EvansKnightFormsofFolklore Prof.

ThompsonANTH333

YarBanaBirElence1:AReinterpretationoftheTraditionalTurkishShadowPlay KaragzveHacvatthroughtheLensofBarbaraNadelsInspectorkmenNovels

In the numerous volumes of her Inspector kmen series of detective novels, English author Barbara Nadel not only plumbs the depths of Istanbuls criminal underworld, but also laces her prose with references to the innumerable and fascinating customs of the nation and peoples of Turkey. Through the eponymous character, Inspector etin kmen, and a motley cast of his friends and colleagues, mysteries are solved, but so too are the readers taught something they might not otherwise have known about Turkey and its people. Of the many books, it is the sixth novel of the series, Petrified, which is most strongly identifiable with a particularly unique aspect of Turkish culturethatoftheShadowPlaysofKaragzandHacvat. While it is not until this novel, rather late in the series, that the idea of karagz2 is introduced, once it has been mentioned and made apparent to the reader,itchangesonesunderstandingof theseriesasawhole. Much in the same way as Englands Punch and Judy, Karagz and Hacvat serve as a way for which the oftendowntrodden Turkish peopletosimultaneouslymocktheirgovernment and celebrate their national pride. Traditionally associated with, and performedduring,theholy month of Ramazan, Karagz and Hacvat also provide the people with a release from the

Yarbanabirelence,whichmeansroughlyAndnow,forsomeamusement!isthelinetraditionally utteredbyHacvatashesummonshisfriendKaragzonstageandbeginstheplay. 2 Boththecharacterandtheartformareknownaskaragz,sotodifferentiate,theartformwillbe italicized,andthecharacterwillbecapitalized. 1

religious strictures of the season. While the origins of the plays are shrouded in mystery, it is more or less consensus that the tradition arose in the court of the Ottoman Sultans, and was originally intended, in fact, to glorify and amuse these notoriously fickle potentates. Karagz, according to tradition, represents the honest and straightforward common people, speakinghis mind and telling things as he sees them to be, while Hacvat, as a member of the Ottoman aristocracy, is in direct contrast to this, speaking a stilted, flowery language often interspersed with bits of poetry and religious wisdom. As a result, his point is always somewhat difficult to decipher, but the witty and sharp Karagz never fails to eventually deduce what is important. Along with Karagz and Hacvat, theplaysfeatureaninterestingcastofcharactersrepresenting stock caricatures of Turkish people, such as the Alcoholic, the Flirt, the Spendthrift, and the Opium Addict, as well as depictions of the Ottoman Empires various ethnic and religious minorities. While each character may have a largerorsmallerroledependingonthestorybeing told, it is Karagz and Hacvat who always take center stage, and through them that the story unfolds. Once the reader is familiar withthestoryandconceptofkaragz,itsdeepconnections with the novel become more and more apparent. etin kmen, the simple, hardworking police inspector around whom the novels revolve, is none other than Karagz himself, always ready with a glib remark or a biting criticism, and always,intheend,abletosolvethecrime.Hacvat, then, is personified in kmens lieutenant (and later fellow inspector)MehmetSleyman,whose descent from the Sultans and resultant social status are a regular plotdeviceinthenovels.Like his folkloric counterpart, Sleyman often has difficulty understanding where kmen is coming

from, and has to becarefullyexplainedto,soasnottoappearaloofandarrogant.Theinterplay between the two policemen is oftentimes eerily reminiscent of that between Karagz and Hacvat, if not in content than in feelandmanner.Theyarenot,ofcourse, theonly parallelsthat one can draw between the novel and the plays. Tuzsuz Deli Bekir, karagzs drunkard, is embodiedinkmenand SleymansformercolleagueBalthazarCohen,who, nowcrippled, was a famous drinker and womanizer in his younger days, and now spends most of his time dispensing oftenludicrous advice, and generally yelling at everyone. It isinterestingtonotethat while Tuzsuz in karagz is accepted to represent the Janissary element of Turkish society, the character in Nadels novel is a Jew. This, perhaps, represents her attempt as an author to remove the more traditionally insensitive depictions of Jews in karagz and integrate them, as characters, more fully into the story. There are also aspects of Alt Kari Beberuhi, the brainaddled dwarf, in Cohens mannerisms and appearance (his lower legs were lost as the result of an earthquake, and he is bound to a wheelchair, so the physical resemblance is not slight). As with Cohen, Nadel departs from the traditional representation of Armenians as servants or moneychangers in her character Arto Sarkissian. Not onlyisArtoanaccomplished pathologist, and integral to most of the solutionstothemanymysteriesthroughouttheseries,he is also presented as one of Inspector kmens oldest friends, and often assumes certain attributestraditionallyassociatedwiththecharacterofKaragz. The karagz plays flirtatious female role, Nigr, is personified in more of the novels characters than any other, and aspects of her are seen in almost every female mentionedinthe book. The most important of these, at least to this novel, is the Gypsy witch, Gonca. Gypsies

had not formed as important or as large a part of Turkish society during the period in which karagz was born, but have, in the last century, become a numerous and powerful cultural force withinTurkeys borders. Asaresult,itwasimportantforNadeltofindawaytoworkthis new element into her reinterpretation of the tales of Karagz and Hacvat. Goncas presence also reiterates an aspect thathaslaindormantinthebackgroundofthe precedingnovels:thatof magic. While not central to the plot, magic seems to permeate each of the novels, especially through Aye kmen, the Albanian Witch of skdar who happens to be the late (yet somehow omnipresent) mother of Inspector kmen. It becomes clear through thecourseofthe novels that this mysterious woman has passed on at least some of her gifts to her ostensibly grounded and rationalistic son, and his hunches more often than not lead to a majorbreak in the case. Like Aye, Gonca serves as a foil to kmens pragmatism, and her magic serves to augmenthisowntohelpreachtheanswersthattheyallseek. Kanbur Tiryaki, karagzs opium addict, is personified in the villain of Petrified, the artist Melih Akdeniz, who is as addicted to painkillers as he is to his own pride, bothofwhich lead to his eventual downfall. It is through thestoryofAkdenizandhisunfortunatechildren,the central story of the novel, that karagz asanartformisintroducedintotheplotofthebook.A controversial artist who lives and works in the Istanbul district of Balat (which itselfoccupiesa storied place in the Turkish culturalmemory),Akdenizfirstcomestotheattentionofkmenand his colleagues when his two young children gomissing,amotif that isoftenseeninfolklore,and forms the central conflict of the novel. Over the course of the novel, various other seemingly unrelated events in Istanbul come together and all lead back to both the missing children and,

ominously, a mysterious embalmer who has discovered a waytopreservecorpsesinanalmost lifelikemanner. While religious burial practices do not explicitly fall under the domain of folklore, the practices of the embalmer and her clients in the novel seem to cross all ethnic and religious boundaries, and when viewed in conjunction with various realworld examples such as the seemingly miraculous preservation of individuals such as Eva Pern and Vladimir Lenin, do represent a subset, if a macabre one, offolkcustomsthatdivergevastlyfromtheculturalnorm. The issue of the embalmer and the missing children brings the Karagz andHacvatsymbolism in thenovelfullcircle,asit wasMelihAkdenizhimself,thechildrensfather,whobothmurdered them and had their bodies embalmed so that he could put on a karagz show of his own, featuring his two angelic children as characters and puppets in this, the most iconic of Turkish artistic traditions. His obsession with making ancient Turkish customs and art forms relevant in the modern world is the driving force in his art (some of his other pieces involve the skillful manipulation of antique kilims and carpets into some rather lewd shapes, or collages formed from knickknacks deemed particularly Turkish), and as his final act, he wished to make his childrenasimmortalasheviewedhimselftobethroughisart. One of the most overriding themesinthisandothernovelsintheseriesistheinteraction of Turkish modernism with the undeniable and everpresent Turkish past (in all of its permutations) and Petrified more than any other displays this tension. WhilewritteninEnglish, and clearly for a mostly European audience, not only do the novels illuminate the reader as to the culture of Turkey, they also present ways in which traditional Turkish folklore can be both

relevant and important in a modern context. The presence of magic in the novel welldescribes the awkward position in which many modern Turks find themselves caught somewhere between an ancient Islamic culture, an even more ancient Pagan past, and a modernEuropean world inwhichthetwoformerare rapidlylosingimportanceandrelevance.Byreinterpretingthe art ofkaragzintoamoremodern medium,thatofthedetectivenovel,BarbaraNadelpresents both nonTurkish and Turkish readers with a beautiful view into the Turkishmindset,butinher other novels, sheisasjustasfixatedonmuchmoremodernissues,suchastherisingprevalence of internet use in and its effects on culture and society. While certainly not academic texts by any stretch of the imagination, Nadels series can be seen as something of a primer in Turkish culture and folklore, both of today and yesterday, as well as an analysis of how both have changedovertime.

WorksCited

Nadel,Barbara.Petrified.London:Headline,2004.Print. zturk,Serdar."KaragzCoOpted:TurkishShadowTheatreoftheEarlyRepublic (19231945)."AsianTheatreJournal23.2(2006):292313.JSTOR.Web.20Mar.2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137056>. Smith,James."KaragzandHacivat:ProjectionsofSubversionandConformance."Asian TheatreJournal21.2(2004):18793.JSTOR.Web.10Mar.2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4145460>.