Elif Shafak has a new book out: ‘There are rivers in the sky,’ and so she is absolutely everywhere. She obviously has a very good publicity agent as every paper, magazine or journal I pick up is pushing this new novel. The author has been speaking at the RA and making podcasts etc. I had thought I would wait for the paperback to come out but of course Amazon is selling the hardback at only a few pounds more than the paperback will cost in March. Dilemma.
Anyway, in the meantime I have been reading another Shafak novel: ‘The Bastard of Istanbul.’ I was totally ignorant of the history of the Turks and the Armenians, I might even have been hard pushed to accurately place Armenia on a map. This story however has made me research a little of this geography and history and central to it is the period of genocide and ethnic cleansing (horrible term) that happened circa 1915. Armenian Christians were by various means removed from Istanbul and much of Islamic Turkey. Apparently there is still no official recognition that this occurred at all.
This story, set in the 21st century, is centred on an Armenian family and a Turkish family, who really have no idea how closely their own history is intertwined.
Asya and Armanoush are two young women pushed together by fate, circumstance, what you will. They are both searching for their own identities within the past of their own particular cultures.Turkey is still a troubled country today, always, through history, at a meeting point, frequently a clash of cultures and religions, the West and the East, Europe and Asia. It’s earlier names of Constantinople and Byzantium illustrate the gap, the uncertainty. Do the population today want to veer towards the West … or not, I wonder.
One character in the story puts it this way:
‘Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East.’
He chuckled. ‘It’s no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.’ Very true I think and beautifully expressed. As the two girls get to know each other and develop a trust that allows them to ask hard questions of the other, Armanoush (Armenian) ventures: ‘You see, here’s the difference. The oppressor has no use for the past. The oppressed has nothing but the past.’
One way and another this is quite a hard read but I gained an enormous amount from the experience. Presumably, it is very personal story to Elif Shafak, herself Turkish, in exile of her own choice, as far as I can see. The Afterword is almost as interesting as the story, as the author talks of her decision to write her books in English. This was in the 1990s when she was already well established in Turkey. The reaction there was strong and negative. She was accused of forsaking her inherited language for that of Western Imperialism and betraying her nation. Declared one critic: ‘How can she be one of us now? If she writes in English she is not a Turkish author anymore.’ Oh dear, what a tangled web we weave for ourselves.
This book is well worth reading. Meanwhile I will ponder on my acquisition of the new one.