If, like this reviewer, you are not familiar with the work of the late Turkish writer, activist, and Member of Parliament Halide Edib Adivar, Soul Climate by Ines Baranay will make you seek Halide’s books out. At a time when the ties between India and Turkiye have frayed, Baranay has explored the connection between the two through Halide’s visit to India.
The story is an inventive braiding of memoir, fact, and fiction. Breaking the fourth wall, there are chapters where the author tells the reader directly where her imagination has come into play. The narrative unfolds at a gentle pace, is filled with socio-political nuggets, and is more driven by ideas than plot.
The factual part of the book deals with a trip that Halide Edib made to India in 1935, fulfilling a promise made to an Indian friend, Dr Mukhtar Ansari, whom she had met in Turkiye. Halide, an intellectual and freedom fighter, visited India when the country was fighting for independence. She gave lectures, travelled, and met important figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, whom she would go on to spend time with.
Baranay gives us a perspective of the country through Turkish freedom fighter Halide Edib Adivar’s eyes, and then gives her own thoughts on the same
The fictional aspect of the book concerns three cousins and close friends—Zoya, Aisha, and Nuran— staying at Dr Ansari’s house in Delhi. Their coming-of-age story is set against the backdrop of the freedom struggle. As they meet Halide and attend her lectures, their ideas and opinions begin to take shape. This, in turn, impacts the kind of choices they make in their life. As India navigates the complexities of independence, the stories of these three young Indian Muslim women show us how the political reality plays out at a personal level.
Baranay gives us a perspective of the country through Halide’s eyes, and then gives her own thoughts on the same. The two combined lead to interesting reflections. Halide writes about the terms she encounters: communalism, nationalism and socialism. This gives the author room to dwell on all three and their relevance today, and she goes on to extrapolate on how the meaning of being a nationalist has changed.
Halide was perceptive enough to realise even back then that there is a Hindu India and a Muslim India. She accepts this duality without probing the part that years of colonial rule played in engendering it. She does feel, though, that this division works against the unity the country is striving for.
The idea of patriotism and what it means is discussed. Halide considered herself patriotic and was a freedom fighter herself. However, as her ideas for her country and the direction it should take clashed with the ruling dispensation, she was forced to go into exile. It is made clear to the reader that the definition of patriotism is decided by those in charge. So, a person like Halide found herself banished, denied the rights of her citizenship.
In another engaging detour, the author talks about present-day Delhi and how it is not the city Halide had visited long ago. In the ongoing process of memory and forgetting, certain things are conveniently dredged up from the past while other bits are obliterated. And so it stands to reason that contrary to what Halide thought would happen, a nationalist like Dr Ansari is not honoured, and neither is his house, that haven of inclusivity, retained as a national monument. When Baranay finally gets to see pictures of the house, it is quite poignant; the house comes alive on the page through detailed description.
The choice to eschew punctuation in quite a few places is distracting, and the digressions by the author do feel a tad stretched in places. However, in exploring the ideas of the past and their relevance and change in today’s context, Soul Climate makes for an absorbing read.
In the preface to her memoir of India, Halide says it was closer to her ’soul climate’ than any other country. She meant that she felt both a sense of familiarity and belonging here. In the present divisive times, a book like this can remind us that it is commonality rather than differences between countries that should matter.