Bibliofreakblog

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Turkey likes to tout itself as a modern, secular country with a mostly Muslim population.  It doesn’t hold to some of the things most Muslim countries do, such as banning graven images (evidenced by their myriad photos and paintings of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk).  Women don’t cover themselves up, they let their hair flow and wear high heels.  However, the government gets a little touchy when writers go on about things such as Armenia.  While the Turks feel that the Armenian exodus (they solidly do not believe it was a genocide), was perhaps unfortunate, but not be confused with their own, post-Ottoman government.  And so despite its modernity, Elif Shafak got her ass sued over The Bastard of Istanbul.

Other Turkish writers have had to deal with their native government as well, most notably, Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Laureate.  Literally the charges writers face is “insulting Turkishness”.  Last year some changes were made to the law, so its supporters can’t go suing people willy-nilly any more.  Nearly all of these lawsuits are eventually dropped, but one journalist, Hrant Dink, was assassinated.  

So that’s the controversy.  It’s not much, by American standards, and truly, I don’t think that the majority of people in Turkey care that a writer uses the words “Armenian genocide” in a book; they might not want to talk about it themselves–it does make them a bit squeamish, but I don’t think that they care.  It’s just a few fundamentalists ruining literature for everyone else.  

However, the rift between Armenians and Turks runs down the center of this book.  Amy (AKA Armanouch), the half white, half Armenian step-daughter of a Turk living in America runs away to join his family in Istanbul in order to learn about the city her grandmother fled.  She meets her wild step-cousin (is that what you call them?) Asya and her step-father’s four sisters, none of whom  are anything like each other.  

One woman is a Mystic, having been taught by her mother.  One woman had a child out of wedlock.  One is obsessed with disaster.  The other has lost her husband.   

Amy has to explain her family’s history to the women, who are sympathetic but not apologetic, because, as aforementioned, they do not connect themselves or their country to anything before 1923.

Asya and Amy tour the city, trying to figure it, themselves, and each other out.  When Asya introduces Amy to her artsy cafe friends, two pages seem to illuminate one of Shafak’s points about modern Turks not understanding the genocide:

“Actually, Amy is short for Armanoush,” Asya interjected, still in a provocative mood.  ”She is Armenian American!”

Now the word Armenian wouldn’t surprise anyone at Cafe Kundera, but Armenian American was a different story.  Armenian Armenian was no problem–similar culture, similar problems–but Armenian American meant someone who despised the Turks.

Asya goes on to explain what happened to Amy’s family.  She is trying to badger her friends into some sort of confrontation, and it works.  One of them flat out denies what happened.

“We never heard of anything like that.”  He took a puff on his pipe and amid the swirling smoke looked Armanoush in the eye, his voice now dwindling into a compassionate whisper.  ”Look, I am very sorry for your family, I offer you my condolences.  But you have to understand it was a time of war.  People died on both sides.  Do you have any idea how many Turks have died in the hands of Armenian rebels?  Did you ever think about the other side of the story?  I’ll bet you didn’t.  How about the suffering of the Turkish families?  It is all tragic but we need to understand that 1915 was not 2005.  Times were different back then.  It was not even a Turkish state back then, it was the Ottoman Empire, for God’s sake.  The premodern era and its premodern tragedies.”

It’s cool though.  The guy who says that gets beat up by everyone else at the table.

While there are several other themes in this book, I speak heavily about this one because of the controversy it caused, as I said.  

And that brings to mind another point.  Who should be held responsible for what past generations did?  Here in America we struggle with that question considering what we as a nation did to many different groups of people.  While time doesn’t seem to heal all wounds, are people today still responsible for the sins of our fathers?  I don’t have an answer to that.  

 
Buy The Bastard of Istanbul on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akcam
The Essential Rumi by Jalal al-Din Rumi
Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey edited by Anastasia M. Ashman an Jennifer Eaton Gockman
My Grandmother: A Memoir by Fethiye Cetin
Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey by Andrew Mango
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni 
The Lace Makers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri 

Other works by Elif Shafak:

The Forty Rules of Love
The Flea Palace
The Saint of Incipient Insanities
The Gaze

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