When I’m planning a trip I read about local culture in novels and traveler’s tales rather than guidebooks. These latter certainly are useful once I get to where I’m going. But, for me traveling is about people in context and history. What is the point of seeing Troy or Gallipoli without a sense of all that went before my visit?
By sheer accident and grace of the Los Angeles Public Library system my intro to Turkey was Phillip Glazebrook’s “Journey To Kars.” Most pertinent to me was how he distinguished between the “traveler” steeped in literature and history of the place and the “tourist” who clutters the environment while seeking “gaudy souvenirs”
He was interested in the divide between Christian Europe and Moslem Turkey and frequently referred to English authors of the mid-nineteenth century. I loved his comment,” What was the impulse which drove middle-class Victorians to leave the country they loved so chauvinistically, and the company of the race they considered God’s last word in breeding, to travel in discomfort, danger, illness, filth and misery ….. in lands which, at best, reminded them of Scotland? This was the question I set out …to answer.” I can’t take the same trip, he traveled in the 1980s, and times have changed, but I can carry the sense of history and mystery through the journey. Also, I’m not going to Kars though it seems to come up often in stories from Turkey.
“Snow” by Orhan Pamuk was next. And this novel takes place in Kars. Pamuk is concerned about the clash between the religious right and the secular state. No one comes out looking good; both sides are refuges of charlatans and farcical players. Religion vs. secularism is being played out every day in Turkey with women wearing or not wearing the headscarf.
My book club elected to read “The Bastard of Istanbul,” by Elif Shafek. A rape, a bastard, choices made and the ties between modern Turks and the Armenian genocide are played out here. It also describes growing up in present-day secular Istanbul. Seems there is a lot of spiritual and emotional malaise for at least one group of teens and those who are long past that age.
“Bliss” by O.Z. Livaneli came next. His themes are rape, spiritual malaise, military action in the mountains, a suggestion of female suicide and a journey to Istanbul from the extremely rural and poor countryside. The headscarf looms large and is a political as well as religious symbol. Class and location seem to determine the relationship of men and women. In “Bliss” a young woman is quietly urged to commit suicide because she has disgraced her family by being raped. In “Snow” young women commit suicide because they are forbidden to wear the headscarf. I wonder how high the suicide rate is among young women in Turkey. It is so curious that two current authors would write about this.
All the authors write about the “old Armenian houses.” So I guess I’m going to make sure I identify these. I’ve got some ideas now about Turkish culture (of course I also read the newspapers) and I’m off to experience the new, eat some wonderful food, and hopefully see more than the sights.
