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- [00:00]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
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- [01:09]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Before we get started, we wanted to let you know that the Moth main stage is heading to Austin, Texas on December 6th for made to Be Broken stories about Disobedience. For tickets or more information about that show, just Visit the site themoth.org we're also excited to announce that we've got a selection of new merchandise available for sale online and it's just in time for the holidays, including a brand new Moth mug and the Best of the moth, volumes 11 through 20. And those feature stories by Steve Burns, Kimya Dawson, Garrison Keillor, Al Sharpton, and many more. So visit themoth.org for more information. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 85,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature. For the Moth listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a chance to try out their service. You might like to consider listening to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. This book is based on hundreds of interviews with Steve Jobs and the people around him, and Steve Jobs cooperated with Walter and did not ask for any control over the final product. The result is a riveting book detailing Steve's intense drive and creative approach that shaped so many technological innovations. That's Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, available on Audible. To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.comthemoth that's audible.comthemoth okay, now for this week's story. You're about to hear from Elif Shafa, who told this story live at the Moth in April at the PEN World Voices Festival. The theme of the night was what went wrong?
- [03:14]
Elif Shafak
So, years ago, I used to live in Istanbul on a street called Kazan. In Turkish, the word means someone who makes cauldrons, although there was no one around who quite fit this description. I was writing my new novel here. Writing and sulking. I was walking a thin line between. Between creating a book and destroying myself. The street was quite narrow and so steep that whenever it rained more than three inches, all the water that will accumulate up the hill would come down in a crazy gush. On such days, it was a river more than a street, and we, the residents, were like passengers on a boat. I could not help but think that one could not settle down here for too long, but only sojourn for a while. And interestingly, the history of the street seemed to confirm this. Once this place had been a cosmopolitan hub of cultures and religions. Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Levantines and Muslims of every sect had lived here side by side over the years, not feeling at home anymore. Most of the non Muslim population had left, but a few of them had stayed. And then in early 1970s, an entirely different cluster of people had moved in. Transvestites, transsexuals and also prostitutes. They had built a life here until they were driven out by the local authorities. But a few of them had remained. So when I moved into the street, one of my good neighbors was this old Greek lady in the opposite building, and the other one was a middle aged transvestite downstairs. Both of them were like relics to me, remnants of a past long forgotten. And this is where I was in the summer of 1999, writing a novel called the Gays. The story was so different than anything I had imagined before and far more surreal. One of the main characters was this extremely overweight and tall woman, and the other one was a dwarf. They were lovers, but because they made such an impossible couple in the eyes of other people, they were also outcasts, running away from the gaze of the society. So this was the story I was working on. But all of a sudden, Ayatita with the plot and the characters had rebelled against me. Even the side characters were now not taking me seriously anymore. Naturally, I was depressed. The novel was sucking me in little by little. And from then on I had only two choices in front of me. I would either put the book aside and take refuge in the real world. Or I would put the real world aside and plunge deeper into the story and write everything all over again. And I chose the latter. I decided neither to leave my flat nor to let anyone in until I had finished the first draft. Now, my flat was very tiny. It had one bedroom and a kitchen with ceilings so low that if you were to make pancakes, for instance, you could not possibly toss them up in the air. The bathroom was so narrow that when you took a shower, the steam would turn into a fog that would undissolve for hours. However, in one corner of the living room, if you put a stool in front of the window and you stepped on it and you craned your head in the right direction, you could. On a bright sunny day, you could see the sea, you could see the boat sailing across the Bosphorus. So it was a flat with a view, as this real estate agent had once told told me. And this is where I decided to quarantine myself for an indeterminate period. Now, at this stage, I should probably tell you that I'm a rather restless person. Even when we go to a restaurant, I need to change seats a few times during the course of the dinner, and I don't like silence. And I usually write my books outside in noisy, crowded cafes, train stations, airports, always on the move. So for me, the decision to confine myself in this little space was a big decision and totally, totally out of character. Nonetheless, I was determined. I called my mother, my close friends and my boyfriend, and I told them, as calmly and as confidently as I could manage, that I would not be reachable for the next days, weeks, perhaps months. They asked me if I had lost my mind, and I said, look, everything is okay, but I need to make the sacrifice for my art. And I told them not to call me unless I called them first. My mother started to cry, and she told me to get married and have kids and live a normal life. I said I didn't have time for that. I had a book to finish, for God's sake. Now, to their credit, they all respected my decision and agreed not to call, not to come, not to even send a postcard. Thus, satisfied, I unplugged the phone, pulled the curtains, and turned the radio up. That summer, my favorite rock station used to play Santana at least 10 times a day, particularly this song, Corazone, Espinalo, Pierced Heart. And that became my personal anthem in this sublime endeavor. But I wasn't totally alone. I had a smoky gray cat that was named Smokey she curled up on my desk and watched me carefully, eyes narrowed to slits, as if she knew things that I wasn't even aware of. And in this state, I began to write the book from the very beginning. Now, the first day went very well. I was quite productive and elated. The second day, not bad, though by the end of the third day, I was having migraines and panic attacks, and the need to go out for a walk was overwhelming. By the end of the first week, I had finished 75 pages, as well as all the food in the fridge, which wasn't a lot to begin with. And now I was feeding on salty pretzels and sunflower seeds, which I was okay with, really, as long as I had water and coffee, I was fine. But being a fussier creature, my cat was starving. Across from the house, there was a little grocery store. The owner was a grumpy man who never talked to marginals and refused to sell alcohol or any newspapers or magazines that he suspected of being even slightly, slightly, slightly liberal. Every day when he went to mosque, he would put a huge sign on his door, as if he wanted the whole world to see where he was. So unlike his wife, who seemed privately spiritual to me, this man was publicly religious. Now, as I said, there was no food left in the kitchen. My cat was desperate, but I had made an oath. And also by now I had the psychology of a vampire. I dreaded daylight. I had not taken a bath in like 10 days. My hair had changed color. It was all oily and all tangled. But most importantly, I didn't want to break my promise just to go to the conservative grocer across the street. So nowadays, of course, it's so easy. We have the Internet and everything. We can do shopping without going anywhere. But back then, the people of Istanbul had found other techniques for this purpose, as those of you who might have been in the city would have realized. There are lots of apartment blocks there that have little shops at the entrance level. So what happens is the people living on upper floors, they usually take a basket, tie a string to it and lower it down, and the shopkeeper puts the required items inside. Then you just pull it up. So a lot of shopping, a substantial amount of shopping in the city is done in this way. The problem was, my grocery store wasn't situated at the entrance of my building. It was across the street. So here's what I did. I asked help from the old lady, from my Greek neighbor across the street. She was in the opposite building. And together we. We extended a laundry line between Our windows. I sent her a basket, which she then lowered down. And through this complicated mechanism I was able to reach the grumpy grocer with a note that said, bread brown, please. Cheese feta, please. Cat food with tuna, please. And a pack of beer, please. And it worked seamlessly, you know. The basket came back to me. Everything was in it except the beer. No problem. My spirits raised, I renewed my oath never to go out until I had finished my book. That night, at 3:00 in the morning, I woke up and the whole world was shaking. The walls, the ceiling and the floor. Having no experience before with earthquakes, I was totally unprepared. Like millions of others, I grabbed my manuscript, my cat, in that order, and I ran out of the building. What I saw out there stopped me in my tracks. There was the conservative grocer sitting on the sidewalk next to the transvestite. There were lines of mascara across her face and she was sobbing uncontrollably out of shock. I watched him open a pack of cigarettes, an offer one to her. I sat next to them that night. My Greek neighbor, my transvestite neighbor, the conservative grocer and his head scarfed wife. Me and Smokey, we spent the night together. My cat was extremely nervous, as if she knew that more than 8,000 people had lost their lives. Later on, as we listened to the radio together and realized the magnitude of the tragedy, I looked at the manuscript in my hands. You know, all of a sudden it seemed so small, so trivial. What difference did it make whether I finished this chapter, whether I found the twist in the plot? Tonight, in the face of death, we were all temporary brothers and temporary sisters. But tomorrow everybody would go their own way. The grocer would stop talking to the transvestites and the old same prejudices would re emerge. I was sure that Kazanji street would be back to normal. But I wasn't that sure that I could go back to my novel. It wasn't a writer's block exactly. It was something like a loss of faith which I had never known before and which was deeper, darker and more sinister to me to this day. This is one of the toughest dilemmas in my work. To have the faith, to have the belief that stories matter, that words make a difference and connect us across the boundaries and the sneaky suspicion that all art is in vain in the face of larger, darker world events. And between this optimism and pessimism, my heart is a pendulum. It goes back and forth, back and forth. In the weeks ahead, I joined the volunteers who were helping earthquake survivors by collecting blankets and food, and so on. By the end of the summer I was back in my flat again, writing again, and suddenly, through the open window, I heard a thud. Someone had sent a basket to me across the laundry line, and in it there were two cans of beer. I glanced at the opposite building to thank my Greek neighbor, thinking it was her, but to my surprise it was not. It was the conservative grocer who had sent them. He waved at me, a tired smile on his face. I waved back and I understood that of the experience we had shared, something had remained. And perhaps at the end of the day, this is what we writers want to achieve with our stories. Something to remain a spontaneous bonding, a speck of empathy, and also the possibility of change. Thank you.
- [16:26]
Dan Kennedy
Elif Shafak is the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. Critics have called her one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature. Her books, which have been translated into more than 30 languages, include the Bastard of Istanbul, Black milk, and the 40 rules of love. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 85,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestsellers. To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.com audible the moth and don't forget, the Moth is heading to Detroit ON Thursday, November 17, when the moth and WDET present Save Me Stories of Rescue and Redemption. For more information and tickets, visit themoth.org.
- [17:24]
Rosetta Stone Advertiser
Our podcast host, Dan Kennedy is the author of the book Rock An Office Power Ballad. Learn more@rockonthebook.com thanks to all of you.
- [17:33]
Dan Kennedy
For listening and we hope you have a story story worthy week Podcast Audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange Helping make public radio more public@prx.org.