Audio
Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç is a political scientist, freelance author and poet. In his work, he addresses anti-Muslim racism and engages with lived experiences of Muslims in Germany. We invited him to contribute written and spoken texts in relation to five objects of his choice. He wrote a story with five chapters, which sits somewhere between the autobiographical and fictional. They propose new perspectives on the things in this room, whilst describing the different feelings and memories these items might evoke.
Audio: In the MEK by Night
Read by Marcus Chavasse
Translation: Susanne Boersma
It’s a minute after midnight and I crawl out of my hiding place. By night, the museum is at its most beautiful. By night, shadows and secrets leap through the corridors, as something rumbles in the display cases. One after the other, I stretch my left and then my right leg over the cold marble floor, I move along, say my Bismillah and jump from one object to the next. The lid for the pilaf is large, it looks like a helmet, its tinned copper engraved. “Is a rice lid still a rice lid if it no longer covers any rice?” I asked my mum this morning. She didn't really know how to answer that question. After all, her kitchen, too, contains lids that remain stagnant for days, sometimes for weeks. “But a museum is not a kitchen,” I remember her saying as I inspect the leaves and vines, including the little flowers on drop-shaped decorations, which have carefully been cut into the shimmering metal. Sentences in Arabic script run horizontally around the lid. I say Bismillah again and open my backpack. I unpack: a packet of rice, a bottle of olive oil, a large onion, two cloves of garlic, vegetable stock, salt and pepper. Out of my trouser pocket, I pull a cinnamon stick. And bay leaves, cumin, turmeric, saffron, sultanas, almonds and pine nuts. The smells bring back memories. I light the camping stove that was last used on the car journey to Turkey during the summer holidays. At motorway service stations, in parks, at border crossings. And then again, on the way back to Almanya, our suitcases stuffed with paprika pulp, dried aubergines and mulberries. Cooking pots and plates not only soothe the stomach, they also soothe the aching heart. I wash the rice, sauté the onions and garlic until translucent, fry the rice, pour in the stock, add the spices, leave everything to simmer for 15 minutes and cover this midnight snack. Now the pilaf lid is a pilaf lid once again. “But is a museum still a museum if it smells like Nene's kitchen?” I ask my mum.
I remember my grandmother cooking, music playing in the background. Amca is playing the saz, Dede sings Fairuz. And Leila, the neighbour's daughter, joins in with the flute. The zurna is made out of plum wood, its sound shrill. Leila wants to play at weddings. She takes lessons and diligently learns the breathing techniques. She blows air through the instrument without interrupting its sound. She plays to ‘Damat Halayı’, the groom's dance. And ‘Erik Dalı Gevrektir’, the branch of the plum tree is fragile. And ‘All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’ by Beyoncé. That’s when everyone freaks out and fights over the bridal bouquet. Leila would have loved this zurna here. It is 32 cm long and has a diameter of 3 cm. The 6 tone holes on top are burnt at an angle. It comes from Bosnia. I wonder when it was made, when it left the country and how, what the zurna knows about the Bosniak Genocide in central Europe, not so long ago. Who owned the instrument, whose breath whistled through the pipe, is any of it still left? I wonder at whose weddings the zurna played, what instruments accompanied it, how people danced, what songs they sang and how they would have danced halay to Leila's interpretation of Beyoncé.
I play the zurna, the shrill sound of which echoes through the room and gets entrapped in every corner. A third display case opens: the Quran bag is made of red fabric, interwoven with gold and silver thread. The fabric is decorated with green, blue and pink embroidery. I reach for the bag and swap it for the tote bag that I usually carry with me on the Berlin underground. On the bag, some text in Arabic script reads: this text has no other purpose than to instil fear in those who are afraid of the Arabic language. It’s just a joke. But the fact that there really are people who fear Arabic, and indeed hate Muslims, is no joke. They believe that the Quran tells a scary story and that Islam is a demon. It is nonsense. The Quran is, if anything, a collection of poems, a very beautiful one at that, and God is a poet. He invites the reader to His paradise, “rushed by rivers, to dwell therein forever.” The world, too, is One of His poems, and so are the forests, the animals and the mountains, Dede said. Goethe wrote about God's poems as well, Dede said, but nobody told me that in my German lessons.
“Is the Quran eternal?
I do not ask about that!
Whether the Quran was created?
I do not know that! That it is the book of books,
I believe out of Muslim duty,”
Dede quoted from West-Eastern Diwan.
A poem must be shared, said Dede. And what could be better than this Quran bag for carrying Goethe's Diwan further, so that the word, like the person, also wanders.
I remember that Nene and I came from the market, our hands only just able to carry the shopping bags. Şiddetli yağmur yağdı, it was pouring down with rain. We sought shelter under an awning in a narrow alleyway, next to us, a man was kneeling on the ground, soaking wet, rain dripping down his hair onto his nose and mouth, in his hands a wooden beggar’s bowl shaped like a wide, flat lip. The man was silent, but the bowl spoke. It said: “Righteousness does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or towards the west; true righteousness consists in believing in Allah and the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the Prophets, and in giving away one's property in love of Him to one's kinsmen, the orphans, the poor and the wayfarer, and to those who ask.” Did you hear that, asked Nene? Did you hear what the wooden lip in the man's hand said? Yes, I replied. It was a verse from the Quran. It means that giving is an act of worship, too. I reached into my trouser pocket and put coins on the tongue. And Nene handed the man bread and fruit from one of the bags. Sharing also means seeing one another, Nene said, addressing the man. “Shall we eat together whilst we listen to the rain?” she asked. “Barak Allahu fikum,” the man replied, “God bless you”.
The rain let up. Nene and I straightened up. “I have something for you,” said the man. He reached into his pocket and handed me a necklace, a tawiz, a talisman. I remember its black fabric with a piece of parchment sewn into it. “There's a verse from the Quran in it,” he said, “the tawiz will protect you from illness, from evil. It will bless you, it will heal.” “Does it also give you courage?” I asked, as I was afraid to go to school. Afraid of the maths exam, afraid of German lessons. Afraid of the stares, of the bad-mouths. I wore the talisman every day, I felt it wrapped around my body like a spell. Sometimes, I dreamt that it gave me superpowers: flying would be wonderful, or teleporting, so that I could go through all walls and cross all national borders whenever I wanted, I could visit Nene and Dede, and I would land on top of the fig tree in the garden. The superpowers never came, but I wrote down these dreams. Here, in the museum, I have found a new heart for this text. In the display case, I see a rectangular, metallic container covered with gemstones and coloured glass stones. A large purple gem in the middle, surrounded by small turquoise and red gems. The corners and edges are decorated as well. The amulet sparkles, the pearls jingle. I put the dream inside, I close the container and all the stones start to glow. The metal vibrates, I place it around my neck and a strong wind blows through the room, lifting me and all the things from the display cases up into the sky. The wind carries us to the top of the fig tree in my grandparents' garden, the fabrics and bags, the scrolls and jugs, the plates and flutes are scattered around the branches. Nene looks out of the window, startled, and sees me sit there on the top of the tree, and calls out to me: “You're back at last, my son. But tell me, what are these things you've brought back from Almanya?”
Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç writes academic texts, as well as columns, essays, radio plays and poems. In 2023, he published his highly acclaimed book ‘Muslimaniac. Die Karriere eines Feindbildes’ (Muslimaniac. The career of an enemy image) was published by Verbrecher Verlag, and the year before, he made his debut with the poetry collection ‘Prinzenbad’ published by Elif Verlag. He was nominated for the Heidelberg Clemens Brentano Prize and the Dresden Poetry Prize. His texts have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Arabic, Kazakh and Czech. He lives in Berlin and is currently working on a novel.