by Elif Shafak
One of the most notorious slogans of ultra-nationalism in Turkey has been ‘Either love it or leave it!’ It is meant to block all kinds of fault-finding from within. The implication is that if you criticize your country or your state, you are showing disrespect, not to mention a lack of patriotism, in which case you had better take your leave. If you do stay, however, the implication is that you love your homeland, in which case you had better not voice any critical opinions. This black-and-white mentality is an obstacle to social progress. But it is not only Turkish ultra- nationalism that is fuelled by a dualistic mentality. All kinds of extremist, exclusivist discourses are similarly reductionist and sheathed in tautology. Either/or approaches ask us to make a choice, all the while spreading the fallacy that it is not possible to have multiple belongings, multiple roots, multiple loves.
Yet often it is in multiplicity and flexibility that we find the salve for many of today’s problems. In an age when millions of people learn to express themselves in more than one language, it is not a pipe dream to talk about multifarious connections. One can be, for example, a Cypriot Turk and a Muslim and a Sunni and a firm supporter of secularism and a European and a global soul and a mystic and an admirer of the Labour Party … One can even feel Western in the East but Eastern in the West … There are many people like this and there will be many more in the century to come. People on the cusp of civilizations, natural-born commuters, connecting places and cultures and traditions, striving to overcome the prejudices on all sides, ferrying memories from one shore to the other. You can be a European with Eastern elements in your past and in your personality, for East and West cease to be mutually exclusive categories as soon as we stop regarding them as oil and water.
When politics hijacks the debate on the Muslim diaspora in Europe, it disregards this complexity and reduces individuals to one or two labels. Both Islamic fundamentalism and the anti-Islamic extreme-right are similarly intolerant of the and … and … and aspect of our lives. In a system where human beings are confined to one solid and stable identity, as opposed to having open-ended multiple connections, it will be harder to find a common ground that will keep them together.
A Pew Research Center poll of Muslims in Britain conducted in 2006 found that when asked whether they saw themselves as either British first or Muslim first, a whopping majority of 81 per cent opted for the latter. Apparently, only 19 per cent saw themselves as ‘British first’. This then led some media experts to conclude that British Muslims were weakly bound to the ideals of the country that was home to them. However, when a Sky News poll posed the same question, but without asking the interviewees to make a choice between ‘British first’ or ‘Muslim first’, 46 per cent stated they were ‘British first’.5 When faced with the choice between one identity and another, most made one decision; but when they were allowed to have multiple attachments, the decision they made was not necessarily the same.
My contention is one can have several homes, instead of a single, fixed homeland. One can belong to numerous cities and cultures and peoples, regardless of the way current politics situates them apart. In an age of migrations and movements, when many of us already dream in more than one language, it is time to discard ‘identity politics’ altogether. It is no longer doing us any good. All it does is to create further antagonism and deeper Angst. Instead, what we need are ‘liquid attachments’ – bonds of love and memory and commitment that are constantly in flux, defined and redefined ad infinitum.
One of the things I remember well from my childhood is my grandmother’s silver mirror. It was an antique mirror, ornamented on the reverse side with an elegant design of roses in bloom and singing nightingales. She would comb her long, chestnut hair, never moving her eyes from her reflection. Every mirror was a passage to another universe, she said, and when you peeked deep within something there peeked back into your soul, too. From time to time, Grandma would declare it was time for this passage to shut down and rest a little bit. It wasn’t healthy for human beings to stare at their reflections all the time, she would add by way of explanation. On such days all the mirrors in the house would be turned back to front, and I would go to school without knowing what my hair looked like.
Years later, I cannot help but lament the loss of this age-old wisdom. Perhaps we gaze too much and too often at our own reflections, in the sense that we generally, if not solely, interact with people who think like us, vote like us, talk like us and are like us. If asked whether we have anything against those outside our cultural cocoons, the chances are that we will firmly and sincerely say no. Of course, we are not biased. Of course, we have nothing against them. On the contrary, we relish some degree of multiethnic diversity. The Iranian grocery shop that is open on Sundays and sells high-quality saffron, the Turkish restaurant where they serve tea in small glasses, the travel agency around the corner that offers flights with Bangladeshi Airlines for a reasonable price … All of this enriches our environment. It’s just that we don’t socialize with them …
Unfortunately, this invisible flight from hybridity occurs on multiple levels. Among the rich and the poor, liberals and conservatives, East and West …We tend to form comfort zones based on similarity, and then produce macro- opinions and clichés about ‘Others’, whom, in fact, we know so little about. When people stop talking, genuinely talking, to each other, they become more prone to making judgements. The less I know about, say Mongolians, the more easily and confidently I can draw conclusions about them. If I know ten Mongolians with entirely different personalities and conflicting viewpoints, I’ll be more cautious next time I make a remark about Mongolian national identity. If that number is 100, I may be even more detailed in my approach, for I will know that, while they share common cultural traits, Mongolians are not a monolithic mass of undifferentiated individuals. As a storyteller I am less interested in generalizations than in undertones and nuances. These may not be visible at first glance, but they are out there, lurking beneath the surface, durable and distinct.
At the beginning of this essay I wrote that the immigrant experience is conducive to Angst. The opposite can also be true, however. Edward Said has stated, ‘The more one is able to leave one’s cultural home, the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity necessary for true vision.’6
There is a story in Rumi’s Mathnawi that reminds me of this. A certain sage was walking in the woods one day when he saw a crow and a stork together. He was surprised. These birds were of different kinds – how could they be in each other’s company? Slowly, gently, he approached, and then he realized that both were limping. Lame birds, they were. Somehow, somewhere, each had separated itself from, or fallen behind, its flock, unable to keep up with the others, and started to fly on its own. Along the way, their paths had crossed, a stork and a crow, and they had become unlikely companions of the road.
The world we live in is full of lame birds who manage to learn to fly together. They share much in common, except appearance. Cosmopolitanism – encounters with different species, and the fellowship that ensues – can be a huge blessing. Today culturally and economically advanced cities also happen to be places where there is a dynamic intermingling of ethnicities and nationalities. Sydney, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin … the amalgamation of diverse entities is surely not an easy process, and yet it holds tremendous possibilities for a new world. In this life, if we are ever going to learn anything, we will be learning it from those who are different from us. It is in the crossroads of ideas, cultures, literatures, traditions, arts and cuisines that humanity has found fertile grounds for growth.
Unfortunately today there is too much emphasis on the distinguishing features of Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe, and too little on what they have, potentially and actually, in common. Too much attention is being paid to the possible dangers of immigration, while too little to the benefits of cosmopolitanism. We don’t have to be romantic, we don’t even need to be optimistic. Bu
t we need to see the larger picture. Systematic Angst is the fuel of a vicious circle that spins on a global scale. Hardliners create more hardliners elsewhere. Anti-Islamic rhetoric in the French parliament incites anti-Western sentiments in a London suburb populated by immigrants; and anti-Western discourse in the Moroccan community in Berlin reinforces the clichés against Islam in the mind of a Swedish or Danish extremist. And on and on we wallow in this quagmire without ever realizing how our own fears serve to buttress the very things of which we are afraid.
Today the dialogue between Europe and Islam cannot be left to politicians or diplomats alone. Nor can it be left to extremists on both sides. Though as human beings we cannot entirely rid ourselves of our existential Angst, we can stop making it our primary guide in our relations with one another. After all, the happiness of blond people and the happiness of dark-haired people are intertwined, not separate.
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First published 2011
Copyright © Elif Shafak, 2011
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ISBN: 978-0-670-92176-8
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1 Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (University of Hawaii Press, 1992), p. 123.
2 Amin Maalouf, Origins: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), p. 77.
3 Angel Flores and Homer D. Swander, Franz Kafka Today (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 241.
4 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage, 1997), p. 28.
5 Sundas Ali, Second and Third Generation Muslims in Britain: A Socially Excluded Group? (Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 2008).
6 Edward Said, Orientalism (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 259.
