THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL
Dmetri Kakmi, Reviewer
The Age, Australia
Aug 3 2007
Elif Safak takes a smart and brave look at Turkey’s changing face.
Elif Safak was initially accused of insulting Turkey with her latest
novel. It soon became a bestseller.
When Elif Safak’s latest novel was released in her home country,
she was accused of insulting Turkish identity. The charges were later
withdrawn and the Turkish edition of the book became a bestseller.
But what is the fuss about? First and foremost, The Bastard of Istanbul
is a cross-continental family saga. It examines, in loving detail and
with much humour, two families: one living in contemporary Istanbul
and Turkish, the other in San Francisco and Armenian. They are the
Kazancis and Tchakhmakhchians respectively.
It appears initially the two have nothing in common. But don’t be
fooled. Turkey is the classic metaphoric haunted house, sitting
astride the continental divide; consequently, from inside its many
rooms the past and present are still largely at war, while from
unexplored corners voices are trying to be heard.
The two families do not know it, but long fingers are reaching from
the blighted past to inextricably bind them. The conduits that will
bridge the gap, that privilege, belongs to the young. And they are
a spunky crew.
The first is the bastard of the title, 19-year-old Asya Kazanci. She
is a modern Turk, rebellious, outspoken, and belligerently without a
past, in more ways than one. She is also the youngest of a household
of several generations of women, the men having died mysteriously at
a young age.
The second is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian. She is sensitive and
searching for her Armenian roots in, of all places, the American
desert. Her curiosity about the "genocide" of the Armenians compels
her to finally meet the enemy on their own turf. Thus she deceives
her family and flies to Istanbul to learn more about her beloved
grandmother’s past. She cannot know what a Pandora’s box she is
opening, and what a hidden blessing she will find.
It’s an intriguing premise that allows the horrors of what took place
in 1915 to slowly surface.
This is a smart and brave book, by a smart and brave author. First,
because it attempts something that is quite difficult to pull off in
literary terms. The Bastard of Istanbul is an absorbing and artfully
composed meditation on Turkey’s changing face. The trick is that it
is posing as easily digestible popular entertainment, complete with
lashing of scrumptious Turkish food (there’s a recipe), transgressive
(for Turkey) gestures, and illicit encounters.
Second, by using the Kazanci household as a metaphor for her country
(the women are split right down the middle: half are conservative,
while the others move with the times), Safak explores Turkey’s amnesiac
brain with a deftness and compassion that ought to be applauded. She
is, when one reads carefully, fair to both sides.
Despite what I said above, Asya Kazanci is not the bastard of the
story. Turkey is. This is because, as Safak suggests, the country
exists almost purely in the present, with a steady eye on the future.
Sure, it embraced the glories of the Ottoman past, but it has almost
entirely divorced itself from the more painful elements of that
imperial glory.
What Safak suggests is that a country without a full knowledge of
its past is not a country at all, just as a person without a past
feels less than human. With one particular plot permutation, Safak
goes on to suggest that the country might even have an unhealthy or
even unnatural relationship with its sense of self. It must first
embrace the good and bad in its history before it can begin to even
dream about moving forward.
If the book is hard on Turks, it does not go easy on Armenians
either. Those with victim complexes to nurture, beware. You will find
little or no solace here. Safak deftly avoids mentioning the word
"genocide". Instead she uses the noun "massacre".
There is, after all, no proof that the Ottomans sanctioned a systemic
annihilation of the Armenian people along the lines of what the
Nazis did to the Jews. There is, however, ample evidence to show
that Armenian legionnaires inside and outside Turkey fought for the
Russians and the French against the Ottomans during World War I. In
an effort to safeguard the interests of the country, the Ottomans
forcefully deported a very large number of Armenians (the figure is
disputed) in the July heat from the north-east of the country to the
far south-east. Many cruelly perished along the way.
The beauty of Safak’s book is that it is not a political diatribe.
Rather, it is a humanist plea to recognise the past, to commemorate
the dead, and to finally move on. Far from seeming glib, it is a
sensible solution.
Dmetri Kakmi was born in Turkey. His book Motherland will be published
next year by Giramondo. He works as senior editor at Penguin Books.