THE BURDEN OF MEMORY
Priya Krishnan
Hindu, India
Nov 4 2007
The Bastard of Istanbul; Elif Shafak, Viking/Penguin, £11.99.
If you are in the mood for a hearty novel about tangled families
teeming with eccentric, rebellious women, with a pace that is
unrelenting, then this one’s for you. It is also tempered by disturbing
insights into memory and ‘forgottenR 17; history. That makes it even
more compelling.
In this, only her second novel in English, Turkish writer, Elif Shafak
splices together the tumultuous histories of an Armenian-American
family in the USA and a Turkish-Muslim one in Istanbul, against
the backdrop of Turkey’s violent past. Given that this novel spans
different worlds and generations, she gets her characters’ lives to
intersect, seamlessly.
Asya, 19 years old and born out of wedlock, loves cafe life,
Johnny Cash’s music and existentialism. She lives in an old
mansion in Istanbul with three generations of women of the Kazanci
family – her mother Zeliha, three aunts, a grandmother and a
step-great-grandmother. And if you are wondering about men…well,
the author keeps Asya’s uncle, Mustafa, a man who is central to
the plot, distant. He lives in the U.S. He is married to an American
divorced from her Armenian husband and becomes stepfather to Armanoush
Tchakmakchian, her daughter from the first marriage.
In the anonymity of Cafe Constantinopolis, a chat room where the
emotional and intellectual lives of people are bared and shared,
Armanoush exchanges thoughts with other Armenians on Turkey’s denial
of the one million Armenian massacres during Ottoman rule.
Connect with the past
Unknown to her immediate family, Armanoush’s quest to connect with her
grandma’s past, "to meet Turks to better absorb what it means to be an
Armenian," brings her to Istanbul. But why she doesn’t try to delve
into her own family’s history before she jets off to a city where no
one remains from her Armenian family, defies logic. In the midst of
the odd but endearing bunch of Kazanci women, she ends up with a good
friend in Asya and uncovers dark secrets that link the two clans. We
also learn that generations of men haven’t survived in the family. That
seems to explain Mustafa’s ‘exile’. What also strikes one as odd is
that a defiant, modern Zeliha remains silent about a heinous crime.
Apart from these jarring notes and Armanoush’s contrived visit, to
suit the purpose of engaging with the contentious events of 1915,
Shafak is at her perceptive best when exploring at the personal and
the political levels, "the battle of memory against amnesia". Asya
grapples with the frustration of not knowing who her father is and
envies her Petite-Ma who has Alzheimer’s. "Memory withers away…it
might not be good for the people around you, but it’s good for you,"
she observes, wryly.
She also speaks of why Armenians remember. It’s because "your crusade
for remembrance makes you part of a group where there is a great
feeling of solidarity", whereas "Turks like me cannot be past-oriented
not because I don’t care but because I don’t know anything about it."
Searing evocation
Heart-wrenching truths echo through the pages. Shafak, who also
inhabits the world of words, searingly evokes what imagination means
to a minority "a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to
be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined
to be always silenced." Which brings us to her recent battles and
victory over Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which prohibits
"public denigration of Turkishness". She remains undaunted.
Truth hurts but she gets her characters to find similarities that
allow them to heal the festering wounds of memory. This she does with
empathy, by seeing things from the point of view of the ‘other’. If
I have a bone to pick, it is that the novel is overwritten and her
attempts at magic realism are feeble and convenient, much like the end
of the novel. While these hamper its appeal, Shafak’s moral scruples
are spot on in a book that must be read for its conscience and wisdom,
and the clutter, claustrophobia and warmth of families.
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