Monday, March 2, 2020

Last Train To Istanbul - Ayse Kulin


   2002 (in original Turkish), 2006 (English translation); 396 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Turkish Literature; Historical Fiction - Turkey; Historical Fiction – World War 2; Romance.  Laurels: European Council Jewish Community – Best Novel Award (winner, but I’m not sure what year).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    It was a tragic case of forbidden love.  Kinda like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Rafael is Jewish, Selva is Muslim, and they’re in love, much to the consternation of their parents.  Family ties run strong in their native Turkey in the 1930s, so they decide to emigrate to Paris until things cool down, since the French are more tolerant about things like religious differences.

    But things change in 1941.  World War 2 is underway and the Germans have overrun northern France and occupied Paris.  The Nazis do care about religious differences, especially if you are Jewish.  So once again Selva and Rafael are forced to pack up and move south, to Marseilles, which the Germans have allowed the French puppet government, “Vichy France”, to control, at least for now.

    The respite is short-lived though, and in 1943 when the Nazis take over all of France, they don’t hesitate to seek out any and all Jews in France, regardless of citizenship, and ship them off in cattle cars to concentration camps.  Selva and Rafael have run out of places to flee to, as have all other Jews in France, both Turkish and otherwise.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Turkey, who is still neutral in the war, is willing to take some risks to help its expatriates in France.

    It’s just a question of exactly what can be done.

What’s To Like...
    Last Train To Istanbul is written by Ayse Kulin, a tremendously popular Turkish novelist who often combines history and romance in her books.  Here, she presents several relationships (Selva/Rafael, Sabiha/Macit, Ferit/Evelyn, and others) while examining religious bigotry against the backdrop of the holocaust, and the efforts by Turkish diplomats to rescue Turkish citizens, Jewish and otherwise, living in wartime France.

   I found the World War 2 political situation very enlightening.  Turkey was neutral throughout the storyline, and it was illuminating to see the conflict from her point-of-view.  The Allies wanted Turkey on their side, mostly so that Germany would then attack her, thus opening a new front.  Britain promised her arms, but never delivered.  Germany wanted Turkey’s chrome for its war machine, which at the time she was selling to the Allies.  Russia wanted an excuse to sweep down and take over the Bosporus Strait, gaining direct access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.  I got the impression that everyone wanted to “use” Turkey, but no one really wanted to be her friend and I wondered how much-or-little this “attitude” has changed since then.

    The history of Turkey and the Jews was also new to me.  When Ferdinand, the King of Spain, expelled all Jews from there in 1492, it was Turkey who welcomed any and all of them, recognizing that a large percentage of them were skilled and highly educated.  Therefore, despite being a Muslim country, Turkey has had a sizable Jewish element in its population for the past 500 years.

    It was also a treat to be immersed in the day-to-day life in Turkey during the 1930s/40s.  We get to play bezique and bridge, sip raki, and drink Tekel beer.   Our wives get to wear silk dresses when going to tea parties, where they’ll drink from elegant and distinctive Turkish tea glasses.  Our daughters take ballet lessons, and we all like to smoke cigarettes and partake of hot chocolate with sugar added to it. Bon appetit!

    The book is set in 1933-1943,  and in various cities in Turkey and France, with one brief side trip to Cairo.  You’ll learn a bit of French, Turkish, and Spanish, and John W. Baker seems to have done a decent job of translating the story into English.  Being a chemist myself, I liked that Rafael was also one, but it turns out that a “chemist” in Europe is what we Yanks would call a “pharmacist”.

    The story builds to the titular “Last Train to Istanbul”, which encounters a suitable number of tension-filled incidents that threaten the success of the mission.  The ending may be predictable, but it left a lump in my throat.  I found the “Acknowledgements” section at the end of the book to be quite informative, as Ayse Kulin details the sources she used to write this story.  Last Train To Istanbul is a standalone story, and AFAIK, there is no sequel.

Kewlest New Word ...
Kavass (n.) : an armed constable or courier in Turkey.

Excerpts...
    “How on earth do you speak all evening with someone you hardly know?” he asked Muhlis.
    “Come on now, what do you mean you hardly know her?  Haven’t we all been out together a few times?”
    “That was different, we weren’t alone.”
    “Tell her about your homeland.  Ask about her family.  Tell her how beautiful she is.  Don’t tread on her toes if you dance together and kiss her before dropping her off at home.”
    “What!”
    “Kiss her, my dear friend, kiss her.  Women like to be kissed.”
    “You mean on the lips?”
    “I suppose there’s no harm in being cautious; try kissing her on the cheek first, then you can take it from there.  I want to hear all about it when you get home.”
    “Never!”  (loc. 2428)

    “We’ll be providing them with passports.  But if something should happen en route, they’ll have to act as if they are Turkish.  They should at least be able to say a few words.  You teach Turkish.  Would you…?”
    “You want me to teach them Turkish, is that it?”
    “Would you?”
    “Happily.  As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing it in Marseilles for some time.  I can help them memorize a few sentences.  But I need to ask you a question – what do you mean, ‘act as if they are Turkish’?  I’m curious to know how one’s supposed to act Turkish.”  (loc. 3626)

Kindle Details…
    Last Train to Istanbul presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  Five other e-books by Ayse Kulin are available there, ranging in price from $0.99 to $10.99.  The Italian version of Last Train to Istanbul goes for $2.99; the German version goes for $4.99.

“There’s a saying in Turkish:  He who falls into the sea will cling even to a serpent.”  (loc. 4931 )
    There’s not much to quibble about in Last Train To Istanbul.  A number of secondary plot threads remained unresolved, mostly involving the various romantic relationships.  They could probably be worked up into a sequel, but I don’t think it’s necessary.  The book’s primary storyline – the extraction of a trainload of people suffering from the Nazi atrocities – was resolved quite effectively.

    There is a fair amount of cussing in the book, almost all of it in dialogues, but this is realistic in a wartime story.  There is one digression to Auschwitz, which didn’t seem to have much to do with the story, but Ayse Kulin explains in the Acknowledgements section why it was included, and I applaud her decision to do so.

    8½ Stars.  Overall I found Last Train To Istanbul to be both a fascinating and an informative book, and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to see World War 2 from a different viewpoint than the standard "us versus them" perspective.  One other Ayse Kulin book, Without A Country, resides on my Kindle and I'm eager to see if it's as good as this one.

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