book reviews - 50 - Excursions into the literary world - Part One: Bize Dair/Pink Butterflies

Heidi Trautmann

50 - Excursions into the literary world - Part One: Bize Dair/Pink Butterflies – Aydin Mehmet Ali
7/22/2009

I had gone to Famagusta by bus to meet my friend Aydin Mehmet Ali to work on our interview and some poetry texts of our mutual friends. She met me at the bus terminal with her bicycle and we walked all the way back, along the walls of the old city, passing the harbour towards Maraş on the coast to where she lives in a flat facing the sea. There is always a good breeze, I realized, and there are always pigeons, swallows, sea gulls and bats circling around the high building looking for nesting possibilities.

For two days we talked nothing but literature. We were looking for the appropriate texts from her books and publications to include in my interview with her. (The interview will be part of my book “Art and Creativity in North Cyprus” Volume II”). We went through various books and anthologies where her short stories were included, discussed her work as educational consultant and peace activist, as a consultant adviser to the London Mayor and to numerous education and cultural establishments for me to grasp the wide arc of her personality and life time work. (See her separate CV for full details).

Aydin has been living in London for about 40 years and came back to Cyprus in 2006. Her ties to Cyprus have never been cut or loosened. In 2005 she published her first short story collection Bize Dair/Pink Butterflies including the poems of her sister Gülfidan Erhürman who has always lived in Cyprus.

As an introduction to the book she says a few words:

“One of us lives in London and writes in English, the other in Cyprus and writes in Turkish. One writes poetry, the other short stories. We debated whether to translate each story

and each poem into the other’s language. We have decided to leave our emotions, pains, thoughts, angers, hopes, loves and love for life in the original languages we have lived them through and publish this book in our two languages. Only a few poems have been translated into English.

As two sisters, that is our reality. The reality of our devided selves and that of Cypriots.

We have been apart for forty years. Our separation is as old as the history of the division of Cyprus. Our personal is political. Yet we have always been together. This book is a symbol of that. And we hope of our divided island feeling its way to unity and healing of wounds…

London/Nicosia 2003”

In her short stories she lets us take part in short scenes of lives of her people, painting pictures of small events, of dialogues about the hardships of lives lived, memories of childhood. She touches and opens wide taboo areas with stories of intimate character, the anxiety of breaking the rules always present in her people blocking the way for a freer life. Is she a woman writer?

I think she is a writer taking the side of the helpless, the mute, the minorities, trying to make us understand. Her stories are eye-openers, shaking us to awareness and understanding.

Her book Bize Dair/Pink Buttierflies is available at the Isik Booksho in Nicosia-North, Muflon Bookshop in Nicosia-South; or via

email: fz-aydinmehmetali@freezone.co.uk

Aydin Mehmet Ali was born in Cyprus and lives in London. She was educated in Cyprus, USA and Britain. She is an international education consultant, project manager, researcher and writer. As a well-known intellectual community activist and advocate of multiculturalism and multilingualism, she has spoken at international conferences and her work appeared in numerous publications. She has set up and managed many empowerment projects in the UK and in Cyprus. Her work focuses on young people and women. She is a passionate campaigner for peace in Cyprus and amongst Cypriots in the Diaspora. She has been a consultant adviser to the London Mayor and to numerous education and cultural establishments.
She is the author of the acclaimed book, Turkish Speaking Communities & education - no delight (2001) and editor and translator of Turkish Cypriot Identity in Literature (1990). She is an award winning author and her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Diaspora City (2003), Uncut Diamonds (2003,), Index (July 2002), Crossing the Border (2002) and Weeping Island (2000), and in the journals Cadences (2005), Exiled Ink! (2005) and Orient Express (2005).

Her work was part of the art installation, Bedtime Story, at the [IN] visible exhibition, London, 2005. Her poetry translations and articles on literature have appeared in Mother Tongues, Journal of Poetry in Translation (2001), Agenda Poetry Journal (2002), The Silver Throat of the Moon: Writing in Exile (2005), Klandestini website (2004), Negating the Silence (2003), Nicosia (1995), Cadences (2005), Orient Express (2005) and have been performed at numerous international poetry festivals and on radio for over fifteen years. She has done readings in a number of venues including the October Gallery as part of the renowned International Music Village Festival, Soho Theatre, Birkbeck College, Waterstone’s Bookshop, the Fawcett Women’s Library and Deptford Artists Studios, London. She is editing an anthology of Turkish Speaking Women’s writing in London. She has organised Arts and Literature festivals, bilingual creative writing workshops, poetry and short story competitions for Turkish Speaking Women, Cypriot poetry evenings in Turkish, Greek and English, seminars, exhibitions for individual artists, Arts workshops for parents and young people, projects using the Arts to diffuse racial tensions and conflict between different communities. She recently managed four projects, including The way we are, a multicultural and multi-lingual photographic project, in the north and south of Cyprus, with Cypriotturkish, Cypriotgreek, Cypriotroma, settler and mixed heritage children. She took part in numerous documentaries and Arte TV broadcasted a documentary in France and Germany about part of her life (2004).