Two Green Otters (Turkish Literature) - Softcover

Uzuner, Buket

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785080873 ISBN 13: 9781785080876

Verlag: Milet Publishing Ltd, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

When her mother abandons her family, Nilsu loses faith in the world and everyone in it. Terrified of suffering the same fate, she breaks off relationships before they even begin. Then she meets Teo, a passionate environmentalist and one of the founders of the Turkish Green Party. Teo's close relationship with his mother has always held him back and when she commits suicide, his life slips off the rails. In this story of a young woman's struggle to find love and acceptance, Buket Uzuner explores the complexities of human relationships. With her distinctive touch, she weaves a poignant and magical love story of two souls in the modern world. Two Green Otters offers up an original reinterpretation of the role of environmentalism and love in the world today.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Buket Uzuner was born in Ankara in 1955. She has written numerous short stories, travelogues and novels. Her books have been on the Turkish national bestseller lists since 1992, and have been translated into eight languages. Uzuner won the Yunus Nadi Prize (1993) for her novel Balik Izlerinin Sesi (The Sound of Fishsteps), and her novel Kumral Ada–Mavi Tuna (Mediterranean Waltz) was named the Best Novel of 1998 by the University of Istanbul. Her short story collection A Cup of Turkish Coffee (2001) was published in dual language Turkish–English by Milet. Uzuner was selected as one of the 75 Most Influential Women of the Republic of Turkey as part of the country’s 75th anniversary celebration.

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Two Green Otters

A Novel

By Buket Uzuner, Alexander Dawe

Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © 2016 Milet Publishing
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78508-087-6

CHAPTER 1

Part One

How beautiful the way childhood innocently falls into the flow of time. That is what we have lost!

— Nilgün Marmara, Daktilo'ya Çekilmis Siirler (Typeset Poems)

June 1978

It didn't happen in a day. It took all summer for everything to fall apart.

My mom ran away with a handsome painter and my dad left home the day after that, taking only a few things with him. The only living beings left in the flat were myself, my brother Cem, our cat Elvis, and all our potted plants, of which we had many.

And then there was our grandmother who lived in the apartment across from us.

Summer vacation had already started.

I was fourteen and obsessed with the physical and emotional changes happening to me. I wasn't really bothered at first by the exodus that had occurred, or anything that had happened before that.

Maybe I thought that my mom and dad were just putting on some kind of show out of sheer stubbornness.

I knew I was becoming an attractive young woman by the way I was turning heads. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the attention I got from my relatives, teachers and parents, but it was just that being the "sweet and pretty" girl left me with an empty feeling. Confused by so many emotions I couldn't name at the time, I only really understood the way I was feeling after I met "him" — which would happen soon enough.

The silence at home was most palpable at night. In those years my life had settled into a regular pattern: school during the day, tea with Grandma when I got home around five, and then dinner with Mom and Dad in the evening. That was the only time I'd ever really see them. Did these patterns come about naturally? Or did I deliberately entangle myself in them for some reason? I didn't know at the time. I guess back then I didn't know anything about personal choice, responsibility, desire or temptation.

Ever since I was in middle school my dad always worked a lot and I couldn't spend much time with him after dinner. As soon as he finished eating he'd dash off to his lab like he was trying to get away from us, and he only came home to sleep. In the summer my brother Cem and I would stage little surprise visits to his lab, which was just two streets away, and bring him ice cream. We'd find him sitting in his armchair in the little room at the back of the lab which he'd set up as his personal office. The lab took up two apartments at the front of the ground floor of the building. Holding a mug of coffee (he consumed a massive amount of caffeine), he'd be poring over medical, agricultural and tech magazines, reading with the voraciousness of a hungry wolf, or he'd be carrying out biochemical experiments on a small table. He would light up with joy when he saw us and with a playful look — a bit like a naughty child — he'd try to trick us into not noticing the heavy rings under his eyes. Back then he was convinced he could hide them from us, but children are much more perceptive and mature than we ever assume. And by then I was already a young woman, even though my dad hadn't noticed yet.

He would tell us all about his new projects and experiments: making batteries from bacterial waste, developing new uses for enzymes heated at different temperatures, or coming up with elaborate bio- technical procedures that used solar energy to transform chemical energy through photosynthesis ... And the list went on. I don't remember much of it now, but what I do know is that at the time he explained each minute detail with conviction and unbounded enthusiasm, confident that we would understand what he was saying. Cem and I, swept up by the force of his enthusiasm, would leave the lab in high spirits. He knew he'd never be interested in examining patients, so he had specialized in biochemistry and opened his lab where he did his research. That was how he provided for us. He didn't care if the neighbors thought he was some kind of mad scientist.

About a week or so after Mom and Dad left home, I started to feel the oppressiveness of evening, the darker shades of night and the strange way it sighed. It was as if a siren warning of a nuclear attack, a pandemic or some other mortal threat had been sounded and sonic waves reverberated through the apartment.

Before that, our place had been filled with Mom's complaints about how she was still a young woman and how she should be having more fun, and she'd go on and on about how she was fed up with it all. But now the apartment felt like it was completely empty.

Dad's enthusiasm about his work and the same old jokes he loved to tell (he'd always laugh before reaching the punchline) had once filled our home with energy. It was depressing now that he was gone.

Even Elvis was unhappy; I could tell because he'd lost his appetite. Grandma was usually a calm and measured woman, but now she was nervous and impatient.

Cem was glum too, and he cut off contact with most of the outside world. He'd turned twelve that summer and had just finished middle school, and he was about to start English prep classes before high school got started.

Mom called two weeks after she left. She said she was down south on the Mediterranean coast. Lightheartedly she chatted about this and that, and she invited me and Cem to come down and stay with her in Marmaris for the summer. Until then we'd always gone on vacation together. I was stunned into silence. Those were the days before cell phones, and landlines still crackled and hissed. But I could hear the excitement in her voice, and it burned its way into my heart. She told us a few times how much she missed us, but I couldn't help but wonder if she missed Dad or not. Then she told me about how wonderful her villa was and how the sea was crystal clear. I guessed that the villa she kept going on about belonged to her new boyfriend, the painter.

In the end I said that I'd ask Dad and Grandma about it and get back to her. I was curt and cold, and my words caught in my throat. For the first time in my life I felt like my mom had become someone else. That day I understood that she was, in fact, becoming her own person.

I felt empty, alone and alienated, not to mention abandoned and a little angry.

* * *

July 1988

That was the year the Green Party was established in Turkey.

The party announced that among their fifty-one founding members there were two musicians, seven secretaries, two housewives, a pharmacist, a pedagogue, a dietician, an architect, a journalist, seven doctors, three industrialists, seven engineers, three retired admirals, three lawyers, two veterinarians and six people who worked freelance.

Professor Celal Ertug, the party's president-elect said, "I sincerely hope that this new party will have a positive effect on the political landscape of Turkey."

Teoman was one of the founding members, but it was never really clear if he was one of the engineers or one of the six freelancers. Maybe they threw him in with the musicians and the artists. But for him it wouldn't have mattered which group he was put into. The important thing was that the members weren't too seriously involved in their professional lives and could dedicate all their energy to the organization. Soon enough the party was being referred to as "utopian." Teoman wasn't entirely sure which was more important — being utopian or being a good organizer — but both tendencies had long since...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Milet Publishing Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1785080873
• ISBN 13: 9781785080876
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 273
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar