Απλές, ανθρώπινες στιγμές και συναισθήματα στην κουζίνα της Ελίφ Σαφάκ, καθώς έρχονται τα νέα από το πραξικόπημα.
Watching Another Attempted Coup in Turkey with My Mother
by Elif Shafak
The New Yorker, July 22, 2016
...............
My mother’s face was pale. Like all Turkish citizens of her generation, she witnessed firsthand the coups d’état in 1960, 1971, and 1980, with various interventions in between. Each one further tamped down civil society and prompted new human-rights violations. After every military overthrow, another wave of political exiles had to abandon Turkey, like lost birds without a land to return to—Turkish leftists, Kurdish activists, human-rights defenders, ethnic minorities. All of these are still embedded in living memory, the toll of past military takeovers. We do not want another coup. Never, never again.
Mum and I sat at both ends of the kitchen table, sipping dark, strong Turkish coffee. No sugar, a thick layer of foam. Oddly, she paid far too much attention to getting the foam just right, two inches high, waiting patiently by the stove with a cezve in her hand. Her behavior made me wonder if, at times of crisis and chaos, one tends to get obsessed with the most ordinary and mundane details, only those being in our control.
................
When I was ten years old, I attended an international school, in Spain, where I happened to be the only Turk. I vividly remember being asked all sorts of things about the land where I came from. Why had a Turkish terrorist tried to kill the Pope? Was it true that the prisons in my country were like the one in “Midnight Express”? I also remember secretly envying children of other nationalities, especially a ginger-haired Dutch boy and a Swiss girl with freckles. They came from places where nothing much seemed to happen. In my teen-age years, I overcame my envy, even made fun of it, though something remained of the sentiment, an element of sadness as to why we, too, couldn’t be like them. Then, in time, and thanks for the most part to the art of storytelling, I discarded all such categories of “us” and “them.” There are only individuals. Human beings. Multiple belongings.
Toward dawn, the attempted coup was thwarted. I was hugely relieved, like dozens of liberal writers, poets, academics, and journalists whom I know. Not because we are fans of the A.K.P. government; some of us had positive expectations when it first came to power, long ago, but then it became increasingly authoritarian and dangerously polarizing. Still, governments are elected by the people. The putschists are not. And so Turkey’s liberals, including the liberal media, did not support the coup attempt. One of the tragedies of the event is that even those who opposed the coup fiercely may suffer terribly from the climate of anger following that night.
............
But I don’t really think it’s over. I fear we have entered a new phase, a darker one. There may be a rise in “the ideology of sameness,” more nationalism, more religion, more paranoia, less empathy, less tolerance. Whoever organized this coup certainly did it with utter greed, and, in doing so, drove a nail into the coffin of Turkish democracy.
In one night, the citizens of Turkey got a little older while the country went back twenty years.
...........
How I wish Friday was the last sleepless night for citizens of Turkey, of all backgrounds. But cycles of hurt and sorrow are handed down from one generation to the next, marked by unresolved histories, endless power struggles, competing machismos, where nothing is transparent and, like coffee grounds, everything needs to be interpreted, misinterpreted, in a land that is less solid than liquid, still flowing, still unsettled.
Elif Shafak is a novelist from Turkey. She lives in London and writes in both Turkish and English.
Watching Another Attempted Coup in Turkey with My Mother
by Elif Shafak
The New Yorker, July 22, 2016
...............
My mother’s face was pale. Like all Turkish citizens of her generation, she witnessed firsthand the coups d’état in 1960, 1971, and 1980, with various interventions in between. Each one further tamped down civil society and prompted new human-rights violations. After every military overthrow, another wave of political exiles had to abandon Turkey, like lost birds without a land to return to—Turkish leftists, Kurdish activists, human-rights defenders, ethnic minorities. All of these are still embedded in living memory, the toll of past military takeovers. We do not want another coup. Never, never again.
Mum and I sat at both ends of the kitchen table, sipping dark, strong Turkish coffee. No sugar, a thick layer of foam. Oddly, she paid far too much attention to getting the foam just right, two inches high, waiting patiently by the stove with a cezve in her hand. Her behavior made me wonder if, at times of crisis and chaos, one tends to get obsessed with the most ordinary and mundane details, only those being in our control.
................
When I was ten years old, I attended an international school, in Spain, where I happened to be the only Turk. I vividly remember being asked all sorts of things about the land where I came from. Why had a Turkish terrorist tried to kill the Pope? Was it true that the prisons in my country were like the one in “Midnight Express”? I also remember secretly envying children of other nationalities, especially a ginger-haired Dutch boy and a Swiss girl with freckles. They came from places where nothing much seemed to happen. In my teen-age years, I overcame my envy, even made fun of it, though something remained of the sentiment, an element of sadness as to why we, too, couldn’t be like them. Then, in time, and thanks for the most part to the art of storytelling, I discarded all such categories of “us” and “them.” There are only individuals. Human beings. Multiple belongings.
Toward dawn, the attempted coup was thwarted. I was hugely relieved, like dozens of liberal writers, poets, academics, and journalists whom I know. Not because we are fans of the A.K.P. government; some of us had positive expectations when it first came to power, long ago, but then it became increasingly authoritarian and dangerously polarizing. Still, governments are elected by the people. The putschists are not. And so Turkey’s liberals, including the liberal media, did not support the coup attempt. One of the tragedies of the event is that even those who opposed the coup fiercely may suffer terribly from the climate of anger following that night.
............
But I don’t really think it’s over. I fear we have entered a new phase, a darker one. There may be a rise in “the ideology of sameness,” more nationalism, more religion, more paranoia, less empathy, less tolerance. Whoever organized this coup certainly did it with utter greed, and, in doing so, drove a nail into the coffin of Turkish democracy.
In one night, the citizens of Turkey got a little older while the country went back twenty years.
...........
How I wish Friday was the last sleepless night for citizens of Turkey, of all backgrounds. But cycles of hurt and sorrow are handed down from one generation to the next, marked by unresolved histories, endless power struggles, competing machismos, where nothing is transparent and, like coffee grounds, everything needs to be interpreted, misinterpreted, in a land that is less solid than liquid, still flowing, still unsettled.
Elif Shafak is a novelist from Turkey. She lives in London and writes in both Turkish and English.
