62 pages • 2 hours read
Elif ShafakThe Bastard of Istanbul
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Dried Figs”
It’s Saturday, March 19, and “an unusually sunny” day (244). Asya and Armanoush are heading to Zeliha’s tattoo parlor to meet Aram, “Auntie Zeliha’s significant other” (245). Armanoush asks why the couple won’t marry. Asya thinks that Aram would be open to marriage, but Zeliha would never oblige, possibly because of her experience with Asya’s father.
Aram is of Armenian descent and was raised in Istanbul. Asya and Armanoush enter the noisy parlor and watch the artists work. Zeliha is there and tells the story of how she gave herself a nose-piercing when she was 19 to outrage her mother.
Zeliha and Aram take the girls to a Turkish tavern so that Armanoush can experience “a typical evening of drinking” (252). On the way, they pass a group of transgender prostitutes. One of them, a redhead, admires Asya’s bracelets. Asya gives the redhead her beaded bracelet.
At the tavern, Armanoush asks why Aram has remained in Istanbul when he could find a broader Armenian community in the United States, particularly in California. He gives her an exasperated smile and explains that his family’s history in Istanbul goes back for half a millennium. He goes on to say that Armenians in the diaspora have no Turkish friends. All that they know about the Turks is based on what their grandparents have told them, or on gossip that they hear from other Armenians.
Four Roma musicians enter the tavern. Aram requests a song. He sings in Armenian to musical accompaniment. Armanoush begins to understand how people could love Istanbul, a city that contains many people and many histories, despite the pain that the place may cause them.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Water”
Asya and Armanoush return home, tipsy and eager to listen to loud music, much to the outrage of most of the Kazanci women. Zeliha tells them to leave the girls alone, which prompts Grandma Gülsüm to condemn Zeliha’s behavior, too, particularly her short skirts and nose ring. She lectures her daughter on how unbecoming her behavior is for a divorcée, causing Zeliha to remind her mother that she is “[distorting] the facts” because Zeliha was never a divorcée (258).
In Asya’s bedroom, Armanoush logs in to Café Constantinople. Asya is by her side, and Armanoush introduces Asya to her cyberfriends as A Girl Named Turk. Asya says that she recognizes the Armenian people’s pain and is really only “recoiling from” her own past as a result of not knowing her father (261). She asks what she, a Turk, can do to diminish the Armenians’ pain. The members of the cybercafé are stunned and type nothing at first. Usually, when Turks visit Café Constantinople, they tend to diminish or altogether deny the Armenian genocide.
Anti-Khavurma demands that Asya apologize for the atrocities. Asya asks how she can apologize for a crime that she didn’t commit. While stroking Sultan the Fifth’s head, she asks how she can be responsible for her father’s crime. Anti-Khavurma tells her that she’s responsible for recognizing his crime. He then orders her to “[apologize] aloud in front of the Turkish state” (263).
Armanoush, under her screenname, Madame My-Exiled-Soul, intervenes and asks what such an apology would accomplish, other than getting A Girl Named Turk in trouble. Baron Baghdassarian chimes in. He types that Armenians don’t really want an apology from the Turkish people. Armenians, he posits, are as committed to their own victimhood as the Turks are to their denial. It is the “cocoon of victimhood” that bonds the Armenian community (263).
Outside Asya’s door, Auntie Feride worries over the girls still being awake. Her mental illness occasionally causes her to worry about the harm that could invade the Kazanci household. Auntie Banu offers to guard the girls’ door so that Feride can sleep.
Meanwhile, Armanoush calls her mother. Rose answers the phone in a panic and asks Armanoush to call her back in 15 minutes. Armanoush worries that something is “very wrong” (265). It turns out that Rose got a call from Barsam saying that Grandma Shushan died in her sleep. The fact that Barsam made this call to Arizona to alert his daughter to the loss proved to Rose that Armanoush was not where she claimed to be. When they resume their phone conversation, Rose demands to know where Armanoush, whom she still calls “Amy,” is. Armanoush says that she’s in Istanbul, staying with Mustafa’s family. Rose becomes hysterical and announces that she and Mustafa will be flying to Istanbul.
Mustafa calls the Kazanci household shortly thereafter and speaks to Auntie Feride, who is happy to hear from her brother. Mustafa agrees to visit his family’s home and will return to the konak as though it hasn’t been 20 years since the women have seen him.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Golden Raisins”
News of Mustafa’s impending arrival prompts the Kazanci women to clean the konak until it’s spotless. Grandma Gülsüm begins preparing Mustafa’s favorite dessert: ashure (pudding with fruit, including golden raisins). Asya and Armanoush are playing tavla (backgammon). Armanoush continues to worry that something bad has happened in the United States. Outside, a street vendor announces that he has golden raisins.
Armanoush tells Asya that she deceived her family by telling no one that she was coming to Istanbul. Upon hearing the revelation, Asya develops new respect for Armanoush, seeing her as less innocent than she thought and, maybe, not so well-behaved all the time. Armanoush calls San Francisco. Instead of Grandma Shushan answering, as usual, it’s her father. Armanoush asks if something has happened. Barsam has a flashback to his youth, when he nearly entered the priesthood. The recent loss of his mother reminds him of an instance in which she was once frightened to lose him.
Other memories of his childhood flood back to him. He recalls his father dancing around his mother, playing clarinet in an Armenian band, wishing that he didn’t have such dark skin, and unlearning the little Armenian that he knew. He doesn’t want to tell Armanoush that Grandma Shushan has died, but when she hears the commotion from a large gathering in the background—a sign that someone has either married or died—he knows that he cannot hide the truth from her.
Around this time, Auntie Zeliha paces in her bedroom. Since early evening, she’s been feeling nauseous and alienated from her sisters’ excitement over Mustafa’s upcoming visit. She takes comfort in a bottle of vodka that she keeps hidden under her mattress and from some golden raisins that she bought from a vendor earlier that evening. Aram calls. He asks Zeliha to move in with him and tells her that she needn’t bother with Mustafa if she doesn’t want to. She reminds Aram that the family will expect her to go to the airport to welcome Mustafa and Rose, especially since she’s the only one who can drive. After she hangs up from the call, she falls into a deep sleep. When she awakes the next morning, she has an “excruciating headache” and notices that “one of her blankets [is] missing” (282).
In Tucson, Mustafa and Rose head to the airport. At a gift shop, Rose picks up some Arizona-themed souvenirs for Mustafa’s sisters.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
When Armanoush talks to Aram, she gets a more nuanced view of Armenian-Turkish relations. Here is a man whose family is rooted in Istanbul—they were among the few Armenian families that remained after the genocide—but, he has not been “Turkified,” as Armanoush’s cyberfriends would allege, given that he still knows the Armenian language. His comfort with both his Armenian and Turkish identities contrast with Barsam Tchakhmakchian’s lifelong ambivalence about his identity: both his membership within a very traditional family and his desire to blend in with mainstream American culture.
As an expression of friendship and loyalty to Armanoush, Asya tries to understand the feelings of Armanoush and her cyberfriends, offering some attempt at acknowledging responsibility, in contrast with the Nonnationalist Scenarist’s earlier expressions of denial and dismissal. Asya’s gesture is an attempt to make things right in the present and to acknowledge the pain that may still linger, while those in the chatroom seek redress for acts that cannot be undone. Baron Baghdassarian’s clear-cut assessment of how both Turks and Armenians deal with the legacy of the genocide reflects this. The event has given both nationalities a tool with which they can distinguish themselves from each other, despite their intermingled cultures and identities, which Aram reflects.
Meanwhile, Grandma Gülsüm’s intensive preparations for Mustafa’s impending visit sharply contrast with her earlier condemnation of Zeliha, whose headache and drinking are signs of distress over her brother’s impending visit. Her retreat to her room and under her blanket are attempts to cocoon and protect herself. She will not cry, for that would be an acknowledgement of how her brother has hurt her. Instead, she keeps up a façade, not merely because her family needs her help in preparing for Mustafa and Rose’s arrival, but to show that she cannot be broken.
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