The Longest Summer is soon to be over

Summer has always been associated with reading and a slower pace of life in general for me. I had summers where it has been always gray and rainy, end of which marked a once-good friend's return to Antalya and burning the bridges of a possible academic career. The weather affects some people more than the others, even if you're among the spiritual ones who believe in the inner climate's effects on the outer. If your inner light is on, it can stay on regardless of the weather outside, right? Well, nope! :)

After experiencing incredibly frustrating delays at the airports in early summer, I decided to spend it in California and not fly at all, period. I managed it quite well as we're about to say goodbye to October, which makes it 4 months of non-flying, which is nothing compared to the time spent socializing with yourself and your pod(!) outdoors for almost 2 years. 

California as one of the biggest states of the US has a lot to offer for all kinds of people unlike the common belief that it's only for the rich. God has been very generous with it sparing the occasional natural disasters that remind people of their mortality and vulnerability regardless of the statistics or the power of the economy that California boasts about. So many small towns by the coast are to me previews of what Paradise might be like in another dimension.  Ventura, Santa Barbara, Ojai... you name it! 

I met several people who declared mental bankruptcy in California (born and raised or came for grad studies and for business, stayed for 2 decades at least and then crash boom bang!) They cannot even stand it, which is a clear indication of not taking good care of their inner climate and searching for places to escape elsewhere. What a privilege! You cannot imagine the number of young people who run to the East Coast for college and then off to explore the rest of the world after getting their diploma.

I don't come from a background where I can have the luxury to say "I've got a nice place to retire and spend the rest of my life in a small shack" (California has very simple and small houses too). Do you? I was rather pissed off when someone whom I met at the Berkeley Public Library happened to like me a bit too much and kept on communicating. I finally had to say let's give a break to these 'exchanges' especially after listening to his queries about moving to Turkey if Trump wins the elections the second time. I witnessed other liberal people with means who prepared their escape plans -mostly to Europe- if Trump got reelected. The less adventurous ones with small kids to Canada. The problem is it is clear that they are not watching the local news and the intellectuals of the culture that they're hoping for a new start. Sometimes, they are so blinded that all I can do is to listen to them and keep quiet about the content matter.  

There are many advantages of straddling between two cultures and continents if you can be at home in both or neither.  I am far from romanticizing it but I can also identify rather quickly people who have not lived or worked abroad from the ones who did. Bonding with the ones who chose to remain afloat with loose but strong roots (like waterlilies maybe?) is easier for me in comparison to the ones who cling on to one particular culture or identity as they cannot feel at home in multiple places or keep an everlasting longing or nostalgia (and that really drives me cray!):)

I'm on my way to the Bay Area where I've always felt at home despite the fickle weather. I will probably get teary again as the plane lands on the SFO and I take out my clipper card to beat the rush hour traffic and the forced dialogue between the uber driver and I. Aylin is the only friend who never lacks uber-driver stories and always tips them generously regardless of their attitude. 

I cannot believe the sun season is over and I don't want to leave the sunny and slow pace of life, that is my extended summer of 2022. No need to talk about business or failed or aborted job applications that happened within the same period of time. It was summer after all and so many people are still in post-covid-recovery period. There is envy if not confusion when I tell people that I'm working while traveling and as a free-lancer. I know it cannot continue forever but... One never knows!  If you love something you love it never feels like "work" anyways, does it? 

Boulder and Nature

After multiple postponements here I am in Boulder, Colorado. I am being hosted at a stunning house whose owners have money and taste for its indoors and outdoors decoration, the ideal combination for beautifying the world and one's own wellbeing. I am happily refilling the bird-feeders and eating fresh raspberries on daily basis that ripen so fast that I'm having hard time keeping up. There is something incredible about picking the fruit right on the spot whose delight never fades for someone like me who grew up in a city and watched fruit-picking from animation movies and other TV series for children. 

I told the other day to a colleague that some people are generous at heart, period. This generosity relates mostly their non-attachment and healthy religiosity, basically to a worldview. Unlike most people think, it is not necessarily connected to the amount of wealth that they inherited or accumulated. Unfortunately, I met several people (well educated and impressive on their resume!) who justify their weak generosity by not having enough money. I don't buy the argument.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Shepard here in his state of origin! In  the previous blog entry, I mentioned two new friends and he is the second one whom I wanted to talk about. Tom and I met thanks to a common friend who also supports refugee rights and stories with a special focus on LGBTQI+ and thus I got to watch Unsettled first, and then met the director, the wonderful Tom! Here is an artist who is sensitive and knows how to listen to people. Furthermore, he is more than his art in this world. He made an extra effort to get out of his -what some envious lips might call- comfort zone in San Francisco and established a documentary film school for the underprivileged youth:https://www.youthdocumentary.org/ in Colorado Springs. Even this initiative by itself was more than enough for me to have admiration and respect for him for the rest of my life. I'm so happy to have him as a friend and am looking for a possible collaboration for future.  It was so generous of him to drive to Boulder and make sure that we have the most satisfactory time catching up and making plans for the future so that his skills as a film maker can extend beyond the US borders. 

The place I'm staying at is only 3 miles to the heart of the downtown (Pearl Street) and is an easy access via bus (10-12 minutes). I'm drawn to its name: Wonderlands as it does feel to me as Wonderlands that I'm beamed up by the Divine Power.  Power and beauty of Nature here is inexpressible so I will not try here but instead be present in it and cherish every moment.

In gratitude. 

An International Film Festival and Colors of Life

Fortunately, there are times in life when the word serendipity feels very tangible and warms our hearts like fireworks did when we were kids. They are through meeting people whose texture and stances in life match yours despite the seeming discrepancies across cultures, generations, and languages. You find yourself retelling your life story in fragments as the story is getting longer and even if it is interesting for others, to you, it might sound like being on the verge of becoming stale. Yet, you make the effort for these special people because of what you see in their eyes and the ways they listen to you with their whole being. Isn't it harder to make close friends or partners-in-crime as one ages no matter how gracefully? Then, we need to value more and protect them more carefully.

My return to the Bay Area has always been rewarding. My very special connection to San Francisco, the cool gray city of love (Gary Kamiya's book title!), might have begun as a romanticized construction but after my very first encounter with it in 2005, thankfully, time provided more than enough evidence that transformed this construction or dream into a steady and sustainable reality. 

Two new friends: a journalist-author and a documentary director. I will try to express the first one's impact on me as an ever-growing so called adult although the main part of this entry is still about the movies that I saw in the past 3 days. I can't remember the last time when I saw three movies in a real movie theater in such a compact time but it's been two decades since Flying Broom International Women's Festival in Ankara (2002). Step back 7-8 years and there you can see myself and a few friends at the Istanbul International Film Festival:) 

Lindsy is around 70 yrs old, a news reporter who covered everything from major political campaigns to New York’s hooker underworld, interviewed all the celebrities of the eighties and nineties that you can think of from Bill Clinton to Oprah to Margaret Atwood, Susan Sontag... She coined the phrase "bra burning" to describe a feminist protest but due to the permit refusal of the demonstrators, the Undies Immolation never happened! The phrase stuck and L hopes that it's not her most lasting contribution to the popular culture:) She is one of the most transparent, well-traveled and generous women that I have ever met in my life. Sassy and kickass  at the surface but no matter how many F-words she uses as long as she has those innocent child-like eyes and humility, she is unlikely to intimidate people even if she wanted to (or maybe IF she really wanted to... she might?):)  I need to spend more time with her in public.

L feels both like one of my alter-egos and lost-and-found mothers of the second-wave feminists that I still adore and follow (arghh the backlash scares me!) Reading her book on the fluidity and richness among sexual orientation of women took me back to my PhD years at York, the oldest and still one of the most progressive women&gender studies programs in the world in this specialty area. Do I want to revisit the past as a no-regrets person whose imagination is filled with future plans and fantasies no matter how crazy they are instead of nostalgia and/or the reconstructed sepias that are leftovers of therapy sessions?

In my mind, L overlaps with the Lebanese grandmother character in the movie I saw yesterday as part of the San Francisco Film Festival: Costa Brava, Lebanon: They are both feisty and outspoken. Which brings me to the International Film Festival, yay!

SF Festival Highlights: I didn't see you there is a documentary made by Reid Davenport. I can't recall another documentary which depicted frustrations of disability in such an artistic and memorable manner with occasional touches of humor. The use of music and the shifting contrasts from the gray urban/concrete realities (officials, strangers, flight attendants) to green nature, gardens and family encounters in Connecticut) are the keys for the success of the film. When the camera angles change even in the middle of downtown Oakland, one can enjoy the bright blue sky and the beauty in the spiders' webs, transgressions that remind the audience of a beyond-body presence. Layers of feelings and associations make the documentary an excellent piece of work for discussing the politics of disability in any classroom (just ignore the F words or drop a fashionable trigger statement on your syllabus :) Reid Davenport is an approachable and courageous person who is willing to talk about his work and life. 

Nothing Compares (Kathryn Ferguson’s documentary) is about the life and the career of Sinead O'Connor, the bitter consequences of challenging the games of music industry (especially in the U.S.)  Ferguson brings her back to life. I asked the other (younger and Californian) guest of the house I'm staying in SF whether she has heard of Sinead, and she replied no. I don't think anyone who has seen the eyes and heard the voice of Sinead O'Connor will have difficulty of remembering her. She is one of those rebels who genuinely doesn't care for fame or money but happened to get it due to her talent and the circumstances. I had some issues with the documentary (hence the reason for linking it to a critical review) but if your main figure has that angelic face and those piercing looks, you begin at an advantage as the director, no? 

"Nothing Compares to You" didn't get the permission to be used in the documentary to the whole team's shock and the director told us that they got the news at a very late stage of the documentary. The audience get to learn everything about it but never hear it (and you want to!) It a breakup and mourning song but unlike most of us thought, she sang it with her mother in mind, the cruel, abusive mother which Sinead is not shy about criticizing (Prince wrote the lyrics).  She manages to explain the reasons behind the mother's issues but none can cure the scars that left Sinead broken for the rest of her life.  Sinead didn't expect the tears fall down but they did and it truly captured the audience (I for one remember it very vividly!)

The mother-daughter non-bonding or failure in a healthy bonding is a serious matter that affect millions of women one way or another across the world. I used to make it an issue as a teen or college student, but after recognizing the collective and intergenerational struggle behind the lack of communication or displaying love, I let it go, and it was a relief to say the least. Unlike most women around me, it saved me time and money where I could redirect energies to better causes in this limited life time than navel-gazing and blaming and whatnot. The trick is to see each other as individuals too and to acknowledge the huge number of women with mother-issues in comparison to the ones who are in a smooth and strong bondage(!):)

When the documentary ended, the moderator told us that there was no time for Q&A but we were welcome to come down to the stage and interact with the director if we want to so I did. I had to ask her why she didn't acknowledge Sinead's conversion to Islam 4 years ago, which was a bold and unexpected announcement to make (not that Sinead would care, I guess). My question arrived after initial intro and congratulations so I am pretty sure it landed OK:)  Kathryn Ferguson paused a bit and said there was a lot about Sinead that it was hard to pick at the end as written statement on the screen (you know the ones that summarizes 'what's been happening since XY' because the time is up?) But "Isn't it a major event in one's life?" I asked, and that she even changed her name but that too went unmentioned. She got away with it smartly that 'maybe we should go back and add a statement':) Is it possible? I need to ask my director friend now whom I am to thank about informing me on the film festival in the first place.

I am happily extending my stay here and I hope that it is leading me to a better path. 

An Interview by Maria Fedele

MF: You are very engaged in representation analysis, gender studies, and women-on-the-move for decades by now. How did you come to think the way you do about the issues that you’re passionate about?

OE: At the core of all lies my curiosity about the nature and dynamics of injustice when I think about it. It is followed by an early awareness of agency that as individuals we can change things. However, building patience and understanding the importance of transnational and sustainable collaborations came later. Wisdom always comes later, no? That’s the irony of life and the reason why I remained child-free!

How is this passion reflected in other areas of your life?

OE: If you mean non-academic areas by ‘other areas’, I should begin with a correction. I don’t believe in the separation of these, and my life so far has been an evidence. Even as a child, I thought life in my small world was too boring and only by reading and traveling could I transcend it. When I began solo-traveling abroad at 19 and faced many questions that showed extreme prejudices about my country of origin, my interest in studying travel literature and stereotypes began developing. As a literature student, exploring the genre of women’s travel writing was exciting. Later on, I realized the difficulty of categorizing or submitting to already-made compartmentalization of women-on-move. Especially after interviewing refugee women across many countries for years, defining home or belonging as much as traveling became harder to define for me. Recently, I welcomed the phrase “women-on-the-move” into my language so now the trajectory of my life as an immigrant, academic, and traveler gathered under the same roof (only metaphorically speaking of course, hah ha…)

What makes you similar to and different from the audiences with whom you are sharing?

OE: I can’t really know my audiences, can I? I have an imaginary audience which I assume are mostly educated and interested in world affairs, who deeply value traveling and meeting new people and cultures, who are feminist or at least pro-feminist with a good command of English language. These are the similarities that came to my mind immediately. Because I produce work in English mostly, which is not my mother tongue, a major difference between myself and the imagined audience might be in our origins, family and education background as well as my extensive experience of travelling globally and living in different countries more than just a few weeks. 

What do you do beyond your scholarship? 

I love cooking vegetarian food Turkish, international, and improvised! I love taking walks, reading and writing stories. I don’t have a particular hobby or sports that I am obsessed with due to my personality and view of life. I enjoy being, just being, observing, and thinking. One might also say stories/histories are things that I can never get enough of. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how to contribute to nature and be more in tune with it. I like spending time by the sea, in botanical gardens, bookstores, and libraries but the last one is true only for North America. I like dreaming and I sometimes write them if they feel very impactful. Call me a nerd but I also like reading the academic or creative works by the people I know, love and respect, including bright students’ work. 

What have you read, watched, heard lately that challenges and/or inspires you? 

I am reading a book by Volkan Yalazay (2019) Ancient Trees of Istanbul which in fact has many tree-related stories from other cities of Turkey with amazing photos. I keep returning to Ancient Trees - Portraits of Time (2014) by San Francisco-based photographer Beth Moon. I received this signed copy thanks to a gallery owner in Santa Fe. I have had a fascination with old trees since I can remember, which is a kind of mysterious thing that I can’t go into detail here. I enjoy all kinds of narratives that take place in nature no matter what genre actually. I saw a movie which received the best screenplay Oscar this year called A Promising Young Woman, which is promoted as a feminist thriller but it is much more than that. I really enjoyed the way it was done. My next reading is going to be Gabriel Marcel’s Homo Viator Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope.

What questions do you wrestle with that keep you up at night? 

Oh, well… Because I wrestle with questions that keep me alert while I am awake all the time such as injustice and violence against all living beings and arts, I don’t wrestle much at night.  Joking aside, I try to get a good night’s sleep whenever I can since it is a major way to struggle with the problems that I deal with as an engaged scholar. Restful sleep is healing. 

What are your dreams for the young people in your life?

That they live in a more just, more physically connected and grounded world, that is not threatened by environmental crises one after another. I also hope that they can travel the world and feed themselves with the least possible carbon footprints. I am dreaming of a world where things are practiced by moderation, and there is room for off-screen and family time.

Where is home for you, geographically and metaphysically? 

I cannot possibly give you a short answer to this question without feeling it being very reductive and incomplete, I am sorry about that. I feel at home in international, multilingual, and intellectual settings near the water (preferably ocean or the Mediterranean) where people constantly learn from each other without meaning to, where there is genuine respect and love towards each other. There is a saying attributed to Sufism but can be found in many other schools of spirituality: “Being in this world, but not of this world” and I leave it there.  

How do those influences show up in your work? 

I guess in terms of moderation, and not feeling or acting in a materialistic and possessive manner, be it a partner or anything tangible that seems to be under my realm to an outsider. I know that all beings are temporarily entrusted to us and we are tested through them. I am not ambitious or obsessed with my work even when my limited vision tells me that it is the ‘right’ way to go or to act in a certain manner. I am aware of my situatedness thanks to the theory courses I took in college back in the mid-1990s . However, the kind of consciousness I am actually trying to express goes back to something deeper and more spiritual than reading Foucault or Harding.

Thank you so much Ozlem Ezer for your time.

This interview was conducted by Maria Fedele for her final paper for the course ANTH-158 Feminist Ethnographies, UC Santa Cruz. 

Promising Young Woman: My Kind of Thriller

 

I am not into thrillers at all to be honest but rarely, movies like Promising Young Woman (PYW)  that actually measured everything in the exact amount that I enjoy watching are released. The post-effect is important for me, as the Iranian movie So Close So Far (by Reza Mirkarimi) which still lingers almost a month later as I'm typing these lines. I think PYW will feel the same, especially in a U.S. context. 

Summer 2017, Berkeley: I just moved in a studio where only grad-students were supposed to live  (short-term sublets are okay) which was an old but a dream place, a 5 minute walk to the campus and one of my favorite cafes (Strada). However, I had to use earplugs all the time because the building was surrounded with several fraternities and sororities, namely, too many summer parties with loud music and screams. 

One morning, I came across a girl who was desperately trying to unlock the main gate to the building. I was inside, paused for a second, then opened the door for her, but she staggered and sat down on the floor. She looked like a typical student, jeans, t-shirt but I then realized they had some stains and dust, yes, very dusty jeans. I asked her if she needed any help, she looked drugged, in haze, and when she said no, I left, something I still regret today. The campus security was only a few minutes walk but I thought it wasn't my place to insist. 

After watching the movie last night, I thought about her again, and hundreds of female students who got 'totally wasted' on that summer, and had sex without even knowing it. I also remembered my friend, the head of 'one department' at U of Michigan who made her son promise her to ask for 'consent' to any potential girlfriend, which he did despite (once) being teased about it by one girl after a date. Better to be teased than to regret or be remembered as the 'jerk' even years after that forceful kiss or touch. 

The balance in the movie was superb: There was no blood, not a one-sided or blinded revenge. Cassie is wickedly smart and attractive: She never harmed the women who sided with the men in power, who didn't believe her best/closest girlfriend in med-school when she said she was raped. She could have but she didn't, she only made them feel in her friend's shoes, only temporarily. It is easy to say: "Why did she get so drunk?" but that question is cruel and should be avoided. The other one: "We were just kids then" (!) sounds pretty lame in a society where one can drive at the age of 16. Plus, "kids" shouldn't rape or videotape it for fun. When women internalize the distorted patriarchal system and even become some of the most vocal defenders of it (like the Dean, or the third 'good'  friend who now have twins and lead a very domestic life), then it hurts. Cassie manages to keep calm with these two in a way that most women in her shoes cannot.

PYW can be a modern feminist classic but only time will tell. I'm very impressed with it in terms of acting, the screenplay (very original), Christian imagery and music choices. I particularly appreciated the types of revenge, that is, by not using the simple and masculine way: reaching out the guns, spill blood or kill men unlike several other women revenge movies (which I don't like, they don't create the intended catharsis in me but this one did). The Asian female officer handcuffing the white pretty boy in suit... is surely not a coincidence. 

There is one person who admits wrongdoing and thus he becomes the only person who gets to be forgiven by Cassie: The attorney Jordan Green who made millions at the time 'thanks to' the cases of acquitting boys but now is on 'sabbatical' to put mildly whereas the truth is he suffers from insomnia, which would remind any Turkish woman of the "#uykularin kacsin ben ne zaman ifsa edilecegim diye" (may you lose sleep with the fear of exposing harassments) movement in December 2020 as part of a late #metoo act. The rest of the characters are in denial or defense mode, and thus don't deserve or can welcome forgiveness. Jordan not only becomes the 'forgiven' one but also the one that Cassie (short of Cassandra, think of your mythology class) entrusts the video/the evidence of the past crime.  Just for the record: The problem is not the tiny percentage of false accusations (to ruin a 'promising young man's life") but that only 35% of all sexual assaults are even reported (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, BBC Sept.18. 2018).

Language plays BIG in all these cases in daily chat or at courts or the media. Jordan Green says he had an epiphany whereas the doctors told him that it was a "neurosis" and recommended a break from work. I am on the 'epiphany' side as the Humanities person in this humbling world, avoiding easy diagnosis and jargon of the therapists. That one sentence meant a lot to me!

There is so much to say and write about this movie, and mine is only sharing a first impression and scratching the surface. There is genre-bending and mocking (like romantic-comedies) which deserve a whole article by itself.  Kudos to all who contributed to Promising Young Woman.

*The Writer-Director Emerald Fennell.

 

 Understanding Rumi: The “Person of Heart” Is the All

Kabir Helminski

[This is an excellent criticism, eyeopener, gentle reminder, and a friendly warning for anyone who constructed their Rumi-love through the watered-down clichés and misled translations. It is also for those who are frustrated by these misleading oversimplifications of Rumi's oeuvre and eradication of Islam from his words, but keep quiet out of courtesy/edep or adab. There are some very good examples along the way with some 'bitter medicine' by Rumi’s own words. A highly recommended reading, especially for one special person whose effort to understand Rumi excels most people I have met in the Global North. I also extend my immense appreciation via this post to Prof. Omid Safi for his kindness and patience in responding to all my questions regarding Islam and translations from Persian. And if I had written this critical essay, I would have dedicated it to the memory of Leonard Lewisohn, to his love and knowledge of Rumi, his generosity as an editor. OE]

Those sweet words we shared between us/the vault of heaven has concealed in its heart/

One day, They will pour down like rain/ and our secrets will germinate in the soil of this universe.

I have always imagined the quatrain above as being part of an intimate conversation between Rumi and his legendary friend, Shams of Tabriz. We live at a time when those 'sweet words' are needed to rain down more than ever upon the soil of our universe.

Those who have discovered the heart-penetrating words of Rumi sense their beauty and urgency. And yet we may struggle to express, let alone explain, their importance. Poetry can be the language of the soul, communicating through image and metaphor something beyond tangible realities. It can lead us to where our footprints disappear into the Sea.

Rumi belongs to the honored category of wisdom teachers that would include: Plato, Ecclesiastes, Lao Tzu, the author of the Gospel of Thomas, Meister Eckhart, Shakespeare, Goethe, and in America, Whitman and Emerson. He can stand with any of them in terms of his intellectual contribution, and possibly beyond any of them in spiritual depth. Once, when the great German scholar Anne Marie Schimmel was asked to compare Goethe and Rumi, she responded: “The great Goethe is like an immense, majestic mountain; but Rumi, ah… Rumi is like the sky itself.” Her words capture the essence of what Rumi offers: an opening to a spiritual Reality even beyond the majesty and beauty of the physical world, a transparency that allows the spiritual Sun to shine upon us.

Rumi is not a self-help guru. He offers more than consolation to our neurotic anxieties. The ecstatic love he extols is not a form of mystical eroticism. He is not an iconoclast, a breaker of tradition, but an inheritor of the wisdom and revelations of the Prophets.

Using all the rich means of literature, and especially poetry, he awakens our imagination to the presence of the Divine. And as we gradually integrate the images, metaphors, and stories, our sense of reality is transformed, our place in the universe is clarified.

Underlying the vast and complex tangle of his vast work is a clear and coherent metaphysical understanding. The Omega point of nature and all existence is the complete human being. All the laws of the physical world are perfectly in balance, proportioned to manifest the heart-consciousness of the human being who has transcended ego limitations and distortions, and has been so humbled in love as to become an expression of the Divinity itself!

However, if we search on the Internet for Rumi quotes, much of what we find will be a mere caricature of the Master. By the time Rumi appears on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms, his profound and nuanced wisdom has sometimes been reduced to one-liners, watered-down clichés, lame truisms, and misleading over-simplifications.

Everything in the universe
is within you. Ask all from yourself.

What this quote, for instance, seems to suggest is that the individual should be his or her own arbiter of truth and not depend on second-hand knowledge, theologies, and dogmas. This sentiment fits well with our postmodern era in which all certainties are dismissed, in which the sacred is just one option among many of equal or no value.

Rumi would never let an assertion like this stand alone without taking us a further step. He says, for instance:

Listen, open a window to God
and begin to delight yourself
by gazing upon Him through the opening.
The business of love is to make that window in the heart,
for the breast is illumined by the beauty of the Beloved.
Gaze incessantly on the face of the Beloved!
Listen, this is in your power, my friend!

[Mathnawi VI, 3095–97]

What must be sought is a portal that can be found within ourselves, but like a window redirects our vision to something beyond ourselves, the Beloved, the Divine Reality. When that window opens, our sense of ourselves is transformed; we see the artificial nature of what we thought was ourselves. This is a great discovery and a great mystery that cannot be contained or adequately described.

Since the Internet rarely acknowledges who the translator is, I don’t know whose translations I’m commenting on, perhaps even one of my friends, but bear with me for a little bit longer.

Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth.

There is no doubt that Rumi was a master of authenticity, but personality development was not the aim of his teaching, and the word “myth” is not a word to be found in his work. And yet it may have appeal to those creating online identities through social media. Contrast this with the “bitter medicine” that Rumi sometimes hands out:

Unless the seeker is absolutely erased,
in truth, he will not come into union.
Union is not penetrable. It is your annihilation.
Otherwise anyone would become the Truth.

[Quatrains: 800]

Often these “internet quotes” are partial truths that can be misleading if one has little knowledge of the spiritual universe Rumi inhabited.

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

Rumi would never say this either because he understands that the individual ego cannot undo itself; rather when the false self faces the consequences of its own ignorance and denial, it is the Divine Mercy that offers a solution, a remedy. And sometimes the true “Breaker of Hearts” is offering us a lesson, the bitter medicine that is needed:

The gate of union has been closed to me by the Friend.
My heart has been broken by the sorrow and pain of the Friend.
From now on I and my broken heart will wait at the gate,
for those with a broken heart have the favor of the Friend.

[Quatrains: 245]

But it seems that once a “quote” is elevated to Internet heaven, it gets repeated and repeated, confirming that many people only read him online. Furthermore, some of the most popular are not from Rumi at all, as far as I can tell, and I’ll be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong:

Yesterday I was clever and wanted to change the world
today I am wise so I am changing myself.

Who is this? Gandhi perhaps?

Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Actually, this is from The Course in Miracles.

I point these things out, knowing that there are well-meaning people who have found meaning and beauty in Rumi, but have not encountered the true range and depth of his legacy, or have not had the opportunity to experience the living tradition which he represents. And all of us, after all, are students, seekers, incomplete in encompassing the vast universe of spiritual knowledge and human possibilities.

So, if you will allow me to conclude with some words from Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, just one of many possible examples that expresses that more comprehensive meaning to be encountered in his work, a vision of the “possible human” from Discourses of Rumi (published as Signs of the Unseen): Discourse 16:

The “person of heart” is the All. When you have seen such a person, you have seen everything. “The whole hunt is in the belly of the wild ass,” as the saying goes. All the people in the world are parts of him, and he (or she) is the Whole.

All good and bad are part of the dervish.
Whoever is not so is not a dervish.¹

Now when you have seen a dervish you have certainly seen the whole world. Anyone you see after that is superfluous. A dervishes’ words are the most complete words of all. When you have heard their words, whatever you may hear afterwards is unneeded.

If you see him at any stage, it is as though
you have seen every person and every place.
O copy of the Divine Book which you are,
O mirror of awesome beauty that you are,
nothing that exists in the world is outside of you.
Seek within yourself whatever you want,
for that you are!²

This is an amazing view of what it means to be a complete human being, and this view is reflected in Rumi’s own work, especially the Mathnawi, encompassing so many aspects of earthly life — saints and sinners, dervishes and the kings, creatures of every sort, humor and metaphysical reflection, humble fables and sublime supplications — all of these revealing the Divine Love and Intelligence at work.

We hope that Awakening with Rumi will likewise reflect the Divine Love and Intelligence at work in our lives, in matter-of-fact and miraculous ways.

It is clear that Rumi did not take up a position outside the context of traditional Islam. His frequent references to the Qur’an and his love of the Prophet Muhammad are evidence of his alignment with the primary sources of Islam. In a future article, however, I hope to explore Rumi’s idea of the “Religion of Love,” to clarify that Rumi’s Islam is not a legalistic program ordained by a judgmental God, but a spiritual path leading to intimacy with the Divine Beloved.

Within the Ka`ba the rule of the qibla does not exist:
what matter if the diver has no snow-shoes?
Do not seek guidance from the drunken:
why do you order those whose garments are torn in pieces to mend them?
The religion of Love is apart from all religions:
for lovers, the religion and creed is — God.
If the ruby has not a seal, it is no harm:
Love in the sea of sorrow is not sorrowful.

[Mathnawi II, 1768–71]

 

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1. The line is from Rumi, Divan, i, ghazal 425, line 4476.
2. A quatrain by Najmuddin Razi, Manarat al-sa’irin, manuscript at Tehran, Malek Library.

https://sufism.org/library/articles [posted on April 28^th, 2021]

 

An Interview During a Revisit to Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe

 What a treat it was to in Santa Fe where I spent six weeks back in Fall 2014. The simplicity of the women writers’ house, the rural, peaceful setting of the neighborhood reminded me that most life changing experiences and decisions require a radical move from one’s habitual environment (e.g., from Cyprus to Santa Fe!) After six weeks, I remember flying back to San Francisco, how it suddenly felt chaotic and young after New Mexico!  I felt blessed to be back to WISC in March 2018, even with better hopes and plans for the future.  Thank you Jordan Young, the Program Manager, for the interview and the warm welcome. Thank you Jude Deason for hosting me in your lovely studio! The full interview link was online [but no longer there] so I decided to post it here.

J. Young: What are you working on in Taos?

I’m actually at the final stages of my book on Syrian women refugee lives. Doing my best to capture the voices of nine women from different parts of Syria who are now displaced in four countries, that is, Germany, Canada, Turkey, and Greece. I began the interviews almost two years ago. I have a book contract with a deadline of May 15, 2018. 

JY: What brought you to this project?

I have been engaged in women’s life writing since 2003 through my PhD expertise area. I have been recording and writing creative non-fiction based on women’s lives for years. With the conflict in Syria, Turkey received 3 million refugees. This was impossible to ignore for me as Turkish woman writer, researcher, and activist. I thought I could contribute with my prior experience of writing life-stories, compose a biographical work.  I reached out to Syrian women from very different backgrounds and recorded their life stories.

JY: Why?

In order to challenge the stereotype of refugee women. The stereotype would be someone poor, uneducated, needy, conservative, and religious. Covered and conservative women who are considered repressed or secondary citizens. All stereotypes are detrimental and mislead us, yet we all have them.

The media representations of refugee women are fragmented. I write full biographies of people whereas the media focuses on their refugee status, and not that they had lives before and after. I ask questions about their childhood, favorite recipes, families, and other personal stories.  At the end, you get a full human and being a refugee is just one chapter in their lives.

JY: How do you approach telling someone else’s story?

All of my project participants are in transition and have changed countries and cities. After the recordings of  approximately 12-15 hours, what happens is that I send follow-up questions through email or WhatsApp. We are constantly in touch. I keep getting updates on their lives—last week I got some exciting news from one participant and thus added paragraphs into her story.

In Istanbul where I started interviewing, women didn’t live in refugee camps whenever they had the means to rent flats even if located in shanty town areas. Plus, the Turkish government made it almost impossible to go inside the camps and conduct interviews. Whenever I talk about the process of the book in the West, people assume that the Syrian women stay in camps. That is not always true.

My approach and methodology can be called narrative inquiry, which is a ubiquitous practice with some postmodern strands. Life story is a portal through which I enter women’s worlds but the process of narrating forms a relational aspect and demands ethical responsibilities. I highly recommend the works of Clandinin and Huber for people who are interested in digging more on narrative inquiry.

JY: How did you create comfortable rapport with the nine women? Are you a biographer or a witness?

One NGO in Istanbul and friends helped me connect initially, and I wrote all the potential participants emails. I must have sent 15 letters maximum, introducing myself and the project. In return, they wrote me back whether or when they could be available. The two Syrian women made it all the way to Toronto, and I got connected to them by a Turkish sociologist Secil Erdogan Ertorer who is teaching at the Sociology Department at York. My former PhD committee member and a wonderful Canadian feminist professor Meg Luxton mentioned her name due to Ertorer’s work areas. See, it’s all about people trusting your work and good intentions, they want to help you throughout the process.

As for creating rapport, I’m a good listener. I’m originally from Turkey, I grew up there. It was never out on the table, but many times the women I interviewed said “you know” or “you understand this” so in some way, they assumed that we shared commonalities such as religion, food, culture, etc. which we did. Unlike most people who approached them regardless of how well they meant, talking to me did not require opening a lot of parentheses or explanations. Especially when I posed questions on gender and sexuality, men-women interactions in the society, they said: “Well, it’s similar to Turkey…” meaning the patriarchy, the double-standards etc…

Even though we didn’t speak the same language, we shared many cultural experiences and I think that helped build trust.

JY: How does your Women’s Studies background inform your creative writing?

I have the feminist lenses all the time. It means that the women’s authentic voice comes first. Secondly, even though I am being or playing the writer, I need to have their confirmation. Whatever I write, before it goes out anywhere, it goes to the subjects themselves first. They have full control until the manuscript goes to the publishing house. I’m not taking advantage of their voices, which is a common concern in feminism so much so that it paralyses several life story projects or ethnographic work in general.  It is good to be oversensitive but not to the extent that it will block the writer or the researcher due to fear of staining the voice, or not capturing authenticity. I don’t let this happen, I prefer to be criticized instead.

Each storytelling journey has been an empowering journey too. That’s based on the women’s feedback. At the end of the two years, I end the interviews with the question “How did you feel about this?” With no exception, the women expressed feeling much better. They feel relieved and more complete, which is very rewarding for me.

JY: How does your creative writing inform your women’s studies?

I don’t know if it has a powerful effect, but I’d like to make academic language or jargon more accessible, more approachable, more mainstream both on campus and at conferences. I try not to use exclusive language to insert my power as a writer or as a teacher. I have decided to separate creative non-fiction writing as a genre and my career as a professor a while ago.

JY: How does theory inform your writing?

There are a lot of fancy feminists, who are missing the connections that they are part of, or consciously deny them. They focus on differences rather than shared values as women or some get way too abstract in their approach to women’s issues. I’m more interested in fluidity - being open to change and being in transition - and I have really liked that since I was introduced to postmodernist theories or experiments in the 1990s at college and in literature. There should be room for many different ways of thinking about being a woman. I owe the title “womanhoods” to a Syrian feminist activist when I visited her in Stockholm in December 2016. I hope my publisher McFarland will keep the concept even if the title may have other changes. It indeed captures the diversity and evades generalization on women.

JY: What can you say about the #METOO movement?

I’m a big fan! But I’m also aware of the criticism but I don’t care, there are people who will always criticize every move because it’s in their nature or they are very pessimistic in general. I’m very happy that so many stories came out. I don’t think it is pretentious at all, and by the way, it is becoming really an international movement due to social media. One of my Syrian participants who lives in Istanbul is 25, and she joined the #MeToo Movement on Facebook and wrote a bunch of things in English. Her mother saw it on Facebook, woke her up in the middle of the night, and asked her to delete it because it would shame her family.  She refused to take it down. Her father got involved in the conversation the next day and the movement talk is on their table for the family to deal with. It’s amazing!

I’m following Turkish media, and the Turkish feminists wondered why #MeToo Movement didn’t catch on as fast or widely as it did in North America. We put the blame on culture and society: geographical difference.

JY: Can you name three inspiring women?

I recently read Gloria Steinem’s memoirs, and I felt privileged to get the book at Hedgebrook where she wrote it. It was a signed copy! I connected her surprisingly well since my life has been on the road too, and I don’t drive either. I even read a passage from the book to a taxi driver who took me from the farm (Hedgebrook) to the ferry terminal on my way to Seattle. The passage was about taxi drivers, which needs a whole other interview when combined with uber drivers whom I had to interact with in the Bay Area. Talk about #MeToo Movement!

Virginia Woolf was inspiring during my college years, the whole Bloomsbury group was attractive to me. Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration for Woolf’s protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, was another figure I pursued in text: her letters, memoirs, and travels, some 12 years ago. I have been very inspired by women travelers since I was 19 because solo traveling has been an act of rebellion and freedom for me. It still is, and depending on how it is practiced, it can be a very feminist act. I always encourage my female students to travel solo  at every opportunity. Unlike in Europe or North America, we don’t raise many women travelers in the Middle East, less so when it comes to keeping or publishing travel journals.

I find women writers like Ursula LeGuin and Margaret Atwood who steadily and consciously bolstered their fiction with feminism over decades.

JY: What are you reading right now?

I usually read like 2 or 3 things simultaneously. I’m reading a German novelist named Jenny Erpenbeck Go, Went, Gone thanks to the family who is hosting me in Taos. Because of my current work, they knew I’d be interested in it and gave it as a present. I am also reading books about inter-cultural and comparative theology. This is one area that I’m trying hard to direct my academic studies. I’m really surprised with the different reflections and practices of Islam. I realize that with the amount of material I collected for the current book on Syrian refugees, I can write another book selectively focusing on spiritual transformations (either rejections or deeper devotions) that the women have been going through as a result of displacement and war. Can you imagine that in only two years or less, among the small sample of women I interviewed,  some stopped practicing Islam, one covered her hair, two of them became more religious than ever, and increased practicing etc.? It was amazing to witness so I am planning to get another graduate degree in near future where I can dedicate more time into this phenomenon. Also with increasing  number of Muslim refugees from Syria and other countries, Europe and North America will need to be engaged seriously in Islam in the coming years. As women who grew up in Muslim societies, we need to be more vocal about the alternative ways of spiritual living, and present our daily lives realistically. Decontextualized Rumi poetry with its diluted New Age versions for example is not helpful in talking about Islam. I am reading a lot about these matters.

JY: Do you consider yourself an activist?

I think so, yeah. In different ways: for me, writing is an activism, connecting women to other women is also activism. Not jumping on the bandwagon of contemporary society such as not using social media is activism! Buying used clothes or goods, recycling, riding a bicycle or using public transportation etc… I am a huge proponent of the simple sounding “personal is political” motto of feminism.  It captures a lot! People can constantly make ‘mini-revolutions’ in their daily lives and thus are activists.

JY: How does teaching fit into your life?

I gave a break to full-time teaching because it was very demanding and taking me away from writing in the way I wanted to. I came to a point after several years  of teaching where I felt burned out. I arrived in WISC in 2014 and that was an immediate fresh breath: it feels very different to be a full time writer. However, I’m also a people-person, and I like meeting new people, exchanging ideas with them. I wouldn’t mind teaching part-time or offering workshops as I did in Athens.  

JY: Can you say something about your international identity? 

I feel comfortable in most places. I’ve travelled a lot. I don’t feel unsafe or freaked out when I am in a completely new environment where I can’t speak a word of the local language, for example. I’m calm in that fluid global identity that was formed over the years so I don’t need a fixed address or house 24/7.  However, I feel more at home if there is ocean or sea nearby due to … probably my background or happiest memories. Even when I am surrounded by the most stunning landscapes such as in New Mexico or Switzerland, I begin to miss the sight and the scent of the ocean after a few weeks.  I don’t do well in cold climates either. These are my only weaknesses when I’d like to believe that I have a fluid global identity! On a more serious level, I’d like to mention Şirin Tekeli, a prominent feminist figure in Turkey whom we lost last summer (June 13, 2017), who told me once that I shouldn’t feel upset or guilty about leaving my country of origin. She advised the same to other young feminists such as Pinar Selek who has been in exile in France for years. Tekeli said that the nations are actually crumbling, people can contribute to causes in which they believe in and get connected through very different means in today’s world. Last summer when I realized that the feeling of homesickness left me a while ago, it was very liberating. I can’t even point how or when it happened. I remember her words often and how significant it is to cross that threshold for a woman or anyone for that matter.

JY: Thank you so much.

OE: You’re welcome. Very good questions.