Madonna in a Fur Coat - The Story of a Return Migration

It is the first time that I read Madonna in a Fur Coat in English. 

The more I read it the more I saw in the book what life has taught us about migration and gender roles. Madonna in a Furcoat is the story of a bureaucrat in Ankara who in his past had moved to Berlin to study and work, and had to return to Turkey for family reasons. It can even be said that it was out of his wish to return all of a sudden. When he returned he did not even plan to stay but it was seen that he would not be able to stay longer in Berlin even though he was at the beginning of a relationship. 

Previously I read this book two or three times in Turkish. The original book is written in a great and simple style with a rich vocabulary not only Turkish but also including Arabic and Persian words. The book as a style has short sentences nothing is complicated, nothing is too sophisticated. But it is more than just a simple language. The way it is structured is Dostoyevskian. The characters open up to you as you go into the depths of the story. There are many internal conversations of the first person speaking. 

The first person the describer of the book finds the secret diary of Raif Bey and he starts reading it. The story unfolds as this figure Raif Bey who seems to be a typical bureaucrat living in Ankara, in fact had a tumultuous life when he was young. An extraordinary love story unfolds as well. A love story that is not cheesy and that changes the man of a life forever. In the mean while you hear the steps of Raif Bey in Ankara streets, undone pavements which are still undone. He walks to Altındağ, a place which now is highly populated by refugees. At the time the area seems to have been much more deserted certainly. But the routine of the days in Ankara is the same. A book in which the scenes change between Ankara and Berlin takes you into these two totally diverse atmospheres as you travel along with Raif Bey. 

The book is described as such and I believe that it is a good beginning at the cover: 

“A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin. There, amid the city’s bustling streets, elegant museums, passionate politics and seedy cabarets, a chance meeting transforms his life forever. Caught between his desire for freedom and his yearning to belong, he struggles to hold on to the new life has found." 

The book is written wonderfully. It has become a best seller after 80 years in fact as it was written in 1930s and was first published in 1943. The numbers of the book sold passed the numbers sold by Orhan Pamuk (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/21/sabahattin-ali-madonna-fur-coat-rereading). It is an incredibly important book because it also depicts the gender relations in such a nice way. Think of a man who acts more fragile than a woman and is in love with this strong woman figure who does not believe in classical roles of love and togetherness and who lives life as she would like and she does not care about the ideas of the other people so much in general. Even at the time when women were not allowed to vote in many European countries, this woman called Maria a young artist, surprises Raif Bey in many ways. She is beautiful but also formed unique ideas on everything, an independent and non-self-victimizing woman. She does not want to be a burden to him any time and yet towards the end of his life, she manages to surprise him again.

By talking too much I would not like to spoil the book.

The dialogues in the book are natural, almost like Hemingway's dialogues.

Another thing I like about the book is this: You never know till the end how the love story finishes. Not even how it might evolve actually. It is a book in which you cannot guess easily who wins, who loses, or if there are any losers or winners or not? The book for its century was not very well understood and analyzed as we think of the situation of feminism in Turkey currently in 21st century. Sabahattin Ali was a writer and a journalist. And now if we turn and analyse the language used by the mainstream male journalists we see that the language is heavily anti-feminist and even anti-women. Rather more "I am the male and I know it well, you women stay aside" kind of figures of writers and poets have been praised more than Sabahattin Ali who was killed in Bulgaria by the truck driver who was taking him away from the country because his life was in danger. The book describes his life in short like this:

“Sabahattin Ali was one of the most influential Turkish writers of the twentieth century. A teacher, translator, journalist and dedicated socialist, he owned and edited a popular weekly newspaper, which became a target of government censorship because of its political and satirical editorials. He was imprisoned more than once for his political views and writings and eventually, assassinated in 1948 while allegedly secretly crossing the border to Bulgaria. Why, where and by whom he was murdered and where he was buried remains a mystery.”

I love Sabahattin Ali from the heart, not because he wrote such a beautiful book and his realist short stories with a socialist background are also wonderful, but because he had this vision of life and gender relations already. He did not refrain from reflecting the way he thought in a naïve way not only in books but also in articles in Marko Pasha with Aziz Nesin. I love so much this book that I gave it as a present to all of my beloved foreigner friends. It is wonderful that they translated it into Italian and English many years after, this is great news! However, we also have to admit that there are many things lost in translation. For instance, when I read the book in Turkish I can understand the richness of the language but when it is translated, it is very hard to see that. Some words in Turkish, that are borrowed from Persian and Arabic or they are a combination of Arabic and Persian, or old Turkish words, seem to be lost. I am not saying these because I am nostalgic about the past. The translation is good but it could have been better. And Sabahattin Ali as a well-educated man knew how to use the language in the best way. (He even translated a book called Fontanamara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontamara) from Italian to Turkish. He spoke perfect German and Italian.) Therefore, this richness of language is not reflected in the translation unfortunately.

In relation with the story of return migration, at first sight nobody would say that it is a story on return migration. But it is obvious that he cannot stay in Berlin forever, he is gone there for a specific purpose and for a temporary period. Therefore, it is written on stone that he will return one day. On the other hand, he returns because he has to return, not because he has a plan to do so. This story of an individual which could be "every me and every you", tells us that those who returned from Germany abruptly maybe had other reasons to return. My hunch is that those who returned after many many  years established their life plans and were happy to return more or less. Those who have transnational lives are maybe the luckiest ones, who can enjoy the benefits of having dual nationalities, allegiances, cultures, life styles. But who knows? Every immigration is the beginning of an unexpected story that unfolds and dominates one's life, even if one has to return to where she or he started from.