I WILL LIVE

by Lale Gül

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Büsra is living a double life. At home with her parents, life is an endless argument - about what time she comes home, about what she wears, and most of all, about how the rules apply only to her, while her brother Halil enjoys free rein.

But out in the world, everything is different. Büsra is studying Dutch literature at university, and she reads everything she can get her hands on. She works at a restaurant, where she wears tight dresses and serves alcohol. And her biggest secret of all: she has a boyfriend, and she is passionately and sinfully in love with him.

Fiery, erotic and furious, and crackling with a relentless, mischievous intellect, I Will Live is a rallying cry against patriarchal injustice - and the story of a young woman finding her voice.

Release date: August 22, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 105000

Sample

It’s after eleven when I wedge my key into the lock in Oma’s front door and turn it. I’m immediately struck by the familiar, nauseating smell of her house, but after a few seconds I don’t notice it any more, or at least it doesn’t bother me, which is a good thing I guess. That’s how bad smells work. The moment you go from a neutral-smelling environment to a foul-smelling one – high-school toilets, the locker room at Fitness4Me Ladies Only in Bos en Lommer, Lucas’s room when he’s been smoking cigarettes or weed, my parents’ apartment when Mother’s been deep-frying (there’s no ventilation in those old chicken coop flats in Amsterdam-West) or when the dead sheep is delivered for Eid al-Adha, after which the whole place smells like fresh sheep’s blood for at least three days (which is basically how Oma’s house smells all the time) – you’re overwhelmed by the stench, but after a while you get used to it. There are a lot of things in life you can get used to.

I saunter into my room, yank back the curtains and throw open the windows. I’ve placed scent diffusers around the house to mask Oma’s unpleasant odour, but all this does is create a mélange of disgusting smells with hints of green apple and baby lotion. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there’s nothing more I can do – the source of the smell remains: Oma.

Every time my eighteen-year-old brother Halil walks in he feels the need to make the same stupid comment: ‘Jesus, the smell in here. Ever try opening a window?’ I just ignore it. I mean, what would be a reasonable response? He knows it’s because Oma is sick in bed, growing fatter by the day, wrapped in layers and layers of clothing even though it’s sweltering outside. It’s as if her body has been consumed by the rolls of fat, as if she’s literally drowning in them. The worst is when she tries to stand up. She suffers from ‘erosion of the knees’ (something to do with her ligaments – Father can’t quite explain it to me, his Dutch isn’t very good and he’s the one who talks to her doctor, so I don’t really know the details). She also suffers from calcification, asthma, diabetes, Parkinson’s and God knows what else. The bottom line is that she can’t really move. The doctor said she has to lose at least sixty-five pounds before they can operate on her legs. Well, that’s never going to happen. Those white coats have been telling us that she needs to lose weight for years, but there’s just no way. Oma doesn’t give a shit about her health. If it were up to her, she’d just die. ‘Then I’ll be redeemed,’ she says.

She’s been gloomy and cynical for a long time now. The only thing that seems to cheer her up a little is sugar, which she greedily consumes in all its forms, and I’m not about to rob her of that last remnant of pleasure. Almond-filled cookies, apple pie, fizzy drinks, ice cream, crisps – we buy her whatever she asks for. She’s completely illiterate, so she can’t occupy herself with the kinds of things that other, literate grandmas enjoy, like reading, sudoku or watching the news – she can’t follow TV programmes or documentaries. Her Turkish is farmer’s level at best. She never went to school, so she has a very limited vocabulary and narrow perspective. Even modern Turkish television is way over her head. Her general knowledge is so poor that she thinks there are only three countries in the world: America, Turkey and the Netherlands. She only knows America because people talk about it all the time – it’s that wicked place, the geographical embodiment of evil. When she left home, the modern world was so new to her that a lot of things didn’t even have a name; all she could do was point. So, you understand why I can’t have much of a conversation with her – it’s small talk at best. Still, when I’m not there, all the quietness makes her anxious, or just bored.

It’s not that different with my parents (I prefer to call them my ‘begetters’). They were equally illiterate when they came to the Netherlands at the age of twenty-five (approximately, their exact dates of birth were never registered). Though this particular problem was partially addressed back then, there are still plenty of other things they desperately need to catch up on, as will become clear as you read on. They might have heard of a few more countries and have basic knowledge of current events, but their entire worldview is based on what they’ve seen on Turkish media outlets tailored to a reactionary, collectivist, ultra-religious audience, and dripping with nonsense and melodramatic rumours; in other words, media that is totally devoid of fact, deafeningly kitsch and riddled with inflated propaganda. Its goal is to spread a one-sided message – not just about domestic matters but about international affairs as well. Recently, I was exposed, against my will, to one of their Turkish broadcasts, and I learned that Prime Minister Mark Rutte had told all the Turks to get the hell out of the Netherlands and that right-wing politician Geert Wilders was promising to return Holland to its pre-Islamic state. To be fair, I have to give the producers some credit for not being entirely wrong about these things – given the whole ‘Holland for the Dutch’ thing (whatever that means) and the prime minister’s use of mildly offensive language in statements towards easily agitated bicultural youth – but anyway, slightly more accurate quoting and translation would have made a significantly different impression on the audience, I suspect. The Turkish broadcast also made sure to include bombastic sound effects and images of a furious, roaring Geert, as we know him in his natural habitat, and played it all on repeat, like an infomercial, as if their viewers were troglodytes.

Oma is exempt from all household chores. I do them for her, though I should note that Mother has been doing them more often lately since I’m hardly ever home. I’m currently working two side jobs, studying at university and trying to maintain a secret, fairly long-distance relationship. (More on that to come.)

The smell of all the pills that Oma consumes on a daily basis seeps from her pores. It doesn’t help that she never opens the balcony door or a window herself, so after I’ve been gone for a whole day, you really smell it. I have requested, demanded, even begged, that she air the place out a little while I’m away. She refuses. The woman doesn’t give two hoots. She’s a heap of misery, wrecked on all sides by her past, worn out by life and utterly depressed. And on top of all that, she’s no longer able to function normally, so I can’t really blame her. Oma has endured a lot of misery in her life, so much that it’s a miracle she hasn’t gone insane. She grew up incredibly poor, with no mother and an ailing, dependent father, was married off at the age of twelve to her cousin, raped and abused in her marriage, subjected to atrocious domestic violence and became a mother at thirteen. Her husband gambled away everything he had and turned out to be a brutal, unpredictable villain with a hot temper, who killed and abused several of their children (including Father) and beat Uncle Bahattin so hard that he was disabled for the rest of his life. Eventually, he divorced Oma after they arrived in the Netherlands and married a woman forty years younger than he was, from some Turkish village. He managed to lure her away with his Dutch passport – which meant money – and convince her to marry him. Now he’s got five children with her, one of whom, word has it, was born just a few days ago. Grandpa is over seventy by now, but apparently his reproductive system is still going strong.

I have never seen Grandpa. He lives in Amsterdam too, so maybe I’ve seen him without knowing it. Father occasionally has contact with him, but the rest of us only know him from all the blood-chilling stories. Every now and again, Oma will mention Ayse and Atikè, her two daughters who were choked to death by her husband. They squawked too much and it drove him mad, especially after he’d lost all his money playing dice. One day, Oma was furious about it and had the nerve to lash out at him. Before she knew it, he had taken the pan of boiling milk from the stove and tossed it over her legs. And that’s just one of countless stories about him, but I’ll leave it at that. We need to keep things a little upbeat.

In her youth, Oma was aesthetically endowed. She had all kinds of suitors, men who wanted her hand, but it didn’t matter. Her father had already promised her to her cousin at birth. They called it a cradle vow. Parents got together and decided that two infants – who were usually related because you could trust family – would be married when they were ready. Physically speaking, that is. So yes, Oma has seen her share of misery, and all pigs are sent to the slaughter. The long road has made a tired woman. And consistent apathy is more radical than suicide. Life has at least graced us with the capacity for indifference. She has managed to keep an appropriate distance from every latent spark of enthusiasm. Indifference is self-protection at other people’s expense.

The most unfortunate part of all this is that she’s also incontinent: she can still make it to the toilet to poop, but she pees in a nappy. And that you can smell. Everywhere. All day. The house reeks of urine, and in the summer it’s especially unbearable. The outdated flats we live in are mostly made of wood, and they’re incredibly small, so small that you’re basically living on top of each other and can barely turn around, which doesn’t make sharing a household with Oma any more comfortable. But all of these disadvantages are trumped by one single advantage that I have with Oma: she is unfailingly kind to me. She is my companion for life.

The flats have two bedrooms; everything creaks and squeaks and the walls are so paper-thin that you might as well shit with the door open. They’re forty-eight square metres and incredibly cheap, which is why we live here. We pay just 450 euros a month in rent, which is what you’d pay for a cot in Amsterdam these days. My fellow students pay 700 euros a month for their studios, all on their own. This favourable price is not because the housing corporation is particularly philanthropic or likes having us around, it’s because we’ve been living there for more than twenty years. If we were to leave, the rent would most certainly be jacked up for the new residents – those house-milkers would have no shame in demanding 750 euros a month for a worn-out shoebox flat in a poor neighbourhood. Or an ‘up-and-coming neighbourhood’, ‘an investment neighbourhood’, whatever they want to call it. And that’s the price for subsidised housing. Don’t even get me started on the private sector.

Not too long ago, our neighbourhood, Kolenkit, made the news: we had received the honourable distinction of the worst place to live in the Netherlands. This award was based on the considerable economic dependence of residents, the significant language barriers, the rate of juvenile delinquency, the amount of vandalism and, above all, the downright pitiful school performance. In the photo that accompanied the article, you could just make out Oma – she could still walk outside then. The whole neighbourhood went on and on about Oma being in the (free local) newspaper. The article’s content was all but completely ignored; most of them probably couldn’t read it anyway. Or they didn’t care. Or both.

As a gatekeeper of the unwritten laws of the Code of the Turkish Conservatives, Mother experiences any violation of these laws as a nefarious personal attack. Oma has broken all conventions, and I’ve broken a few myself, which has been known to cause a flare-up every now and then, but it has also strengthened the bond between Oma and me; she always stands up for me in arguments and tries to ease the tensions as much as possible. The moment the begetters start going after me, she and I close ranks. I do the same for her. Oma curses or calls for death, even in the presence of others, which is a terrible sin in our religion. You’re supposed to bear your suffering with ‘dignity’ and ‘patience and restraint’ and all that, because that’s the ‘noble’ thing to do, or at least that’s what Mother says. In other words, we all have our cross to bear – only without the cross. It’s not up to you to call upon death; only Allah can decide when your time has come. The suffering is your test and part of God’s plan. By now I know that the best plans are the ones that are fundamentally impossible to carry out.

‘He wants to see if you can handle it without moaning and groaning or questioning your faith in Him,’ Mother said. Even as a child, I had trouble grasping this concept. Back then, whenever my questions became too difficult to answer, Mother would just say that I was too young to fathom it, but that hasn’t improved much over the years. On the contrary, in fact. Once she tried to explain it with an analogy: ‘At school, the teachers make you take tests even though they could just tell you all the answers, but they would never do that, no matter how difficult it is, because they want to see if you can do it yourself. This life is a test from Allah, He’s the one administering the test.’

A test it was, in an experimental sense at least. Even as a child, I had already realised that the sample I was working with was fairly problematic, but deep in my bones I knew that I just had to live with it. It’s a feeling that hasn’t gone away.

Oma has a deep aversion to all things divine, although she doesn’t dare say so out loud. Mother is constantly having to remind her that it’s time for prayer, which happens five times a day, so it’s pretty damn hard to get out of it. Oma doesn’t participate in Ramadan either. Now that she’s ill she has an excuse, but even before that I spotted her sneaking little snacks. And to make sure that her illegal behaviour remained secret in the occult caverns of our zealot household, she used to pay me off; it’s not like she had anything else to spend her government subsidy on anyway. Back then, Mother kept her fed and clothed (Mother happens to be an excellent seamstress, as well as, in my opinion, the incarnation of the devil), so there was always money left over for bribes.

Whenever Oma starts bemoaning her physical pain and her very existence, which in Islam is equivalent to expressing grievance against the Creator, Mother admonishes her and tells her to turn to prayer or recite chapters from the Quran, that this will help. At this, Oma’s mood turns even more sour. She doesn’t say a word, but you can see her boiling like a volcano about to erupt. The other day, a valve burst: ‘Oh come on,’ she said irritably when Mother advised her to pray about something. At that, the despot of the house asked God to pardon Oma’s slanderous words, which had been whispered into her ear by Beelzebub, and rebuked the sinner. She told Oma she better watch out and quickly fill her rebellious heart with godliness, for she would have to account for her sins in the afterlife and accept the wrath that she had brought upon herself. And since her day of judgement was dangerously close given her current condition, she’d better be careful. It seems that, as you get older, the temporary loses more and more of its original, theoretical nature.

As I take off my bag and toss my keys on my desk, I spot Oma in the living room. She’s got the heat turned up to 27 degrees, it’s burning up in there. But as usual, she’s wearing a long, floral dress, a knit cardigan and a white headscarf. I can’t remember the last time I saw her without it; it’s almost as if it’s grown into her head. That’s a habit among elderly women – they just stop taking it off, except to take a shower, even though they technically don’t have to wear it at home. That’s what I learned in Quranic school, where I spent every weekend as a child and teenager.

In practice, many of the rules are based more on culture than the Holy Scriptures; the doctrine I was taught doesn’t actually reflect the lifestyle of many of the Muslims around me, which was something I struggled to understand as a teenager. Now I know that hypocrisy and discrepancy are integral parts of the pious life. I’m willing to bet that there are more Muslims out there than people who sincerely believe in Allah. Way more. A pious pagan is less unlikely than a devout Muslim.

Case in point: in Islam, any kind of transaction involving interest is an unforgivable sin, yet plenty of people still take out mortgages or loans, including my own family members, who then, in turn, like to berate me for violating the rules. My begetters would never approve of me coming home with a Muslim convert. People who play with tar eventually get covered in it, that’s the argument. Also, things like over-the-top, fairy-tale weddings have no place in the Islamic doctrine, which calls for simplicity in earthly life and forbids extravagant spending on worldly things. And praying five times a day is non-negotiable, but many people, especially men, don’t do it.

More than anything, people get competitive and coquettish when it comes to luxury, money or a high standard of living; all of these things are denounced or extremely marginalised in the doctrine. They love going all out for celebrations; the women are addicted to all the soap operas about forbidden romances on Turkish and Arabic satellite channels; and young people are willing to shell out for expensive, brand-name clothing, even when their parents earn next to nothing and they live in the poorest part of town. Then there’s the music they listen to – drill rap by people of their own ethnicity, such as the famous Boef and Lijpe, whose lyrics promote an aggressive, promiscuous, criminal, nihilistic existence. Their words toss out shards of Islamic doctrine, producing a toxic mix that’s beyond my comprehension, seeing as music is forbidden in the first place. Just as rain and wind are perfectly tolerable when experienced separately but a massive pain when combined, so it is with religious doctrine and the glorification of street culture. Together they create a sort of Islamic gangster culture. Our religion, which most of these people could go on about endlessly, is entirely incompatible with such a profane, materialistic, superficial hip-hop culture, but this is somehow completely lost on them. They’re like Catholics preaching the tenets of Calvinism.

Now, of course, the question remains as to what the Islamic doctrine actually is. I’ve had countless lectures on it, but I won’t bore you or myself with that. What I’m talking about is my doctrine, our doctrine, the one I learned at the Quranic school run by the Millî Görüş Foundation, which I was forced to attend from the age of six to seventeen by Mother, the embodiment of evil, the tyrant of the nest, a virus against which no antidote can be found, a woman bursting with hatred and resentment towards me, the instigator of all molestation and the source of my tragedy.

Halil had to go to Quranic school too. He came home with stories about teachers who administered corporal punishment if you didn’t do your homework or failed to fluently recite verses from memory. My begetters, who believed that physical violence was an indispensable tool in any respectable upbringing, were happy to hear it. ‘Otherwise, you’ll never learn what discipline is. A man is not at his best when he’s totally free; freedom makes you lax. Adam’s son [this means “man” in zealot jargon] needs guidelines and direction. Discipline and fear are necessary devices for civilisation. Those who experience fear are strengthened for battle. Those who do not, become lazy. One must submit to authority, pay no attention to the drivel of Westerners who unconditionally embrace latitude, autonomy and boldness. Unbridled casualness threatens a man’s happiness and with it the peace and harmony of society and the home. Fear is the mother of morality, one must learn to face it,’ Mother claimed. I can say a lot of things about Mother, but I can’t say she possesses any cognitive ability. Still, there’s no lack of vision. It’s vision that holds her together, it’s just that her ideas are incredibly rigid and utterly simplistic. It’s ludicrous how she sprinkles her wisdom on all sorts of topics, always with a tone of certainty and a nod to the facts.

Fortunately, I myself hadn’t been subjected to any disciplinary measures of this calibre; that only happened in the boys’ classroom. Defne, my eight-year-old sister, is currently being cultivated at the same Quranic school I went to. Sometimes she tells stories from class that make me wonder whether these children will ever recover from the constant intellectual mutilation they’re being subjected to. It’s downright disastrous. And her indoctrination has been even more extensive and devastating since she also attends an Islamic primary school, whereas I didn’t. But still, I think about how I turned out and try to hold out hope.

The Quranic school is an institution designed to stifle any form of truth-seeking, with no regard for science and reason. I hated it there. I never wanted to go, and begged Mother to let me stay home, but every weekend I still found myself in a tiny room crammed with way too many girls around a rickety little table reading the Quran, ready to pound sacred texts into our tightly wrapped heads. But if I, being the simple soul I am, have managed to untangle myself from the shortcomings of our religious doctrine despite being dispossessed of all instruments of scepticism and open-mindedness, my little sister might be able to do so too. But I also know that a person’s path in life is largely determined by a series of circumstances and thousands of other variables, and that most people don’t stray from it. Or at least I didn’t know anyone else who had, so I can’t say if my hope for Defne is reasonable or misplaced. Most of the time, hope is just a way of outsourcing one’s responsibility. Nietzsche said that no victor believes in chance, so neither did I. The trick is to be able to decide which responsibilities are best outsourced to fate. The future is not beholden to us. I spent half my time trying to turn the tide, but I could never shake the feeling that I was trying to use the eraser at the end of my pencil to rub away letters written in permanent marker. For the most part, though, I consider humans to be system managers of an infinite network of possibilities that they create themselves, not pawns of fate, regardless of the situation.

Recently, Defne and I were out shopping for Oma when she spotted two men kissing. ‘Eeew!’ she squealed. ‘That’s disgusting!’ The couple probably thought she was my daughter given the significant age difference between us, which unleashed a deep feeling of shame. I scolded her and told her to apologise, which she politely did, and informed her that, as an upstanding citizen, one shouldn’t make fun of people’s affection for each other or the way they manifest it, no matter their gender. She was quickly forgiven; she was just a kid, after all, and she was clearly ashamed. Shame is another sign of affection. We are only ever ashamed of those who are dear to us. Shame for one’s own stupidity combined with the recognition of it is the definition of true wisdom.

Children can get away with a lot, and as someone who always had to pass for an adult, I sometimes envied that. In the end, naivety is a luxury that not everyone can afford. Comfort is always the privilege of the weak.

Defne was a quick learner; she recognised her mistake and repented. In that sense, children are empty vessels; you can fill them with whatever you want. An intolerant person never starts out that way. We humans are so fond of pointing our arrows at those who are the least like us or whom we struggle to understand. Being civilised means being able to curb that tendency. Being able to behave better than you are.

Sometimes, after a weekend of indoctrination, she’ll come home with flyers listing all the Israeli companies she’s supposed to boycott. Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Danone, Evian, Colgate and Maggi, for example. And a list of items, such as dates and figs, that we’re not supposed to buy at big chain supermarkets like Albert Heijn. Recently, after Erdoğan accused Macron of Islamophobia in his response to the murder of Samuel Paty, she brought home a list of French products we couldn’t purchase any more either.

From time to time, she’ll ask a question on a topic I prefer to avoid, such as why Christians and Jews hate Musl. . .