There are spoilers here, but I tried to keep them to a minimum. This book was translated from Turkish. While many times a book can lose something in translation, I was amazed that I felt no stilt or stumble along the way that happens in so many translated works. This was an amazing story that unfolded in surprising and extraordinary ways. Well worth the read.
This story starts off in a way that does not prepare you for its depth. It is modern Istanbul and the country is simmering in the duality of the world -– is it Secular or Religious? Rich or Poor? East or West? A woman is driving her daughter through the city which teems around them as they are stuck in traffic. This woman, Peri, uncharacteristically leaves her bag in the back seat of her car, and it is stolen. Also uncharacteristically, she runs after the thief to retrieve it. As she runs through the alleys of Istanbul, she is faced with the dark underside of the city. She is wounded, and almost raped, but is able to survive with only a knife wound to her hand, and a photo from another lifetime. Peri then returns to the car with her daughter, drives on to her original destination – a dinner party with the elite of Turkey.
You will not be aware until you have finished the story, that this is a metaphor for her life.
The story is told starting now, and flashing back to Peri’s history. With a bit more told each time, the woman becomes more visible. Her mother, a religious woman, believes that there is darkness in Peri’s soul, and Peri had not faced it in years before she was following the child that stole her bag. It is this darkness that has led Peri to live between her mother and her father, non-religious, that fight each other for everything. Peri has spent her life being conflicted because she didn’t want to take sides, even if she was leaning toward her father’s. He had placed all his hopes for the future of the family on her going to Oxford. Peri was successful in getting there.
Once there, however, she continued to remain outside everything. Her suite mate, a fully assimilated woman from Iran, suggested that Peri take a lecture with Professor Azur on Gd. Initially not interested, she warms to the idea. Once accepted to the selective seminar, the challenges that Azur puts in front of her continue to perplex her. Another woman Peri befriended in the college, Mona, a religious Egyptian, joined her in the class. The suite mate, Shirin, ended up convincing them all to live together. All along, Peri was warned by some that Azur thought he was Gd, and Shirin who swore he was. Throughout the story, you see the twists and turns of the pathways of Peri’s mind, just like the pathways she ran after her purse. The wound on her hand continued off and on to bleed and throb, just like Peri’s emotions. The duality of choices, to be or not, and the reality of Peri’s which was in the middle, are reflected throughout the country, and even within all the people at the party. As Peri is faced with inquiring minds that hear she went to Oxford, she speaks out for herself, timid at first. She reviews and revisits the past during this dinner, and she comes to a conclusion. She asks her mother for a phone number. Once dialed, she faces the first of many steps toward reconciling herself. At the end of the call Shirin tells Peri to call Azur. Peri, during this phone conversation, had been hiding in a hall. She then hears and sees masked men enter the house, and she hides in the closet behind her. In the blink of an eye, she calls Azur, and hears he is not angry. She then begins a seminar on Gd, teaching the teacher. As the power runs out on the phone, Peri stands and opens the door. She is finally ready to come out of the closet, figuratively and metaphorically, to face her destiny. She is no longer hiding from herself or anyone else.
The Source 4 Books 