WEBVTT - Read This: The Multiple Belongings of Elif Shafak 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.080 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. All week we're sharing our 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.560 favorite episodes from our sister podcast, Read This. It's the 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.639 show where editor of the Monthly and book lover Michael 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.800 Williams talks to some of the best and most respected 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:17.640 writers from Australia and beyond. Today we're hearing his conversation 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:23.560 with the award winning British Turkish novelist elf Chavak. But 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:28.160 first his host, Michael Williams. Hi, Michael, Hi Ruby. So Michael, 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.440 this is not the first time that you've spoken to 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:31.479 Elif Schavakh, is it. 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.440 No. I got to chat to her a few years 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.960 ago as part of Adelaide Writer's Week. She didn't appear 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.559 in person, that was down via zoom, but she was 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.680 so charismatic and carried the kind of love and attention 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:47.800 of the audience that it was like she was there. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:50.720 And part of that is she's written more than twenty 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:54.560 books at this point and people really adore her combination 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.240 of folklore and realism deeply kind of romantic hard, as 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.920 well as a passion for questions of human rights. You know, 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.440 she is a campaigner on that front, and she just 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:09.759 tells these amazing stories about kind of human beings who 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.319 are destroyed by the system or lost in the world. 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:14.760 I think my favorite of hers is her twenty nineteen 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.840 novel Ten Minutes thirty eight Seconds In This Strange World. 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:23.080 It's set, as that title would suggest, the final minutes 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:27.400 of the life of a woman who's dying. And it's 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:29.840 pretty haunting stuff. A shortlisted for the book when it 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.520 came out, and it's fantastic. 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:34.280 And as you say, she's not just a writer, she's 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.760 also a campaigner, human rights advocate. Can you tell me 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:39.800 a bit more about what she does in that space. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:40.560 Yeah. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.040 As you'll hear in the interview, Ellaf is more or 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.760 less exiled from her home of Turkey because she's an 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:52.080 outspoken public intellectual. You know, she talks about human rights, 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:56.559 she talks about women's rights, in particular, freedom of speech, 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.160 a whole lot of things that made her very unpopular 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.520 in her home country. She spoke particularly powerfully back when 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.600 some and Rushti was attacked in New York a couple 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:08.799 of years ago. And one of the quotes from her 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.400 that I love is the literary imagination is one of 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:16.600 our last remaining democratic spaces. Her new novel is using 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.280 that kind of idea using that democratic space and bringing 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.280 ideas of water, ideas of the ways in which there's 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.240 interconnectedness across history, across the years. And it's heard her 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:27.840 very best. 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.680 I'm looking forward to hearing more coming up in just 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.559 a moment. The multiple belongings of Ilifshavak. 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.400 Elif Shaffak's latest novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:51.560 stretches across millennia following a single drop of water. Much 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:53.840 as she did with the connective tissue of trees in 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.160 her last novel, Elif explores the long memory of the 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:03.000 natural world alongside the relentless figure of civilizations. Her drop 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.480 of water is present at the building of a great library, 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.800 witnessing the saving of the Epic of Gilgamesh from destruction 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.960 for blasphemy. Much later, in nineteenth century Constantinople, it lands 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.320 on Arthur, who's just arrived on an official mission to 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.160 find a missing section of the epic that depicts a 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.160 pre biblical flood, and in its third and final incarnation, 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:26.480 the drop of water is the last in a bottle 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.799 carried by twenty first century Yazidis who are fleeing from 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:34.040 violent persecution into the mountains of Iraq. As with so 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:38.000 much of Ellif's fiction, there are these multiple narratives converging 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:42.080 to tell this larger story about connection and about climate. 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.600 As she explained when we sat down for our conversation, it. 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.000 Is a story of three characters who seem to be 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:53.160 completely different. That first glance and two rivers, the River 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.520 Thames and the River Tigris in the Middle East, and 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.480 then one ancient poem, which is the epic of Gilgamesh 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:05.680 three two one. But everything in this seemingly complex structure 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:10.560 is actually based on a single small drop of water. 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.920 It is water that connects everything, and I think the 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.400 moment we forget how connected we are, we only need 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.039 to look at the journey of water, because it's the 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.960 ultimate immigrants in a way, and it connects us and 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.360 the water that flows in the river Thamps and the 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.760 River Tigris, or the water in our glass, the water 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.000 inside us, the tears that we shed, They're all the 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:41.159 same water circulating. So it is a book that attempts 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:46.640 to connect seemingly different pieces and destinies, But I genuinely 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.760 believe as human beings, we are all deeply interconnected. 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.520 A Kepe. Part of that interconnection in this book centers 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.000 around a text, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I wanted 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.880 to ask whether you remember when you first came across that. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.960 I do roughly remember because I was in Turkey. I 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.640 was a student in Turkey. But to be honest, that 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:11.560 introduction was incredibly limited. All you know is just as 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.720 it was an ancient poem and there was a hero 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.760 in it, and that hero had some adventures and journeys. 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:22.080 That's about it. Really. It took me years and years 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:26.480 to dive deep. And then many years later I revisited 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.799 the epic, but this time with a completely different eyes. 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.479 And then the third reading, which was the real reading, 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:38.360 that one really really changed me because what I found 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.960 in the epic was a story that is quite relevant 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:46.040 to our times, that is universally important. It is almost timeless. 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.560 It's a story that does not have a hero in 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.760 a traditional sense. If anything, it has an anti hero 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.279 because Gilgemush is a terrible person at the beginning of 0:05:55.320 --> 0:06:02.400 the story, you cannot like him. But through losses, journeys, friendship, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.240 but also failure, by the time he comes back, he 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:10.159 has not achieved anything. He has failed in everything. Through 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:14.279 all of that, he changes and he becomes a wiser person. 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.279 But also it's a story about climate crisis, about the 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.599 search for youth immortality, you know, how do we deal 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:27.239 with aging process? And I think it's a story about power, 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:31.200 how power corrupts. So in so many ways, I find 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.440 it a very very important and almost urgent and universal story. 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.960 It does seem to me that as your work has 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:44.320 developed from book to book, your love for your fascination 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:48.320 with the natural world is something that has become increasingly 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.440 to the fore that it's there even in your earliest works, 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:54.960 But it seems to me, particularly in the last two 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.520 or three, the ways in which we might better understand 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.400 our human relationships if we were more open to understanding 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.640 the relationship between elements of the natural world is a 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.720 kind of recurring theme for you, and I'd love you 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:12.360 to share with us how that passion, how that kind 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:13.840 of focus came about for you. 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.040 That is so correct. I think I'm also very interested 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.720 in eco feminism, the kind of feminism that connects the dots. 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.080 There are several threads that come together when we talk 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:31.000 about nature and literature. And you're right, my interest in 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.600 nature is increasing as I get older, and also older 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.960 as a writer as well. But I think Basically, what 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:43.480 I would like to remind myself and everyone is that 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:47.040 we tend to think we are above nature, that we 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.240 are superior to everything else, because we think we're very 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:54.080 clever as human beings, and we have turned ourselves into 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:58.360 consumers of nature. That is our basic relationship with the 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:02.200 things around us, and that is a completely long and 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.960 destructive relationship. We're destroying an entire ecosystem, and as we 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.720 do this, we're destroying ourselves. So a different way of 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:15.280 thinking which is actually not new but quite ancient, and 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:21.640 many indigenous tribes, many ancient spiritual systems knew this. They 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.440 were telling us that we are not above nature, but 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.640 just a small part of a very delicate ecosystem. And 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.120 you need to respect the trees, you need to respect 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.600 the earth, you need to respect water. So we need 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:40.280 to rewire our brains and rewire our relationship with nature. 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.720 And I believe that is an important part of my work. 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.280 What do you say is the relationship between that work 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:52.920 and that subject, that area, and the business of literature itself, 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:55.680 Because it seems to me there's something very fraud about 0:08:55.720 --> 0:09:00.440 applying words to natural phenomenon, to natural ideas, to ancient 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.959 concepts where they run the risk of feeling inadequate or 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.840 incapable of capturing the kind of richness of the natural world. 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.280 And I know in your career there was a point 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.400 at which you made the shift from writing your books 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.480 in Turkish first to writing them in English first. And 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:19.640 I've heard you talk about the way in which you 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.280 can dream in multiple languages. But do you commune with 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.640 nature in the same way in English and in Turkish? 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.920 Does one language find the rhythms more readily? 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.480 For you? That is such a brilliant question. And you 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.319 made me think more deep there. Thank you. I think 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.560 I need to go back to my childhood. I was 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.480 raised by a grandmother in Turkey who was it was 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.480 very spiritual, you know, in her own way. She was 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.280 not religious, but she was spiritual. And in her own world, 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:54.640 my grandmother was an oral storyteller. In her world, the 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:58.240 mountains would speak, the trees would whisper, you know, water 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.280 would say things, and that was that was not madness. 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:06.280 There are these kinds of stories in Anatolia, in the Balkans, 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:10.600 in the Middle East. I have never forgotten that. And 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:14.320 it paints me that oral culture in general is looked 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.959 down upon it because it's regarded as not intellectual enough, 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.400 and sometimes I've heard people say things like, oh, it's 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.360 just you know, tales by ignorant housewives. I've heard these things. 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.480 So there's a part of me that wants to also 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.040 take the wisdom because there are so many pockets of 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.599 wisdom within oral culture that we need to tap into. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.920 So I want to bring those pockets of wisdom and 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.599 connect them with written culture, or in other words, I 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.360 would love my writing, to the best of my ability, 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:49.240 bridge oral culture and written culture, because even when we 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:54.240 talk about seemingly irrational things such as superstitions, there's a 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:58.960 reason why those superstitions are there. You know. They reflect 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.839 our most basic fears as human beings. There's something existential there. 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:08.280 So I do pay attention to different ways of storytelling, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.120 not only to the European canon of the novel, as 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.240 much as I love it, I am also connected to 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:20.840 different types of storytelling, much more cyclical, much more oral storytelling. 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.719 You know. With regards to language, it's a big, big 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:28.240 question for me because language is a huge passion. I 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.320 do not see it as an instrument that I use 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:34.000 and then put aside. I think languages shape us. We 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:37.840 breathe them, and you know, we dream in them. But 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.320 at the same time, as you can hear in my accent, 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:46.320 in my mispronunciation, I am not a native speaker in English. 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:49.439 This is an acquired language for me. I'm an immigrant 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.320 not only in England, in the UK, but also inside 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.880 English language, and as a result of which I will 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:02.880 always experience this immigrant anxiety. There's a gap between the 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.760 mind and the tongue. The mind always runs faster, so 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:09.240 you're as immiicantc You're always aware of the things that 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:11.679 you're not able to say instead of the things that 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.360 you are able to say. But I love it. I 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.720 love writing in English. It gave me an existential freedom, 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:24.319 perhaps an additional sense of freedom. Being a Turkish writer 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.800 is sometimes very heavy, and being a Turkish novelist, female novelist, 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.440 can be heavier. So when I write in English, I 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:38.800 find another cognitive distance, and that distance helps me to 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.800 feel lighter, and with that lightness I can maybe delve 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:47.840 into more difficult subjects with a little bit more hutzpah, 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:52.360 you know. So that's my relationship. Of course, my relationship 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.640 with Turkish is more emotional, with English more intellectual, but 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:58.880 in a natural all I can tell is still to 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:04.720 this day, if my writing has melancholy, sorrow, longing, sadness. 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.600 I find these things much easier to express in Turkish. 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:10.960 But when it comes to humor, which I love, irony 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.960 and satire are much easier in English. 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.680 I just want to pick up on making the point 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:20.520 about recognizing the oral traditions beyond just that kind of 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:23.600 European traditions of literature. And it seems to me that 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:29.200 perhaps a writer of Turkish heritage is singularly well placed 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.959 for that multiplicity of influence. But of course modern Turkey 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:38.160 is very uneasy with that duality. Does that represent a 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:40.600 kind of additional thing to navigate? 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.320 That is so true? I mean, Turkey in so many 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.520 ways is a place of in between them. It's a 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:53.880 very liquid city. It's constantly becoming shifting. It hasn't settled yet, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.079 even though it's a very very old city. And that 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.960 liquid world is something that always makes me think more 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:10.000 carefully about memory, identity, heritage, ancestors, What does it mean 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:13.360 to be from the East or from the West. I 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.640 think for a long time with good intentions, no doubt, 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.440 but many people in media and academia adopted a very 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:25.280 dualistic approach. They thought that some countries were quite solid 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.440 and safe and steady, and that was the Western world. 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.760 And they also thought that in those solid countries, democracy 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.760 had been achieved, women's rights had been achieved, LGBTQ rights 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.800 had been already achieved, so you didn't have to worry 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.800 at all about the future of democracy. But it was 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.360 the liquid countries over there outside the Western world that 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.360 had to worry about such things. Now fast forwards, in 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.600 the year twenty twenty four, we do know that there's 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.600 no such thing as solid countries versus liquid countries, and 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.600 we're all living in liquid times. And even in those 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:04.720 countries that seem so solid, actually things can go backwards, 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.160 and it can happen very fast, so we all need 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.840 to worry about the future of our democracies. 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.080 After the break, Elif reveals the Virginia Wolf novel, which 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.840 she returns to again and again. We'll be right back. 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.160 The Financial Times called the Elif Shafak one of Turkey's 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.720 most important writers, but back in two thousand and six, 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.800 her book The Bastard of Istanbul saw Eliff prosecuted for 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:47.000 the crime of insulting Turkishness, though she has later acquitted 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.200 and has received a lot of support from Turkish readers. 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.680 Elif and her family were forced into voluntary exile in 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.760 twenty thirteen. They're now based in London. This sense of 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.880 displacement runs through all of her work, and it's especially 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.000 present in There Are Rivers in the Sky. How do 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:13.120 you manage to scaffold the extent to which grief and 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:18.720 anger at the nature of loss and exile they inform 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.440 your work, but they don't overwhelm your work. And I'm 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.320 interested in whether that's a discipline you have to apply, 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.240 whether you have to say, I see that's there, and 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:30.400 I'm going to leave that at the door, or I'm 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.120 going to make that the focus here because it's in 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.480 everything you write, but it's handled with such grace. 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:46.200 That's an amazing question. I'm no stranger to anger, depression, anxiety. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.080 I think we need to talk about these things also 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:55.600 mental health. How do we struggle with difficult emotions? Exile, 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.480 not being able to go back it makes it harder. 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:03.840 At the same time, I have found a home in 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:08.240 the UK, in the English language as well, And at 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.040 the same time I see myself as a citizen of humanity, 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.640 as a citizen of the world. So I'm someone who 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.680 very much believes in multiple belongings. That said, like everyone 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:21.520 I believe who cares about what's happening in the world. 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.239 There are days when I feel so sad. There are 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.199 days I feel an almost existential fatigue. All of that 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.720 is human, and I think we should not be ashamed 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.000 of our emotions or feelings. Feelings are not a sign 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.200 of weakness, just the opposite. They are a source of energy. 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.439 The question is not whether we feel angry or not. 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.840 The question is what do we do with our anger? 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.480 Can you turn it into something much more positive? The 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.600 only thing that worries me, There's only one emotion that 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:54.520 really really troubles me, and that is the lack of 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.560 all emotions, which is numbless. The moment we become numb, 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:01.600 you know, if I stop caring about your story, if 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.119 you stop caring about my story, or about what's happening 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.840 elsewhere in Afghanistan, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine and 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.320 everywhere around the world, I think that is a very 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:12.600 dangerous world. You know. 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.520 I like that you were talking before about liquid and 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.840 solid countries, and I think, coming back to the role 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:26.080 that water plays in this book, and that idea about fluidity. 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.119 I know a book that is incredibly important to you 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.840 as a reader and that you return to throughout your 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:36.080 life is Virginia Wolfs Orlando. And I know that that's 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.879 a book that you think of as a liquid book. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.919 That is so true because because it is, it's a 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:50.480 water like book, and it's constantly evolving, shifting until reading Orlando, 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.560 and I've read it multiple times throughout my life, but 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.000 the first time I read it really struck me. Until then, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.399 I did not know you could write a novel without 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.960 any constraints, you could fly that high so bravely, with 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.320 such such a sense of freedom. And I think it's 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.520 it's a book that I associate with a sense of freedom. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.640 Can you travel through time? Can a character live more 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:19.280 than just a mortal life? Can a story go beyond 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:26.320 boundaries of geography, time, gender, culture? She dared to do 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.359 all of that and more so. It is an important 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:31.879 book for me. But in general, I think novels have 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.199 shown me so much. I love the broad canvas of 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.639 a novel and the way it connects the seemingly small 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:43.720 with the seemingly big, the way it connects us versus 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.359 them to such a to such an extent that we 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.960 realize there is no such a thing, there's no such 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:53.399 thing as the other. So it does dismantle dualities, and 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.760 especially in these times when everything is to a dualistic 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:58.080 we need to go back to. 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:02.000 Fiction with the book quite there are rivers in the sky, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.040 which is so kind of rich and layered and texted. 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.919 How do you get the relationship right between if I 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.000 can use your metaphor the solid and the liquid, the 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:18.320 solidity of research and your sense of responsibility to real stories, 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:22.480 real historical moments, real bits of knowledge that you want 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.760 to impart on the one hand, and on the other hand, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:30.920 that sense that Virginia Wolf sense of possibility, of openness, 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.360 of things moving fluidly from one state to another. How 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:36.440 do you get that tension right. 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:40.679 It's a massive challenge, especially as you go back in 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:45.280 time and you tap into the forgotten stories and the 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:50.199 silent stories of minorities such as the Yazidi minority in 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.439 the Middle East. This is one of the most vulnerable 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:58.160 and persecuted minorities across the world. Of course, in twenty fourteen, 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:02.720 the entire world or the zd genocide in the hands 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:07.560 of ISIS extremists but we should also know that it 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:10.480 wasn't the first time that the Azids had been persecuted. 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.720 The AzID lore talks about seventy two massacres at least, 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:20.399 So how do you approach such a beautiful culture but 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.600 also with respect, with dignity, but without forgetting that you're 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.119 a novelist and you need to fly and you need 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.560 to let your imagination free. I'm always aware of those 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:35.159 of those challenges. The second challenge, especially in this case, 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:40.760 was that the Azidi culture is mostly transferred from generation 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:45.040 to generation, not through written culture, but through oral storytelling, 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:50.080 so songs, ballads, folk tales. This is very important, a 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.400 very important part. So I had to do a lot 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.240 of listening, lots of interviews, especially with the Yzd elders. 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.239 At the same time, there's a story of water in 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.600 my book, so there's a scientific research. It was insane, 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.280 to be honest, amount of books that I had to 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.280 read and the range of books that I had to 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:14.960 read for this novel, which also includes of course a 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:18.400 very deep research about the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:23.720 Akkadian rights and rituals. But I love learning. I've stayed 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:27.040 in academia for a long time, and from political science 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:31.320 to cultural history, but also to cookbooks. I love reading 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:35.000 across the board, but there comes a moment when I 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.960 know I have to let my intuition guide me. 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:43.679 Are you someone who goes back to books, stories and 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:47.520 rediscovers them as you yourself have grown, as you yourself 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:48.720 have changed as a reader? 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:52.160 I come from a country that has a very very 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:55.720 rich history and a very complex history, but that does 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.320 not necessarily translate into a strong memory. I think, in 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:02.560 so many ways we are My motherland is a society 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:06.760 of collective amnesia. So when we talk about the past, 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:10.200 there are lots of silences and gaps, and I think 0:23:10.359 --> 0:23:14.639 literature is drawn to those silences. Personally, as a writer, 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:19.000 I don't see myself only as a storyteller, but maybe 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:22.040 as a silence teller as well. You know, I'm drawn 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.840 to those silences. So the meaning of the past changes 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.000 depending on who is telling the story and who is 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:31.920 not allowed to tell the story. The moment you start 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:36.159 asking questions about where were the women, Where were the minorities, 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:39.160 or men who are not in positions of power, men 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:43.960 from maybe poorer backgrounds, more disadvantage backgrounds, Suddenly there's a 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:49.160 huge silence in history books, so I think literature can 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:51.680 take a closer look at those silences. 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:56.000 As a parent with your kids, how do you decide 0:23:56.000 --> 0:23:58.879 what stories to share with them and when? At what 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:03.320 point the stories that matter to you get threaded into 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:05.320 their lives and their understanding of the world. 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:11.040 I've always been interested in how, especially in immigrant families 0:24:11.160 --> 0:24:14.720 or any family that has experienced some kind of displacement 0:24:15.760 --> 0:24:20.640 complex history, there are generational differences. Now I'm not talking 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:23.080 about my family in this instant, but I'm thinking about 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:27.480 many immigrant families that have experienced some kind of trauma 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:31.840 on for instance, either side of the Atlantic. What stayed 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:34.919 with me is when you talk to the elderly, the 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:39.359 people have experienced the biggest challenges. They don't talk about 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:42.960 the past much, which doesn't mean they have forgotten the past, 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:45.399 of course they haven't, but they don't know how to 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:48.159 talk about these things, so it stays in their chest 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:52.960 and they don't know how to express those emotions. The 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:57.000 second generation immigrants, they're usually not interested in that in 0:24:57.040 --> 0:25:00.359 the past as much, understandably because they have to be 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:04.960 forward looking, future oriented. It's almost like tabolerasa. You need 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:08.199 to build a new life, which leaves the youngest in 0:25:08.280 --> 0:25:12.800 these families. The third or fourth generations today are the 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:17.320 ones who are asking the biggest, sharpest, deepest questions about 0:25:17.320 --> 0:25:22.000 their ancestors, stories, and heritage, and they want to know 0:25:22.080 --> 0:25:27.080 the family silences, not only the family stories. I've always 0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:29.800 been interested in that as a novelist. Now come to 0:25:29.880 --> 0:25:35.800 my experience personally, I try to talk more. I'm aware 0:25:35.880 --> 0:25:41.040