SHAFAK’S `BASTARD’ OFFERS ZANY WOMEN AND GENIES, STOKES OUTRAGE
By Farah Nayeri
Bloomberg
April 12 2007
April 12 (Bloomberg) — When Elif Shafak’s latest novel, "The
Bastard of Istanbul," came out in Turkey last year, protesters burned
posters bearing her photograph and she went on trial for "violating
Turkishness."
It’s not because her unmarried Muslim heroine, Zeliha, wears a
miniskirt and marches into a clinic seeking an abortion. Nor because
Zeliha’s teenage daughter later beds a married man. No, the reason
Shafak faced charges was that her Armenian characters use the word
"genocide" to describe the killing of Armenians during World War I.
Though the legal charges were quickly dropped, Shafak could have spared
herself the trouble. The Armenian characters in this engrossing novel
surface in a subplot that distracts from the main story, an intense
account of a Turkish teenager’s unwanted pregnancy and its dramatic
consequences.
Recently published in the U.S. and due for release in the U.K. in
August, "The Bastard of Istanbul" opens when Zeliha is just 19. As
she awaits her abortion in the clinic’s crowded waiting room, she
encounters patients including a devout and barren Muslim couple.
Moments later, as the morphine is kicking in, she has a screaming
fit that prevents the doctor from terminating the pregnancy.
Onto this intense beginning, Shafak then grafts an Armenian
connection that is at once contrived and unbelievable, transporting
us to Arizona, where Zeliha’s brother Mustafa has just arrived as a
college student. As he stands clutching canned beans in a supermarket
aisle one day, Mustafa is approached by a chubby American divorcee
with a half-Armenian daughter, Armanoush. Mustafa and the divorcee
marry, forming one of the novel’s studied efforts to connect Turks
and Armenians.
Fortune Teller
We then shuttle back to Istanbul and fast-forward some two decades
to the heart of the story, which plays out in a household inhabited
by four generations of women. The men of the household have either
died or departed, leaving behind a zany matriarchy.
Living under the same roof as their bitter mother and senile
grandmother, we find Zeliha, who now works in a tattoo parlor;
Feride, a collage artist; Cevriye, a widowed history teacher; and
Banu, a fortune teller whose genies reveal the past’s dark secrets
to her (and the reader). Zeliha’s headstrong teenage daughter Asya,
the bastard of the title, calls all of the sisters — her own mother
included — "auntie."
Asya spends her afternoons at Cafe Kundera, a place entirely unrelated
to the Czech writer, with a group of idle Turkish intellectuals
known to her by names such as the "Exceptionally Untalented Poet" or
the "Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies." One, the
Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, is Asya’s lover. Shafak renders these vignettes
of Istanbul atmospheric and inviting; she clearly loves the city.
Unspeakable Revelation
The Armenian subplot comes back to life when Armanoush, Mustafa’s
stepdaughter, visits his home in Istanbul and realizes that this is
the place to which Armenians trace their past, their traditions and
their memories. Her visit also prompts Zeliha to recount, for the
first time, the unspeakable circumstances of her pregnancy. The prose
regains its original intensity and the denouement is unexpected.
Shafak has storytelling talent and a sense of humor. Born in France and
raised in Turkey and Spain by her single mother, a Turkish diplomat,
she now splits her time between Istanbul and Tucson, where she is
an assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University
of Arizona.
In this, her sixth novel, Shafak shows great promise. The hope
is that her seventh will stick to telling one story instead of
intertwining two.
"The Bastard of Istanbul" is published by Viking (360 pages, $24.95,
16.99 pounds).
(Farah Nayeri writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
her own.)