Rivers for Reflection

Yesterday I attended a very moving St. Paul Chamber Orchestra performance of Neharot, Neharot by Israeli composer Betty Olivero for viola, accordion, percussion and two string ensembles. The viola soloist was Kim Kashkashian, who has recorded the composition. This haunting piece uses the elegies of women who had lost loved ones in the Israeli conflict with militias of the Lebanese Hezbollah in 2006 as it's touchstone.  The program notes explain,

The title of the composition Neharo't Neharo't, means “Rivers, Rivers” in Hebrew and refers to the rivers and floods of tears which are too often shed by mourning women in disastrous situations. On the other hand, the title contains also an element of hope: the root of the Hebrew word “nahar” (river) resembles the word “nehara,” meaning “ray of light.”

I found the music very appropriate to marking this Holy Week and the season of reflection we experience each April with Remembrance Days for both the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. How fitting too, that we are reading Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife this month at the same time the people of Sarajevo are commemorating the 20th anniversary of the siege their city. Take a few minutes to soak this in. Listen to Part 1 above. Here is Part 2.

Pamuk in Exile?

The Guardian Reports,

The Turkish author Orhan Pamuk has reportedly left his home country to live in America amid fears for his life. The Nobel laureate is believed to be at risk of assassination in Turkey following the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink last month. Threats appeared to have been made against Pamuk by the man who confessed to orchestrating the murder.

Our December Author: Hiner Saleem

Here are a few links for our December author, Hiner Saleem, (My Father’s Rifle: A Childhood in Kurdistan). Most concern his career as a film director, rather than a the book. You can start with his IMDB page for an overview, then check out articles regarding his most recent film, Kilometer Zero, set in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Iran-Iraq war: Cannes Film Festival summary, Guardian and Christian Science Monitor articles and here's a bit from the New York Times,

In exile since the age of 17, the director, like his hero, is an angry man, with the kind of suppressed rage that comes out in spurts. His previous film, ''Vodka Lemon,'' on the plight of Kurds in Armenia, won the San Marco award at Venice in 2003. ''Of course I'm the same person with the same sensitivity and aesthetics,'' he said, ''but 'Kilometer Zero' is inspired by one of my brothers, who was nabbed off the street and sent to fight for Saddam Hussein.''

and on the difficulty of filming in Iraqi Kurdistan from a CNN interview transcript(scroll down),

SALEEM (through translator): It was impossible to find a single camera in Kurdistan. There are no film crews, no professionals, no film stock. There was nothing, only people and fantastic landscape.

GLASS: It was just as hard to find an image of Saddam Hussein. Once ubiquitous, all of them have been destroyed. The statue that is endlessly transported across the screen was specially made.

SALEEM (through translator): Kurdish sculptors refused to make it. I had to commission an Arab in Mosul. For security reasons, it was build in Kurdistan behind a high wall. But when it rose higher and higher, people spotted Saddam's head peering over the wall. The police came and confiscated the statue and arrested the sculptor. I had to intervene and explain it was for a film.

Finally, here's another profile describing a different film, but perhaps more fun, at the same website there is a collection of Kurdish panoramas.

Turkish Writers on Trial

Maureen Freely, Orhan Pamuk's (Snow) translator writes in the  New York Times about another Turkish author facing trial,

In [Elif Shafak's] sixth and most recent novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” which is already a best seller in Turkey and will be published in the United States by Viking next year, one character declares: “My father is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian, his father is Varvant Istanboluian, my name is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some Turk named Mustapha!” These are strong words in a country whose official historians maintain that the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turks is itself a fiction... In September, she spoke at a conference at Bilgi University in Istanbul — the first Turkish conference ever to challenge the official line on the Ottoman Armenians — and though she went on to state her own position clearly and unequivocally in several newspapers, the censors left her alone. But early last month, Shafak learned that she was to be prosecuted for, among other things, allowing a character of partly Armenian heritage in “The Bastard of Istanbul” to utter the forbidden G-word. Her trial is scheduled for Sept. 21.

Hey that's just in time for Banned Book Week!  PEN urges you to take action.

Tags: Turkey, Armenia, genocide, censorship, banned books