When Allah wants a pauper to be happy First he makes him lose his donkey Then he lets him find it A lost donkey and a collection of stories don't appear to have much in common. But the joy of finding each of them lies in the renewed appreciation for something vital that perhaps was taken for granted. For his livelihood's sake, a pauper mustn't lose his donkey; for humanity's sake, we mustn't lose our desire to listen to - and recognize ourselves in - the voices of others. Nuri's Donkey takes readers to a remote village in Turkey, where they will discover funny, bittersweet, and stranger-than-fiction tales about people who are not so different after all. In 1982 I went to this village with my then-husband to meet my in-laws. None of the villagers had ever seen an American or heard a foreigner speaking Turkish, so I was quite a novelty! Each day curious onlookers would gather at the house to stare and ask me questions . . . my sisters-in-law, feeling obliged to protect me, would try to shoo them all away. Four-year-old Yucel was persistent: he followed me everywhere while solemnly declaring, "Your eyes are green, your hair is white." When the time came for us to leave, he asked if he could keep me in exchange for one of his toy trucks.
Presents the lives and sayings of some of the most renowned figures in the Islamic Sufi tradition, translated into a contemporary American English from the Persian of the poet Farid al-Din 'Att'r.
Just like in the Indiana Jones movies, ride the waves of adventure but this time through the crystal clear waters of Earth's seas and oceans. Visit the lost sunken city of Atlantis where the Merkids struggle to save their dying people. Then like the wizards of Harry Potter fame, watch as the kids from two different worlds use their own astral energy and natural forces of the Universe to work real magic, in their attempts to save the day.
'A knotty, postmodern tale. The quicksilver narrative slips between dream, memory and reality ... A beguiling enigma' Financial Times 'A poetic masterpiece of world literature ... An oriental Kafka, enriched with the literary achievements of Islamic mysticism' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung In an Anatolian village forgotten both by God and the government, the muhtar has been elected leader for the sixteenth successive year. When he staggers to bed that night, drunk on raki and his own well-deserved success, the village is prosperous. But when he is woken by his wife the next evening he discovers that Nuri, the barber, has disappeared without a trace in the dead of night, and the community begins to fracture. In a nameless town far, far away, Nuri walks into a barbershop as if from a dream, not knowing how he has arrived. Try as he might, he cannot grasp the strands of his memory. The facts of his past life shift and evade him, and as other customers come and go, they too struggle to recall how they got there... Blurring the lines of reality to terrific effect, Shadowless is both a compelling mystery and an enduring evocation of displacement from one of the finest, most exciting voices in Turkish literature today.
This book summarizes all the topics in the Risale-i Nur, the author's great multivolume commentary on the Qur'an, and provides an outline for the later, more famous and massive treatise. Now available in English, it offers an overview of the material treated in the Risale-i Nur and an opportunity to browse through brief entries such as Flower, Spark, and Whiff, each of which is a keyword linked to a passage in the Qur'an or a figure of speech in a theological argument.
Film maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan's meditative, visually stunning contributions to the 'New Turkish Cinema' have marked him out as a pioneer of his medium. Reaping success from his prize-winning, breakout film Uzak (2002), and from later festival favourites Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and Winter Sleep (2014), he has quickly established himself as an original and provocative writer, director and producer of 21st century cinema. In an age where Turkey's modernisation has created societal tensions and departures from past tradition, Ceylan's films present a cinema of dislocation and a vision of 'nostalgia' understood as homesickness: sick of being away from home; sick of being at home. This book offers an overdue study of Ceylan's work and a critical examination of the principle themes therein. In particular, chapters focus on time and space, melancholy and loneliness, absence, rural and urban experience, and notions of paradox, as explored through films which are often slow and uncompromising in their pessimistic outlook. Moving on from the tendency to situate Ceylan's oeuvre exclusively within the canon of 'New Turkish Cinema', one of this book's major achievements is also to assess the influence of classic European thought, literature and film and how such a notably minimal - and in many ways nationally-specific - approach translates to an increasingly transnational context for film. This will prove an important book for film students and scholars, and those interested in Turkish visual culture.
“They say he met the King of the Sea, who taught him something important.” “And it all happened because he fed a fish!” “And it all happened because he shared what little he had.” Every day young Nuri makes his way to the sea shore to eat some bread and throw a piece into the waves. He does so because his father told him to “cast your bread on the water”. Even though Nuri can’t remember the second part of that beloved saying, but he follows his father’s advice and generously feeds the fish in the sea. One day, Nuri slips and falls into the water where he meets the fish he had been feeding. As Nuri marvels at the treasures hidden beneath the waves, the fish takes him to the bottom of the sea. There, Nuri meets Whisewhale, the King of the Sea. Wisewhale teaches him something important about the saying his father passed on to him all those years ago. This will change Nuri’s life forever, he just doesn’t know it yet. Told in beautiful prose, this heartfelt story is inspired by the Hebrew Bible verse, “Cast your bread on the water, and one day it will come back to you.” - Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 11:1. Through moving and uplifting encounters, Nuri teaches readers the value of kindness and the importance of being generous even when you don’t have much yourself. This is a simple message that has a big impact as we see Nuri grow to become surrounded by the love that blossomed as a result of his generosity. Accompanied by magical and colorful illustrations that bring the characters to life, young readers will be captivated by the illustrator’s unique style. The perfect bedtime story for 4 to 8 year olds.
Enter into the world of medieval Baghdad as Zaytuna and Tein solve mysteries and come to terms with the legacy of their mother and the violence that has consigned them to lives without love. Widely used in university courses, each mystery uncovers a different aspect of medieval Islamic history. "Completely engrossing and richly atmospheric. Tenth century Baghdad comes alive through the eyes of a dazzling cast of characters." —Ausma Zehanat Khan, critically acclaimed author of Blackwater Falls, A Deadly Divide from The Getty-Khattak Mysteries, and The Khorasan Archives The Lover Book One in The Sufi Mysteries Baghdad, 295 Hijri (907 CE) Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes and begs her to bring some justice to the death of a local boy, she is forced to face the suffering of the most vulnerable in Baghdad and the emotional and mystical legacy of her mother, a famed ecstatic whose love for God eclipsed everything. The Lover is a historically sensitive mystery that introduces us to the world of medieval Baghdad and the lives of the great Sufi mystics, washerwomen, Hadith scholars, tavern owners, the enslaved, corpsewashers, police, and children indentured to serve in the homes of the wealthy. It asks what it means to have family when you have nearly no one left, what it takes to love and be loved by those who have stuck by you, and how one can come to love God and everything He’s done to you. The Jealous Book Two in The Sufi Mysteries Baghdad, 295 Hijri (907 CE) When a distinguished scholar dies at the Barmakid hospital in Baghdad, nearly everyone points the finger at his enslaved servant Mu’mina, as the one who called a demon to kill him. Tein, a former frontier fighter turned investigator with the Grave Crimes Section, has no time for religion, let alone jinn, and sets out to prove her innocent. But Ammar, Tein’s superior and old wartime friend, has already pushed her case before the Police Chief’s court where she’s sure to be executed or condemned to rot in the prisons built into the damp walls of Baghdad’s Round City. With the help of his twin sister, Zaytuna, his childhood friend, Mustafa, and Zaytuna’s friend, the untamable Saliha, Tein plunges into a dangerous investigation that takes them into the world of talisman-makers and seers, houses of prostitution and gambling, and the fractious secular and religious court systems, all in an effort to turn back the tragic circumstances set in motion by Ammar’s destructive fear of a girl horribly wronged. The Unseen Book Three in The Sufi Mysteries Baghdad, 295 Hijri (908 CE) When a young man is found dead, killed in the exact manner as a martyr slain on the fields of Karbala some two hundred years before, there is no mistaking it as anything other than an attack on the Shia community of Baghdad. The city is on edge as religious and political factions are exposed sending the caliph’s army into the streets. Investigators, Ammar and Tein, have to clear the case, one way or another, before violence erupts. But amateur sleuth, Zaytuna, has had a visionary dream of the murder that holds the key to solving the murder. Can she can read its signs? And will Tein and Ammar listen? The Peace Book Four in The Sufi Mysteries Baghdad, 297 Hijri (909 CE) When an unscrupulous young scholar who claims to possess a controversial Quran manuscript goes missing, most of his colleagues are only too happy to see him gone. Is he merely drunk in one of Baghdad’s gambling houses? Is he hiding while he considers what to do with the manuscript? Or is his life in danger for the claim of having the manuscript at all? A friend of the missing man asks Mustafa for help, pulling Tein, Ammar, and Zaytuna into a case that forces them to make choices threatening their hard won peace.
