Aydemir

Fatma Aydemir

Fatma Aydemir (born 1986) is a German novelist, and a journalist for taz. She is the granddaughter of Kurdish-Turkish Gastarbeiter [guest workers], and grew up in a suburb of Karlsruhe.

She is known for her two novels Ellbogen (2017) and Dschinns (2022).

Her second novel is available in English translation as Djinns, trans. by Jon Cho-Polizzi (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2024; London: Peirene Press, 2024)

In 2019, Aydemir co-edited (with Hengameh Yaghoobifarah) a collection of essays about ethnic minority experiences in Germany:

Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum [“Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare”].

Dschinns (2022) / English translation: Djinns (2024)

Dschinns is a compelling family saga. It offers profound insights into how people respond to different forms of intersectional discrimination in Germany and in Turkey.

The novel is set in 1999 although with numerous flashbacks. The two main locations are ‘Rheinstadt’, an imaginary suburb of Karlsruhe, and Zeytinburnu, a district in Istanbul. (In the 1960s there were plans to build a new suburb of Karlsruhe called ‘Rheinstadt’, but they were abandoned).

Dschinns is a novel about the return of the repressed. It tells the story of the Yılmaz family and the secrets which haunt them. These hidden, unresolved traumas are the ‘djinns’ (spirits) which distort their lives.

At first, the Yılmazes seem to represent a typical Turkish-German family: the father, Hüseyin, came to West Germany in 1971 to work as a Gastarbeiter in a factory. Eight years later, in 1979, his wife and children joined him in Rheinstadt. We soon learn that the Yılmaz parents are (like Aydemir herself) of Kurdish descent, however, they have abandoned their Kurdish language and traditions in an attempt to conform to mainstream Turkish society. Therefore, The Yılmaz family face double discrimination. In Germany, they face discrimination as Turks. In Turkey, they face discrimination as Kurds.

Kristin Dickinson (see reading list below, p. 26) argues that: ‘Without asserting equivalence between forms of discrimination in Turkey and Germany, Aydemir’s novels show that, however different their desired outcomes, the logic of assimilation in each country operates similarly and remains equally impossible to achieve.’ The terrible silences within the family mirror the silences and gaps in German history and Turkish history. The family, and by extension, the modern nation-state, is depicted as requiring a vow of silence (omertà) in order to operate smoothly. It seems that the cost of integration into each respective Leitkultur (guiding culture) is high, as it requires repression and enforced silence.

The mother, Emine, sums this up when she thinks to herself: ‘Glücklich. Warum reden die Kinder ständig vom Glücklichsein? [...] Warum wollen sie immer, dass man glücklich ist? Kann man nicht einfach normal sein?’ (Dschinns, p. 308) [Happy. Why do the children always talk about being happy? Why do they always want to be happy? Can’t one just be normal instead?’]. This echoes the ironic title of Jeanette Winterson’s memoir, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? (2011). The Yılmaz parents embody the compulsion to be ‘normal’, i.e. effectively invisible, and the long-term damage that this repressive discipline causes to them. Their priority is to disappear into the mass of so-called ‘ordinary’ people, and no longer be a potential target of potential aggression. Their bland, dogged pursuit of ‘normality’ takes precedence over the pursuit of happiness. Faced with normative regimes both in Europe and in Turkey, the Yılmaz parents decide that security is paramount, even if it requires the imposition of a blanket of silence. But this normative ‘security blanket’ turns out to be a stifling, suffocating one.

Each chapter tells one family member’s story, often through flashbacks:

Hüseyin

At the beginning of the novel the father, Hüseyin, has just retired after working in a factory for 28 years. He has spent his life savings on buying a retirement flat in Istanbul. He dies of a heart attack. The family must rush to Istanbul to attend his funeral.

Ümit

Ümit is the youngest sibling. In the school football team, Ümit falls in love with another teenage boy, Jonas. Ümit writes a love letter to Jonas which is discovered. The football coach threatens to tell Ümit’s family about this incident, unless Ümit agrees to go to ‘conversion therapy’ twice a week, with Dr Schumann. The scenes with Dr Schumann depict the therapist as a bigot who is blinded by his own prejudices.

Sevda

Sevda is the eldest daughter. She was born in 1967, so in the novel, she is 32 years old. In 1979, when she was 12 years old, the family moved to Germany, and Sevda stayed behind for two years in Karlıdağ to look after her grandparents. In 1981, after two years of domestic drudgery, her father brought her over to Germany and she could rejoin her family. As a result, she was raised illiterate and was not allowed to attend school until she was fifteen, when her parents finally allowed her to attend a German language class. Ironically, Sevda’s best friend in Germany, Havva, also belongs to an ethnic minority – she is from a family of Christian Arabs in Hatay in southern Turkey. Havva is a big fan of the famous transgender singer, Bülent Ersoy.

We learn that when Sevda was 17, back in the mid-1980s, her parents pressurised her to get married. She marries Ihsan, but it is an unhappy marriage – Ihsan spends all his free time in the bar with his friends, leaving her alone. Sevda gives birth to two children, a boy (Cem) and a girl (Bahar). She finds a job in a laundry. One morning, she returns from her night shift to find that their flat has burned down. The two children are alright, but their father Ihsan, who was supposed to be looking after them, had left them alone in the flat so that he could go out drinking with his friends. Sevda tries to leave Ihsan, but her parents force her to go back to him. She takes over a pizzeria from an Italian woman, Mariella, and becomes a successful businesswoman. Ihsan loses his job and develops a drink problem. He smashes up the family home looking for money. Sevda changes the locks on him. At last, their marriage is over.

Peri

Perihan (Peri), the younger sister, is the family member who is most assimilated into mainstream German culture, the so-called ‘Leitkultur’ (guiding culture). Yet she concludes that assimilation requires immigrants to erase their own history: ‘Assimilation, dachte Peri, hatte eben keine Geschichte. Sie war das Gegenteil von Geschichte.’ (Dschinns, p. 182) [Assimilation, thought Peri, had no history. It was the opposite of history]. Peri has a doomed relationship with a privileged middle-class German boy called Arnim, who fails his Abitur and drops out. Like Aydemir herself, Peri has studied at university in Frankfurt am Main. She is now writing her Masters dissertation (Magisterarbeit) on Friedrich Nietzsche. Her exasperation with Nietzsche is extremely funny. She is turning away from Nietzsche, ‘weil er sie stumpf gemacht hat’ (Dschinns, p. 187) [because he has dulled her senses]. Peri tries explaining feminism and Simone de Beauvoir to her mother, with little success. Then Peri meets a handsome stranger called Ciwan from Kurdistan, who goes on demonstrations for the release of Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish leader. Ciwan encourages Peri to think about her own Kurdish heritage.

Hakan

Hakan, the older brother, is determined not to become like his father and so he has started his own business, selling used cars. He decides to drive all the way from Germany to Istanbul to attend the funeral, but unfortunately he gets high drinking too many cans of Red Bull, and is stopped by the police. By the time he is allowed on his way, he will miss the funeral. Hakan recalls that when he was a teenager, the police arrested him and his best friend Musti for spraying graffiti. His father was horrified and humiliated by this incident. Musti’s family sent him back to Turkey in disgrace. Ever since then, Hakan has avoided any conflict with his father, and he has played a role around his family, almost like Caspar the Friendly Ghost.

Emine

In the final chapter the mother, Emine, and her daughter Sevda are left alone in the flat in Istanbul. They confront each other. The family secrets are finally revealed!