Without a Country

by Ayşe Kulin

politics has contaminated religion, which should be a conduit for love.

At the very least, they will break your heart. And a broken heart aches forever.

In the wake of the Great War, the continent was struggling with border disputes, unrest, mass internal migration

So many details were missed in the bustle of daily life.

Goebbels, his minister of propaganda and the man who purportedly said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,”

“The honor of the nation, the honor of our army, and the ideal of freedom—all must once more become sacred to the German Volk! The German Volk wishes to live in peace with the world.”

How foolish and how human, he thought, to believe that trouble will never come calling,

right up until it knocks on your own door.

Gerhard felt, for the first time in his life, that the reins had completely slipped from his hands.

All he knew was that the simple, ordered existence that had been his until yesterday was gone forever.

Poised to begin a new life whose course he couldn’t begin to envision, he felt like a baby taking its first steps: timid a...

Thousands of books reduced to ashes because their authors are Jews, or Communist, or nihilists, but in truth because the power of ideas poses a threat to Hitler. The bonfire

“What this proves is that an entire nation can go insane.” “It is also an indication of the depravity to which a despot can drive his countrymen,

evil, too, can be instructive.”

He had stopped allowing himself to hope for a better future. His new motto was “whatever happens, happens.” He was on his way to the East, and he would embrace the famed fatalism of the Levant.

With hope, with zeal, for the people, with the people, and—when necessary—despite the people, they’re trying to transform this place through mass education.

Obedience is unquestioning submission to authority; discipline requires adherence to certain essential rules and duties, yes, but one is permitted—nay, encouraged—to question those very rules and duties.’

The courses were overly burdensome and yet oddly unfocused.

The future leaders of this republic must be educated in accordance with the latest scientific and pedagogical methods, regardless of gender. This will create a generation that is intellectually disciplined, capable of critical thinking, and skilled in problem

solving.”

poorly educated military leaders led to bureaucratic inefficiency and defeats on the battlefield,

an ambitious young country untainted by Western hubris and unshackled from its own imperial past.

Why are these reactionaries being tolerated?”

“People resist change. The Turks have been resisting change for centuries.”

A daughter will always be yours, but a son is only yours for the first few years. After that, he’ll belong to his friends, then to his girlfriends, and finally, to his wife.

questions of identity.

honest labor was also a form of prayer.

Perhaps the religious instruction she received so early in life helped make Suzi the industrious and empathetic woman she would one day become.

Nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion . . . how to explain the complexity of identity to a six-year-old?

so there was no reason for him to submit to testing. Or, Hanna had thought, you’re just terrified of being proven wrong.

who would lash out, particularly if she felt trapped.

Children don’t care about fresh air and peace and quiet.”

Turkish villagers showed their guests a kind of love and respect found nowhere else in the world. The Turkish phrase for “unexpected guest,” he explained, is “guest of God.”

The armistice of May 1945 ushered in the promise of a world where national identity would no longer matter.

the snow fell, the frozen earth seemed as reluctant to claim him as we were to relinquish him forever.

This was Turkey, after all, the land of shipwrecked hopes.

Life can scatter even the closest family. What’s important is that we each find a place where we can be happy.”

“Good things can’t be forced.”

“It’s always the minorities

who get targeted when nationalism boils over,”

Politicians are all the same, whatever party they belong to.”

You always said time was precious, and we should never be afraid to show our feelings, that there’s no place for pride in love.

So that’s why her father was so grumpy. Mother and her moralizing. Why, oh why, was her mother so rigid, so German?

Even a newborn knows when she is truly loved.

Naturally, Sude’s early life and outlook were formed in large part by the era in which she lived, and by her parents.

Sude was sheltered from the wider world but simultaneously exposed to bewildering id...

we are leftists. We believe in social justice and the fair distribution of wealth, and we think people shouldn’t be greedy.”

who believed that the real threat to Turkey’s future was the stealthy but steady effort to roll back Atatürk’s secular, modernizing reforms.

The nation was restless. Its people were poor. Its people were angry.

She poured the water onto the ground as they drove away. “Mom always does that,” Sude said. “It’s a wonderful Turkish custom,” Hirsch said. “It means ‘Go like water and return like water. May your journey be as smooth as flowing water.’”