From The Furrow

Abstract

from The Furrow Valérie Manteau (bio) and Claire Foster (bio) Hrant, according to translator Dominique Eddé, addressed his reader not as one person in need of persuading, but rather as two people in conflict whom he hoped to bring closer together. Karin Karakasli, his longtime partner at Agos, says he "invented a language that wholly seizes nationalism by the throat." I flip through all the translations I can find, in English and in French, while sitting outside my favorite cafés, where I seem to attract frequent demonstrations of sympathy from neighbors and servers. Erol, the souvenir seller just next to Café Muz, is the only one who doesn't hide his disappointment. If you write about Hrant, there won't be any room in your book for me, even though you promised. I ask if he has any stories about Hrant but he shrugs, I'm just a humble shopkeeper. I point out that Hrant himself had a slew of businesses before going into journalism, but Erol doesn't want to be a character in a book about Hrant. I remember the day I saw on TV that he'd died, I didn't know who he was, but I heard it was an Armenian journalist killed by a Turk and trust me: it was the first time in my life I'd ever felt so Turkish, so ashamed of being Turkish. I'd be happy to play the villain, but in a story. Whatever your thing is, it hits too close to home. Erol's souvenir shop is trying to change with the times, as Westerners are scarce, and have been somewhat replaced by tourists from the Gulf region who, in addition to buying traditional soaps, napkins, magnets, and tchotchkes, acquire calligraphies that Erol can't read, but which he sells as authentically Turkish. I'd sell anything, he says, as long as I can take some time off and ride around with my friends. I ask whom he votes for, but he dodges the question—I don't do politics, I'm for peace, I just want everyone to respect each other, that's it. He still does some politics, though—I mention the Syrian guy he'd hired but eventually asked to leave. He'd wanted to do his prayers and he entirely has that right, Erol contends, but he couldn't just abandon the store like that without letting me know. And then he bothered the customers at Muz because the music was too loud, it was all too much. It's a shame, because it was nice having someone who could speak Arabic to customers, but there's always trouble with Middle Easterners. Hearing him say this I burst out laughing, but he doesn't know what he's said that's funny—just so you know, it's Europe here. "The difference between East and West," writes Hakan Günday, "is Turkey. [End Page 50] I don't know if Turkey is the result of subtraction, but I do know that the distance that separates East and West is as wide as the country itself." And within this space emerges a third path, which occurs in any space between two things—without which Europe wouldn't be Europe, and the Middle East would be seen as a flat, illegible mess. Erol tried to hire Fares, who's tired of making coffee at Muz, but Fares declined without a second thought—the ridiculously low wages, 12 hours a day, six days per week, plus his total indifference towards the work. And why not shine the shoes of Emiratis too, while we're at it. Erol gets it, but can only bemoan his own situation, because of course he too would prefer to have a garage filled with old motorcycles. And to live closer to Izmir, spend the day doing nothing—like you, by the way, living la dolce vita. I wonder what it is you see in this place. If I weren't stuck here, I'd be long gone. If I had a foreign girlfriend, easy, I'd marry her, and we'd go to Europe. You see, the problem with having...