When I was buying my copy of Elif Shafak’s latest novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World from a noted bookstore of Lahore, the man on the counter asked me, “Why is Elif Shafak read so much here in Pakistan?” This question was posed as a result of having sold several copies of the novel in a few days of its publication. Based on my perusal of Shafak’s previous works, I said that it is the mysticism of Shafak’s Turkey that attracts the Muslims of Pakistan as well. However, when I read 10 Minutes 38 Seconds, I realized that mystics are not the only common theme between Turkey and Pakistan, but there is a lot more in common.
Tequila Leila, the protagonist of the novel, is dead. And in the remaining few minutes of her consciousness, recalls her life from cradle to grave. Leila’s narration gains importance because her life is not rendered isolated from the society she resides in. In the background of Leila’s happening life is an Istanbul that lures, that betrays, that is politically active and that blends all kinds of mindsets, be they rebelliously atheistic or religiously rigid, extremely leftist or politically indifferent, driven by the state or making sense of things through personal effort. Leila lands in this colourful city after fleeing from her homeland where her conservative family resides; a family that carries two marriages, a family that exploits Divine Scriptural verses for its personal benefits, a family that tries to hide boisterous sexual activities perpetrated against its female members, a family that is not ready to accept a friendship between a boy and a girl.
Istanbul, however, an attraction from far-off lands, does not turn out to be a New York full of opportunities, but in the very start, takes Leila to a brothel where she encounters countless other people, who from their respective homelands have arrived at Istanbul in search of livelihoods, only to find themselves in pits of broken dreams. Thus, Istanbul does not remain a purely Turkish city, but a centre that attracts different races, different genders and different nationalities, hence becoming fluid – much like water that never assumes a single shape. One of the excerpts from the novel goes like this:
Istanbul was a liquid city. Nothing was permanent here. Nothing felt settled.”
Why would it be permanent, when migration to and from the city continue to take place, just like Pakistan’s Lahore, the years-old universities of which bring people from all over the country to the city, the traditionally popular red light district, which, ironically standing quite near a massive mosque, tells different tales. The reality of this Lahore is known only to those who reside inside. The historical fort which is an epitome of Muslim rule but is built near a Sikh temple. Is it not a place where women are killed in the name of honour but only after a male chauvinist secretly fulfils his lust with them, where people are ready to force homosexuals into heterosexual marriages yet at the cost of a woman, where communist marches go hand in hand with the protests of right-wing groups?
All of this happens in Lahore and all of this happens in Shafak’s 20th-century Istanbul as well. Her protagonist, an emblem of the city itself, is willingly or unwillingly influenced by religious, cultural and socio-political activities around her. She detaches herself from her religiously hypocritical household to land in a brothel that is licensed by the government, a fact that is not accepted by the jingoists, is married to a communist who is killed in a march disrupted by right-wingers, goes back to the brothel because her past continues to haunt her in a city of unforgiving people, comes across a gay man on whom she lavishes all her riches (of every kind) and is finally killed by extremists who cannot provide a decent livelihood to people but also cannot stand prostitutes. Leila is then buried, first by the state because no one is ready to accept her, but is dug out by her five friends who are different in their ideologies but whose concern for humanity keeps them together.
Elif Shafak
Leila’s five friends seem to be a suggestion that if our concerns are bigger – like love, care and compassion; and not petty, like hatred, murder and coercion of others – then people, even if they are from different religions and cultures, can live together. Leila herself makes one of her friends while attending to an injured cat.
But this togetherness, unfortunately, is not really the reality that we live, and Shafak herself puts it best in the novel at one point, where she writes:
“There were multiple Istanbuls, struggling, competing, clashing, each perceiving that, in the end, only one could survive.”
This statement too, aptly describes Lahore where Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, Africans, Chinese and Pakistanis, Pakhtuns, Punjabis and Sindhis, communists, rightists and apolitical people, men and women, people of mainstream sexuality and an LGBT community – all of them apparently reside together, but each group may also be looking forward to a Lahore of its own dreams. For some, a religious Lahore, for some, a secular Lahore, for some, a Lahore ruled by Chinese, for some, a Lahore to hopefully welcome people from all provinces warmly at some point in time, for some, a Lahore of Punjabis only, for some, a Lahore of straight people only, for some, a progressive Lahore that can live with its LGBT community too, for some, a patriarchal Lahore, and for some, a Lahore based on gender equality. But nothing is fixed yet. The liquidity remains there, refusing to take a fixed shape for long, melting time and again.
“Imperial Istanbul versus plebeian Istanbul; global Istanbul versus parochial Istanbul; heretical Istanbul versus pious Istanbul, macho Istanbul versus a feminine Istanbul”
It is to be realized that Elif Shafak, as much as she is an author and a political scientist, is an incredibly imaginative and creative woman indeed, who has not simply created a character, but through that fiction has provided reflections on a city that is alive and active. It is a city which, even after dying, is resistant and thus recalls whatever people have done to her, hence reliving its history before being called “dead”. It is not simply Leila who enters the waters in the end, but Istanbul as well, which according to this partly historical novel, still causes its people to “hear the water rolling under their feet” while reverting to its history.
Leila’s refusal, or Istanbul’s reluctance to die, resembles Bano Qudsia’s stance when she gives the title Shehr-e-Lazawaal (Indefatigable City) to her short story based on the city of Lahore, where saints sleep under the earth above which bodies are sold.
The author is a student of English Literature at GCU, Lahore
