TURKEY

“Journey” is Looking At Yourself In a Puddle, Not In the Mirror

“… she watches the promenade where the Jews, who used to have taverns and are now the owners of restaurants and souvenir shops, park their cars. She looks at the sign asking pedestrians to move to the other sidewalk because this sidewalk was made with the bones and skulls of the Jews killed in the concentration camp. She thinks of Moises M´s passion and Rosa S´s despair because her Chilean granddaughter has gone astray, a man is patching the facade of his house with plaster.”
Neşe BİNARK
January 17, 2025
“Journey” is Looking At Yourself In a Puddle, Not In the Mirror

I believe that literature is life itself and its functionality. It is obvious that it is fueled by people's desire to express what they experience, feel, and think! With the development of written culture, people began to be concerned about witnessing life and explaining social conditions and aspirations. The same person also uses literature as a supporting tool in the process of self-realization. Literature comes to life when the adventure of the pen touching the paper and dancing with each other begins. In my Bibliobibuli columns, I crowned my interest in books by coining the title of "Bibliojournalist" and enjoying it by stretching my feet in my reading chair with plain Turkish coffee with lemon, "travel literature" comes to my mind as I travel through the pages of books. Lie! It would be more accurate to say that I never forget it. Believe it or not, a "Sagittarius" ascendant always desires to travel while reading a book. I dive headfirst into treasure hunting on the internet, tracking down travel books and their authors.

I come across a post like this: "They will talk about New Paths in Narrative, the vitality of literature, the darkness of its absence, the drawbacks of standing still, and the excitement of leaving." A-ha! Who are they? The author of the book Postrestant (Spanish original: Poste Restante) is Cynthia Rimsky and its translator is Banu Karakaş. I catch a trace that is quite curious, confusing, and makes my bibliojournalism speak for itself. I cannot go to the interview because I live in seclusion far from the city, but Epona Kitap delivers the novel Postrestant (the Turkish translation) to my reading chair, thank you.

As soon as the book arrives, I read it and start writing for you. This is the story of my first encounter with Cynthia Rimsky's literary language. Now it is time to examine the novel Postrestant.

Cynthia Rimsky is a Chilean writer living in Buenos Aires. The author, born in 1962, published her first novel, Poste Restante, in 2001. She has written ten more novels to date. Her first novel, Poste Restante, was translated into our language and published in our country last October.

Poste restante; “It means that the shipment, which is a letter or package that the recipient must come to the post office to pick up, is sent to the post office where the recipient is located, not to the address.

Poste Restante

Postrestant (The Turkish title), Author: Cynthia Rimsky / Translator from the original Spanish (to Turkish): Banu Karakaş

Epona Publishing, October, 2024, Istanbul, 232 pages

Isn't it an interesting travel novel title? Its content, language, and narration are also interesting! Are you ready to embark on a Europe-Mediterranean-Middle East journey with Chilean Cynthia Rimsky, the daughter of a Jewish family who had immigrated from Poland and Ukraine, in the pages of her novel, which consists of the notes, writings, photographs, letters, and city maps she kept during her travels? It's the 90s, there you are!

Buyable stories of the flea market

This trip is not a touristic trip with a certain end. It is about a Chilean journalist-writer who sets out to investigate the origins of the trip that is the subject of the novel, and drifts to new routes in line with the clues she finds. How does a writer, who decides to embark on an endless journey based on a photo album with a name similar to her own surname she encountered at a flea market, feel? “As time goes by, with deaths and removals, these items will end up in the Iranian bazaar, their children or grandchildren will find them and identify these trinkets with legendary stories, buy them again, and thus the fake will replace the original.”

Many small consistencies stuck together smooth out a larger inconsistency

The author, who could not trace the roots of a family that emigrated from Poland and Ukraine, talks about a small camel figure in the house, special scents, and a special caramelized sugary smell on his grandmother's clothes.

“After three weeks in S, the traveler woman develops an irrational fear of the Polish. “Perhaps she was influenced by books accusing them of anti-Semitism or graffiti encouraging hooligans, Nazis and punks.”

Since she doesn't have money, she buys a backpack and her trip lasts a year. During her travels, she often looks at her photo album. She shows it to others too.

"They talk about the feeling of not belonging anywhere. She visits Sudan, Chad, Cairo and Europe through stories. While her mind travels, her body dissolves."

She also finds its way to Turkey. She is going to Cappadocia. “While I was heading towards Turkey, the blue scarf I forgot on the ship continued on its way to Piraeus." Based on the information she received from a woman she met in Cappadocia, she learns that the name on the photo album is not her surname, but the name of a bathhouse.

“The idea comes to her to take out of her backpack a photo album she found in a street market in Chile, with her surname written on the first page, but in reality it is not her surname but the name of a Roman Bath.”

The author goes hitchhiking to a town on the Austrian-Slovenian border. She sees more of the photos in the photo album in a hostel where she stays. In fact, she believes that the only photo missing is in her photo album.

Shoshana and the objects of the stories

When she returns to Chile after a year of travel, she finds that all the clothes in her backpack are torn and worn out, and instead, her backpack is filled with objects such as brochures, map pages, and pebbles. Things and their stories accumulate in the writer's mind so much that she decides to write. She evaluates the travel stories in the novel like a photograph or a movie, and tries to write from the perspective of the heroes in the photographs who do not have families. She fills the gap with fiction.

“She now perpetuates the legend by buying the defective pickle instead of choosing the perfect pickle in Pondil, where neither her own house nor the house of Moises M, buried in Santiago's Israeli cemetery, are located.” “A traveler woman feels a tingling feeling inside her whenever she goes to a new place." "Shoshana will come dragging her feet. Just like when she was a child and held the wool that her grandmother wrapped around her dolls and made into a ball. In exchange for three thousand Chilean pesos a night, Shoshana will unravel the story that the guest woman will then wrap around her own wrists, one by one, every night.”

Jewish traveler woman travels the world alone

In the book, you find the author's journalism, a mixture of stories, fiction, and facts. The author uses an incredibly minimalist language. Words and sentences are short and clear. In some paragraphs, the reader has to fill in the gaps with imagination. This situation adds a different interestingness to the novel. When you complete the novel, it takes some time for you to fully decide and digest what you've read. You select with tweezers the sentences that the author draws from his roots and the codes that dominate Jewish traditions.

"She sits on the porch (she has run out of money for restaurants) and watches tourists read travel guides about Jews living there before World War II." "A Jewish woman travels the world alone, between Israel and Cyprus, on the deck of the Sinfonia. In cabin 167, a Muslim woman returns to Jerusalem. They share a scent." "As we say goodbye, she tells me that talking to me is like looking through a window."

Sunflower seed shells

The author's preferred method in narrative language is to change the narrators. While traveling and writing travel stories, the author actually plays with the idea of distance by changing the narrator.

“In Tel Aviv's old buildings, they have a habit of lowering the metal shutters to protect themselves from the summer sun. It's winter now and the blinds are still closed.”

“They wander like religious ants among the pieces of tombstones that have been warped and dragged by a transhistorical dent, making it impossible to distinguish which is a path and which is a grave.”


Being a traveler is like people without direction

The author talks about the qualities of being a traveler, distributed in various parts of her novel. Yes, the reader reads a travel book, but she also begins to think about the question of what it means to be a traveler.

“Bowles, Potocki, Maupassant, Gide traveled with the aim of opening windows and exploring not only geographical but also imaginary worlds.”

Enjoyable readings. With friendship from Bibliobibuli.