Kurdshop _ “Erfan Amida” started his literary works by writing poems first. Then he kept on his work in researching and translating. Finally, he began to write novels. “Don’t Close the Doors, the swallows will return” is his third novel.
“Don’t close the doors, the swallows will return” like Erfan Amida’s preceding novel is written in a language form that is hard to read for many readers but some think that it is a precious work. I believe the language form is hard to understand but once one gets into the depth of the novel it gets better and the language form becomes like a poetic form with philosophical, psychological, and social phrases. This helps the reader to pay attention to every sentence.
As I mentioned above there is hard language with short and muddled sentences and many pictures in this novel. Many words have been used in sentences that do not exist in the standard language. Many readers who do not know the subdialects of Mardin cannot understand the text easily. The short and muddled sentences make understanding the meaning even harder which leads to a novel that is hard to be understood. There are a small number of dialogues. However, the notes and clarifications both within the dialogues and after them are so hard to get that sometimes the reader forgets what the dialogue was about. The dialogues get lost in the atmosphere, the characters, and their psychological conditions and this ends in making the dialogues too hard to comprehend. Those characters who have misbehaved in society begin to analyze society. They talk so philosophically that people forget their duties in society, which means that the writer mingles with the characters.
There is no main plot in the novel. Every story leads the reader to another story and none of them finish at the end. All the stories remain unfinished. However, we can say that it is generally a novel about immigration and it is the story of four immigrants.
The first story is about Nasima and Zarifa who have come from a faraway country to Nisebin and they have lived there; have married there; have had their children there but they still do not feel that they belong to that place and see themselves as immigrants.
The second story is about Zarga and her daughter Shilan. They have moved from Laleshew to Nisebin and Zarga’s husband Piro is a soldier in Rojava. They, too do not feel they belong to that city just like Nasima and Zarifa and they are waiting for Piro to take them away from that place.
_ “Will we return back to Rojava to Daddy?”
_ “No, let your father come here.”
_ “Will we go to Shangal?” (p. 80)
Such dialogues happen several times between Zarga and her daughter Shilan. Through reading these dialogues it appears that they do not like to stay in Nisebin.
The third story is about Osman. First, he moved to Istanbul from Nisebin and later he returned back to Nisebin. But in Osman’s story, unlike the other stories so far, we do not see a search for finding oneself or trusting in oneself. Although sometimes some guys had told him to return back to where he came from. “He was in that city before, let him go back to where he came from.” (p. 94) Osman had heard such words many times but he never listened to them. We can say that Osman is a protesting voice in this novel. He and the young revolutionary figures debate many times; they even feel hurt by Osman’s ideas and they even act against him sometimes. An example of Osman and the young soldiers’ dialogues: “_ This time he will drown in the world. Kurds have never been so much popular. Friends, support us. Today all the other nations believe in us. We are not alone.” (p. 210) Osman’s answer to these words is like the following:
_ “No lamb has ever been sacrificed for our Ishmaels”.
_ “We are not anyone’s Ishmael, either dear Osman.” (p. 211)
The fourth story in this novel is about immigrating from Nisebin. So many times in this novel it is mentioned that a lot of people have prepared themselves to leave this city and some of them still are preparing to do so.
As we mentioned above there is no plot for this novel and it is simply made up of four stories about immigration. After these examples we can easily say that this novel is about immigration and the plot is actually about immigration but each story starts from Nisebin and it is not a good shelter for the characters.
There is another character in this novel that we cannot ignore because if we do so this review would be unfinished. This character is Sufi Kisa (Sufi means an old man who believes in Sufism). Sufi Kisa is a special character that is recognizable in our society. He owns a large amount of property and he is so greedy that he puts a kind of bag (Kisa) under the goats’ udder so that their kids would not drink the milk. He puts grapes in a bag while they are still on the grapevines so that birds would not eat them. Before Sufi Kisa decides to move he is putting bags over the grapes and tells Zarga: “_ it is such a waste dear that birds and other creatures eat these grapes and children pick them”. (p. 179) Here we can see that Sufi Kisa is a greedy character and whatever belongs to him will not be shared with anyone else. Even if he has to move away from that city he still cannot let birds or children eat those grapes. It is better to keep them in bags even if they get rotted rather than letting birds and children eat them. Zarga’s response to Sufi Kisa makes him look another way and keep silent. She says: “As long as you have to move away it is not important that what or who gets to eat those. If they stay on this vine they will rot.” (p.179)
If the nest is not destroyed, the migrated will be back. Our characters also return to their roots because they cannot abandon their roots for if they do so they would die eventually, they would face the emptiness, they would get lost, … Amida’s novel is about leaving and coming back however, in order to let someone return, the doors need to stay open, the nest must remain intact.
Those nights that owls are wandering around, the mornings will not be very shiny my son. Those owls on the terrace will eat up the morning. Swallow birds are different. Their breaths help the morning shine. (p. 151)
