The Netherlands

1. Black Milk isn't translated yet. I heard it is about a postlabourdepression. Could you tell our readers what it is about and why you have written this book? What was the urge? I heard it's a novel very close to your own experiences, was that more difficult to write than total fiction?

After the birth of my daughter, I suffered from a long and draining depression. I didn't know how to harmonize motherhood and writing. For the first time in my adult life, I stopped writing and lost faith in words. It lasted almost ten months. And during that time I had lots of feelings of guilt, bewilderment and anxiety.
Today, there are two seemingly different, albeit complementary, attitudes toward motherhood. On the one hand, there is the view that motherhood is the most sacred thing that can occur to a woman. In this traditional approach, motherhood is romanticized and idealized. On the other hand, there is also the view that contemporary women can have it all-they can be perfect career women, perfect mothers, perfect everything. None of these approaches deals honestly with the multiple effects that childbearing has upon women.

2. And is it very different from your other books, since you tend to write as less as possible about yourself (I mean: you split yourself into all those different characters and possibly now you found yourself more in one?)?

It is very different than my previous books, true. I used to write as less as possible about myself. Literature, for me, is not telling your "own" story to others. It is the ability to become "Others". To transcend the boundaries of the Self. I am not interested in talking about myself. I am interested in discovering the "Other". But this is my first autobiographical book.
I named this book Black Milk for two reasons. First, it deals with postpartum depression and shows that mother's milk is not always as white and spotless as society likes to think it is. Second, out of that depression I was able to get an inspiration; out of that black milk I was able to develop some sort of ink.

3. Could you work with a baby around in the first months? I myself have to leave the computer now because my ten weeks old daughter is crying out loud for milk… ;-)

My experience is that new-mothers can seldom work at the beginning. Let alone writing, we cannot even read a book. And we panic. We fear we are not "brains" anymore. Only "body". The experience of being a new mother generates unmatched pleasure and happiness. Yet, at the same time, it can trigger a profound identity crisis, infused with guilt, loneliness, and bewilderment. I think, the postpartum stage can be a particularly debilitating condition for intellectual or artistic women who are used to an independent lifestyle.

4. It seems there is, at least in the literary world, a depiction of autobiographical literature. Why do you think autobiographical fiction is so low honoured/ disliked by these literary people (critics, scientist, and so on)? Is it possible it has something to do with the distinction between female and male writers and the topics they each have?

I am not sure autobiographical genre is equally disliked everywhere. I think there are cultural differences. It is different in Europe than in the USA. It is even more different in Turkey. In the USA, for instance, autobiographical books are very much in demand.  There is a lot of emphasis on individuality and everyone aspires to "being a role-model to others." In Turkey it is very different. It is more difficult for a woman writer to write about herself and her sexuality and depression directly and be respected as "high literature". You will automatically be placed in a different genre, like "chick lit", you know.

5. You were scheduled to give birth to your first child the week of the trial, one and a half years ago. What a horror, I hope your baby came later. How did that go, how do you look back on that period?

It was a difficult time for me. But spiritually and intellectually, I learned a lot from those difficult days. And I have always had a very positive relation with fiction readers in Turkey, most of whom happen to be women.

6. You write that every place could be your writing place: library's, cafés, streets, stations. Didn't that changed since you have a baby? I can't imagine you can still live in all different sort of places, and carrying a baby around. How do you do that now?

Yes, indeed. It did change a great deal. And that change was part of the reason for my post-partum depression. Settling down into a sterile, ordered, family-based bourgeoisie lifestyle scared and annoyed me. But after the baby life has necessarily become more settled. Now I am practising "the art of female balance". How to balance the free-spirit, independent, nomadic woman writer in me with the responsible, matured, settled-down mother that I became? Human beings are full of conflicts and in Black Milk I do make a lot of fun of mine.

7. Don't you become totally fragmentized when you live in all sort of places: how to root yourself than? Is literature your point of rest, the place to be?

Yes, it is fragmentising. After awhile it can become exhausting. You cannot even keep your books together. I have books and pieces in different countries, different cities. This is how I lived for the first 35 years of my life. This year I have made Istanbul my base. I will still travel as often as I can but at least have a place where I can keep my books together.

8. When you've travelled as much as you did/do, you see so many different places; what's the favourite place to be?

I am deeply attached to Istanbul. It is a She-city. Istanbul is a treasure for artists and writers. But she also suffocates me bit by bit. So time to time I run away from her, but then I miss her dearly and come back. I always come back. It is a bit like a crazy love affair.

9. You write literature is a way to cross borders, but how can we cross the border of the east when so little is translated out of the Middle East ? What to do about that problem? What to do about the pigeonholed writers, like an African has to write about black people?

You are right, that so little is translated from Middle Eastern literature makes it very difficult to establish a healthy bridge of understanding between cultures. Nevertheless, I think we writers from other parts of the world have to resist the requirement that "if you are African write about black people only or mostly." I, as a Muslim woman writer, can write about Muslim women but I can also write or dream or imagine about a Norwegian gay professor or Siberian peasant.  Imagination knows no limits. Good literature knows no limits. However, today's identity politics try to pigeonhole us into a hodgepodge category of "multicultural literature". Western literature is regarded as true "literature" and all the Rest is lumped together and called "multikulti". Then they expect us to produce sad stories about the "Other." I believe we should challenge the very boundary between "us" and "Other."

10. In your novels there's much of the 'islam of love', by using words of Arabic and Persian origin and drawing on Sufi traditions, but you get a lot of negative critics on that. Do you have to have guts to put something of the batini-tradition of islam in your work?

Esoteric Islam or Islamic mysticism is a deeply-rooted and rich tradition that has been alive since the beginning of Islam. I like it. I embrace it. And I write about it. Interestingly it wasn't the conservatives who got upset by the Sufi traditions in my books. It was more so the cultural elite. The Westernized, staunchly secular elite got upset. You see, some of the elite do not understand how come a "leftist, Westernized, cosmopolitan woman writer" like me be interested in religion or religious philosophy. But how can a writer not be interested in God - the greatest Writer?

11. Do you have to be brave to write? Why?

I don't think so. But you have to be curious. And I think there are two basic motivations when it comes to writing. Both are very strong. One is love. You either have to really, passionately, deeply love the art of writing. The second motivation is anger. Or else, you have to have a lot of resentment and reaction inside. I do not choose the second path. I write with love. Within love. I love my characters, my readers and I love the art of literature.

12. Books, even holy books are multi-interpretable, does the same goes for your work? That people can read it in love or in fear? What's the fear they have most? And which people do fear your work most?

I see my novels as buildings with multiple doors and entrances and exits. Every reader enters from a different door. Sometimes two readers can read the same book, they can be inside the same building without ever running into each other. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, my novels are multilayered. Secondly, I believe, a true reader of literature is not a passive being. Reading is a constructive, active process. The reader contributes to creating the meaning. And that is different with every reader. In my country my books are read by a very diverse readership that crosscuts cultural or political boundaries. People of all sorts of walks of life. Leftists, liberals, feminists, nihilists, university students, professionals and many Sufis, mystics. I also have a lot of readers from conservative circles, especially many woman readers with headscarves.

13. What's your fear and what's your hope?

There isn't one single fear or one single hope. What gives you fear one day might give you hope the next day. The answer changes all the time. I think that's the way it is in life.

14. Have you worked on a novel in the Netherlands?

It is interesting that you ask me this question because I am planning to.

15. What do you think of the Netherlands? (the East-West-conflict in this European country)

I have a lot of interest in the Netherlands. I am interested not only in what it is today but also in its history and culture and ethics. I followed the debates in the Netherlands around the time and after Theo van Gogh was murdered. For a long time the whole world thought East-West conflict was happening outside the Netherlands but all of a sudden that wasn't the case anymore. As a Turkish woman writer who believes that Islam and Western democracy can coexist, I am deeply interested in the conflicts and solutions in the Netherlands.

16. What do you suggest to our country, what should we keep, what should we change?

One thing that worries me deeply is "mental ghettoes". It doesn't matter ifn you are a progressive liberal or a let's say religious person as long as you live in an enclosed space of your own. It's the same thing. Many people withdraw into a mental ghetto and do not even realize it. If everyone around us thinks alike, acts alike, is alike... there is a problem there. I believe in this life whatever we will learn we will learn from people who aren't like us. So I find it very important to increase the channels of dialogue and interaction between "dissimilar" people.

17. I heard you're fond of the work of Harry Mulisch. Is that true, and which work and why?

Yes it is true. I have a lot of respect for his work. I have read some of his work in English, some in Turkish. Especially The Discovery of Heaven, The Procedure and The Assault have a dear place in heart.

18. What do you think about the fact that you are on the stage with him?

It's very exciting. I feel happy and honored...

Thank you so much...