High Profile
Into Connection
Interview by Jo Carruthers
The Turkish novelist Dr Elif Shafak
– controversial but hugely popular in her own country –
celebrates Sufism in her latest best-seller, The Forty Rules
of Love. Third Way drank tea with her in a sunlit
courtyard in Bloomsbury.
What is it in Sufism that attracts you, and when did
your interest in it develop?
I started getting interested in my early twenties, when I was a
student. To be honest, to this day it’s a mystery to me why I felt
this interest, because there was nothing whatsoever in my life that
obviously led me in that direction. I had a strictly secularist
upbringing, so I had no knowledge of any kind of mysticism or
religious philosophy, and at that time I was very leftist, very
nihilist, very feminist, philosophically anarchist –
anarcho-pacifist, of course. And when I look at my friends at the
time, none of them have any interest in Sufism.
All I know is, I began reading about it. To me, books are the
gateway to most things in life: that’s how I connect with the
universe, always through reading and reading. So, I began reading
about Sufism and one book led to another – and not only Turkish
books: there are very good scholars studying Islamic mysticism all
over the Western world, including Japan. For many years, I think,
it was an intellectual curiosity, but there came a time when it
became more of an emotional attachment, though it’s a bit hard to
tell where one stops and the other starts. I don’t claim to know
anything about Sufism; all I can say is: I’m still reading, I’m
still learning.
And I also like to unlearn, because that is what Sufism does to
you. You have to unlearn some of your dogmas – most of your
dogmas. The ability to learn goes hand in hand with the ability to
unlearn.
In The Forty Rules of Love,1 Rumi’s wife Kerra
says: ‘If you ask me, when it comes to the basics, ordinary
Christians and ordinary Muslims have more in common with each other
than with their own scholars.’ Is doctrine at all important to you?
Are you a Muslim who is interested in mysticism or someone
interested in mysticism who just happens to come from a Muslim
tradition?
Allow me to put it this way: I am a spiritual person. I’m a
Muslim… It’s hard to say I’m a Sufi.
I grew up in an Islamic culture and it’s part of my identity,
but I’ve also grown up with Christian and Jewish friends and I’m
someone who believes that, whatever our background, we need to
expand our hearts and our minds. It’s a pity if we stay in our
little cocoons – and it’s an even bigger pity if we think that our
little cocoon is better than someone else’s. In mysticism, the
whole idea is that it really doesn’t matter, you know, how you
dress up, how you think, how you pray – or whether you pray or not
– we are all interconnected.
I know it sounds very simple but it is such a fundamental thing
we keep missing and missing and missing. In Sufi philosophy, nobody
is excluded. Maybe novelists learn to appreciate this because when
you write a story you always write about connections.
I’m still not clear why you hesitate to call yourself a
Sufi.
It’s hard for me to say ‘I’m a Sufi full stop.’ I think Sufism is
like ending a sentence with a comma – and keep going. I’m a student
of Sufism, that’s how I see it – and a student of life. And I’m
learning a new thing every single day. The moment you think you
know something you stop learning, because you think you possess
that knowledge.
In both The Forty Rules of Love and your
earlier novel The Bastard of Istanbul,2 I
was shocked to find that there is a character who seems to be
beyond the range of forgiveness or love. Do you think there are
actions that can’t be forgiven, or people who can’t be
loved?
I think it’s a very, very hard question. I believe in forgiveness
but I don’t think it comes very easily.
But, if I may say this, in my novels I am not trying to give a
message or teach people anything. I do just the opposite: I put all
these different views, these different characters out there and I
let the reader decide. Everybody reads differently, everybody
brings their own perspective, their own gaze into the stories.
Everybody’s reading is so, so unique, and we create the story, the
meaning, together. I think it’s the task of the novelist to pose
the questions rather than to find the answers.
That’s something I enjoyed in both novels, that they are
very provocative and ask very difficult questions.
And these are questions that I ask myself, so I like to see myself
on the same level as the reader – whereas when you think you are
teaching something, you think you’re superior. We have this
tradition in Turkish literature of ‘father novelists’, who write
in simple language because they want to teach their readers
something, or to ‘modernise’ them. It’s not a tradition that I’m
very fond of.
Could there be such a thing as a ‘mother
novelist’?
I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that. It could be a
powerful metaphor, I can see that – but I think [it still implies]
a certain hierarchy. Rather than that, I’d like to be… maybe a
kindred spirit? That’s better.
In the observation I quoted, Kerra refers to ‘ordinary
Christians and ordinary Muslims’. You seem to be very interested in
ordinary lives and ordinary spirituality.
Yes, I am. By ‘ordinary’, I mean daily life, right? The things that
we ignore, that particularly scholars tend to neglect. To me, those
things are important – like, for instance, the recipes that are
handed down from one generation to the next. Or tales, songs,
myths…
And when you follow cultures through those little doors, you
will see there are no boundaries. I mean, we have so many things in
common – particularly in societies like Anatolia in the 13th
century, where there were people from all kinds of religious
backgrounds, all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, and there was an
amazing exchange of ideas and, you know, daily habits. To me, this
is something precious, you know?
The title ‘The Forty Rules of Love‘
suggests that Sufism offers a kind of discipline that leads
to a better way of living. Is that something that comes entirely
from within us, or is it something we depend on God to give
us?
I think that’s… It’s a complicated question – and maybe it’s
a question that needs to be asked again and again and not just
answered once and left behind. I do believe we are all born with
an amazing ability to develop ourselves, our minds and our hearts;
but whether we do so – it depends on the circumstances we find
ourselves in but it also depends on us individually.
I think what I like about [the Sufi] philosophy of life is that
it’s so introspective, its energy is introverted – we learn from
criticising ourselves, instead of each other. We do just the
opposite in our daily life, in the media, in politics particularly:
everywhere, everybody is constantly focusing on someone else’s
mistakes. But the moment you start thinking introspectively, that
step leads you to the next step, and the next step.
You have said that stories lose their magic when they
are seen as more than stories. Does that mean that there are good
and bad ways to read a novel?
One thing that troubles me is this question I often hear,
sometimes explicitly, sometimes very implicit: Why should I read
this book? What am I going to get out of it? We think time is such
an important commodity and we shouldn’t waste it, so we want to
think: If I read this book, it’s going to help me over my
depression, or I’m going to learn about a particular culture or
whatever.
I would like to emphasise the autonomy of fiction. It should be
read for its own sake, not to get a result. It’s not a box of pills
that is going to immediately change us. It will change us, but in
the long term, in a more abstract way. But oftentimes this
autonomy is ignored by today’s politics – when I write a book,
there is an expectation that my characters should be
representative of Muslim women, or Turkish women, of larger
entities. But at the end of the day a novel is about nuances,
details, the small things that are important in life.
Your memoir, Black Milk,3 does
talk about depression. How did that happen to
you?
After the birth of my first child [in 2006], I experienced
post-natal depression that went on for 10 months. It shook me so
hard! I think one reason why it happened is because I stopped
writing. I started writing stories when I was eight years old and I
had never stopped [before]. That doesn’t mean I am writing novels
every day of my life, but every day there are stories, and I had
this rather arrogant assumption that wherever I go in this world,
all I need is paper and a pen and my mind and that’s about it. My
imagination is my suitcase.
And when that talent is suddenly cut off, you have to rethink
what it means to be creative. Do we really own [our talent] or, as
you said, is it given to us – and can it also be taken away? It
leads you to very spiritual questions, I think, about God, about
life, about death. I think all of us face these dilemmas.
We all have different people inside us – particularly us women –
so in the book there are six different characters: all of them are
Elif and all of them are quarrelling constantly, wanting to go in
different directions. I realised when I started writing this book
that I had no democracy inside me, you know, because I had loved
one of those little Elifs – the intellectual, the writer – much
more than the others, and I had belittled the side of me that
wanted to lead a more domestic life and raise a family. So,
throughout the book there is this transformation from a monarchy to
full democracy.
To be honest, the depression helped me in a very interesting
way. Depressions can be golden opportunities to reassemble the
pieces of the self. Normally, you just carry on with your life as a
matter of daily habit; but when you fall down really hard and all
your little pieces are scattered everywhere, you cry your heart
out, of course, but then you have to reassemble the pieces – and
perhaps what you end up with is a better composition than before.
I think it’s important every now and then to stop and try to
reassemble our lives, our personalities.
Do you think that men in general don’t have that same
opportunity to reassemble themselves?
I agree. I’m aware that many men also go through lots of depression
and lots of turbulence – it’s not easy to be a man, particularly in
very patriarchal societies – but I think women have an amazing
ability to recreate themselves. And this is something that
fascinates me. We go through so many phases – like the phases of
the moon – and perhaps are also more capable of expressing our
emotions, our weaknesses, which is a healthy thing. So, when you
fall down you can say, ‘OK, here I am. My knees are bleeding’ – but
then you recreate yourself. And life pushes us in that direction,
because there are so many things we need to cope with, like the
different stages of motherhood. We have to be able to transform
ourselves and to go beyond our boundaries, all the time.
What was your relationship with your own mother
like?
I’ve always had a very strong bond with her. She was very well
educated, very independent. She had a critical mind and of course
was westernised: very modern, very urban, able to find her own feet
and raise a kid on her own. It wasn’t easy for her because in the
1970s the environment [in Turkey] was quite patriarchal – it
still is in many ways, but then even more so – and most of the time
she had to struggle with all those prejudices on her own. I have a
lot of respect for her.
Actually, I grew up seeing two very different kinds of
womanhood, of female role-models, if you will. My grandmother took
care of me for some time when my parents got legally separated,
when I was around five. (Their physical separation took place much
earlier.) She was a very kind and compassionate woman, full of
love. She was always one of those women who love to give without
expecting anything in return. A beautiful heart she had.
And she was very spiritual in her own way. She had lots of
superstitions – you know, against the evil eye and all that.
Emotionally they were very challenging days but at the same time
there was a lot of magic in my life.
Is there a single, overriding memory that epitomises that period
for you?
Well, here is one scene for instance. People with warts on
their hands would come to her and she would pray. There were lots
of roses in our garden and she would pick the thorns and she would
[draw a circle round] the warts, one by one, and she would stab
those thorns into an apple – as many thorns as the number of warts
she wanted to cure. And those people would come back a week later
and the warts would be gone. That scene – her with her red apples,
the roses, the thorns, the people with the warts on their hands
looking for healing – it’s very vivid in my memory.
And what did you make of it at the time?
You know, when you’re a child there is so much room for magic in
your imagination… You already see life full of such enchanting
elements, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise. It’s only much later,
as you grow up, that you feel the need to rationalise.
Of course, I don’t call it ‘magic’. I should find a better word
for it – for things we cannot explain directly with our reason,
our logic. Perhaps ‘supernatural’?
Has becoming a mother made you feel differently about your own
upbringing?
The biggest transformation happened with my father, because I
had no connection with him as I was growing up – as a matter of
fact, I saw him very rarely until my late twenties – perhaps two or
three times, maybe two or three postcards and that was about it.
So, my father was always this big, big, big void, and there were
times when I felt sad about that and there were times when I was
very, very angry and bitter.
So, I went through all those harsh seasons; but after that there
came a tranquillity somehow, and it happened naturally and
spontaneously after all that sorrow and anger. Of course, I’m not
claiming that I have no anger or sorrow whatsoever, but they are
minimal now. And when my father wanted to see his grandchildren, I
of course let him. Whatever problems I have had with him should not
affect them. But I can’t say that I have a deep love for my father.
I don’t feel anything.
What are the values that as a mother you most want to pass
on to your children?
I think the best thing I can do is to give them freedom,
self-confidence and love.
I think we should also allow ourselves to be students of our
children, because you learn from parenthood. You keep learning and
learning.
Your surname, Shafak, is an adopted name…
It’s my mother’s first name. When I started publishing my first
stories, when I was about 18 years old, I decided I wanted to
recreate myself, you know, with a new name – and also I didn’t want
to keep my father’s surname, because there was no attachment
whatsoever. My mother’s name means ‘dawn’ in Turkish and I like
that. Ever since then, it has been my name. When I got married, I
did not adopt my husband’s surname either; and he’s OK with
that.
You’re living in London at present. How do you find
that? In some ways, the British are not very cosmopolitan, are
they? Most of us don’t even speak a foreign language.
Perhaps the UK in general is like that, but the London that I
observe, that I inhale, is full of diversity and it amazes me. I
recently read that over 40 per cent of the children attending
primary school in London, their mother tongue is not English.
I am someone who very much supports cosmopolitan culture and
energy. I believe that in this life, if we are ever going to learn
anything, we are going to learn it from people who are different
from us. Someone who is exactly like me, who has a similar
background, similar views, who dresses similarly, you know – we
are just going to echo each other. But someone who has a different
story might open my mind up – and I might do the same for them as
well.
Of Istanbul you have written that it ‘is like a huge,
colourful Matrushka – you open it and find another doll inside. You
open that, only to see a new doll nesting.’ I wonder how you would
describe London…
To me, maybe because I’m a latecomer, in some ways London is like a
jigsaw puzzle. It’s composed of different villages and
neighbourhoods. Of course, there is a sense of continuity as you go
from one borough to another, but nonetheless I see that each has
its own small autonomy. And all these little pieces have their own
history, spirit and energy. That amazes me. I’m still trying to
understand this puzzle, but I’m very aware of how those pieces
function on their own and also compose a picture together.
You have lived in the United States, where people seem
to take their country very seriously, and in Turkey you have been
prosecuted for ‘insulting Turkishness’. How different does it feel
living here, where we have a strong tradition of mocking our
leaders and our institutions?
It’s a good thing if we can laugh at ourselves, as individuals, as
societies, as cultures – at our own weaknesses, foibles,
idiosyncrasies. Of course there are cultural differences, but in
Turkey also there is this long tradition of black humour, in
cartoons, poetry, songs, images, which goes all the way back to
the Ottoman Empire. I think almost all societies find a way for
humour, you know – even when the road is blocked you go around
those obstacles, because that’s how we breathe.
I’m someone who thinks very highly of humour. I think it makes
life so much more worth living. It makes literature so much more
worth writing and reading. Humour to me is essential – like bread
and water. Black Milk has a lot of humour in it: I made so much fun
of myself, and that’s how I came out of my depression.
I’m interested in the dialectics, if I may say that, between
humour and sorrow. When I write about something sad, I like to do
it through humour. When I write about something funny, I like to do
it through sorrow. There is this dance between sorrow and humour
that fascinates me, and I believe it’s everywhere in our lives.
You went to live in the US shortly after ‘9/11’. How did
you find that experience?
There was a lot of fear in the air, fear of the other – and
that’s a very unhealthy thing, because it cuts off all possibility
of dialogue, you know? It just withers away.
Dialogue to me is crucial. When we fail to speak to the ‘other’
and fail to listen to what the ‘other’ says, I think it breeds a
lot of fear, a lot of xenophobia, a lot of extremist ideologies. I
think listening is so important. As a writer, I listen to people
all the time, everywhere I go. I listen to two things: what they
are telling me but also how they put it – both the content and the
style.
In The Second Plane,4 Martin Amis wrote: ‘The champions of
militant Islam are misogynists, women-haters; they are also
misologists – haters of reason.’ However, in The Forty Rules of
Love you portray militant Islam as very rationalistic, in
contrast to the more visceral and emotional Sufic
mysticism.
I think there are different approaches in every religion, not only
in Islam but in Christianity, in Judaism as well. The monotheistic
religions have so much in common, and there are so many parallels
in their histories, in the debates they have had. So, I think there
is sometimes a gap between, you know, the scholar, who concentrates
solely on the surface, on the word, the rules and regulations, on
what is permissible and what is not, and the other approach, which
is much more holistic, much more mystical, that wants to see what
is beyond and underneath and looks for the inner meaning.
When I look at the writings of Christian mystics, to me it is
really amazing how similar the words are – and even the experiences
they talk about – to those of Muslim and Jewish mystics. They use
very similar imagery, because the quest is the same – the one,
universal quest that connects all of us. There’s a metaphor that I
like in mysticism: every river is flowing on its own, of course,
but they all flow towards the same ocean.
Because of today’s politics, today’s prejudices, we are always
talking about how different Islam is, but I want to talk about how
much more the three big monotheistic religions have in common.
That, to me, weighs heavier than the differences. The same quest
lies at the heart of each one – I mean, you might go through one
door, another person goes through a different door, but we all have
this need to understand: What am I doing in this world? How can I
make it more meaningful? What comes after death? Am I going to
leave anything behind me? Our answers may differ, but the
questions are very much the same.
And if somebody says, ‘I am an agnostic,’ I respect that. There
are lots of agnostics who think about religion much more deeply
than some who call themselves very religious and don’t think any
further.
Many of our intellectuals in Britain argue that
religion is essentially irrational and ‘religiophobia’ is rational.
Polly Toynbee once declared, ‘I am an Islamophobe. … I am also a
Christophobe.’ How do you react to that?
I think all kinds of phobia create more phobia and fear elsewhere.
Islamophobia creates more anti-Westernism, anti-Westernism creates
more Islamophobia. Hardliners create more hardliners. Someone who
speaks with hatred creates more hatred somewhere else and so on
and on. It’s a vicious circle.
But I think humanity has the ability to break this vicious
circle. This is a very interesting age: yes, we are becoming more
and more antagonistic in our discourses – we see it all the time –
but at the same time we are becoming more and more interconnected.
This is the age of migrations, movements, cultural dialogues and
‘global souls’. I mean, 500 years ago people didn’t talk like this,
couldn’t connect like this. There is an amazing transformative
potential there.
I think there is a test for all of us, and it is a test we need
to go through again and again, many times: Am I capable of
respecting and loving someone who thinks differently, someone who
approaches life from a different angle? Am I capable of loving
that person as he is, as she is? Am I capable of seeing the
beauties they might give me through their difference? Can I manage
to live with them and create something beautiful with them?
We’re always trying to convert the other person to our own
perspective, but why? We are all so interested in our own replicas.
If I want to surround myself with people who are exactly like me,
it means I am very narcissistic, because I want to see my own image
wherever I look. That’s something I find very unhealthy, for
individuals and societies.
—
1 Published originally by Viking in 2010 as The Forty
Rules of Love: A novel of Rumi, and now out in paperback from
Penguin.
2 Viking, 2007.
3 Black Milk: On motherhood, writing and the harem
within, published by Viking 10 days after this
interview.
4 The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007
(Jonathan Cape, 2008).