It is a strange, asymmetrical pendulum, an author’s life. Every now and then, it swings madly from customary solitude to an opposite existential space shaped by literary festivals, book signings, public talks. After spending the past two years mostly working at home in my pyjamas, talking to myself or listening to imaginary fictional characters, these days I have become a more social human being. My new novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, has just been published.
It is an unresolved mystery to the hermit in me just how much I enjoy and appreciate doing book events. Libraries, art centres, literary festivals… Over the years, I have come to regard them as being among our last democratic spaces. Sanctuaries that keep their doors open for everyone. Cultural havens where we can slow down and find the time to hear each other out, even in this age of hyper-information and fast consumption.
Another kind of cancel culture
Early in the morning I am at King’s Cross Station, excited to take the train to beautiful Edinburgh. But there is a surprise: all the trains have been cancelled. I join the crowds walking around the station looking lost. We are trying to gather snippets of information, trying to find alternative routes. By the time I arrive in Edinburgh via a different line, I am three hours late.
In the green room I meet with the wonderful Nick Barley, the ex-director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the new director of the National Poetry Centre in Leeds. On stage he and I talk about a range of difficult subjects, from the Mesopotamian artefacts that have ended up in our museums to the companies motivated by greed pumping sewage into our rivers. A raindrop connects centuries, continents and cultures in my novel. Water is the connecting force in our conversation too. Afterwards, there is a book-signing queue. One reader has travelled from Estonia, another from Lebanon. One has come from Manchester with her book club; yet another has brought her elderly mother to meet me. My heart is filled with gratitude.
The next day I visit bookshops in and around Edinburgh. I am convinced that booksellers, librarians and translators are the kindest people. On Monday I am a guest at the Big Scottish Book Club, hosted by Damian Barr. I join Jackie Kay and Julian Clary. It is a vivid conversation with a palpable energy of empathy, literary camaraderie, laughter and love.
Yodelling for Kafka
For the next few days, I meet with a group of old and dear friends in Switzerland. This is how one afternoon I find myself in a beautiful but steep Alpine landscape. My friends are really good at hiking; I am not. They love heights; I am afraid of heights. They are wearing sports clothes and high-grip shoes that appear to have been designed for zero gravity, whereas I am clad, as usual, in dark trousers and espadrilles clearly not meant for this type of terrain. In my defence, I was not expecting the climb. Otherwise, I would have stayed in the hotel.
I feel upset at myself for not being sporty and athletic, and for dropping yoga almost as soon as I started last year. As I awkwardly clamber, in an attempt to calm my nerves, I search for an audiobook and click on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. It is a fabulous listen. After a little while, I shout towards the valley below: “Hermann Kafka! You nasty bastard!” A biker whizzing by stares at me, but I am not going to apologise for my unruliness. Instead, I yell again, louder: “Franz Kafka! You are beloved!” It really helps, this formula. First take your anger out on the father Hermann Kafka, then fill the empty space it left with love, by remembering Franz Kafka.
From our tears to the Tigris
Back in London, I am interviewed by Ayesha Hazarika on Times Radio. We talk about literature, but also about the racial riots that erupted in our cities. She asks how I felt. I tell her it broke my heart to see Filipina nurses working for the NHS having stones thrown at them instead of being thanked for their hard work, or a newly renovated library in Liverpool burned down.
It has been more than 15 years since I moved to the UK, leaving a part of my heart behind in Istanbul. I am an immigrant not only in England, but also in the English language, which also is home. I write fiction in my third language and it is not easy. And yet, there is a sense of freedom and a renewed sense of belonging. Despite what populist demagogues preach, it is possible to carry within multiple belongings, to feel attached to multiple places, and still to remain citizens of humankind.
We tend to think that they are different things, the tears we shed yesterday or the tea steaming in our cups today or the water of the Thames or the Tigris or the Ganges… But the same droplets continue to travel beyond borders of time and geography, connecting our stories and silences.
[See also: How motherhood was weaponised]
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This article appears in the 28 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump in turmoil