Ümit Hussein recently translated Secret Dreams in Instanbul and spoke with H. L. Schmidt about the experience of translating a work that encompasses psyche, memory, and philosophy.
What is the novel about?
My answer to that question could be quite lengthy. It’s about a lot of things but, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say it’s a novel of intrigue, set in contemporary Istanbul. Here is a brief synopsis:
One evening Pilar, the novel’s Spanish protagonist, returns from work to discover that her husband, Eyüp, has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from the home they share in Barcelona. She learns from the police the following morning that he has boarded a plane for Istanbul, the city of his birth that he has not visited since he left it almost two decades previously. Mystified as to what could have provoked such uncharacteristic behaviour, and assailed by her own insecurities, she decides to follow him there and bring him back. Packing a tiny bag with just a few clothes and the dream diary that Eyüp’s psychologist has asked him to keep in an attempt to get to the bottom of what has been perturbing his sleep, she sets off for Istanbul, where she will embark on a journey of painful discovery. Meeting Eyüp’s dysfunctional family, from which he has been as good as estranged since before she has known him, and his friends, and seeing for the first time the city where he grew up, she will piece together the clues to uncover the horrifying truth about what drove Eyüp away.
Each chapter is narrated from the perspective of a different character, beginning with Pilar, and continuing with Müesser, Eyüp’s long suffering and resigned unmarried elder sister, Veysel, Eyüp’s belligerent and embittered elder brother, Perihan, Veysel’s spiteful, mean-spirited wife, and two minor characters, Bülent, Veysel’s twelve year old son, and Bünyamin, Perihan’s younger brother. Each chapter is followed by a dream from Eyüp’s dream diary. These dreams, which begin very frivolously, grow progressively more serious as Eyüp remembers more and more of his dreams, until the disturbing climax which ends the novel.
More broadly, I think the novel highlights how it feels to be a victim, of domestic violence, of one’s gender, of one’s social class, of one’s biological clock, of one’s complexes, of social taboos, of social expectations, of one’s physical, intellectual and financial limitations, of one’s own family. It’s about facing up to one’s insecurities and confronting one’s demons. It’s about the age-old issue of sibling rivalry. It’s about the role of memory in the human psyche. In short, this is a very readable work, that piques the reader’s curiosity from page one, but be warned, it also touches raw nerves and will provoke indignation and pain, alongside deep compassion.
Why did you feel the need to translate this book?
To use a somewhat frivolous simile, if you have a diamond necklace, you don’t want to leave it locked away in a drawer where no-one can appreciate it when you can display it for all the world to see.
I am a translator, I have the very great privilege of making it possible for Anglophones to enjoy the literature of other languages. I am also a reader. When an avid consumer of literature encounters a book that leaps out from all the others and lodges itself in their mind, that is not something to be taken lightly. I first read this novel in 2012, when I was commissioned to translate a section. It wasn’t until 2016 that I received the go ahead (at my instigation) to translate the whole thing.
This is Nermin Yɪldɪrɪm’s second novel. She has since written another five, all of them very fine and more successful than this one. Yet it was Secret Dreams in Istanbul I felt compelled to translate. Whilst re-reading it, four years after my initial reading, I had a rare, surreal experience, whereby it was almost unnecessary to keep reading because I remembered practically every word. I don’t recall that ever happening to me, either before or since.
When a novel is so memorable and carves such a deep impression on one’s mind, it becomes morally imperative to share it with other readers. Nermin Yıldırım is well loved and respected in Turkey, but is as yet relatively unknown in the English speaking world. I want to be instrumental in introducing her and her work to a wider audience. Literature is life changing, it has given me great personal satisfaction to pave the way for this troubling, yet refreshing novel to change the lives of Anglophone readers.
Okay, so I think I’ve made it pretty clear I like the book. The translator’s enthusiasm for a work is obviously a good starting point; being passionate about an assignment increases the likelihood of success or, at the very least, enhances the pleasure of the translation process. I cannot, however, attribute my desire to translate it solely to my own affinity for it; my strong urge to make it known to others transcends that. I have a firm belief that this is a book with important messages and that everyone should read it, rather like Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, or Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. By making these comparisons I am not of course presuming to equate Secret Dreams in Istanbul with those works, I am merely referring to the relevance of what it has to say, particularly, but by no means exclusively, to women. It is a book that clamours against injustice, not only to women, but to the weak in general. It is a novel that raises awareness, whilst remaining strongly rooted in the literary genre. By that, I mean it is not a feminist or political treatise, but an impeccably plotted novel, written in Nermin Yɪldɪrɪm’s unique poetic prose.
Secret Dreams in Istanbul contains all the elements of a good read: it has a gripping story, is peopled with interesting, well-rounded characters, is written in an accomplished literary style and manages to be both heartbreaking and humorous at the same time. Perhaps its most important virtue however, is an understanding of humans that goes so deep it makes it possible to comprehend and even sympathise with the most unsavoury individuals. There are no real heroes or heroines in this book, but, once you scratch beneath the surface, there are no, (or almost no) real villains in the true sense of the word either. When you understand the reasons why someone behaves in a certain way, it becomes impossible to despise or judge them. Nermin Yɪldɪrɪm has an acute awareness of the human condition and writes like a psychologist. Yet she is not, she simply possesses a great deal of emotional intelligence and the maturity of a much older writer than she was when she penned this novel. Nermin Yɪldɪrɪm is able to portray a character committing monstrous acts on the one hand and then, a few chapters later, paint him in a very endearing light when she shows him as a small child waging war on the household mosquitoes in an attempt to win his sister’s love. As with life itself, there is no black or white in this novel, it is a complex, unsettling, thought-provoking work, where the darkest, most repellent characters somehow manage to find redemption.
How is your work relevant to everyday life?
Secret Dreams in Istanbul is a work of literary fiction, but deals with issues that are very prevalent in our society, particularly, but not exclusively, in Turkey. It speaks to people from all spheres of life, transcending age, gender, social class and cultural background. Although it is largely set in Istanbul, and is about a family with traditional values, many of the issues treated in the book are universal. At no point does the reader get the impression that this is about people far removed from her own reality; on the contrary, one of the reasons why this book is so tragic is because, no matter who or where we are, the term, “There but for the grace of God go I” rings all too true.
The problems that assail the characters in this novel are, in varying degrees, evils that afflict everyday people in everyday life: the ticking of the biological clock and, on the other end of the spectrum, self-induced abortion, domestic violence, loss of “honour”, favouritism within the family, feelings of exclusion, inferiority complexes and, above all, the condition of being downtrodden, undervalued, insignificant, vulnerable to the oppression of those more powerful than oneself. None of this is alien to us today. Monday 8 March is International Women’s Day; almost all of the issues discussed in this novel are relevant to the battles women have been fighting for over a century to combat the injustices they have been facing since the beginning of time.
Although Pilar is the main protagonist, if indeed there is a protagonist in this novel told from multiple perspectives, the character who made the most lasting impression on me is Perihan. She is spiteful, uncouth, pretentious, self interested, covetous, yet, despite all of that, resonates with me to a far greater extent than anyone else in the book. I have thought long and hard about how it is possible for someone so unlikeable to work her way so deeply under my skin. After considerable deliberation I reached the conclusion that many women will see themselves reflected in her. Pilar for example, is educated, attractive, affluent and independent. She is in the privileged minority and therefore not at all representative of the average woman, particularly (beauty aside!) of the average woman in Turkey. Perihan, on the other hand, or rather Perihan’s condition, is quintessentially unexceptional, she has neither intelligence, beauty, charm nor wealth to recommend her. Her circumstances are those of countless other fatherless girls from deprived backgrounds. She is highly flawed and knows it, there is nothing admirable or sympathetic about her, yet still she casts an enduring sense of melancholy over the reader. Perhaps because her feeble attempts to rebel against her situation backfire so dramatically. She is unpleasant, yet the price she has to pay for her sins far outweighs the sins themselves.
After the premature death of her father, she, her mother and her younger brother are forced to depend on the grudging charity of relatives. Perihan grows up in cramped houses, with no space to call her own (once again Virginia Woolf comes to mind) and no possessions that are truly hers. It is not surprising she feels compelled to flaunt everything she acquires in later life:
Because she had always had to partake in what others had owned and been forced to be grateful for what they had tossed to her out of charity, ownership meant a very very great deal to Perihan.
I am reminded of Eva Peron, who was not able to shake off the shadow of her early destitution either. On the Spanish leg of her famous Rainbow Tour, the first lady insisted on wearing her fur coat at the height of summer, even though at one point she actually fainted from the heat.
The extreme sadness that Perihan’s character evokes is not just pity, it is the realisation that “that could be me”. Her aspirations and frustrations and feelings of inadequacy will strike a chord with many women, rich and poor alike. The whole of this book triggers intense emotions, but it is arguably the observations made by Perihan in the chapters told through her eyes that penetrate the deepest. Appalling things happen to her, but in that respect she is not alone in the novel. What distinguishes her plight is her capacity for self analysis. Through the voice of the narrator she examines herself and her situation and, at least in the private recesses of her mind, lays bare the stark truth about herself and her existence. She exposes ugly, perturbing facts, and yet no-one can censure her. All her life she has been made to feel inferior and inconsequential. She despises everyone who is similar to herself, precisely because she is aware of how unappealing she is, and feels threatened by everyone who is different:
Every time she looked in the mirror, she tried to find what was lacking in her face. She was lacking in eyes and over-endowed where her nose was concerned, but it was something else that prevented her from looking beautiful no matter what she did, something that went deeper. After spending years searching in mirrors for the feature she lacked, she eventually realised that what had penetrated so deep inside her she could never wipe herself clean of it was her past, her past that she believed, in her heart of hearts, was what she deserved.
Even more than the harrowing events that take place in the book, it is confessions like these that etched themselves into my heart as I was reading. It is painful to witness the total erosion of another human being’s self esteem. There is one image I find particularly haunting, when Perihan, who is nothing and nobody, is awed by Pilar’s ability to impose her will so effortlessly:
Perihan envied her sister-in-law and wondered what it would feel like to be heeded so absolutely. For that to happen would she have to wear a green dress, or be born in a different country? Or would she have to be an architect, drink only coffee in the morning and walk around intimidating everyone with her withering look? Was there still a chance she might ever become such a person?
Perihan feels utterly crushed in the presence of this assertive Western woman because she makes her feel all her own inadequacies more keenly. Perhaps the reason why this scene is so poignant for me is that, deep down, no matter how ostensibly confident or successful we may be, there is a touch of the fearful, self-doubting Perihan in all of us.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
I sincerely hope it will appeal to and make as much of a difference to other readers as it did to me. For a book to be able to make an impact however, people need to know about it, which is why I’m so grateful to the APA for providing me with this platform to talk about it. Hopefully the people who read this piece will feel motivated to read the novel too and then motivate others to read it. As far as I’m concerned, the greatest challenge is to put a book in the public eye, the idea being that once that first hurdle has been passed, it will be able to stand on its own and speak for itself. A work can be great, or good, or simply enjoyable, but no-one will be able to make that judgment if they don’t know it exists. It’s not easy to obtain a review in the mainstream press for a new work from an unknown author, particularly if it’s a translation. Fortunately however, there are alternatives, it’s just a matter of being creative and persistent. If I were the book’s writer, modesty would prevent me from praising it as highly as I have done in this piece but, being the translator, I am not bound by the same constraints. In fact, as well as the book’s translator, I have appointed myself as its ambassador. It requires a lot of dedication and energy, but is also very gratifying, and not entirely altruistic. So far I have not discussed the translation process, suffice it to say that it was an intense and extremely painstaking effort. Having worked so hard, it will give me tremendous satisfaction if the book does eventually receive the recognition it deserves.
I think this would be an ideal text for discussion in a book club, because it lends itself to endless debate. I would love to see it serialised on BBC Radio 4 and featured on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, where so many of the themes it deals with are treated on a regular basis. I also think it would be an interesting text to include on a Women’s Studies course. That does not, however, mean I believe its relevance is restricted to women and women’s issues, I think it is equally likely to enrich and give pleasure to a male readership.
What challenges did you find?
Aside from the fact that this is not in general an easy book to translate, there were two main challenges to deal with. The first was trying to remain true to its music and structure in the original language. In the Turkish version, many of the last words of each sentence rhyme. This is possible, firstly, because in Turkish the verb is placed at the end of a sentence and secondly, because past participles very often have the same endings. Here is an example:
Karɪsɪna alɪşmaya, hatta onu sevmeye bile çalɪştɪ. Kusurlarɪnɪ görmezden gelmeye uğraştɪ. [He tried to get used to his wife, to love her even. He tried to tolerate her faults.]
As I mentioned earlier, I first translated a section of this novel in 2012. The author and I had a lengthy discussion before I started, during which she told me she felt very strongly about maintaining that structure. I promised I would try, but realised very early on that it just wasn’t feasible in English, because of the different way sentences are ordered and because of the irregularity of verb endings. Initially I attempted to compensate by using a different technique; instead of rhyming the sentence endings, I used alliteration all the way through the sentence. It was a challenge looking for words that all had the same sound, and often it involved some tweaking of meaning but, at least at first, I was satisfied with the result. Here is an example of a sentence in which the s sound is repeated throughout:
While Pilar considered how best she could broach the subject, the woman, striving to melt the silence that had been moulded with ice, started talking.
When the time came to translate the whole thing, as opposed to the first 70 pages, which is what I did in 2012, I soon rejected that too as an option for an entire novel. At least for this kind of novel, where it is so crucial to maintain the serious tone. The book is humorous, but the messages it conveys are not and I quickly made the decision to prioritise the feel, rather than the sound of the language.
Translators love to write about how they overcame translation challenges, but sometimes it is equally important to acknowledge that the solution is to make sacrifices. Making that decision and acting on it is a form in itself of overcoming a challenge. It’s necessary to remember that what works in one language does not necessarily work in translation and to establish priorities. In this case it was to remain true to the message.
The other big translation challenge of this book was the title. In Turkish, Ruyalar Anlatɪlmaz literally means, You Mustn’t Tell Your Dreams, the word “Tell” being a very inadequate substitute for the verb “Anlatmak”, which means to relate, to narrate, as with the verb “racconter” in French, or “contar” in Spanish. I love the English language, but I sorely feel the lack of a satisfactory equivalent for this act of descriptive telling. In Turkish the title is snappy because there’s no pronoun, whereas in English it just sounds clumsy.
I must confess, I struggled very hard with the title. I needed to find something completely different from the original title that still conveyed the essence of its content. (In fact, in Turkish, the title remains an enigma for the reader until the end of the novel,) I toyed with several different alternatives, none of which convinced me one hundred per cent. I knew for certain I wanted to include the three evocative words, secret, dream and Istanbul, all of which are key elements of the novel. The challenge was how to combine them. For a large part of its life the work in progress was called Secrets Dreamed in Istanbul. It very nearly ended up becoming the definitive title, but I eventually discarded it on the grounds that the passive voice jarred; hence the birth of Secret Dreams in Istanbul. As its translator and fervent admirer, I will observe its progress with great interest.
Ümit Hussein
Ümit Hussein, of Turkish Cypriot origin, was born and grew up in London. She is now based in Seville, Spain. She has translated the work of several acclaimed authors and in 2018 her English translation of Burhan Sönmez’s Istanbul Istanbul won the inaugural EBRD Literature Prize. In addition to translating novels, she also works as a conference and tele-interpreter.
H. L. Schmidt
H. L. Schmidt currently holds the Becker Fellowship. She has worked as an editor or writer at multiple publications, including Qu, City Magazine, and The Verve. Schmidt is SOPHIA’s Chapter Development Officer and is a doctoral student in the University of Kentucky’s Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation Ph.D. program in Philosophical and Cultural Inquiry, where she focuses on how we develop, communicate, and sustain a personal moral code. She founded the Roanoke chapter of SOPHIA, has presented at a number of conferences, including Philosophy of the City’s 2019 Conference where she presented her research on the role of the public library in a just city. She is part of the leadership of the Philosophers for Sustainability group, where she co-leads the Social Media & Outreach team. At the APA Blog, she edits the Research beat, conducts interviews for the Recent Book Spotlight, and oversees the Diversity & Inclusion beat, which features the Women in Philosophy and Black Issues series. She hosted the Civic Connections podcast featuring conversations with local public policy officials about justice and public affairs. She holds a Master’s in the Humanities from Hollins University where she studied ethics and public policy under Lawrence C. Becker and a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Her interests include practical ethics, public policy, existentialism, and utilitarianism. You can follow her on Twitter @theheidifeed.
