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A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
Elif Shafak on the power of storytelling, freedom of expression and the global water crisis
00:51:57
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- [00:02]
A
All around the world, women are water carriers. When there's no fresh water, the amount of distance that a woman has to walk increases, increasing the chances for gender violence along the way. So we tend to think these are different boxes, like water crisis, gender violence, or racial inequality, but actually they're all connected.
- [00:25]
B
I am really, really excited to share this episode with all of you. Elif Shafak is an award winning writer, a political scientist and an activist. Her beautifully written novels are bestsellers the world over. And today we discuss her new book, There Are Rivers in the Sky, a spectacular tale spanning centuries and countries with a single drop of water tying the characters together. We also delve into Alif's own story and the personal sacrifices she has made in order to keep writing about the issues she holds dear. Women's equality, freedom of speech, and human rights. I'm sure you have heard the expression an old soul used for someone who seems inherently to have a depth of wisdom beyond their years, beyond this lifetime. Alief is in that sense an old soul. And I think that comes out very strongly in this interview. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. Alif, it's fabulous to have you here for this podcast.
- [01:33]
A
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.
- [01:34]
B
I'm very excited to talk to you about your new novel, which I absolutely loved, absolutely loved. But before we get there, I'd like to give listeners the chance to learn more about you and your story. Your parents are Turkish, but you were actually born in France, but spent much of your childhood in Ankara. You have spoken about how your parents divorced and your mother returned with you to Turkey with the most likely next step for her, being married off to an older man because she would be seen to need a husband. And having already been married once, her value, and I'm doing air inverted commas there, her value in the marriage market would have dropped. That didn't happen because your grandmother insisted that your mother, who dropped out of university to marry, should get to finish her education. Your grandmother sounds like an amazing, strong woman and your mother too. Can you tell me about the influences of those women on your childhood?
- [02:35]
A
Oh, thank you so much. Those two women, my mother and my grandmother, had a, I think, huge impact on my life, but also my writing, my fiction. They were very different personalities. My mom is very, I would say rational, urban, and grandma pretty much the opposite. More traditional, maybe more Eastern, you know, and what I loved most was the solidarity between them, the sisterhood, and as you mentioned, very critical moment in our lives at a difficult moment in our lives. The very fact that my grandmother interfered, took a step forward and supported her daughter's independence and education changed our lives. That's why I sincerely believe when and if women support each other, the impact of that goes beyond generations. So my mom went back to college, back to university. She started from scratch, all over, because she had dropped out of university. And she did graduate with a very high average, with flying colors. And afterwards she entered the Foreign Ministry. She learned multiple languages. We went to Spain, where I was educated in Madrid. But life was different. All I'm trying to say is I think I've never forgotten my early years in my maternal grandmother's house, her support. And maybe I got my love for written culture from my mother and my love for oral culture from my grandmother. And I would love my work to bridge these two worlds.
- [04:06]
B
When you were growing up in this environment with your mother and your grandmother, do you recall the first time when it occurred to you that boys got treated differently to girls? Was that visible to you from a young age?
- [04:20]
A
100%. I was actually very aware of this. I started thinking about this unequal treatment of girls and boys from an early age onwards because of my unusual upbringing. When we returned from France, we returned from Strasbourg to Ang. We came to a very patriarchal, very conservative and inward looking neighborhood in the middle of Ankara. This was my maternal grandmother's house. And we were like the old ones out, you know. And when I looked around the family structures that I observed, it was very clear that fathers were the head of their families, that little boys were raised like little sultans in their. In their families. We do that. I mean, and I need, and I think we need to talk about these things openly. It's not good for those boys either. Of course patriarchy makes women unhappy and takes away their rights. But I really don't think men can be happy and free within a patriarchal order either. Especially young men or men who do not conform fit into these descriptions of masculinity. Their lives can be quite difficult as well in this system of inequality. So from an early age onwards, because I felt like an outsider in so many ways, I think I had to do a lot of observing and trying to understand why this was the case.
- [05:45]
B
An outsider because your family was different.
- [05:49]
A
I've always felt like an insider, outsider, like always on the edge, the periphery. I mean, looking back, I see lots of layers. One reason was, of course, because I came from France at a very young age. I had to think about this. Belonging, migrations, home. Where is home again from an early age onwards. But I think I felt like the other also because I grew up without seeing my father much. And it took me long years to understand that in the meantime, during those long years of absence, actually he had been a very good father to his other children. He has two other kids, my half brothers, who understandably had a very strong relationship with him, and he was a very good father to them. But I think this was very difficult for me to understand. Some. Some people are not capable of parenthood. Perhaps then that would have made sense, you know, if that was the case, but because he was a good father to them, and with me, it was the exact opposite. I think I questioned myself a lot. Sometimes I felt like this was my failure, but I always felt like the other child, the forgotten child. And that added another layer of, you know, this outsider feeling.
- [07:08]
B
And with your mother becoming a diplomat, you did live in very many places around the world. You've referred to Spain, but I think Jordan and Germany as well were places you lived when you were young. You've written beautifully about what it feels like to be asked the common question, where are you from? Can you talk to us about that question? I mean, we all say it to people when we meet them. Where are you from, indeed?
- [07:34]
A
I mean, we all say it, we all want to know, but actually, it's not as simple as it sounds. And the problem that I see when I look around is that we're living in a world that doesn't allow us to be multiple and to celebrate the multiplicities that we have in ourselves and in our family stories. I love that saying by Walt Whitman in which he talks about how we all contain multitudes. And I think in this age, we have, to a large extent, forgotten that because we're constantly being pushed into boxes. When I look at myself, at my writing, there's a very clear bond, you know, attachment to Turkey. Of course, being Turkish is a big part of who I am, especially the city of Istanbul, where I moved in my early 20s. I lived in Istanbul for a long time, and I really, really fell in love with the city. And I'm still in love with the city. But on the other hand, I feel attached to the Balkans, definitely Anatolia, the Middle east, the Levant, the. The Mediterranean. I also consider myself European. The values that I share. Over the years, I've become a British citizen. I just want to emphasize that I am, at the same time a citizen, or I try to be a citizen of humankind, a citizen of the world. That doesn't mean you're A citizen of nowhere. So I want to think of identity not as a static monolithic block, but rather something more fluid, like ripples in water. You can have both local and global international attachments at the same time.
- [09:09]
B
Now, I'm 10 years older than you, and if I'd somehow come from Australia to meet you in your classroom when you were first learning to read, I would have found a girl struggling with it. You've written about how you were lagging the class in learning to read. And you've also talked about how the soft G letter in Turkish saved you. Can you tell us about that? Because I think most people would think a prolific writer like you would have been, you know, reading and writing almost from the moment that your little hand could pick up a pencil.
- [09:44]
A
I so appreciate that this question. I struggled a lot, actually, at school. So I went to primary school in Ankara, and it was a crowded schoolroom. I think I must have been the last student to get this red ribbon that each student would earn once they managed to read and write. All the students would display their red ribbons. You were supposed to attach it on your black uniform so it was quite visible. And then you would know who has made it and who hasn't made it yet. In my case, I was left handed by birth. And at the time in Turkey, at least in the school, this was regarded as a problem. The left hand was supposed to be your bad hand, you know, it's associated with sin and darker things. And the right hand is supposed to be the good hand. So you have to hold your pencil with your right hand. And I was constantly being told by the teacher to send my left hand into exile, which means you need to keep it under the desk. And I found that. So. So in the Turkish Alphabet, there's this interesting letter which is not pronounced. It's a silent G. It's a G with a little squiggle on top. And I like that. I like that silent G. It seemed like an introvert to me. It helped me to connect with the rest of the Alphabet. And I have always loved reading. I was a good reader, actually, even when I couldn't write, when I couldn't hold the pen properly. But that silent G, I think I connected with that other night letter in the Alphabet. And it helped me to finally learn to hold the pencil with my right hand and get that red ribbon. But even to this age, I cannot. I struggle when I'm holding, you know, a pencil in my hand for a long time. That's why I write my books with a computer or before that there was a typewriter. And only when I am using a keyboard can my two hands finally meet.
- [11:50]
B
And when did you first have the ambition to be a writer? How did that happen?
- [11:55]
A
I've been writing fiction from an early age onwards, since I was 8 years old. But that's not because I was planning to become a novelist. You know, I had set dreams. Honestly, I didn't even know such a thing was possible. There were no authors around me. I didn't know you could dedicate your life to books. What I did know, what I did feel at the time, was this almost existential need for stories, because I thought life was very boring. I was this only child, very lonely child. I didn't see my mother much during those early years. I was raised by my grandma, who was remarkable. But of course there's a big, big age gap, you know, and you are. There are these long stretches of loneliness in which you have to feed your imagination. And to me, storyland seemed much more real and much more colorful than the so called real life that I found myself. And it was through books that I learned there were other possibilities, there were other ways of existence. There were other worlds out there beyond the limits of my little corner of the universe. And maybe I could connect with those worlds. So from the very beginning, fiction for me has not been autobiographical. I understand when people write more autobiographical work. I respect that. And I also understand when people say in every book that you read there are echoes of that author's life. I get that. But for me, what is much more interesting is not to be myself, to journey into someone else's mind, life, truth, try to look at the world from their perspective and then another person. So I think fiction is always more transcendental. You transcend the boundaries of the self that's given to you by birth. That's what I find fascinating.
- [13:44]
B
You studied international relations, women's studies, You've got a PhD in political science. Was there a time, even as you were obviously in love with reading and writing, was there a time as a young person that you might have thought about politics? Is that what took you in the direction of international relations? Or was it because your mother was a diplomat? Why those courses of study?
- [14:08]
A
I think I loved academia, always, for a long, long time. What I liked about it was that if I could build an interdisciplinary structure of learning, I love that. I adored that. I didn't like being those silos, atom walls between disciplines. That didn't work well for me. So cultural studies, women's studies, these fields are more fluid they're more interdisciplinary. You can learn from history, philosophy, sociology. And I love having eclectic reading lists. I love doing research, learning. And also I like those discussions in the classroom with students, seminars. Just not to forget that we're always learners in life. I think writers need to be two things. Primarily, we need to be good read, and then we need to be good listeners and just always be students of life. So that side of academia really speaks to me also, because as a writer, when I first started publishing, it was impossible to earn a living by just writing books. You have to have another job, whatever. So academia seemed the best option for me, and I stayed in universities for a long time. A part of me still cherishes that. But always, always for me, the priority was fict. That's where my heart beats.
- [15:30]
B
How old were you when you published your first book? Your first few books were published in Turkish, and then you moved into writing in English. Can you take us back to that time of that first book? What was it like?
- [15:42]
A
Indeed, I started publishing actually relatively young. I was 22, 23 when my first novel came out. And people at the time, those who read my book, they were a bit puzzled because the language that I used, they were not expecting it from a young. In Turkey, unfortunately, we're a little bit polarized when it comes to language. We have Turkified our language. As you know, when you go back in time, we're talking about the Ottoman Empire, which was a multi ethnic, multilingual, multi religious empire. And that diversity was also reflected in its linguistic structure, in the sense that the vocabulary, the syntax was Turkish, but within the vocabulary there were Arabic words, Persian words, also Ladino words, words coming from Armenian, from Greek, Kurd. So a whole mixture over time, as we Turkified our language, lots of old words were gone. And in Turkey, if you are a liberal young person, you're not expected to connect with those old words unless you are a very older person with conservative ideas. I've never understood that duality. I'm a writer. I love words. I love all words, both old and new. And I also think the lifespan of a word is longer than the lifespan of a human being. So let them flow. You know, the river of language has to be organic. So when you speak English and you say chutzpah, or when you say kismet and nobody says to you, wait a minute, the first is a Jewish word and the second one is an Arabic word, they're all organically part of the English language. There's a part of me that treasures that. So people were A little bit surprised when my book came out because it used a whole wide range of vocabulary.
- [17:33]
B
And it was well received. Your first book at 22 in Turkey.
- [17:37]
A
It was well received. It was a bit more mystical, that work. And as you mentioned, I wrote all my earlier novels in Turkish first. But then about 20 years ago, if not more now, there came a moment when I felt the urge to start writing in English. And that wasn't a rational decision, believe me. It was more like an instinct, a need for air. I had to. I needed more. More oxygen. Another zone of existence. Being a writer in Turkey is not easy, especially when you're a novelist, because novels are full of ideas inside a novel. You question, you ask questions, you open up spaces, even for difficult conversations. And then when you're a women writer, I think it's even harder. There are layers of sexism, misogyny, and then if you are part of the LGBTQ community, there are additional layers and so on. There came a moment when I felt really, really suffocated, and writing in English maybe provided some cognitive distance for me, an additional sense of freedom. I love the Turkish language. I'm very attached to it emotionally, to English. I'm attached more intellectually. It's a more cerebral connection, but I feel like I need both. And over the years, I've realized still, if my writing has melancholy, sorrow, longing, I find these things much easier to express in Turkish. But when it comes to humor, irony, satire, it's much, much easier in English.
- [19:13]
B
Your first novel in English was the Saint of Incipient Insanities, and the second was the Bastard of Istanbul. And that novel proved to be quite pivotal in the pathway of your life. You were charged with insulting Turkishness because one of the book's characters refers to the massacre of Armenians during First World War as a genocide. Do you remember that time? I mean, I'm sure you do. It would be seared into your memory when you were first charged and how you felt about those charges.
- [19:50]
A
Yeah, I do. To be honest, it was quite unsettling for me. I was very surprised. I was not expecting it at all. In the Turkish Constitution, we have an Article 301, which is supposed to protect Turkishness against insults, even though nobody knows what that means. And this article was used against historians, scholars, journalists for so many times, but never before against the work of fiction or a fiction writer. So I found myself in a very surreal situation in which the words of fictional characters were taken out of the text and used as evidence in the courtroom, as a result of which, my Turkish Lawyer had to defend my Armenian faith. Fictional characters in the courtroom. And meanwhile, outside, there were groups. During that whole year, there were ultra nationalist groups spitting up my pictures, burning EU flags, burning my pictures because they thought I was the pawn of Western powers. You know, I was not patriotic, and I was betraying my nation. To me, that was very unsettling also because I was pregnant at the time, and it was not an easy year for me. At the end of that year, I was acquitted. Fictional characters were also acquitted with me, but even then, I had to live with a bodyguard for over a year and a half.
- [21:14]
B
You were pregnant then with your first child. You've had two children, and you've written on motherhood. And I'm referring to your book Black Milk, in which you canvass six small versions of yourself. They're Thumbelinas, or finger women. You know, tiny. But they are women with competing identities, all of them inside you. One of them is the career woman. A stellar career, no children. They're only gonna waste time. One of them wants to laze around and read all day. I can understand that one a lot. And one wants to be a mother, a domestic goddess. I think every woman listening can relate to that sense of, you know, multiple competing versions of ourselves, ambitions for our life. How did the vision for this book come to you?
- [22:03]
A
I so appreciate this question. To be honest, it was born out of postpartum depression. I really, really struggled. And in Turkey, it's very difficult to talk about postpartum depression because motherhood is immediately romanticized. Of course. There's so much beauty, so much joy in it. But the first days of motherhood can also. Or parenthood in general can also be a time of transition. Sometimes you don't quite know what you're doing. Sometimes you doubt your. So it's an emotional, you know, ride. And we don't allow ourselves to talk about those emotions. In general. Emotions are regarded as a sign of weakness, which I oppose. I think emotions are like sources of raw energy. It's okay to sometimes feel anxious, depressed, or emotional fatigue. The main question is, what do we do with those emotions, with those sources of raw energy? So I wrote a book about a difficult subject. But I think I'm right, right to say I wrote about the subject with humor, with compassionate humor, not condescending humor, but also making fun of myself. You know, the things that may be my own flaws, my own failures. I didn't know how to ask for help. And that process showed me that there are moments in one's life when you have to Say, you know what, I'm struggling. I really, really need help. Because I was so independent from an early age onwards, I thought, you know, I can do it by myself. It doesn't mean I always do it right, but I can do it by my. So I found it very hard to say I need help. That was a big learning process for me. And I realized two things about depression. When we are going through depression, we tend to think it is forever, but we have to understand that it's a season in our lives and after that season there will be other seasons. And the second thing is when we're going through that tunnel, we think it's only happening to us. But actually so many people are struggling. Maybe the only difference is some of us are better at hiding it than others. But when the book came out, I cannot tell you how many people contacted me to say, you know what? I had the same thing. I had something very similar and that made me very happy. And the only thing I can briefly add is I think when we talk about democracy, we usually think of it as an external concept, but we also think of need to think about internal democracy. We all have those multiple, you know, voices inside pulling us in different directions. There's a beauty in that there's no right and wrong in terms of you can choose very different paths as a woman and they're all, you know, praiseworthy, they're all important, but it doesn't mean it comes easily. Right? So let's talk about these things honestly, openly. But let's also take care of our inner guards and inner democracy.
- [25:02]
B
I love that expression, inner democracy. So you've been through these experiences having been charged and the trauma experience of people on the street spitting at your picture. Fortunately, those charges were dropped. You've lived through postnatal depression, you're living in London and you keep writing and you've written more than 20 books. And I think many people would be most familiar with your wonderful works of fiction. But I do want to take you to one non fiction extended essay you wrote. And I feel a particular connection with it because one of the things that brings me to London, in London, having this conversation apart from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, is that I chair the global health focused philanthropic fund, the Wellcome Trust, which supports some publishing and it supported the publication of an essay you wrote entitled how to Stay Sane in an Age of Division. I recommend it to everyone. Can you give us the answer?
- [26:08]
A
Really means a lot to me. You know, your words. Thank you. Thank you. It is not an Easy question that can be answered in a short, concise way, of course. Why? Because we are living in a world that is fast moving. It is deeply polarized, bitterly politicized. But my point is, I think we are all struggling at this moment in time. And every study shows us that the levels of anxiety are rising, particularly among young people east and west, but also across generations. And so we need to talk about anger. Anxiety, anxiety, frustration, confusion. Sometimes we feel confused. That is all. Okay, if there's one emotion that really, really worries me is actually the lack of all emotions, which is apathy, which is numbness, the moment we stop caring about each other, the moment we stop listening each other, I think that would be a much more dangerous world to live in. So we're living in the age of anxiety. Let's maybe recognize that. Let's also talk about our own worries, anxieties, and try to understand also people who feel left, left behind. We cannot gloss this over. These public conversations, nuanced conversations are important. But the main question for me is, you know, hidden in a beautiful essay that Toni Morrison wrote once, she said, sometimes I feel so angry, but then I go and I sit down at my desk and I write. And I like that she takes her anger and she turns it into something positive and constructive, you know, for herself and for many other people. So can we do that with our worries, anxieties, anger? Can we turn it into something more constructive, both for ourselves, but also for our communities and societies?
- [27:53]
B
Can you talk to us a bit? You've referred then to Toni Morrison getting to her desk to write. How do you write? You know, I mean, you've written so much. Is there a formula? You always start your day at the desk at a certain time? Or is it more flow and organic than that? How do you write?
- [28:11]
A
Yeah, I think, you know, not many of us have precise schedules as writers. And I don't want to cause off. Usually when I hear a writer who is very fond and very sure of their precise, perfect schedule, you know, they start at a certain time every day. They go for a run and then they come back. Lunchtime's, you know, set and so on. Usually it's male authors above a certain age. But for all the rest of us, I think we're all, you know, juggling multiple roles, multiple balls in the air. So sometimes you can't write during the day. Well, then I write at night. Sometimes I'm not good at writing at night, but I write better in the morning. You carve out a space, a time for yourself, and that's okay. You know, we shouldn't put too much pressure on ourselves because we don't have these perfect schedules. What I do every day, however, is to read. You know, I love reading. I'm a curious reader and I love reading. Across the board, from political philosophy to cookbooks, there's no such thing as highbrow literature, low brow literature. Who makes those distinctions? We need to question that. But let's read from east and west, north and south, not only Eurocentric literature, not only the same genres over and over, but across the board, both fiction and non fiction. And I genuinely think inside fiction, there's everything that is inside life. You know, there is politics, there is history, and there's emotional intelligence and there's empathy. And I don't know a single person who doesn't need to connect with their own emotions.
- [29:48]
B
And one way of doing that will be to read your wonderful new book, There Are Rivers in the Sky. We're recording this in London three days before it comes out here. Before we talk about the book specifically, how does that moment feel for you? The moment before it gets launched into the wider world and you go on a book tour and you start receiving reviews and impressions from readers? Is this a time of anxiety, excitement? How do you feel in this moment?
- [30:17]
A
It's both anxiety, anxiety and excitement. And sometimes people think that if you have written a number of books, that maybe you must be used to this. You know, there's no such thing. Whether it's your first book, fifth book, tenth book, you always get nervous, you always get anxious. Also, while you're writing, you go through maybe valleys of doubt, mountains of, you know, anxiety. Some weeks you think like, wow, I'm writing something great. Maybe the other week you're crawling on the floor. That's also part of the creative process. What I have learned, although I would love to add this over the years, is the value, the beauty of literary festivals, cultural spaces, libraries. We have to invest in these spaces. These are genuinely among our last remaining democratic spaces where we can still hold nuanced conversations, where we can still meet people who might think differently and hear each other and listen to each other and learn from each other. So those book festivals, those book events are very precious for me. I love book signings. Even though I'm an introvert by nature, there's a part of me that genuinely appreciates those spaces.
- [31:32]
B
I'm very, very glad that you referred not only to book festivals but to public libraries. It just breaks my heart to see some of the things we're seeing, particularly in the us, where public libraries and librarians become the centre of horrible, vicious community controversies because. Because they've chosen to put wide selections of literature on the shelves. I mean, it's completely in contrast to everything we want young people, people in general, to achieve about broader understanding. It's just so horrible to witness.
- [32:06]
A
Absolutely. And as we're speaking and Pan America just recently published their new report showing, unfortunately, that book bans and book removals from school libraries and public libraries has escalated. You know, we're talking about thousand of cases now. Any book can offend someone and this creates a huge pressure, as you mentioned, on librarians. It doesn't protect children. They were just having the wrong debate. And I think it's very important that we support libraries and librarians.
- [32:41]
B
Absolutely. Now, there are rivers in the sky. This is a weaving together of a number of individual stories. As I was reading it, the image in my mind, like they're individual notes and then they combine into a piece of music. It's terrific. One of the stories is in the olden times, as you refer to it. So an ancient story. One of the stories starts in 1840 and then there are two stories set in this century. And these individual stories reverberate and there are themes that connect them, but the overarching theme is water. Can you talk to us about why the theme of water and how you came to this conception of these weaved together stories?
- [33:32]
A
Thank you. Indeed, the whole book is based on a single tiny drop of water, a raindrop that thousands of years ago, falls on the head of this remarkable king, a Syrian king called Ashurbanipal, who built a fascinating library, very important library. So it's that same drop that travels across centuries, cultures, continents. It is a big book, if I may put it this way, or an epic book in the sense that it has a very broad canvas, but that small starting point is at the heart of everything. That little raindrop is at the heart of everything. So it's a story of three characters who seem to be very different at first. First glance, but are connected in a surprising way. And then two rivers, the river Thames and the river Tigris in the Middle East. And one poem, ancient poem, which is the epic of Gilgamesh. 3, 2, 1. That's the structure of the book, and I guess I see it as my love letter to water.
- [34:40]
B
I love that. Three, two, one. Three characters, two rivers, one at. One of the characters is Arthur, and he is the character from the 1800s, born into incredible poverty, but ends up involved with the British Museum. And his story is very important to the weaving of the Epic of Gilgamesh through the novel. In telling Arthur's story, there's a wonderful quote in the book which refers to the British Museum. It says, no longer simply a warehouse, it is actively taking part in determining what is worth preserving for posterity. Within its walls, history is not only being protected and displayed, but also rewritten. Yet Arthur is too young to understand that in deciding what will be remembered, a museum, any museum, is also deciding, in part, what will be forgotten. Fabulous. And you clearly wanted to explore that concept about museums, colonialism, taking artefacts from around the world. Why was that on your mind? And why was it projected into the novel?
- [35:55]
A
Yes, I find this a very, very important subject that requires calm conversations. And I think it's not only with regards to the British Museum, but also also the Louvre or the Metropolitan. I mean, across the world, in many parts of the world, this is an important conversation and we need to have it now. How did those artifacts end up in our museums? What were their stories like? Who owns the past? Who has the right to tell the story and who cannot tell the story? Can we hear the story from their perspective? For me, as a right, of course, I love stories, but I'm not only drawn to stories, I'm also drawn to silences and people who have been silenced or people whose stories have not been heard. So I always pay more attention to the periphery, the margins, rather than the center. And so when we talk about the artifacts, for instance, in the British Museum, thousands and thousands of artifacts, can we also talk about how minorities in the Middle east are actually the owners of those artifacts? Because we, again, we pay too much attention to a certain government in, let's say, in Iraq or in this part of the world or that part of the world. But I'm not talking about a conversation between governments. I'm also talking about bringing the voices of minorities onto the table. Now, when we're talking about the artifacts from Iraq and Syria in particular, it is a very complex story because, as you know, in 2000, before, after fanatics Isis destroyed so many museums in the region, they have also been selling so many artifacts and making enormous amounts of profit from this. But the destruction of collective memory was something very deliberate on their part. So that also needs to be added to this conversation. I guess what my book tries to do is it opens up debates, conversations about colonial institutions, history and how many artifacts were brought into British Museum and through which means and ways. But at the same time, I think we can honour and respect the passion and love of individual archaeologists like Arthur in the book, who is loosely based on George Smith, because this is a person who came from poverty. He genuinely loved archaeology, he genuinely loved poetry, in my opinion. And in order to find the mystery lines in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he came to the Middle east twice and he lost his life there. And today he's buried there between Syria and Turkey. So as I recognize his passion and love, and a part of me respects that, I can also be very critical of institutional colonial history. We can do multiple things at the same time, and that's one of the beauties of literature and art, because it allows us to hold these nuances, conversations.
- [38:55]
B
And the book also does seek to address a silence, the story of a minority group. You've referred to ISIS and the way in which they destroyed and sold important cultural artefacts. So a silencing of culture. But one of the stories in the book is also around their enslavement and selling of people and their genocidal intentions. Can you tell talk about that?
- [39:21]
A
Yes, as we're speaking, actually, this week, it's the 10th anniversary of the Yazidi genocide. In 2014, in front of the eyes of the world, these militants, these fanatics, they attacked Yazidi communities. And we're talking about a very vulnerable minority, not only in the region, but across the world. Yazidi lore talks about 72 massacres, at least throughout their history. So they have been vilified, misunderstood, given all kinds of terrible names, targeted and violently attacked so many times. But what happened in 2014, both in Syria and in Iraq, was, again, horror beyond words. Villages were attacked, the elderly were killed very deliberately. Because of, in my opinion, what we spoke about earlier. Earlier, the elderly are the memory keepers. The Yazidi communities are not based on written culture. The memory of the identity of this community is transmitted not through archives, but through oral storytelling. So when you kill the elderly, you are killing the collective memory. And that's what ISIS did. And then they killed so many men and boys and they kidnapped women and girls and they unfortunately, unfortunately, have subjected them to horrific tortures and sexual slavery. As we're speaking, 3,000 girls are still missing. And while I was writing this book, I read something that really made me pause. I kept those news in my research as an important part of my research. In Ankara, very close to the neighborhood where I grew up, my maternal grand grandmother's house, a young Yazidi girl was saved by the police. And I'm talking about an ordinary family neighborhood, you know, and this girl had been kept there for years and years under horrific circumstances. So those 3,000 girls are in, quote, unquote, normal neighborhoods in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, in Iraq, in Kuwait as we're speaking. How is it possible that the neighbors are not saying anything? How come that kind of numbness exists? So there are lots of things we need to talk about. My point is the Yazidi genocide is not over yet. There's, of course, a lot of individual and collective healing that needs to take place. And I wanted to write about this community and their relationship to rivers, to water, and also cultural memory.
- [41:58]
B
So we have Arthur, you powerfully tell the story of one girl who is in these horrific circumstances. And then the third character is a water scientist, and she's a hell of a scientist. We learn so much about water and rivers and hidden rivers through the way that you tell her story. And her story is really about her working out who she is in the world and finding herself. But I was incredibly impressed, intrigued. I learned so many things about water I didn't know before. But I really want to assure listeners this does not in any way, shape or form feel like you've picked up a high school science book. It's all powerfully told in the narrative of the characters, but you must have been reading books about water science from morning to night to get this together.
- [42:54]
A
I did. I did. And I loved it. I love water science also. While I was writing this book, I lived in a river house for 20 and a half month, just observing the movements of the Thames. I love it. It's, of course, tidal river, every shifting, ever moving. I mean, imagine we're talking about a river when we talk about the Thames that was declared biologically dead not, not that long ago. And that's why it's called the zombie river right now, because even even though it was so filthy, it was so treated so horribly by human beings, us human beings, it managed to clean itself, we managed to clean the river. And now we're talking about a waterway with a biodiversity of over 200 species, and yet we never learn anything from history. We make the same mistakes over and over again. And as we're speaking, water companies in this country, in order to get more profit, to increase the amount of money that they're earning, they're just pumping sewage into our rivers again. So we're just drawing circles. And I think we need to pay attention to rivers, we need to pay attention to water and stop taking it for granted. Climate crisis is primarily fresh water crisis. And I really want to add this. Water is the element that Connects all the dots all around the world. Women are water carriers. They're also memory keepers. When there's no fresh, fresh water, the amount of distance that a woman has to walk increases, again increasing the chances, unfortunately, the possibility for gender violence along the way. So we tend to think these are different boxes, like water crisis, gender violence or racial inequality, but actually they're all connected. Where I come from, the Middle east is experiencing this acutely. Out of the most 10 water stressed nation in the world, seven are in the Middle east and North Africa. Our rivers are dying. And when this happens, we will see an increase in political extremism, poverty, inequality and of course, patriarchy as well. So they're all connected.
- [45:03]
B
I'm going to come to some concluding questions now, all based around the fact that, of course, this podcast is named for Virginia Woolf and riffing off her statement that to write a woman needs a room of one. Earlier this year, you delivered the well named A Room of One's Own lecture at the Cambridge Literary Festival, which of course is in Ode to Virginia Woolf. And we're sitting recording this podcast in the Virginia Woolf building at King's College London. So she's all around us. In the lecture, you said patriarchy is at its strongest not when it's imposed from above by some brute force, but when it's normalised and absorbed to such an extent that it becomes par for the course. It does not need to be enforced any longer. If, when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we judge what we see through an external gaze, through the patriarchy's gaze, that really spoke to me. And how do you think, as women, we get out from that external gaze and we really look and see ourselves?
- [46:15]
A
Really, I really appreciate this question. It's very close to my heart because I think there's so many moments in our lives when we look at ourselves and judge ourselves through patriarchy's gaze, we judge each other as well. And when and if women are divided like that, the only thing that benefits from it is patriarchy itself. So we need to empower ourselves, we need to empower each other. To me, it means nothing when we have only just a few successful women, whatever success means in business, a few successful women, in media, again, a few, you know, in this area and that area, that's nothing. We have to hold each other, right? We have to help each other. But also, I think the solidarity between women's movement and LGBTQ movement is very important to me. That's also part, part of the story. And coming from a country like Turkey, I Do know how easy it is for countries to go backwards? We cannot take it for granted. Until Perhaps recently, late 1990s, early 2000s, there was so much optimism in the world. Maybe the biggest optimists back then were the techno optimists because they thought thanks to digital technologies, proliferation of all these technologies, Facebook and so on, democracy was going to spread everywhere. Just give people information. Information will make everyone informed. Informed people will choose democracy. It's not like that in the year 2024. We do know that their predictions were wrong. My point is, at the time people thought they were like solid countries. The Western world in general was regarded as solid, safe, steady. You don't have to worry about the future of women's rights in these countries because it had already been achieved. You don't need to worry about democracy in this country because it has already been done. So it is in those liquid countries like Turkey, where you have to worry about human, human rights. And that duality was false. So my point is now we know that there's no such thing as solid countries versus liquid countries. We're all living through liquid times. As the. The Polish British thinker Sigmund Baumann said, it's liquid times from now on. Which means we do need to worry about the future of women's rights. Whether you're in Turkey or in America. Right. Things can go backwards and we need to hear each other's voices. I genuinely think this is the right time to talk about global solidarity and global sisterhood. So the kind of feminism that opens up quite conversations but also invites men to talk about, you know, how they struggle with the straight jacket of masculinity. We need to initiate these conversations and we need global sisterhood.
- [49:06]
B
Hear, hear. To that I agree with every word. I always conclude this podcast with a quote from Virginia Woolf. And for you, I just want to do the background that during your Cambridge lecture you talked about the first time you read A Room of One's Own. As a young aspiring writer in Istanbul, you said that the version you purchased also included a later work called Three Guineas. So I've taken a quote from there and the quote is, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
- [49:46]
A
Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, Julia. What a pleasure this has been. Thank you.
- [49:52]
B
And I think everything that you've said, that Virginia Woolf quote come together so beautifully. It's just been a delight to have you on the podcast and thank you again for another wonderful, intriguing, thought provoking novel. I'M a big reader of your work. I'm the one who's always, always, you know, anxiously waiting. When is she going to publish again? No pressure, but I really recommend this book and will look forward to everything that you write in the future. Thank you so much.
- [50:23]
A
It really means a lot to me. Every word. Thank you. Very grateful. Thank you.
- [50:28]
C
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our Sister in Institute at King's College London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Elena Ecot with editing by Liz Keen from Headline Productions and recording support by Nick Hilton. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us@giwlnu.eduau. to stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl.anu edu au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social mediaulanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
- [51:55]
B
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- [52:27]
A
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