The main power of Elif Shafak in The Bastard of Istanbul lies in her unique and omnipresent humor. From the funny titles of the chapters (Cinnamon, Garbanzo Beans, Vanilla, Roasted Hazelnuts), to the hilarious names of the cats (Pasha the Third, Sultan the Fifth), facetious nicknames of characters (The Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, The Closeted Gay Columnist), to the abundance of witty lines: (the namesake of the novel calls her mom auntie, “Asya auntifies her mom to keep her at a distance. ‘What an unpardonable injustice on the part of Allah to create a daughter far less beautiful than her own mother, ’” the humor rarely lets up.
The story’s scope is vast. It is heavily populated, spans continents and centuries. The Kazanci family, composed of seven women: four sisters, their mother, their grandmother and Asya, the illegitimate daughter of one of the sisters, live in one household in Istanbul. The only brother of the four sisters, Mustafa, lives in Arizona. He is married to an American divorcee, who has a daughter, Armanoush, from her first marriage to an Armenian man who lives in San Francisco with his extended Armenian family.
Complicated? Hang in tight.
Asya, a nineteen-year-old nihilist rebellious young woman, is full of anger towards her smothering caring extended family in general, and her mother in particular, for not telling her who her father is. Armanoush, who’s been very close with her Armenian paternal grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, wants to see the house her grandmother was born in, and find out more about the details of her family’s past. So she picks up and goes to Istanbul and stays with her step-father, Mustafa’s family.
Asya is under strict instructions from her whole family to be nice to Armanoush, her step-cousin. She grudgingly obeys. But it takes no time for the two girls, of approximately the same age, to strike a deep friendship despite their diametrically opposite temperaments. One thing follows another, and gradually light is shed on historical events, dark secrets are revealed, and unexpected developments occur.
Elif Shafak talks about the Armenian Genocide in The Bastard of Istanbul. Because of that she was prosecuted in 2006 for “insulting Turkishness”, a charge that might have landed her in prison for three years. But the charges were eventually dropped.
The novel explores various attitudes about the historical deportations and massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915. The Armenian view is that it was a genocide and the government of Turkey has to apologize and pay restitutions. The Turkish views differ. Some have no idea and are not interested. Some claim that Armenians killed Turks too, so Turkey has nothing to apologize for. Some say whatever happened in the past is not our fault. Let’s move on to the future. And others say we have to examine the issue and resolve it before we can move on.
Alongside these conflicting political views, Shafak also explores the similarities between the two cultures. The family relationships and gatherings, the overbearing aunts and grandparents, and the cuisines of the Turkish Kazancis in Istanbul are practically interchangeable with those of the Armenian Chakhmakhchians in San Francisco.
There’s no shortage of mesmerizing and beautiful, but not always positive, descriptions of Istanbul. “…it is densely dark in Istanbul. Whether along the grimy, narrow streets snaking the oldest quarters, in the modern apartment buildings cramming the newly built districts, or throughout the fancy suburbs, people are fast asleep. All but some. Some Istanbulites have, as usual, awakened earlier than others. The imams…the simit vendors…the bakers…most of them get only a few hours of sleep…the cleaning ladies…of all ages, get up early to take at least two or three different buses to arrive at the houses of the well-off, where they will scrub, clean, and polish all day long…It is dawn now. The city is a gummy, almost gelatinous entity at this moment, an amorphous shape half-liquid, half-solid.”
Something that could be confusing for the uninitiated is the plethora of unfamiliar Turkish and Armenian names. However, Shafak’s characters are recognizable by their distinct and often colorful personalities. For example it’s impossible to confuse Asya’s four aunts: the tattoo-artist in high heels and miniskirt, Auntie Zeliha, the didactic high-school history teacher, Auntie Cevriye, the schizophrenic Auntie Feride who “had a problem with making eye-contact. She was more comfortable talking to objects…she addressed her words to Zeliha’s plate,” and the headscarf-wearing Auntie Banu, the fortune teller who carries two djinns on her shoulders, good one on the right, bad one on the left.
But what is constant and delightful throughout this densely populated novel full of heavy themes is Shafak’s unrelenting humor. Even at funerals and abortions.
Alternate Perspective 