Books on Wheels
An excited crowd has gathered in front of the town hall in Urfa. Marc Pierini, European Commission ambassador to Turkey, has confirmed he will be there, and a shady spot has finally been found to park the Goethe Institute's bookmobile. Only the guests are missing.
Uniformed classes of school children stand ready and waiting in their grey pleated skirts, grey trousers and white shirts. Others are wearing the shirts of the newly chosen Goethe partner school.
Claudia Hahn-Raabe, head of the Goethe Institute in Istanbul, does the honours and introduces the writers Hans-Ulrich Treichel and Renate Welsh to the EU delegates and local politicians.
Amongst the curious spectators in the front row is an almost toothless old woman; her weather-beaten face and hands decorated with henna tattoos, she rapturously blows kisses to all and sundry. Whether she actually knows what she has come to see is another question.
By far and away the most famous of those present is actor, Turkish TV star and heartthrob Mehmet Ali Alabora from Istanbul.
At ease in both Turkish and English, he skilfully moderates the event, giving the children, who are curious to know more about the European writers, a chance to speak – and to disconcert the famous authors. "Why is it that Russian and French writers are better known than German authors?" one pupil asks.
Renate Welsh, the highly successful writer of children's and young people's fiction, has a quick reply: "I wish I knew. Then I would write better-selling books."
Curiosity and frustration
Hans-Ulrich Treichel and Renate Welsh have been in Urfa, a city of almost two-and-a-half million inhabitants, for two-and-a-half days. So far, it has been a real reading marathon; they have been much in demand, appearing on local television and being reported on in the newspapers – including front and even full-page spreads. The chance to come face-to-face with writers is a rarity in Urfa.
In fact, culture and entertainment in general is pretty thin on the ground. Cinema and bowling are just about the sum total of what is on offer. "There is practically nothing for young people to do here," complains one young man who has lived in Germany for a number of years. Though it has to be said that for the men, at least, things are relatively good.
Girls are not allowed to go out in the evening; not after eight o' clock in any case. To the question of whether it is any consolation to them to know that they are not missing much, they answer: "Going out and dancing would be great." Then, seeming a little anxious that this could be taken as a criticism: "We are not complaining, we are used to it."
Lion hunt and sacred fish
Urfa, though, has not always been so culturally impoverished. The museum holds one of the oldest representations of a human figure in existence – over eleven thousand years old, a life-size statue of a man, whose eyes of precious stones still gaze down on the modern visitor.
Close by, archaeologists from the University of Ankara are busy restoring Roman mosaics depicting Amazons on a lion hunt – and an orgy of blood letting! Evidently, a magnificent building, offering all the trappings of luxury, once stood on the site. It takes no more than the removal of a few shovels of earth anywhere in Urfa today to turn up relics, sometimes thousands of years old: history in the sand.
Stories and legends abound here also. Abraham, or Ibrahim as he is called by Muslims, was reputedly saved from the fate of death by fire in Urfa. The fire turned into water, the burning wood to fish. Sacred fish are still to be found swimming in a pool close to the Great Mosque to this day.
Urfa: destination for pilgrims
Urfa is a centre of pilgrimage, one of the holiest places in Islam. Restaurants here serve no alcohol, but around the fish pool one can buy fish food and kitsch souvenirs. Children balance enormous trays piled with sesame bagels on their heads in the hope of finding a few hungry pilgrims.
But holiness brings no guarantee of a vibrant cultural life. Any visitor to Urfa who has a notion to search out a bookshop will have a hard job finding one. Cash dispensers, on the other hand, are everywhere. Not something one could say of German provincial cities.
Without a doubt, Urfa is a modern city, notwithstanding the traditional crafts still to be found at its bazaar. It is estimated that the city has one mobile phone shop for every ten inhabitants.
Campus in the desert
Since 1992, Urfa has even had a university. The enormous campus was built 25 kilometres from the city, in the middle of the desert. The bookmobile enters the campus through an imposing gateway and passes scattered blocks of buildings and artificial lakes.
Fountains of water suddenly shoot into the air. Is this a special greeting to mark the arrival of the writers? Three swans appear to be the only living creatures on an otherwise deserted campus. The students are all at home studying for their end of term exams. Not a particularly auspicious arrival, it seems, with the readings in mind. Will anyone here be interested in German literature?
By 3 o'clock the picture is very different: the lecture theatre is bursting at the seams with more than 300 students; for many it is standing room only. They listen attentively as Renate Welsh reads from Drachenflügel (dragon's wings), her novel for young people, about a girl with a handicapped brother who suffers loneliness and exclusion before finally finding a friend, and are deep in concentration when Hans-Ulrich Treichel reads from Der Verlorene (Lost) a story of the Second World War, about dispossession and a search over many decades for a lost brother.
Two-and-a-half-hours later and despite the baking heat, most of the students are still there. "These are stories that we, too, can identify with," says one of the students, "I can really imagine what it must feel like to have to search for your own brother."
"Goethe is very successful!"
The experience of meeting real authors, live, is not only a rarity in the city square. It is also the first time that German-language writers have ever appeared at the university, says philosophy professor and vice rector Zuhal Karahan Kara.
"This is something of a forgotten outpost," he says. "I have been to Europe on a number of occasions and have come to realise that nobody knows anything about us. Many are familiar with the western part of Turkey, but that is a completely different culture. We really feel cut off here."
Meanwhile, however, the school children of Urfa are well on the way to establishing contacts of their own with the West. No sooner does the bookmobile make an appearance than it is besieged. At the partner school, the Goethe Institute team doesn't make it beyond the playground.
The children are bursting to tell them about everything they have read. Goethe's Werther, for example, or Faust. "It has something to do with God and the Devil," explains one boy, "just what I like!" And it is quite astonishing to hear them reel off all the names of the European writers they know: Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Balzac, Kant, Nietzsche.
Could it be that Urfa is an untapped source of literature and philosophy after all? Well, they may not really have read everything, but one thing they are sure of: "Goethe is very successful!"
Anatolian marriage proposal
The programme of readings that has given Urfa something to think about for the past five days was a great success. For 71-year-old Renate Welsh there is an unexpected extra to think about too – a declaration of love.
One girl from Urfa was so impressed by her that she wants to know if she is already married. "Yes," she says, "to the nicest man in all of Europe and Asia." "Pity," the girl replies, "I wanted to ask you if you would marry my grandfather."
And when Hans-Ulrich Treichel does a reading at the culture centre, the room is not only full, it is full of people who themselves are writers. Around one third respond in the affirmative when Treichel asks about this.
"I've never experienced that anywhere else," he says. "I was struck by the independent self-assurance of the young girls, their self-confidence when they get up to speak. They don't need us as talismans of modernity, to help them get rid of the headscarves, or anything like that. They are taking care of that themselves. Of course, it is good that we are talking to one another. But maybe I get more out of it all than they do."
Aya Bach
© Deutsche Welle 2009
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