Three Daughters of Eve

by Elif Shafak

She had always been determined to have a far better relationship with her daughter than the one she’d had with her mother. In the end, wasn’t that the only real aspiration to be fulfilled in life: to do a better job than our parents, so our children might be better parents than we were?

The presumption that their ways were the best – only because they had been born into this culture and swallowed unquestioningly whatever they had been taught. How could they be so certain of the superiority of their truths when they knew so little, if anything at all, about other cultures, other philosophies, other ways of thinking?

Could she swim away? Daily habits were altered, personalities reformed, allegiances renounced, friendships broken, even addictions spurned, but the hardest thing to change in this life was one’s attachment to a place.

In the name of religion they are killing God. For the sake of discipline and authority, they forget love.’

‘You see, what a toxic cocktail is ignorance and power. The world has suffered more in the hands of the religious than in the hands of people like me – whatever funny word you call my kind!’

Peri loved her father’s tales. She had grown up with them. Yet the melancholy with which they were infused pierced her soul, like a splinter under her skin that had become an organic part of her.