The author and academic on her exploration of a ‘dark chapter’ in Turkish history, how working as a translator changed her view of the world, and her long friendship with novelist Orhan Pamuk
Maureen Freely, 71, was born in New Jersey and grew up in Istanbul. Her new book, My Blue Peninsula – the fourth in a loose series of novels set in the Turkish city – is narrated by a woman trying to understand her family’s role in the Armenian genocide. Freely, a former president of the human rights organisation English PEN, teaches at the University of Warwick and has translated widely from Turkish, including five books by Orhan Pamuk. She spoke from her home in Bath.
Why did you write My Blue Peninsula?
When Orhan got involved in the opening up of the Armenian “dark chapter”, as they call it in Turkey, he was prosecuted along with other friends of mine [in 2005]. He and the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink were the main targets; Orhan is alive today because he did the wise thing and put some distance between himself and the others. Because I’d grown up with so many Armenians in Istanbul in the 60s – they used to say kes, kes if they were talking about the slaughter, “cut, cut” [stop talking] – I stayed involved in the movement, just following it, helping write speeches and translating the biography of Hrant Dink, who was assassinated [after discussing the genocide]. What I came to understand was that the people involved in opening up that history are direct descendants of the perpetrators, or else beneficiaries – there was a lot of empty property – because post-Ottoman families were everything: a lot of people are descended from perpetrators and beneficiaries and victims. My Blue Peninsula tries to figure out how we live with these legacies.
