62 pages • 2 hours read
Elif ShafakThe Bastard of Istanbul
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Cinnamon”
On the first Friday of July, Zeliha Kazanci is rushing to the gynecologist’s office. She struggles through pouring rain, traffic, and broken cobblestones. Contrary to the old adage that warns against cursing things that come from the sky, Zeliha curses the rain that falls “from her dark curls onto her broad shoulders” (3).
The streets are crowded. Men stare lustfully at Zeliha’s body and look “disapprovingly at her shiny nose ring” (3). A taxi driver sexually harasses her in the context of offering a ride. Zeliha refuses, then her right heel gets stuck under yet another loose cobblestone and breaks off. The taxi pulls away, leaving her holding “the broken heel of her shoe as tenderly and despondently as if she were carrying a dead bird” (7).
Zeliha hurries along, going through the Grand Bazaar. She remembers that one of her three sisters asked her that morning to buy cinnamon. Obediently, Zeliha buys some sticks. She then purchases a glass tea set to add to the collection of about 30 that already exist back at the Kazanci home.
Twenty minutes later, she arrives at “a chic office in one of the most well-off quarters of the city” (9). She’s carrying her broken heel in one hand and the glass tea set in the other. She left the cinnamon sticks at the bazaar, and she’s 46 minutes late for this appointment. There are three other women in the waiting room, including a worried-looking woman wearing a head scarf and sitting beside her husband (9). Zeliha announces to the receptionist that she needs an abortion. She reluctantly answers the receptionist’s question about her age, admitting that she is 19 and unmarried, which excuses her from needing the consent of her husband. Before going in to see the doctor, Zeliha observes the head-scarved woman cursing her and the doctor for aborting the child that Allah should have given her instead.
The gynecologist welcomes Zeliha. After they go through some formalities, Zeliha starts to cry. The doctor comforts her, saying that she’ll be asleep during the procedure and will remember nothing when she awakens. While lying on the surgical table, she listens to street vendors announcing their wares. She hears a call to prayer from a nearby mosque, then another, before entering a dream in which she’s wandering through crowded streets when, suddenly, cobblestones rain down, vehicles speed toward her, and pedestrians nudge her aside. She hears herself screaming, “Please stop!”
Shortly thereafter, Zeliha wakes up in another room. The receptionist tells her that the doctor didn’t perform the abortion due to her screaming. Zeliha leaves and returns to her family’s konak—a “slightly decrepit, high-ceilinged” edifice among the much taller, modern apartment buildings (22). Her mother, Gülsüm, is there, along with her three sisters, Banu, Cevriye, and Feride, and her grandmother, Petite-Ma. They’re preparing for dinner.
While stripping the grape leaf off of a dolma, Zeliha tells them that she went to the gynecologist to have an abortion but decided against it after an epiphany revealed to her that her child would one day “lead the masses, and bring peace and justice to humankind” (29). Gülsüm exclaims that the child will be “[a] bastard” (29). She registers her disgust with Zeliha’s behavior and reminds her that if there were men in the family, they would have killed this wayward daughter of hers.
Indeed, most of the Kazanci men died much sooner than their wives; the others simply left. There is one son—Mustafa. Petite-Ma sold her jewels to send him to the University of Arizona to study agricultural and biosystems engineering.
Generations of cats have also passed through the household. Unlike the human inhabitants, they died only of old age. Each kitten is descended from a white Persian cat that Petite-Ma brought with her as a young bride in the 1920s. The maternal ancestor mated with a “tawny” cat during “one of her runaways” (32). If a descendant resembled the haughty Persian cat, it was named Pasha. If it resembled its “self-governing” father, it was called “Sultan” (33). The Kazanci women now reside with Pasha the Third. Zeliha feeds the cat bits of feta cheese, then busies herself with the dinner dishes. Everyone is silent. Cevriye then remembers the rice pudding for dessert. Banu, Zeliha’s eldest sister, chides Zeliha for forgetting the cinnamon, which would have made the pudding much better. In a guilty voice quite unlike her own, Zeliha murmurs an apology.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Garbanzo Beans”
In Tucson, Arizona, Rose Tchakhmakhchian is shopping in Fry’s Supermarket. She’s left her infant daughter in the parking lot; the child sleeps in the backseat of Rose’s ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee. While searching for diapers, Rose becomes distracted by rows of the sweets that have been her only comfort since her divorce. She blames her overbearing mother-in-law, Shushan, and her ex-husband Barsam’s large, mysterious Armenian family for turning her into an outsider within her own marriage, and for calling her an odar.
Rose grabs the diapers and places them in the cart. She then notices “a middle-aged man with graying hair and a goatee smiling at her,” which encourages her to toss more baby care items, far more than she needs, into her cart to show him what a good mother she is (38). Rose then stops in the next aisle—the International Food section. The sights of eggplant dips and grape leaves remind her of the Tchakhmakchians. She decides that her daughter will be spared Armenian cuisine. Instead, she’ll have “real Kentucky dishes”—mutton barbecue, hot dogs, and garbanzo beans (39). Rose also decides to find a lover who’ll appreciate garbanzos.
The thought of the beans sends Rose into the Canned Food and Dry Beans section, where she sees a familiar-looking young man gazing at a shelf lined with different brands of garbanzo beans. Rose recognizes him from the University of Arizona because she works part-time at the Cactus Grill “on the second floor inside the Student Union” (41). The young man studies her face while Rose reveals that she dropped out of college the year before to have a baby, but she’d like to resume her studies and become a schoolteacher. She finally offers her name and the young man offers his: Mustafa. Rose asks where he’s from, and he responds brusquely: Istanbul. Rose isn’t sure where that is. When Mustafa replaces the beans and leaves her, she goes to the book aisle and picks up The Great World Atlas. She finds Istanbul on a map.
Rose returns to the parking lot and awakens her daughter, Armanoush, with the promise that she’ll cook “real American food tonight” (43). She also tells the baby about the Turkish man she has just met. Rose looks at her daughter and observes how everything about her is perfect, except for her name. She decides to call her “Amy” instead.
Meanwhile, Mustafa pays for his groceries. Life in the United States has been difficult for him, particularly cooking and cleaning. Things in Istanbul were not much easier. He was apprehensive toward women, spoiled by his mother, and beaten by his father. His sister, Zeliha, once called him “a precious phallus,” in reference to his favored status (45). Mustafa wants a better life, but wants a compassionate woman to help him attain it. While he’s in the midst of these thoughts, Rose is driving away from the supermarket. The sight of a “blissfully content” Mexican-American couple prompts her to turn back into the supermarket parking lot (46). She sees Mustafa waiting at the bus stop and offers him a ride, which he accepts. Rose imagines the delicious vengeance she’ll get when her former in-laws find out she’s flirting with a Turk. Mustafa corrects her mispronunciation of his name. Rose then introduces Armanoush—first, as Amy, then with her full Armenian name. Rose anticipates Mustafa’s antipathy for the Armenian name, but he registers no recognition of it. He even mistakes it for Turkish. Rose invites him to see a Mexican art exhibition the following night, and Mustafa accepts that invitation, too. Rose tells Mustafa again how nice it is to meet him; again, she mispronounces his name. This time, Mustafa doesn’t correct her.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Sugar”
In San Francisco, California, Uncle Dikran Stamboulian bangs open the door of the Tchakhmakchian house and begs those inside—Auntie Surpun Tchakhmakchian, distant cousin Kevork Karaoglanian, Auntie Zarouhi, Auntie Varsenig and her twins, and the family matriarch, Shushan Tchakhmakchian—to tell him that it’s not true that Rose is seeing a Turkish man.
The family is having dinner. Dikran sits at an empty chair at the dining table. His heart is eased at the sight of his favorite dish: burma (a variant of the Greek dessert baklava). As he begins to eat, he asks where Barsam is and if he knows what Rose is doing. Dikran believes that she’s dating a Turk to upset the family. Barsam arrives. Dikran reminds his nephew that his daughter will be raised by a Turk, unless he does something to stop it. Barsam refuses to interfere, while Dikran implores him to go to Tucson to talk to his wife. Auntie Zarhoui corrects him: Rose is Barsam’s ex-wife. She then chastises herself for eating the sugary burma. She asks her mother why she won’t use artificial sweeteners. Shushan insists that she’ll cook with nothing of the sort. People, she believes, should eat freely, even at the peril of developing diabetes.
The family talks about how Rose has found a job in Arizona, which they think she’s doing to make it look as though she has no financial support. Barsam reminds them that Rose wants to return to school and become a teacher. He reiterates that he doesn’t care who she’s dating, as long as Armanoush is cared for. Auntie Surpun tells him that he is both right and wrong: Rose is, indeed, entitled to her life, but Barsam has the right to interfere, especially when Rose is dating a Turk.
The Tchakhmakchians discuss how the Turks dominated the Armenian people and forced them to learn Turkish. They express their outrage over the memories of Armenians who were killed, orphaned, deported, and forgotten while the Turks came to dominate Central Asia.
Uncle Dikran then tells the fable of a barber who once offered haircuts to an Arab, a Turk, and an Armenian, respectively, for free, as “a community service” (55-56). The Arab left the barber a thank-you card and some dates; the Turk left a thank-you card and some lokum; and the Armenian returned with a dozen Armenians waiting for a haircut. The moral is that when Armenians find something good, they share it. They are a communal people, and sticking together has ensured their survival. Cousin Kevork disagrees, but Grandma Shushan ends the debate.
Barsam reiterates that Rose is decent and simply had a hard time enduring life within an Armenian family. She is, after all, from Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Auntie Varsenig says that it wasn’t easy for them, either, pretending to like her “horrendous mutton barbecue on buns” (58). Barsam says that the Tchakhmakchians gave Rose a hard time, making it so that the first word she learned in Armenian was odar. Other family members called her Thorn, which Auntie Varsenig still thinks is a name that better suits her former sister-in-law’s bitterness.
Shushan silences everyone and reiterates that “[saving] Armanoush from harm […] is the only thing that matters” (59). Only Armenians, she asserts, understand what it means to be erased. She then asks her eldest daughter, Auntie Zarouhi, for half of her burma, unfazed by the threat of diabetes.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters establish how the rituals of preparing and eating of food bind families and reassert their traditions. Each chapter narrates episodes in which the characters are dining or preparing for dinners. The author uses the theme of food as culture to establish the similarities between Turkish and Armenian cuisines: in Istanbul, Zeliha is unwrapping the grape leaf from a dolma, while, in Arizona, Rose looks at those same grape leaves in the International Foods section with contempt, reminded of her former and overbearing Armenian in-laws. Food becomes a signifier of cultural origins, but a rather ambiguous one, given the cultural exchange that developed common tastes in cuisine among two groups who often regard each other as historical enemies.
These common tastes make it that much harder to validate the enmity between the Armenians and the Turks, which developed as a result of the former group’s experience of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1922). During World War I, the Ottoman Empire instrumented a plan to remove and massacre the Armenian people who had lived in the Caucasus region for 3,000 years. By 1922, when the genocide ended, between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were killed, particularly intellectuals. In the end, only 388,000 Armenians were left in the Ottoman Empire. Shafak explores how the genocide created one of the numerous divisions that inform relationships within the novel. In addition to Armenians vying against Turks, Shafak also illustrates women versus men, mainstream American culture versus Armenian immigrant culture, and tradition versus modernity.
Also, in these first three chapters, Shafak establishes the nonlinear pattern that characterizes her narrative. The story moves back and forth in time, establishing how the past is palpable in the present. Asya hates birthdays because they remind her of the ambiguity around her origins—her supposed lack of history. The Tchakhmakchians refuse to accept Rose’s choice to date a Turk due to their inability to relinquish the pain of their past, as well as their need to make the Turks—any Turk, even one as ignorant as Mustafa about the historical enmity between Turks and Armenians—guilty for exiling them from their homeland.
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By Elif Shafak
