insulting Turkishness’ under Article 301 of Turkish law which penalises “public denegration” of : Turkishness; the Turkish Republic; the Grand National Assembly; the government ; the judiciary...
You get the picture.
But the terms of ‘denigration’ are so open to interpretation that they can be conveniently applied to pretty much any opinion which challenges the political mores.
Finally, like scores of other writers charged under the law, Shafak was acquitted by the prosecutor. Sara Whyatt, the director of the writers in prison committee at International PEN, said: “Elif Shafak has been acquitted [but] the prosecutors have done their job. The fact she’s had to go through this creates a climate of fear and self-censorship which would deter other authors from writing on taboo topics.”
So to borrow words from another female author, it must be a truth universally acknowledged that the fact governments - of the present, of the past and no doubt in the future - fear books enough to burn them and writers enough to threaten them with imprisonment - or worse, betrays the truth: stories are powerful.
They do punch holes in people’s mental walls, they can prick complacency and maybe even galvanize someone into action, to begin demolishing those frontiers.
There are always those who prefer not to let the scales fall from their eyes. And there are plenty of stories for them too. But if you escape into a romance or love story, it's indulging yourself in the dream that romantic love will save you from whatever demons pursue you. If you read the slick thrillers, you want to believe that the good guy will conquer the baddies. Some commentators even see the proliferation of vampire and zombie fiction not simply as pulp teen fiction, but hugely symbolic of the crepuscular reality their eager readers inhabit.
So, are the seemingly anodine tales which toe the lines of cultural and political ideology any less powerful - or dangerous - because they reinforce instead of destroy our complacency?
