{"id":36972,"date":"2025-05-09T08:09:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T06:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=36972"},"modified":"2025-05-09T08:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T06:09:48","slug":"djinns-unveils-silence-in-the-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/djinns-unveils-silence-in-the-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Djinns<\/em> Unveils Silence in the Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
Djinns<\/span><\/em> come to life in a broken home in bustling Istanbul to embody intercultural and intergenerational tensions, veiled by silence, in Fatma Aydemir\u2019s grippingly realistic family saga.<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Djinns\u00a0<\/span><\/i>by Fatma Aydemir
\nTranslated from the German by Jon Cho-Polizzi
\nPeirene Press<\/a>, 2024
\nISBN 978191680602<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elena Pare<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Identity crises emerge in banalities of everyday life in Fatma Aydemir\u2019s haunting <\/span>Djinns<\/span><\/i>, a novel exploring questions of home in migration, belonging, shame, sexual desires, gender confusion, feminism, motherhood, and other existential meditations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dschinns<\/span><\/i> or \u201cdjinns\u201d in English is a Germanized, and subsequently Anglicized, false plural of the Turkish collective noun <\/span>cin<\/span><\/i>. Its original Arabic root means \u201cto conceal\u201d and \u201cto descend into darkness\u201d with other forms signifying \u201cmadness\u201d or even \u201cparadise,\u201d but it has become globally understood through the mythologizing of invisible beings inhabiting Earth known as <\/span>jinn<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Djinns<\/a>
Djinns<\/em> is published by Peirene Press<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jinn<\/span><\/i> are a rich well of metaphoric opportunity in literature, which, in its best expressions, can convey life\u2019s incorporeal mysteries. For example, the <\/span>One Thousand and One Nights<\/span><\/i> comes to mind. In Western cultural consciousness, the archetypal <\/span>genie<\/span><\/i> from \u201cAladdin,\u201d which Antoine Galland added to his French translation of the cult text having been told it by Syrian storyteller Hanna Diab, is a key example of the crucial role of translation in transcultural exchanges. The incorporation of <\/span>jinn<\/span><\/i> into modern literature is popular, often to comment on contemporary reality. Examples include Egyptian artist Deena Mohamed\u2019s graphic trilogy <\/span>Shubeik Lubeik<\/span><\/i><\/a>, or <\/span>Your Wish Is My Command<\/span><\/i><\/a>. <\/span>Jinn<\/span><\/i> are also present in the magical realist literary worlds of Turkish writer Latife Tekin, whose debut novel <\/span>Dear Shameless Death<\/span><\/i><\/a> (1983) follows a girl\u2019s move from superstitious rurality to the \u201cmodern\u201d city.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fatma Aydemir was born in Karlsruhe, Germany to children of Turkish \u201cguest workers.\u201d She called her second novel after these beings to explore meaningful silences, intercultural and intergenerational clashes, and identity questions in a grippingly realistic family saga loosely based on her own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those who can should read the original German, but Aydemir\u2019s novel is now available to a global audience thanks to Jon Cho-Polizzi\u2019s fine translation. In an email interview, the professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan wrote: \u201cThe books I translate are labors of love. I translate them because I think they are important and make critical contributions to contemporary German social discourse that readers in the wider world should be aware of.\u201d Cho-Polizzi engages himself politically \u201cby highlighting different literary voices that move us past \u2026 tired expectations\u201d of world literature. <\/span>Djinns<\/span><\/i> was first published in the U.S. and recently brought to the UK by Peirene Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the launch of <\/span>Djinns<\/span><\/i>\u2019 UK edition at London\u2019s Goethe Institut, Aydemir explained that after throwing away multiple attempts at a light-hearted romance, she turned to writing the story of a character loosely based on her grandfather. H\u00fcseyin Y\u0131lmaz returns to T\u00fcrkiye after spending the better part of his life working in Southwest Germany as part of the 1960s and 70s <\/span>Gastarbeiterprogramm<\/span><\/i> that saw hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers fill a labor shortage in the post-WWII German economic boom. After decades of back-breaking factory work \u2014 and ironically though unsurprisingly little experience of <\/span>Gastfreundschaft<\/span><\/i>, or hospitality \u2014 aged 59, he buys an apartment in Istanbul. Aydemir writes in the first chapter:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cH\u00fcseyin! You\u2019ve finally found a place you can call home \u2026 Germany was not what you had hoped it would be, H\u00fcseyin. You\u2019d hoped for a new life. But what you received, instead, was loneliness \u2026 How the time flies \u2026 You want to breathe, H\u00fcseyin. You don\u2019t want to die. Not now, even though you are devout.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His wife and four children follow him to Istanbul, not for the homecoming he had dreamt of, but for H\u00fcseyin\u2019s funeral. In a tragic early twist in the story, he dies from a heart attack as swift as his brief taste of retirement freedom, on the day he moves in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With her main character expiring within the initial pages, Aydemir turned a short story into a substantial page-turning novel by giving voice to the next generations: her parents\u2019 and her own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cacophony of Silence<\/b><\/h4>\n

The short opening chapter suits a man of few words while still alive. H\u00fcseyin\u2019s death opens a void that substantiates his life beyond the silence that governed it and is embodied by the otherworldliness contained in the apartment, which his widow Emine considers \u201ccursed.\u201d One of their children describes the dynamics of this space as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe silence of this room hurtles around his ears like a screaming siren, like a fire alarm. Like the sound of rolling tanks \u2026 This family never argues out loud. In this family, fights always happen this way: with meaningful glances and diverted eyes, with all those things that can never be said and so hang all the heavier in the air between them \u2026 Something must have happened. Something so terrible there were no words for it. And now H\u00fcseyin is gone, now here they all are, those he left behind, sitting around with his only legacy. Silence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Each subsequent chapter is told from the perspective of the family member it is named after, starting with the youngest teenage son \u00dcmit, followed by the eldest daughter Sevda, then Peri and Hakan, the middle two. Emine, the mother, gets the final word.<\/span><\/p>\n

The novel progresses chronologically in time, from H\u00fcseyin\u2019s death through his family\u2019s journeys to Istanbul for his funeral, until a both crushing and uplifting ending. Each character\u2019s account moves between inside and outside lives, revisiting memories that together mold the family\u2019s history and present.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Y\u0131lmaz family\u2019s Kurdish origins are suppressed by assimilation policies introduced under the Republic of Turkey. Notably, Kurds were referred to as \u201cMountain Turks\u201d for the better part of the 20th century, and Kurdish languages were banned after the 1980 military coup that followed more than a decade of political violence and ever-more-right-leaning nationalist tendencies. H\u00fcseyin\u2019s legacy of silence is rooted in this forced renouncement of his own language and identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

As distant relatives and friends flood the apartment to mourn its deceased owner, the language they speak mystifies the youngest son, \u00dcmit. He guesses, correctly, that it is Kurdish, \u201cbecause the Kurds are always in the news these days.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00dcmit\u2019s panic-inducing sensory disassociation from his surroundings through his unfiltered observations and unlikely associations establish a distance between his newfound community and the reader. Introducing \u201ca mountain of dusty grandma shoes\u201d in the hallway, he then compares the black-cloaked praying women to zombies in the horror films his brother watches.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aydemir balances humorous stereotyping and complex nuance as she blunts the orientalist razor\u2019s edge between authenticity and modernity, giving space to the exploration of agency in existential questions of identity and home in the context of migration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cracking Tiered Terror<\/b><\/h4>\n

The Y\u0131lmaz family leaves T\u00fcrkiye only to reach Germany, a nation mired with its own history of genocidal silence. At the book launch, Aydemir pointed out that, as she learnt from interviewing immigrants in Germany, many of them became aware of the Holocaust concurrently with their first-hand experience of racist xenophobia in Germany. Perversely labeled as \u201cTurks\u201d in Germany, the Y\u0131lmaz family and many other \u201cTurkish\u201d immigrants are made to re-live the very persecution they fled.<\/span><\/p>\n

H\u00fcseyin\u2019s grandchildren are left alone one night, when their father goes out drinking instead of looking after them while their mother Sevda worked a night shift to pay the rent. They are rescued from their burning building instants before being \u201cIncinerated. Burnt to dust. Exterminated,\u201d as their mother imagines in a picture gruelingly evocative of Nazi extermination camps. With this incident, Aydemir recalls the fatal arson attack against a Turkish family in Solingen, Western Germany, in 1993, and brutal acts of racist violence that take place around the world to this day \u2014 from last summer\u2019s anti-migrant riots across the UK to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n

Djinns<\/span><\/i> unravels layers of systemic terror that the most vulnerable individuals \u2014 many migrants foremost among them \u2014 live under, revealing in the cracks lives that cannot but be subversive to homogenizing myths. These stories are vital in today\u2019s bulldozing political landscape. The vote gains achieved by the extremist Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD), representing the steepest rise in popular support for the far-right since WWII, threaten the collapse of the <\/span>Brandmauer<\/span><\/i>, a metaphorical \u201cfirewall\u201d denoting mainstream political demands and strategies to protect German democracy against the far-right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sevda\u2019s younger sister Peri asks, \u201cIs it easier to worry about djinns than to worry about Nazis?\u201d She is the most politically aware and outspoken in the family, taking it upon herself to educate her mother Emine about feminism and mental health. She accompanies her to a therapy session, only for Emine to walk out five minutes later, confounded, and resorting to her usual recitation of suras. Aydemir gives space to various grief coping mechanisms, levelling spiritualism with intellectualism. She also deconstructs the more-often problematized image of the young male migrant through the older son Hakan.<\/span><\/p>\n

His journey to Istanbul is a breakneck road trip \u201cdown the A8, blasting past roadside churches, grazing fucking cows and the Chiemsee. He\u2019s still on the German autobahn: anything goes. The only freedom this piece of shit country hasn\u2019t taken away yet.\u201d But in the infamously conservative state of Bavaria, the police arrest him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time the cops brought Hakan home\u201d was for tagging N.W.A.\u2019s FUCK THA POLICE in the train station. His American hip-hop-inspired slang meets the harsh <\/span>AUSL\u00c4NDER RAUS <\/span><\/i>(\u201cforeigners out\u201d) tags that Jon Cho-Polizzi kept in German. The translator explained, \u201cmost of the translation work I do has some sort of transnational element where multilingualism plays a role. This is part of the experience of global modernity, and it\u2019s really important to preserve this even in translation \u2014 though of course this becomes difficult, particularly in German-language literature, where a lot of the code switching actually deals with the use of English in a German text. One solution that I\u2019ve come up with is to turn this around and re-insert German words to remind the reader that this is a translation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Language is Hakan\u2019s only power, however ineffective in the face of institutional power: his rhythmic and poetic slang reflects his deep knowledge of the dark layers of the society which he sardonically mocks. He re-appropriates the ethnic slur <\/span>Kanake<\/span><\/i>, putting on \u201can Oscar-worthy performance\u201d when he interacts with his girlfriend\u2019s father, \u201cleisure-time Nazi\u201d G\u00fcnther. All for the sake of an <\/span>Elternhaus<\/span><\/i>, or \u201cfamily home.\u201d The compound noun in German emphasizes the entanglements inherent to the notion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mother Emine is a looming presence in each of her children\u2019s accounts yet only given a voice in the last chapter of the novel, reflecting the societal favoring of the role of \u201cmother\u201d over the woman as an individual. She does not narrate her own chapter but rather is addressed, like H\u00fcseyin, in the second-person <\/span>du<\/span><\/i>, \u201cyou\u201d in English, which underlines her shadow status as family pillar while simultaneously honoring her silence. Aydemir nevertheless establishes a distance between her voice and that of the older generation in a compassionate critique of their silence and inaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Language Haunts<\/b><\/h4>\n

Aydemir\u2019s use of specific vernaculars and insertion of Turkish words like <\/span>\u015fekerleme<\/span><\/i> (\u201csugar sleep\u201d) not only adds to the text\u2019s poetic quality and creates a creative cultural meeting space but also adds a veil of silence and obscurity to the text. For example, the gender-neutral third-person pronoun <\/span>o<\/span><\/i> creates ambiguities to build tension in a plot mystery that unravels gradually and satisfyingly to ultimately shock the reader.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jon Cho-Polizzi\u2019s translation continues Aydemir\u2019s linguistic fluidity. He added a glossary and explained, \u201cFatma Aydemir is making a specific intervention in her novel by <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>translating Turkish words for a German audience. Because a German readership <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> know these words. In the U.S., I might make a similar argument against translating Spanish in a novel \u2026 But to transfer a work out of its original context through translation also introduces new questions and assumptions about the readership, and the same intervention is not made by a minoritized language in a new cultural context. So I tried to negotiate a balance between staying true to the feeling of the source text, while also making the intervention intelligible to a new readership.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The translator into English holds, Cho-Polizzi stressed, \u201ca huge responsibility,\u201d that he undertakes through \u201cexperiential\u201d research: having lived in Southern Germany and spent time in Frankfurt and Eastern Turkey, he also went on research trips, including to Istanbul. The existence of a \u201cliterary kinship\u201d between author and translator is key to the process\u2014and so are multilingual and multicultural networks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cho-Polizzi met Fatma Aydemir during their collaboration on the open-access English translation of <\/span>Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum <\/span><\/i>(2018; <\/span>Your Homeland is Our Nightmare<\/span><\/i>, 2019<\/span><\/a> \/ <\/span>2022 in print<\/span><\/a>), an essay collection that deals with many of the issues, specifically in what relates to migration and identity, Aydemir explores in her fiction. He then translated a sample of <\/span>Dschinns <\/span><\/i>for <\/span>New Books in German<\/span><\/a>, which highlights German-language literature for translation into English. This season\u2019s picks include German Iranian Hengameh Yaghoobifarah\u2019s experimental queer diaspora piece <\/span>Schwindel<\/span><\/i> (\u2018<\/span>Dizzy\u2019<\/span><\/a>) and Saudi-raised Rasha Khayat\u2019s <\/span>Ich Komme Nicht Zur\u00fcck<\/span><\/i> (\u2018I\u2019m not coming back\u2019), which also explores silence in family, friendship, and love. Khayat repeatedly writes: \u201cEntire books could be filled with all the unspoken words.\u201d <\/span>Jinn<\/span><\/i>, or<\/span> Djinns<\/span><\/i>, give shape to the invisible, just as literature gives words to the unsaid.<\/span><\/p>\n

H\u00fcseyin\u2019s death brings the scattered and shattered family crashing and clashing together in Istanbul\u2019s cacophony of car toots, music, people, the azan, etc. The domineering \u201cweapon\u201d of silence is challenged by the children\u2019s voices and the family\u2019s heads-to-heads. But as Libyan writer Najwa Binshatwan declared, <\/span>\u201cwords are like gunpowder,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and in Aydemir\u2019s novel, as \u201cthe ragged shreds of their words fly past,\u201d they progressively make space for language on the emotional battleground.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mahmoud Darwish once wrote to his friend the poet Samih al-Qasim: \u201cDo you still believe poetry (<\/span>qa\u1e63\u0101\u2019id<\/span><\/i>) to be more powerful than planes?\u201d While it is difficult to hold on to this belief in the near-impotence vis-\u00e0-vis past and current political terrors, Aydemir proves literature\u2019s power to move the reader from the inside out.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in <\/span>The Message<\/span><\/i>, \u201cThe goal is to <\/span>haunt <\/span><\/i>\u2014 to have [the reader] think about your words before bed, see them manifest in their dreams, tell their partner about them the next morning, to have them grab random people on the street, shake them and say, \u2018Have you read this yet?\u2019\u201d Fatma Aydemir\u2019s novel <\/span>Djinns <\/span><\/i>is haunting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the Y\u0131lmaz family\u2019s silent issues remain unresolved by the end of the novel, they have been voiced, spelled out for the reader to think through past and current societal as well as personal questions that are perpetually obscured by silence and even distorted by lies and mythmaking.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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