Memory is a responsibility

Sense and Sensibility - A Conversation Beyond Borders (Viviane Reding & Elif Shafak) | DLDwomen 14

Stories

"Audre Lorde once said, 'the white fathers taught us to say, I think, therefore I am.' She suggested: 'I feel, therefore I am free'. I think it was a wonderful paradigm shift. And yet, why is it that in creative writing courses, today, the very first thing we teach students, is 'write what you know'. Perhaps that's not the right way to start, at all. Imaginative literature is not necessarily about writing who we are or what we know, or what our identity is about. We should teach young people and ourselves to expand our hearts and write about what we can feel. We should get out of our cultural getto and go visit the next one and the next one... In the end, stories move like whirling dervishes, drawing circles beyond circles. They connect all humanity regardless of identity politics."
Aqui
Elif Shafak

Closing her eyes for a moment, Ella prophesied to herself with jubilant conviction and confidence what the days ahead would bring her. She had never been on her own like this before, and yet, oddly enough, she didn't feel lonely.
"I've missed you, baby," she said. "And I've missed your brother and sister, too. Will you come to see me?"
"Of course I will, mamma — we will — but what are you going to do now? Are yu sure you aren't coming back?" 
"I'm going to Amsterdam," Ella said. "They have incredibly cute little flats there, overlooking the canals. I can rent one of those I'll need to improve my biking. I don't know... I'm not going to make plans, honey. I'm going to try living one day at a time. I'll see what my heart says. It is one of the rules, isn't it?"
Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of love

"Two men were traveling from one town to another. They came to a stream that had risen due to heavy rainfall. Just when they were about to cross the water, they noticed a young woman standing there all alone, in need of help. One of the men went immediately to her side. He picked the woman up and carried her in his arms across the stream. Then he dropped her there, waved good-bye, and the two men went their way.
During the rest of the trip, the second traveler was unusually silent and sullen, not responding to his friends questions. After several hours of sulking, unable to keep silent anymore, he said, "Why did you touch that woman? She could have seduced you! Men and woman cannot come into contact like that!"
The first man responded calmly, "My friend, I carried the woman across the stream, and that is where I left her. It is you who have been carrying her ever since.""
Elif Shafak, The Forty rules of Love

Mirror, mirror

"Bountiful is your life, full and complete. Or so you think, until someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all the time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul — the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours. All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror."
Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of love

Come, let us be friends for once

Come, let us be friends for once.
Let us make life easy on us
Let us be lovers
And loved ones
The Earth shall be left to no one.
Yunus Emre
[poema Sufi]

storytelling

A wandering dervish arrived in a town where the natives didn't trust strangers. "Go away!" They shouted at him. "No one knows you here!"
The dervish calmly responded, "Yes, but I know myself, and believe me, it would have been much worse if it were the other way round."
Elif Shafak, in The Forty Rules of Love