Zülfü Livaneli is one Turkey’s most influential cultural figures — a renowned composer, film director, political activist, and award-winning author whose books concentrate on diverse social and historical events. In 2020’s Serenade for Nadia, Livaneli channeled the horror of the Struma, a ship that the Russians had sunk in 1942 off the coast of Istanbul, targeted for carrying nearly 800 Jewish refugees to Palestine.
In his new novel Disquiet, Livaneli continues to inform the world about heinous acts committed against religious groups. This time, he focuses on the fate of a Syrian Yezidi woman, Meleknaz, and Hussein, a Muslim man who was stabbed to death by two neo-Nazis. The tale is told through Ibrahim, a young Turkish journalist who places his life on hold to unearth the truth about his friend Hussein’s murder.
The reader learns that it was Hussein’s willingness to comfort people of all religions, including the Yezidi, that led to his death: “We’re all compassionate people, but no one could be as compassionate as he was. He devoted his life to the poor, the sick, and the oppressed, and he wasn’t just kind to people but to all creatures.”
Hussein was engaged to a wealthy woman, Safiye, but he left her when he met Meleknaz and her blind baby at a Yezidi camp. He was obsessed with helping the Yezidi people because “ISIS beheaded all males over the age of ten” and raped the Yezidi girls and women. Meleknaz’s blind baby was most likely the result of her being raped.
To uncover truth about Hussein’s death, Ibrahim knows he must find Meleknaz. He flies home to Mardin to query Hussein’s friends and family about her, learning that Meleknaz once hid in a 4,000-year-old sun temple “sacred for the Yezidis … constructed from giant blocks of stone that were leaned against each other. The only thing that kept the stone sun temple from being in complete darkness was a small rectangular opening through which the Mesopotamian sun seeped.” He locates her friend Zilan who discusses the horrors she and Meleknaz faced under the sweaty bodies of ISIS men, including hours of rape and being sold “like a pack of cigarettes.” He explains why Hussein departed for Germany, and he spends time with Hussein’s mother and sister Aysel because Ibrahim’s “desire to find Meleknaz throbbed like a toothache that occasionally made itself felt but that was always there.” It is at Hussein’s house that Ibrahim realizes that Hussein’s mother blames Meleknaz for her son’s death: “Don’t ever mention that she-devil’s name in this house again. She consumed my mighty son. She brought disaster wherever she went.” After all, “a Muslim and a [Yezidi] can’t marry. It’s forbidden by Muslims.” Throughout his journey, Ibrahim “felt a disquiet. [He] couldn’t taste anything [he] ate or drank. Conversations with [his] friends seemed empty.”
Livaneli familiarizes the reader with Yezidi beliefs, including their fear of romaine lettuce because the “Satan they worship is hidden in the romaine.” On one occasion, as Aysel started chopping up a head of romaine, Meleknaz “ran out [of the kitchen] as if she’d seen the devil.” Readers are also introduced to professional mourners who dress in all black and beat their chests and pull their hair as they wail uncontrollably convincing “a passerby [to] think that they were the ones who were really burning with anguish.” These black-clad mourners attended every funeral in town:
“They had purple tattoos on their hands and faces, and most of them also had their lower lips tattooed purple. They believed that a slave had once bit the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima, and that her lower lip had been bruised, so they tattooed their lower lips purple.”
Although Ibrahim’s curiosity places him at odds with his editor, his love for his friend takes over his life. The reader will discover the exact reason Hussein was murdered. They will also learn about ISIS’s hatred of Yezidi peoples. Livaneli’s poetic book evokes emotion and illustrates just how much love and compassion one person can possess, and that love can be infectious and unconditional.
Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is the recipient of the French Voices Grand Prize and the Grand Prix du Roman Métis. He continues writing powerfully in his first novel rendered for anglophones, Brotherhood, a tale about despotism in the fictional town of Kalep, Salem (North Africa). In this unforgettable novel, Sarr – through the meticulous translation of Alexia Trigo – creates the Brotherhood, a radical organization led by the unforgiving police chief Abdel Karim, whose militia instills fear into Kalep’s denizens with mere glances.
The book opens with the public execution of two young lovers who committed adultery. Sarr masterfully limns the grim scene, beginning with the victims crawling out of a trunk of a car at Kalep’s City Hall square. When they arrive, they face Karim, who states: “May this serve as an example to all. Adultery is one of the capital sins. The Law punishes all adultery.” The anguished mothers of the lovers have to keep silent or face their own execution. Through secret epistles to each other, they cope with their agony:
Sadobo,
My husband and I buried her ourselves in the middle of the night. Just the two of us. He rented a cart. We loaded the body onto it. It was starting to decompose. [My husband] dug a deep grave. We had to let her fall to the bottom of the hole. I froze when I heard the sound it made. I can still hear it.
— AÏssata
AÏssata,
[My husband] beats me. When he hits me, he shouts, he accuses me of being the cause of Lamine’s defiance. It’s my fault he’s dead, because I failed to instill in him the values of Islam. We’re still the same, AÏssata. A mother is always guilty.
— Sadobo
Sarr then creates an opposing force – a band of intellectuals who brainstorm a way to spur a rebellion against Karim’s regime. The group – comprised of seven friends – believes the best way to incite an uprising is to publish a journal – Rambaaj to “bear witness to the barbarism. A journal to reflect on the madness of terrorism.” The group includes the journal’s writers, editor, and layout expert. Their plan works. When the journal gains popularity, it displeases Karim: “the journal was dangerous, a real threat” to his ironfisted rule over the people of Kalep. Karim knows “it was time to find and punish the authors of this journal.” This cat and mouse game propels the plot to warp speed. In an attempt to smoke out the purveyors of Rambaaj, Karim burns down a library that might hold more value than a human life.
To demonstrate just how monstrous Karim’s rule is, Sarr focuses on Malamine and his family. On one occasion, Karim’s soldiers visit Malamine’s house and his wife Ndey Joor answers the door without her hijab, a sin for a Muslim woman, so “the whip came crashing down” and “she felt her clothes ripping apart, her flesh tearing apart, her blood gushing.” When Malamine views her body at the hospital, she “looked like a cloth soaked in blood. And her back … Torn apart. Cut open. Bloody. Four deep wounds covered her back in all their horror.” On another occasion, Karim visits Malamine searching for clues about Rambaaj. Malamine’s daughter Rokhaya asks Karim why he killed their dog Pothio? The reason: “they’re satanic animals … they attract the devil.” However, it is Malamine’s oldest son Ismaïla’s association with the Brotherhood that troubles Malamine the most.
Sarr rewards the reader with a powerful dénouement, revealing whether Malamine and his cohorts incite a rebellion or if Karim and company continue their tyrannical rule over Kalep. Sarr is prescient; there was an uprising in Dakar last spring. Opposition leader Ousmane Sonko is accused of rape, compelling his supporters to hold public demonstrations in which 13 people were killed.
Sarr and Livaneli display uncanny abilities to transport the reader into the lives of oppressed groups – the Syrian Yezidi people and the peaceful Muslims of Kalep — showing just how unfair and cruel life has been for some of them.
[Disquiet, published by Other Press on June 29, 2021, 176 pages, $14.99 paperback; Brotherhood, published by Europa Editions one July 6, 2021, 256 pages, $17.00 paperback]