Last Train to Istanbul: A Novel

The main characters in this historical novel are two sisters: Traditionalist, Sabiha, the eldest, who follows the precepts mandated by their Muslim faith as well as their father. She marries, Macit, an educated, distinguished man, accepted by her family.Clever and sensible Selva, the younger sister, is her father Fazil’s favorite. She and her father often execute healthy debates.Fazil often spoke of the liberality of Turkey being a safe haven for Jews. During the 1400s, the Sultan issued a formal invitation to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal.Fazil appeared a freethinker concerning tolerance and loving thy neighbor until Selva wanted to marry a Jew, Rafael (Rafo) Alfandari. The controversy of an interfaith marriage reared its ugly head in both their families’ minds. Selva is shocked at her father’s bigotry and bitterness.However, Selva followed the dictates of her heart. She and Rafo quit college and were married. In 1937, ostracized by their families and her parents’ emotional blackmail, Selva suggested they move to Paris.In early spring 1940, Germany invaded France. Selva and Rafo fled to the south of France—the ‘free zone.’A year later, Turkey wanted to remain neutral during World War II. It worried concerning war with the Bulgarian army, the shadow of Germany who had already flexed its muscles into the Balkans, skepticism of Britain being their ally, and the hand extended by iron-fisted Russia, known to be intolerant of opposing views.Turkey had received a letter from Hitler of his good intentions toward the Turkish people, promising not to put German soldiers on Turkish soil. However, in actuality, Germany wanted Turkey to choose sides.While residing in Marseille, Rafo and Selva had a son. They named him Fazil.In 1942, Selva taught piano in their Marseille home. Later, she decided to teach Turkish to Jews desiring citizenship in Turkey. Meanwhile, Rafo partnered in a pharmacy establishment across the road from their home.That fall, the Germans had advanced into the southern region of France. They had begun to deport Jews and what they considered other undesirables to Auschwitz. However, French police were already hard at work the summer of 1942 rounding up Jews.A watchful Selva telephoned Rafo and his partner when French police or Germans canvassed the area near their pharmacy. She also telephoned residents.The novelist leaves you in suspense at what happens next when Rafo is captured by the Germans, and placed in a cattle car heading for Paris and then to Auschwitz. Selva undaunted and unashamedly pleaded on her knees for her husband’s life to the late, real-life Turkish diplomat Consult General to Marseille, Necdet Kent, while he dined in an affluent restaurant with an Italian diplomat and his wife.Of note, Necdet Kent risked his life to save Jews during World War II. To spare them from deportation, he provided citizenship to Turkish Jews and non-Turkish Jews living in France. I won’t discuss Kent’s tremendous courage and heroics in Marseille at that time. I suggest you read the book.In addition, the novel captures the lives of a depressed, guilt-ridden, but self-indulgent Sabiha, who appears disinterested in her eight-year-old daughter, Hulya, who wasn’t born a male child. Sensitive Hulya realizes her mother’s indifference. She finds solace in her maternal-grandparents.Macit, Sabiha’s husband, was overloaded with work, assisting Turkey’s President Inonu, during the war. Although he appeared insensitive to Sabiha’s needs, maybe because of their lack of communication, he does grasp her apparent apathy toward their daughter.Macit suggests Sabiha seek professional help. However, their marriage is almost compromised because of a competent, but unethical psychiatrist’s desire for Sabiha.Outstanding is Selva Alfandari, an altruistic, principled, young woman who believed it her philanthropic duty, from a civic standpoint, to assist Jews escape France during the Second World War. But Selva’s kindheartedness almost risk the lives of fellow passengers during her assistance of a fellow-traveler.Other remarkable characters in the novel are Turkish, Assistant Secretary, Tarik Aricet, assigned to Paris, and Ferit, a Turkish socialist that worked for the Resistance.The theme encapsulated the grief, fear, and hope of the Jews leaving France, traveling on a Turkish coach, supervised by two Turkish citizens with their best interest at heart.The story abridged a female passenger being dehumanized on the darkened train by possibly a German soldier. I thought the women should have been alerted for safety reasons, and, that Constance, who suffered this atrocity should have had the love and support of the women she travelled with. Instead, the incident was kept secret. Constance became silent and detached. Her husband, Marcel, appeared undeniably angry. He didn’t seem to have the capability, which is not unusual, to comfort his wife after her ordeal.I enjoyed reading this novel. The plot is believable. There are likable characters. The author captures your concern and imagination. Before passengers reach their desired destination, you anticipate and expect danger at every depot or sudden stop where documents are scrutinized by German soldiers.Turkey signed the German-Turkish Non-Aggression Pact, June 18, 1941. I believe this pact might have saved lives. If Turkey had not signed this pact I doubt they would have had the latitude to return Turkish Jews to Istanbul during the war.

Last Train to Istanbulby Ayse KulinOk I have been making a few trips to Istanbul lately. It’s a wonderful city. I have come to love Turks. They are very industrious, accommodating, fun loving, sincere, and live a wholesome life. So I thought I’d read up on Turkey and come to a deeper understanding of their country from a literary point of view. Yes I’ve read some history on Turkey and am now going the novel route, books about Turkey by Turkish authors.Many novels in some way draw on history. A novelist has license to color the story with one bias or another. Reader beware of perspective… yours and theirs. Ayse Kulin is the most popular modern author in Turkey today. She captures the emotion of Jews in WWII and places it in a Turkish perspective. This book is about fate on the stage of religion and war. {reference my bibliography note Page 357} The prime mover in the book is Selva Recit who demonstrates that you can influence your destiny. It is also about the destiny of Jews. And finally the book is an eye opener to the average American: in our differences we are so much alike. Ayse Kulin portrays Turkey as a country open to all walks of life. To think that Turkey’s Muslim orientation does not welcome all people the same way America does is a mistake. However, once again beware. While Americans typically and conveniently turn a blind eye to their atrocities against Native American Indians, Kulin equally ignores their dark history with the Armenians and Kurds.This book is set in a WWII time period. It involves a prominent politically engaged family who are also devout Muslims. At my age I still remember being a devout Catholic of the 1950/60s. In reading this book, I found many more similarities in the meaning of devout than differences. With regard to the story line in this book; it is about a Muslim woman and a Jewish man who marries against all family tradition and move to Paris to start a new life, only to have to escape back to Turkey. It is to their misfortune that their new start gets foiled by Hitler’s invasion of France and the Anti Jew policy. When you tie the drama of Turkish Jews in Paris in 1940 with a religiously divided family you have the making of a family melodrama on a prime historic stage.With regard to bigotry, in the 1940’s Americans were no better than the Turks on that subject. I clearly remember my parents in the 1950’s making slurs on Negroes, and Arabs. I do not know how they would have dealt with an inter-religious marriage and I am certain a black-white marriage would have at least one of my parents’ react the same way Selva’s father did when his Muslim daughter married a Jew. And amazingly enough this book mixes the ingredients of time and space stirred in with the human drama of escaping life threatening Nazism to illustrate that experiencing the depth of desperation can glue back together a father and daughter that were divided by bigotry. It begs the question, can society do this under less extreme circumstance than pure survival?To add multiple dimensions of the tension the author uses Nazism, with an additional character, David, whose sole purpose is to add horror in an otherwise mundane family squabble. This eighteen year old Jew with Turkish papers goes from happy-go-lucky to wishing he were dead and a two months time, an eternity in a German camp. {reference my bibliography note page 269}The book is yet another accounting of German atrocity, where no explanation justifies their black mark on a society let alone their individual actions. It took the Turkish embassy’s efforts to extract this poor boy out of the camp. He goes in to the camp a fit well stocked young man and comes many weeks later out an emaciated fearful old man. This little segue ads intensity to the emotions of the people escaping Nazism on a train for Istanbul.Then the book also captures the life of the Turkish ‘polito-crats’. Macit, is totally consumed with government duty leaving his wife Sabiha to struggle with the depression that comes with being abandoned by her husband. She has two close brushes with affairs. And what impressed me was the author held her virtue in tact. The close encounters, add a little human drama tension and keeps the reader turning the pages. Sexual tension, one of the spices of life, weather reading it or actually experiencing it, the phenomena exists that still perplexes me.From the book: Suddenly his mood changes and he felt warm inside despite the drizzling rain and the cold weather. He remembered how his wife had snuggled up to him at night he had returned form Cairo. The way she had rekindled the fire in his body when he felt her naked breasts rubbing against his chest. Her hot lips filled him with desire, making him feel the passion he hadn’t felt for ages. He’d been taken aback by emotiojnal intensity between them that night. Could it be that he had fallen in love all over again with this capricious and coy wife?For the intrigue part, there is family drama as an undercurrent. In Paris Selva becomes the patriarch in saving her Jewish husband. She commands the same traits as her father who rejected her. She not only goes to exceptional effort to save her husband, but she also brings in to her household many other Jews to make arrangements to board the Train to Istanbul. She organizes passports, for non Turks, she teaches non Turks a little but of the Turkish language. She brings them in to her home and shelters them. She ensures they can get on the train. Then there is the diplomats arranging a train car and mapping its route through German territory. They actually decide that the best route is through Berlin. The train ride itself includes as much a story of how one lives on a train in the 1940s…that includes a little more dash of German atrocity.Their history however is much different than ours. In World War Two there were more countries involved than Americans, Germans, Italians and English, and French. There is a Turkish story as well. Time and distance allows for an American reader to see the contrasts to find our similarities. Turks and Americans have a lot in common. Turkey’s constitution accepts all people as do Americans. Though we both have our prejudices, they are openly criticized as opposed to being flaunted in some sort of supremacy scheme, as the Nazi’s did. With regard to religion, divides ran deep in the 1940s in Turkey. With Americans, our prime blight was racism. Turkish religions bigotry and American racism carried similar measures of social segregation. In my experience in Turkey these flaws do not jump out at you the way they do in the rest of the Middle East.It is therefore my opinion, reinforced in this book that the northern boundary of the Middle East, if selected by the trait of the people, is the Marmar Sea. From the perspective of a 21st century American in the august of years who has traveled the world many times over; I found this book to reinforce what I already knew in Turkish people. They are very human in a sincere way.The characters:Rafael Alfanderi: A Jew and a Pharmacist. In a time period of the 1940’s men still wore the pants in the house. Albeit through the course of history when the front door is closed many times the roles are reversed. The author blends a passive man found in the clutches of life threatening horror to outwardly hand over the reigns to his destiny to his wife.Selva Recat: Blond and beautiful Rafael’s wife. She is the hero of the story. The storyline in the Turkish setting is told around her character.Sabiha Recit: Blond and beautiful. In the book her character is mostly that of a victim. The storyline in the Turkish setting is told around her character.Macit: Sabiha’s husband and part of the cabinet making advising the PM on which side Turkey is to fall on in the war.Fazil Resat Pasa: the politically charged father who remembers the revolution and respects Turkey’s new policy on secularism, but abhors the marriage of his Muslim daughter to a Jew.Terik Arica: a Turkish official in the Paris embassyFerit: A Turkish embassy officer in France who takes charge of the train to Istanbul. German Soldiers: Again history in this novel form records the war crimes of German soldiers doing atrocious things to Jews. It was not just a leadership crime. It was a large scale German crime on humanity.Metaphors: My bibliography marks metaphors, tools of great authors. They convey much more than word alone. This one below strikes the mood of the book. The Jewish violinist, who played the piece, knew this was his swan song. It speaks to humanity and the nature of all things to be complete That musician died on his final note.The notes of the Paganini violin concerto flowed through the compartment like a stream rippling down a snow-covered mountain. The adagio… it was as though the bow was playing the notes on their heartstrings, not the violin. As the bow wandered through the chordsI have published the long version of this review on my blog Cigar Room of Books. Do a key word search cigarroomofbooks search. There you will find a bibliography rich with the author's metephors.