{"id":3788,"date":"2023-05-07T14:24:15","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T18:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/?p=3788"},"modified":"2024-09-16T21:21:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T01:21:00","slug":"in-the-belly-of-the-queen-by-karosh-taha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/in-the-belly-of-the-queen-by-karosh-taha\/","title":{"rendered":"“In the Belly of the Queen” by Karosh Taha"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\"In the Belly of the Queen\" by Karosh Taha<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Karosh Taha,\u00a0In the Belly of the Queen.\u00a0<\/em>Translated by Grashina Gabelmann. Berlin: V&Q Books, 2023.<\/strong><\/p>

The book is available for purchase here<\/a>.<\/p>

Karosh Taha was born in 1987 in Zaxo. She came to Germany in 1997. She now divides her time between Cologne and Paris. In the Belly of the Queen<\/em> is her second novel\u2014it was written in German and has been translated into English. It won Germany\u2019s Alfred D\u00f6blin prize.<\/p>

At our Book Club meeting on May 7, 2023, the author joined us for this discussion.<\/p>

The novel is divided into two parts, and readers are told that they can read either part first.\u00a0<\/strong>Why did you choose this format? <\/strong><\/p>

We\u2019re accustomed to novels having a beginning, a middle, and an end. That structure choreographs our reading. But a story is by nature a construction and can be told in many different ways. Telling the story in one way excludes other options and alternatives.<\/p>

I have the character Shahira in the center of the novel. I wanted to examine how these young adults perceive her. I wanted the points of view of two of them. I wanted to look at how the reality changes when the narrator changes, when the language changes, and when the point of view changes.\u00a0<\/p>

I started by writing from Rafiq\u2019s point of view, but at one point I felt that by reducing Shahira to Rafiq\u2019s language, I was betraying her character. She needed more space, she needed to be expanded. So I introduced another point of view\u2014Amal\u2019s.<\/p>

Throughout the novel, as things change around Shahira, she is independent, desired by some, unwanted by others. She reminds me of Kurdistan itself. \u00a0Who is Shahira?<\/strong><\/p>

Yes, Shahira doesn\u2019t change, she is the center of the community and the novel, everything revolves around her. \u00a0We don\u2019t have categories for women like her, who want to live for themselves and don\u2019t pay attention to their \u201cduties\u201d as mothers and housewives. We have only negative stereotypes for women like her. \u00a0Shahira refuses them to fit into these categories, which cannot hold her because imagines herself in a different way.<\/p>

Shahira is a challenge to talk about because our languages don\u2019t allow us to talk about her. don\u2019t have positive terms for women like Shahira. We only have negative terms. We don\u2019t even have neutral terms. \u00a0It\u2019s so sexist. We have lots of words for men who don\u2019t care about social rules, but not for women. The term \u201cfemme fatale\u201d is a negative stereotype.<\/p>

She wants to have sex, but that wouldn\u2019t be notable about a male character. In literature it\u2019s unusual for a woman to have sex and not be punished. In her culture, a woman like Shahira would be subject to an \u201chonor\u201d killing or a femicide. But in my novel this expected outcome does not happen.<\/p>

It\u2019s confusing for Western audiences, \u00a0that this woman, in a restrictive society, she lives that way without any consequences. She becomes almost mythological \u00a0as a character just from the way people talk about her. The young adults desire her but hear their parents talking about her. \u00a0They\u2019re all ambivalent. She seems above them. She seems carefree, a godlike figure who has created society and is now watching it rage against her.<\/p>

I find it interesting that Shahira is tolerated. I would have expected something to happen to her. But she is not physically threatened and has no consequences for her behavior.<\/strong><\/p>

Almost every country has these classical novels where any woman who has an affair outside her marriage is punished. Hester Prynne, Anna Karenina, Effie Briest, Madame Bovary. I didn\u2019t want to create another literary female character who is killed for having sex! I wanted a character who is beyond that.<\/p>

Shahira is still punished by patriarchal reality. Her husband abandoned her and left her with the responsibility for raising Younes. And she is punished by the community that excludes her. But those punishments is don\u2019t restrict her. She is interrupted but not endangered.<\/p>

We never get her perspective.<\/strong><\/p>

No, we don\u2019t hear her story. That\u2019s why I wanted Amal. It makes more sense that Shahira would give her own story on femininity and female sexuality to another female person t to Amal. She wants to tell Amal, to give as a present.\u00a0<\/p>

Amal also breaks gender barriers\u2014she cuts her hair off, she punches people. Reading her story first prepared me for Shahira, alerted me that this novel has women who break gender barriers. <\/strong><\/p>

I\u2019m not sure if the English version conveys Amal\u2019s restless naivet\u00e9.\u00a0 She has to keep repeating herself, so that people will be believe her.<\/p>

Why did Amal\u2019s father raise her to be so independent?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>

The father, as an architect, with a prestigious job, and he has this perception that he can do whatever he wants and it\u2019s all right. He raises Amal like this. At first he doesn’t realize the consequences of teaching her to defend herself. \u00a0Maybe he underestimates the conservatism in his own community, but Amal is his only child, so she has a special role in this family. Her mother is concerned about what will become of her\u2014as a woman, she is more afraid of the society than the father is, because she know how it judges women. She tries to protect her daughter by restricting her.<\/p>

But [later when Amal visits him in Kurdistan and tells him he\u2019s selfish for abandoning the family] the father says, \u201cYou can\u2019t talk to me like that, you\u2019re behaving like a German.\u201d He\u2019s rejecting that energy from her. He\u2019s taken aback by her independence and her power.<\/p>

While I was growing up in Istanbul, it disturbed me that Kurds were dismissed as \u201cbackward\u201d people even as Turks were appropriating \u201cbackward\u201d Kurdish food as their own. You refer to lahmacun<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s the Turkish name for our pizza. How do you feel about that?<\/strong><\/p>

We don\u2019t know the origin of many foods. Turkish, Syrian, Greek, Iraqi\u2014food migrates, and everyone takes ingredients and makes it their own. In Germany we have a big \u00a0Turkish community, it\u2019s the largest ethnic community in German, and for a long time every exotic food was marketed as Turkish. But for many restaurant owners, it would be a risk to call themselves Kurdish. The Grey Wolves are active in Germany. I haven\u2019t seen a restaurant that would dare to call itself Kurdish.<\/p>

In Paris I\u2019ve found several that call themselves Kurdish. The dishes are not authentic, but it\u2019s nice to see Kurdish words and letters in a Kurdish restaurant. It tells me, \u201cWe are not dreaming, we exist, we are here, we have this food, we have this restaurant, we have this culture.\u201d There will be a Kurdish waiter or cook, and I\u2019ll be safe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

The setting of the novel is immigration and how different generations experience it. It shows what it means to be Kurdish means after immigration.<\/strong><\/p>

I grew up in a political household. I didn\u2019t want to write about how my characters suffer because they are Kurdish and have problems with characters from other immigrant groups. Younes says he doesn\u2019t want to be associated with Turkish students, but I didn\u2019t put much of that in because for me Kurdish characters are so normal. I want characters to have ordinary conflicts.<\/p>

In Germany, certain Turkish authors have been talking about how they have a Kurdish ancestor and are writing about them as struggling for Kurdish identity. It\u2019s fine that they acknowledge family diversity, but I feel like they are using Kurdish identity as \u201cmaterial.\u201d\u00a0 Kurdish people don\u2019t think every day about how to be a Kurdish person. We have the whole range of sorrows and problem and feelings and desires. We do not think about ethnicity all the time and how to defend ourselves against those who are hostile. We have the same normal problems that every other community has.<\/p>

The community you portrayed scared me. It was so disconnected from its surroundings, we see no connection to German society. The characters are living in Germany, but Germany is not there. <\/strong><\/p>

In the context of German literature, immigrant literature is about characters struggling in some way with German culture and people. It\u2019s not about the experiences people really have. So many books talk about that. I think it\u2019s boring. Immigrant life doesn\u2019t happen just because of German culture. Immigrants have their own problems. Our lives are worth being told in their own right.\u00a0<\/p>

I don\u2019t feel comfortable writing about those struggles. To a German audience, it\u2019s almost entertaining. But we exist beyond German society.<\/p>

In novels by white Germans, no one asks, \u201cWhere are the immigrants?\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s like Black American authors who are always asked, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write about white lives?\u201d For me, it\u2019s basic racism.<\/p>

Back in the 1980s, for Kurds in Germany, the struggle was to become part of German life. That has changed.<\/strong><\/p>

For a long time, I wanted to be called a German author, now I don\u2019t care about being a German author, and I don\u2019t want to be part of boring white German literature. What do they offer me?<\/p>

Yet your characters are first generation diaspora Kurds, living in between two societies, as in all immigrant stories. Have readers who are also young diaspora Kurds responded to this novel?<\/strong><\/p>

Usually my audiences are older Germans, not young immigrants, but sometimes I get a few. In one German city they read my first novel in school. When I visited, students said, \u201cWe like the characters,\u201d and for them that was new. In German schools they usually read old classics, but they could identify with my novel. Also, I\u2019m active on Instagram, and I get messages from young Kurdish people who thank me for this book. They tell me they recognize and identify with the characters. It\u2019s nice for them. It’s the same feeling as when I see a Kurdish restaurant.<\/p>

I thought Kurds had more freedom in Germany, but we have the same problem. We have no Kurdish restaurants here. <\/strong><\/p>

Alevis are in more danger, because the places they worship are not mosques, and so there are signs in the windows, and many Kurdish Alevis are attacked. The problem can\u2019t be solved by police because they don\u2019t understand. To them it\u2019s immigrants attacking other immigrants, they don\u2019t acknowledge it as a racist attack. They don\u2019t see that there are minorities inside minorities, or that these are crimes committed by fascists. I don\u2019t expect them to understand anytime soon that Kurds are attacked by Turks and need to be protected. For them, we are all just immigrants doing immigrant stuff.<\/p>

Thank you for this discussion. You are welcome to visit us in New York. <\/strong><\/p>

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A conversation with the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,62],"tags":[114,115,113],"class_list":["post-3788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-club","category-literature","tag-authors","tag-karosh-taha","tag-novels"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3788"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11626,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3788\/revisions\/11626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}