Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü
Turkish fiction
Original title – Çocukluğun Soğuk Geceleri
Translator Maureen F’reely
Source – Personal copy
I kick off this year’s Women in Translation Month with a slim gem of a novella from Turkey. I feel that in the sixteen years I’ve been blogging, the landscape for books in translation has changed. I can think of very few, if any, female Turkish writers who were available in English 16 years ago. This is one of the beauties of things like women in Translation. Months have helped along, and small presses like Serpent Tail are willing to take a chance on books like this. This novel was written forty years before it was finally translated into English. It captures a writer who, like the character in her book, had spent time travelling in Europe but also in institutions and had undergone electroshock therapy like the character in her novel. This debut novel was written in Turkish, but her later works were written in German; she also worked as a translator between the languages.
Sunday is bath day. We take it in turns. On cold days, a large copper basin is placed next to the stove. We bend over the basin to wash our hair. Then we sit in the basin and wash our bodies with what little water sits inside it. Bunni oversees all this. She pours the dirty water into a bucket, returning with a bucket full of clean water. Bunni never gets tired. Bunni devotes her life to overseeing baths, sweeping up ashes and cleaning away filth. For as long as I can remember, that’s what she’s been doing. She can even hold fire between her fingers.
When she isn’t doing laundry, washing dishes, praying, fasting, she’s at argamba Market. No one offers her more than this. If they did, she wouldn’t listen. When she pours the last drops of water over our heads, she blesses us with prayers in Arabic.
And we protest:
—God does not exist!
The first bit of this quote reminded me of how the uk used be weekly baths seem distant and the last line of god not existing would have been shocking then for her to say
The woman in the book, unnamed, is rather like the writer of the book. This free-spirited woman wants to be herself but is caught in a world where it is very patriarchal, and thus she keeps getting into institutions and having shock therapy. I was thinking how outdated that is these days, still used in very extreme cases of mental health issues, but much more tightly done than at this time. I think that maybe also adds to the structure of the book a jumble of thoughts, memories spilling onto the page childhood memories of rural Turkey, next thing in smokey cafes in Paris sexual awakening encounters this is the tale of a young woman maybe thirty year before her time a spirit unbound but caught in a world where things are changing the late seventies were turbulant yeas in Turkey.
Past the two double-sided sales counters by the entrance of Baylan Patisserie, there’s a large and dimly lit salon. This is where my brother and his friends gather every day towards evening.And so do we, to observe their legendary goings-on. In the begin-ning, they don’t invite us to join them. We sit at a nearby table, Günk and I, keeping a close eye on them while chatting. The genial, fatherly Greek waiters create an atmosphere that is possibly the most welcoming we have ever experienced. Istanbul too small in those days to fit my brother and his friends. They’re all university students. But they’re more interested in things like writing, drama and art. They have a shared obsession, too: Paris.The city of art, they say. Freedom’s beacon. They believe themselves to be living as artists do, moving from café to café and meyhane to meyhane in strict rotation. The Green Rooster and Lefter’s. Tosun’s Place and Club 47. (Most of these continue to be traditional locales frequented by artists and writers.) Our new friend Hayalet Oguz introduces Günk and me to Beyoglu by night.
This feeling of the Istanbul be to small for the minds of her and her brothers in a way trhere way of thinking is to much for the homeland in a way!
This is one of those novellas that flies by. It’s a great summer evening read that leaves you thinking for days after and feeling for a woman caught in a world that, even though in my lifetime, looks pretty distant. The treatment she has is rarely used well in the UK these days. I am not sure elsewhere, but the book may capture the chaotic, free-wheeling nature of the writer herself, a woman, and that in a male world would have seemed dangerous or as in her case, in need of treatment 50 years ago. I think this is the perfect start for this woman in translation month as it captures a world gone by in her own country’s history that saw them move forward in some ways after the revolution in 1980. If you haven’t read any female writers from Turkey, this is a great place to start, but the blog also has four other female writers from Turkey who followed Özlü. Have you read this or any other female writers from Turkey?
