NOVEL BY ORHAN KEMAL

                        BIRDS OF EXILE

 Synopsis

 Come the 1950s, Istanbul is swept by a new wave of construction and development. And this has drawn hordes of villagers to the city to work on building sites. Memed is one such bird of exile. Gafur, a fellow countryman who arrived in Istanbul two years ago, has written to Memed suggesting he comes to the city too. Memed takes his advice but there is no work to be had. Eventually, Memed meets Hadji Emmi, a character who finds work and lodgings for the worker community. Soon enough Memed lands a job, where he gets to know Recep, a master bricklayer. Recep teaches Memed to read and build walls.

Memed meets Ayşe, a maid in the mansion across from where Memed is working. Gafur happens to be staying in the same mansion and sexually harasses Ayşe. When Ayşe falls in love with Memed, Gafur is overtaken by a growing sense of hostility. When he gets mixed up in an incident of physical abuse, Gafur ends up in jail. Ayşe and Memed get married and set about building themselves an illegal shanty with their savings. However, their home is later razed by the municipality. Memed is devastated. Gafur grins at him not far away: he is now out of jail and has exacted his revenge. Ayşe, a tough woman, cannot bear to see Memed crumpled like this. The final words of the novel are delivered by Ayşe: “Get up off your backside, come on! We’ll build a new one!”

 About the Novel

 An accomplished figure of the realism movement in fiction, Orhan Kemal recreates in this novel a palpable, historic landscape of Turkish society set against the backdrop of 1950s Istanbul. The period is one that saw the advent of cheap labour and profiteers to exploit it, the proliferation of sharks and the emergence of the newly rich.

 And the atmosphere of the novel is coloured by the dismal, narrow world of construction workers, illegal shanties, partisan politics, political intrigue and the trials of moving from village to city. Taking a socio-political perspective, Kemal presents a sequence of events and action, both tragic and comic, that are the result of economic change, migration, industrialisation, urbanisation and clashes of culture.

 The portrayal of characters in the novel is particularly powerful, Memed being a case in point. The character springs to life in our mind’s eye when, for example, he draws comparison between village and city on arrival in Istanbul; and again, when taunted about his provincial origins in Istanbul, he naively launches into a description of his father, oblivious to the implied ridicule.

 A master of the spoken word, Orhan Kemal displays his skill once more in this novel, bringing dynamism to his narrative through consistently rich dialogues.

Orhan Kemal Kültür - Sanat Merkezi
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