An Evening with Elif Shafak and Peter Frankopan
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is our recent event with Elif Shafak and Peter Frankopan. They joined us live on stage at Smith Square Hall to shed light on the history of ancient Mesopotamia and the art of storytelling across time and place. Elif Shafak's award-winning novels are celebrated globally. Her work has been translated into 58 languages, and her latest, There Are Rivers in the Sky,

is an epic story of interconnection, charting the lifespan of a raindrop as it is consumed, subsumed and transformed across continents and centuries. Elif is joined in conversation by historian and author Peter Frankopan.

Due to some technical difficulties on the night of the event, we are only able to bring you the final 45 minutes of the event. Please accept our apologies that it can't be released in full and for the subpar audio quality, but we hope you enjoy listening. Thank you for your understanding. Now let's join our host, Peter Frankopan, with more. Was there a reason that you wanted to write about the Yazidi community in this book?

What was it about water and about Narin in particular that you wanted to show the reader? It's the raindrop that brought me to the Yezibi culture. You know, the raindrop brought me to the Epic of Gilgamesh. From the Epic of Gilgamesh, I tamed...

to this ancient community because they are one of the oldest cultures and communities in this region. And today when we talk about cultural artefacts, we really talk about the minorities of the region who are also the owners of those artefacts. And there are very interesting parallels between, I mean, some scholars think

I know not all scholars agree, but the roots of the Yazidi culture go all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia and Assyrian Empire. So there were also these interesting links for me, but it was primarily the range of that book. And did you fall in love with her as well, as a character? Tell us about how you created her, how you conceived her, how she lived up to your expectations then. So the way this book is composed, written, illustrated,

Each character demanded their own style. When we come to George Smith or Arthur's section, Victorian England, it's written in a much more Dickensian style and the vocabulary is like that too. The modern character, we'll talk about her later, it's much more contemporary literature. But when I wrote Naryn's section, the Yazidi girl's section, there are more dialogues there.

because of the importance of oral storytelling. So lullabies, riddles, stories. Perhaps I need to tell you that my grandmother was Nari's grandma as well. So to me, she's a very familiar character. I was raised by my maternal grandmother until I was about 10 years old.

And it was an interesting story because my mom had dropped out of university. So it was thanks to my grandmother's support that my mom was able to go back to uni, eventually graduate with flying colors and it changed our lives. But during that critical moment in our lives,

journey, it was grandma who supported me. And my grandma was not a very well-educated woman, only because she had been called out of school in Turkey for being a girl. And she wholeheartedly believed in women's education. And she was one of the wisest people I'd ever met in life, you know. She showed me that you might not have a fancy diploma on the wall, but you can still be a wise woman, dear. You can graduate from a very posh

Maybe we can still be ignorant in life. There are different paths to knowledge and wisdom. And so I think when I wrote about Marie's grandmother, there were echoes of my own grandmother in there. And again, wisdom and all traditions. I mean, you've spoken before about literature being a sort of corrector to amnesia. How do you put those two together? The ideas about those stories that we're told and everybody's individual memory, and a bit like with your books, everybody liking something different or understanding things in different ways. That permeates.

personalization of memory is something you're obviously very interested in. I really, really appreciate this question. I mean, imagine when you look at the history in Turkey as we touched upon earlier, usually it

It prioritizes a few people, a few men in positions of power. So history as his story. But the moment you start asking where were the stories of women, what was the Ottoman Empire like for a peasant woman who had no access to power or privilege? Or a concubine in the haram? Or a prostitute in a brothel? What was her empire like? There's a big silence.

Or what was the Ottoman Empire like for an Armenian silversmith, for a Jewish miller, for a Kurdish peasant or an Arab farmer or a Greek sailor? Again, big silence. So I think you become interested in these silences more.

And when I pay attention to oral culture, what the written culture has conveniently forgotten can be remembered by the elderly in oral culture. So if you talk to grandmothers and grandfathers in Turkey, they do remember the things that written culture has erased and

and censored. I've always found that interesting. But overall, what I'm trying to say is oral culture in general is belittled. It's regarded as the domain of, you know, ignorant housewives, superstitions. These are the terms that I've heard being said to me. Why are you paying attention to oral culture?

But even our superstitions are the projections of our deepest fears. They come from somewhere. And I think in countries of collective amnesia, in order to understand what has been buried, you need to pay attention to oral culture. Well, Richard, when you're talking, Elif, you sound like a historian rather than a novelist. I can tell you one thing, I'm never going to sound like a novelist. But I think that that's exactly how we would think about things, about different perspectives, but also the importance of oral traditions. All literature is written about

or most literature, written literature is written in cities, and those are all cultures and traditions that I'm familiar with from Central Asia, etc., where stories are constantly being, they're alive because they're constantly being remodeled. Can literature sometimes also serve as a prison because then you have the great works in Shakespeare that are written down, they can't be tampered with? Is there a way also where fiction and all kinds of literature actually also can lock you in by...

I mean, just thinking about creative writing when I was younger, we were told to go and read other people's work, and maybe that doesn't teach you how to be creative.

I'm intrigued by what you said. I think I like to think of literature like roots, the roots of a tree. So all those roots are connected with other roots of other trees under the ground. We don't see those connections. The key to me, but those connections are there. For me, the key thing is not to make our reading list solely Eurocentric. Shakespeare is magnificent. Shakespeare taught me so much.

And European literature and particularly European novel taught me so much. So this shaped me, it shaped my writing, but I can never forget the fact that

that I also grew up with different traditions of storytelling, that there isn't just one single formula, that there isn't just one way of writing books. And sometimes we forget that. So I'm very attached to the stories of the Balkans, Asia Minor, the Levant, Middle East. They shaped me too. And that's a very different way of storytelling, much more cyclical, like circles within circles. You start a story and then you open another book

you introduce the reader to another story and then another story, like One Thousand and One Nights. So just to keep in mind that there's a variety of traditions of storytelling.

You mean not just Western Europe? I'm disappointed to hear that. Tell me, Alif, because we've got about five more minutes, and then please be thinking of questions. You have an opportunity to ask, Alif, whatever you like. I'll try and do it in groups of two or three, but it would be great when the lights go up to see how many hands there are so we can make sure you've got time to ask Alif some questions. Tell us about your third time frame and character. When you've been talking, Alif, when I read your book,

Life would be a lot easier to just write four separate books about the Assyrians and about 19th century Britain, but you blend them all together. Tell us about the fourth timeframe, which is much closer to 2014 than... Indeed. So we're talking about present day contemporary London and my third character, Ziliha, she's the child of immigrants and she lives in a houseboat and

She is going through a difficult stage in her life, phase in her life. At the beginning of the book, she's going through a divorce and she also has existential questions. If I may quickly add this, I think in particularly immigrant families, but any family that comes from a complex background, there are difficulties.

differences you know as you move from one generation to the next in their relationship with memory and amnesia the elderly are usually the ones who have experienced the biggest hardships but they don't talk about the past the

The second generation has no time for the past. They have to build a new life. They need to be forward looking. But that leaves the third or the fourth generations in these families who are today asking the sharpest or deepest questions about ancestral heritage, not only family stories, but also family silences. So in every family, I think there's at least one memory keeper.

And Ziliha, the water scientist in this novel, is the memory keeper of her own family. She is studying buried rivers, lost rivers. As you know, the biggest rivers on our planet are invisible rivers, the ones above our head. But there are also so many rivers under our feet. What we did as we built our civilization is we created,

called some rivers insignificant, too dirty, too filthy, unnecessary, and we covered them, and we built entire roads and buildings. Of course, London is a city of lost rivers, but so is New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Athens, beautiful Athens. You go there, it feels like there are no rivers. Of course there are, but except they're under the ground, three of them. All

or in Paris, in Stuttgart, and so on. So what is happening right now is with sea levels rising and flash floods increasing, that system is not sustainable anymore. These buried rivers cannot carry this much water. And that's why we will have more and more floods in our cities.

And so there's an awareness across the world which talks about, and many people now are talking about, bringing these buried rivers into daylight. And it's called daylighting. And there are very successful examples of this in South Korea. For me as a writer, it was also an important metaphor. What else have we buried? What else do we need to bring into daylight?

And is that acutely aware because of the environmental crisis? I mean, are you concerned? Are you active in the environmental movements? Do you write about it? I mean, lots of your books have an environmental theme and a strand that runs through. Is that because that's something you spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about in the here and now?

I think I like ecofeminism. I love it. You know, the kind of feminism that tries to join the dots. But that's a cerebral thing. When I write, it's my heart that is always my guide. And so when the story takes me in that direction, I love to learn from a tree. I love to learn from a river, from a mountain. Sometimes this is risky, to be honest. When I started writing my previous novel, The Island of Missing Trees,

I wish you had seen my agent's face when I told him I'm going to write a novel. There's going to be a fig tree in the middle and this fig tree is going to talk.

And for a moment I saw, I mean, Johnny is wonderful, very supportive. I saw this glimpse of anxiety in his eyes because you're taking a risk, right, as a writer. But I really, really heard this voice, this tree's voice in my head day and night. So it has to be organic. It can't be something intellectually you can impose on a book. You can't say, OK, I'm interested in this subject, so let me write. It really has to come from within.

How many ideas do you have that don't make it? How many times do you think I've got something and then it slips away from you or it doesn't blossom? All the time, all the time. You know, it really doesn't matter whether it's your first book, fifth novel, tenth novel, it never gets any easier.

Maybe it gets even more difficult as we get older. And I think what I've learned is when you start writing a novel, some weeks you feel like you're the king of this fictional world. It feels like, wow, I get a great story. And then the next week you're literally crawling on the floor because everything you've written previously is so bad. You have to throw it away.

So you go through these valleys of anxiety, mountains of doubt. I'm not sure I completely believe you. It is so true. Self-doubt. What I learned over the years is that's okay. That's also part of the journey. I cannot think of any author, fiction or non-fiction, every day feeling like, oh, I got this. I'm just sailing through. We suffer as we write. But all I know is when I'm not writing, I feel more miserable. So...

So writing a novel gives me a lot of energy too. Alif, you are a beautiful writer, but you're also a beautiful thinker and a beautiful speaker. That's very rare. I'm very lucky to be able to talk to some incredible writers, but you're my favourite. It's a privilege to spend this evening talking to you. If we have some lights up, let's see if there are some questions here. We'll try and get some microphones around you all. Great. Is there anybody who is young or thinks that they're young who could get to go first?

Let's say anybody under the age of 25, 30, something like that. It would be great to empower young voices to start with. So a hand here. Anybody else? Otherwise, it's a free-for-all and then put your hands up. There's one right at the back as well. Let's take two. One here and then one right at the back, please. Hi. Thank you so much. First of all, it's an honour to be here with you. My question is, I come from a blend of cultures, East and West. I got married in Istanbul. My husband's Turkish.

And we're now expecting a blend as well. So I loved how you mentioned cultures blending furiously. But how do you find the balance in that blend in your books? So I just want to say thank you so much for the talk. It was amazing. I had a question about how you envision the relationship between water and trauma. In my mind, I have a reading of Nathalie Diaz's poetry anthology, A Postcolonial Love Poem.

just because it really resonated with me and when I was reading your book. And it's also this quote that you mentioned in the book about

water remembers but it's human to forget and it really reminded me of her work and how she speaks about the erasure of the Native American community and their water resources and I just wanted to ask you a bit more about how did you reconcile or maybe perhaps didn't reconcile this relationship between water and trauma especially as water is like a flowing element and it's something that's always moving and yet it always has this kind of ability to keep memory and

Also, just on top of that, why do you choose water as an element over other elements? What about water was it that you felt was really pertinent and different to the other elements? Gosh, what great questions. Good luck with both of those. I'm going to sit back and enjoy them. Such beautiful questions and also very inspiring questions. I'm very, very grateful.

You know, how do we decide how much we blend? It's always the story that guides me. But that said, I have to be honest with you. There are so many glass walls also within the publishing industry, aren't they?

So, for instance, if you happen to be a woman writer from outside the Western world, you are very easily put into a box and expected to write stories that are in harmony with the culture where you come from. So there's a definition. Let's perhaps give an example. If you're an Afghan woman writer...

Almost no one expects you in the publishing world to write avant-garde fiction or experimental fiction or sci-fi. You're expected to write about the problems of women in Afghanistan. But please don't get me wrong. The problems of women in Afghanistan must be shared, must be amplified, definitely must be written about. No question. But my point is, maybe that author, in one book she's going to write about this, in her next book she's going to write sci-fi, you know, or fiction.

climate fiction, we don't give that kind of flexibility or room when labels or identities become so static or monolithic. And that's something that I always want to challenge because I do in my heart believe that we live in a world that never allows us to be multiple.

never allows us to celebrate our own multiplicity. But when we look at each and every human being, like Walt Whitman reminded us, we all contain multitudes. Doesn't matter wherever we come from, our ancestral heritage, sometimes our sexual orientation, sometimes the journeys of our families. Layer upon layer, every human being is complex and cannot be reduced to a single thread of monolithic identity. So those are the things that I believe in.

Water memory is a concept that was so crucial for me. And I also became very intrigued by these scientists. Now, I'm going to tread very carefully because I know this is a controversial subject. Many scientists say it's not scientific. But the very fact that some scientists have been drawn to this idea of water memory is

with such passion that they lost all their funding, they lost sometimes their credibility, but they kept going. As a writer, that's an interesting thing to me, that kind of passion. Where does it come from?

But if I may take you back one step further, because I was raised by a grandmother who herself was an oral storyteller. In my grandmother's world, water would speak. Water would have memory. Trees would whisper. It wasn't irrational for her. So I think a part of me is also shaped by that world which tries to pay attention to nature. When you think that water has...

energy has character, you use it more carefully. You do not see yourself as a consumer of water, as a consumer of nature. So my point is we have a lot to learn from these ancient cultures and philosophies. And I just try to merge that scientific quest with

And these old ancient cultures and like the examples that you have given, I think there's a big, big similarity wherever in the world, many of these cultures were approached trees and water and soil and earth with tremendous respect. And we need to remember that.

And what about other elements that were mentioned, like fire and the Zoroastrian tradition, the importance of fire as a purifier across the Middle East too? Are there other elements? Maybe that's what we're going to write about a lot of the time. But does water have a special priority? No, I didn't want to approach it in a hierarchical way. But I think the very fact that we have so much water inside us as human beings, our planet is so much shaped by water. This is the water planet, isn't it? So I think...

Water has a very special place in my heart, but I don't want to approach it in a hierarchical way because without fire, water is nothing. Without earth, air is nothing. And that's the beauty of it. So we're always losing that balance. And I think if we could refine that balance, maybe this world would be less greedy. Yeah. Yeah.

Congratulations, by the way. Let your baby be healthy, happy and live in a peaceful world. Let's have some more hands, please. Maybe we do three at a time. So wherever the microphones are, let's do the three on this side and then I'll come to this side next. So there are three hands here. Whoever's closest to a microphone, there's one, then there's two and then there's a third one here. Hello. Thank you so much for the very inspiring talk.

I guess my question is one about language. Halif, I know that you write in English and Turkish and I think it's fair to say you're staggeringly eloquent in English.

But I've heard you talk, I think, in another interview about this idea of feeling very at home in English, but at the same time being aware of your status as someone, as an English speaker. And I guess my question for you is, do you find that this is a very, you know, this position that you're in, you know, being between maybe these cultures, do you find that that allows you a kind of creative freedom to play with language? Or is it something...

Does it lead to kind of self-consciousness? And is that something that you've had to unburden yourself of in your career? Great. Then there was another one here with a hand behind. Let's do two at a time. This gentleman here with the, what I can't see, is it the white shirt? And then up at the front. Good evening, Aleph. I think I've been following you for many years. Not stalking you, though. That's an ominous start to the question. Thank you.

I think we first met at the Frontline Club and I was sort of really enthusiastically telling, suggesting that you visit Pakistan. And I think since then you've been there several times and I've missed it each time because I've been here in London. It's I want to tell you that despite a bereavement, I did not change my ticket only so that I could come and see you today. I'm flying out tomorrow. And the only reason is because I really have so much respect for your work.

So the question is, you talked about writing, telling a story that it has to be organic and intuitive. To what extent does courage play a role in your writing? Great. Thank you. Those two, but I can see a hand here. There was somebody back here on the right.

Yes, start with those two. Thank you so much. Such really beautiful questions. And I appreciate your words. I appreciate that you're here. As you can hear, of course, in my accent, I am not a native speaker. English for me is an acquired language. And I'm always conscious of what I cannot quite say. Every immigrant knows this feeling, right? Every immigrant knows when this...

almost gap between the mind and the tongue. The mind runs faster and the tongue in its own clumsy, awkward way tries to catch up, but never quite can get there. So we always want to crack better jokes as immigrants, but we can't get it right always. Or the words that we cannot pronounce. This is very important because those gaps are very intimidating. But

But if we can learn not to be intimidated by that, I think it can also be inspiring because it pushes you, it urges you to take a closer look at each and every language, not to take it for granted. I love languages with a passion.

Some novelists are plot driven, some novelists are character driven. And then there's a third category of novelists for whom language is a passion. And we believe that language can be, you know, your love, not a passion, not only for poets, but also for novelists as well. So I belong in the third category here.

And for me to abandon my mother tongue and to start writing in English really felt like cutting off my hand, you know, the hand that I write with. It was so difficult.

But I did it because I wanted more freedom. To be a novelist from Turkey is a difficult experience. To be a woman novelist is even more difficult. Whatever you write about, from politics to history to sexuality to gender, you offend the authorities. And in a night, you can be sued, prosecuted, investigated, digitally lynched, you know. So there came a moment in my life where

I felt like I needed a bit more cognitive distance, maybe another zone of existence. And I migrated into the English language before I migrated into this country. So I feel like I'm an immigrant, not only in the UK, but also in the English language. Now that said, I still love the Turkish language. How can I not love? It's the language of my childhood, my dreams.

my childhood dreams, my grandmother. Still to this day, melancholy is easier to express in Turkish. Longing loss easier in Turkish. But humor, which I love, I think humor is our oxygen. Humor keeps us sane in this broken world. Humor is easier in English.

Irony is easier in English. Satire is easier in English. And so I feel connected to each language in a different way. But I think as a novelist in particular, the freedom of speech that I've needed sorely came to me from the English language.

If I may quickly say this as well, I'm always interested in how people express different emotions in different languages. I have Italian friends who, when they're angry, they immediately switch back to Italian. So those things are also quite interesting for me. You're very kind to ask me about courage.

I know many courageous poets. I know many courageous writers and I have a lot of respect for them. For me, I wouldn't say courage is, I wouldn't associate myself with courage or as a courageous person. The only thing I would say about myself is I'm a curious person. I love that childish curiosity is so essential for us artists.

You know, when we were young, if you speak to a six-year-old, seven-year-old Turkish or Jordanian or Egyptian child, they're no different whatsoever from a Norwegian, Canadian, French child, right? At that age, children have so much chutzpah, so much courage, so much confidence. If you ask in a room full of children, are there any poets in this room? So many hands go up. Any artists' hands go up. They're already artists.

But then if I would go to schools in Turkey and speak to older students, 16-year-old, 17-year-old, and then ask, are there any poets in this room? Nobody puts their hand up. Are there any artists? No. So at what point do we stop calling ourselves poets?

A writer, a poet, an artist. At what point do we kill our own creativity? That's why I think it's so important to reconnect with that childish curiosity and not be afraid of asking the big questions which children are never afraid of asking. That's why I would always call myself a curious writer. Brilliant answers.

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One more hand, please. There's a question, one here and then one here in the white top. One near the front. Just be waiting for a while. Okay, take that one. But then one here in front, please, afterwards. It's my favourite bit. Be able to tell people what to do. Hi. Please. I'm Nursal. I'm an immigrant. You can tell from my accent. Embarrassingly, I have only started reading Elif's

I should have started long ago. I've started pinhunt and I fell in love with your style, but I actually am glad that you mentioned the language, your passion for language. I noticed that you use a lot of beautiful old words.

I don't find it terribly difficult at all because I'm an older generation. But I'm wondering, it's beautiful, really very rich, where lots of old words that younger generations probably don't even hear or know.

Are you worried or do you have any concern that younger generation might struggle with that kind of stuff?

It's beautiful. I don't feel, I don't want to discourage or speak in that way. But I'm wondering, younger generation, many of them actually operate within 100 words or 200 words, and half of that might be English. Okay.

Do you have any concern about that? Great. There's one in front. Could you wave vigorously so I can see you, particularly the back, because in the light it's not easy to see. There's one here who's been waiting. There we go, finally. Thank you. I want to ask to you, someone that's really written about remembering history, where preservation of heritage ends and where destruction of it begins.

And I'm asking that not in any way to absolve ISIS or Saddam Hussein or the destruction of Hassan Kaif, but in the context of the Assyrian kings of whom you wrote, who essentially acted as archaeologists in their own stead, looking for Babylonian kings and Assyrian kings and Akkadian kings and finding them.

and what they had built and then rebuilding the same palaces and using those palaces as a way to justify their own rule, I suppose. So for you, what's the line between preservation and destruction? Is it freezing history and putting it into a museum for all of us to see? Or is reuse in some way factoring in there? Great. Let's take a third one. And there's been somebody here at the front also with the white top who's, yes, that's right, a beige top boycott, but yes.

Just come to this one here and then we'll go towards the back. Thank you. That's how I feel satisfied now.

Thank you. Hi, I really enjoyed that. I just had a question about, so you said this thing about following your intuition and writing. And I really, really liked that. And I feel that that really rings true to me as well. But it feels to me like intuition is such a skill and like sort of being able to distinguish what's intuition and what's like self-doubt and other kind of non-intuition things. So I just wondered if you could share some insights into like how you developed that skill.

Brilliant. All those three, I'll help you with those. I mean, not ask them, I'll help remember what they were. Please do, please do.

So the book we're talking about actually, PINAN, is my first novel. I wrote my first four novels in Turkish. And when that book was published, it came as a surprise to critics in Turkey because I was very young at the time. And the language that I used was a combination of old words and new words. As you know, in Turkey, over the years, we got rid of lots of words coming from Arabic roots or Persian roots.

And I've never understood that there's almost a duality in Turkey. Like if you're modern, liberal, progressive, I mean, all these adjectives, then you're supposed to use new words. And if you're more older and conservative, you're supposed to use older words.

I don't like that duality. I think we need all the words and words live longer than us. Their lifespan is much longer than our lifespan. And we need those nuances. So sometimes in Turkish I can say red or yellow, but I cannot say the shades in between because they used to come from Persian.

And when you speak Pita, you use words like chutzpah or you use words like kismet. And those are organically part of the English language, even though one of them came from Arabic, right? Nobody says, oh, wait a second, this is not English, English. I like it when, you know, language is a river. We need to allow it to flow.

to flow. So in that sense, it is a passion. But I know many young people who think like me, and they're also interested in those nuances. I think when our vocabulary shrinks, our ability to think is also affected by that. When we have more nuances, it gently encourages us to think in a much more nuanced way.

Forgive me with the second question. We'll come to intuition. Intuition is the third. I'm dizzy listening. Yeah.

Well, history about destruction. Oh, history of destruction. Such an important question. Absolutely. Indeed. You know, I find this question so important. And I think it's a question that many museums, of course, British Museum, but not only the British Museum, the Louvre, Metropolitan, they need to engage in this conversation. It's not enough to say our doors are open to everyone.

and anyone can come and visit the artifacts. How many people can even afford the journey? How many people can even get a visa? So we need to talk about how the artifacts from the Middle East were brought over. It wasn't a smooth transition. At the bottom of the River Tigris, there are Lamassu sculptures. There are clay tablets because they sunk while they were being carried on boats.

So many artifacts have been damaged, broken, shattered. We need to talk about these things. We need that kind of knowledge. But as I mentioned, while I'm questioning that, I need to talk about what the Ottoman authorities were doing. That adds another layer. I need to talk about ISIS.

Now, if we go back in time, how Ashurbanipal himself destroyed. So all these layers and nuances, I think, deserve a much calmer conversation. And we need a new approach. And I believe we need to gently push our museums to engage in these conversations rather than avoid them.

With regards to intuition, you're so right. It sounds a little bit vague when I say intuition. But at the same time, we all know what I'm talking about, right? Something feels right or something doesn't feel quite right. That voice is very important. Writing is not always a very rational thing. It doesn't always come from, you know, it's not always a cerebral activity. Of course, intellectual process is a big part of it.

and I cherish that but there's an emotional component the heart and the mind needs to connect that for me is crucial so if I cannot feel a character in my heart then I know it's not the right character even the name of the character the name has to match that personality does it make sense these are very irrational things but in your heart you you feel it you you know it so I think we need to make the heart our guide as well when you're writing a novel

Great. We're nearly out of time. Let's take some at the back, because I've not prioritised you. And then there's some at the front. So a couple at the back. And please wave, because this is your last final going-going-gone moment. OK, one, two, three. We might sneak four. If they're quick questions, we might do four. Go ahead. Please. Thank you very much for your wonderful and eloquent description of your thoughts about your latest novel. And I love specifically the...

the use of water as a metaphor for memory, identity and connectivity. And I love how you use that we need to preserve our collective rational memory and to pass into the next generation.

What do you think about this, the most critical ingredient, defined connection, conventional thinking, current education system, that prevents the younger generation being the custodians of this collective memory of the current times and the age of AI? Okay.

Okay. Thank you. That's a big question. We're going to have to do short questions to get through them. Otherwise, I'm never going to, Leif will get invited back, but I won't be. There's one here, one here, and there was someone else at the back I saw. So, well, wherever the microphone is going to come quicker. So here. Thank you very much. Thank you to the fantastic people working tonight. Thank you for the great talk. My question was probably similar to the one in the back. It's your writing style seems really intuitive, perhaps archaic.

How do you engage with new technology, AI in particular, which was just mentioned earlier? What do you make of it yourself? And then one back here I can see. And who else is there? And then one here. Sorry. Yes, I've been looking. Sorry. Thank God my wife has pointed me out. I'm only looking at her, not towards this side of the audience. So I'm here at the front. Was there somebody else in this section too? Yes. So we've got two, one here and then one here.

Can you hear me? Oh, okay. We're going to do five. Crikey. Okay. They've got to be quickies though. I'll be really quick. Thank you so much, Aleph. I've been a big fan of your writing for a long time. Being someone of mixed heritage as well and thinking about multiplicity, I was really interested in what you said about glass walls box you in with literature. And it's something I think about a lot in visual arts as well and artists being asked to represent their heritage. How do you think we can navigate kind of this in the future to

to stop those glass walls from boxing people in. Great, let's do those three and then the last two here. So AI technologies, how you use those and then about glass boxes. Thank you so much. Really, really, so inspiring, such inspiring questions. I think I make a distinction between information, knowledge and wisdom. Remember, TS Eliot reminded us of this. And the problem is we're living in an age in which we are bombarded by information.

And those of us who are old enough, we remember late 1990s, early 2000s, we romanticized information. Did we not? The biggest optimists back then were techno-optimists. There was so much faith in technology, digital technologies, that I remember a young Egyptian couple, they named their baby girl Facebook. You remember that? So I think about Facebook a lot. You know, she's a teenager now and what kind of a world have we given her?

We gave her an age of anxiety. We gave her an age of pessimism. So what we've done is we over-romanticize information, thinking if you spread information, everyone is going to become informed citizens and democracy is going to spread. What happened in reality is the opposite. We have way too much information, very little knowledge and even less wisdom. We have to change that ratio upside down. It has to be the other way around.

Information gives us the illusion that we know something about everything. You can ask me anything. If I don't know the answer, I will Google it. In the next five minutes, I'll be able to say a few things about that subject, making me think that, well, I know something about it. If you're a man, you're an expert.

So what we forgot is how to say I don't know. I don't know was the beginning of philosophy. It was so important for Socrates. It was so important for pre-Socratic philosophers. So let's leave information aside. It really isn't helping us. And what it's creating in the long run is apathy because we get

tired. We cannot process this much information. Our brains are not wired in that way. But let's instead focus on knowledge. For knowledge, we need cultural spaces, podcasts, slow journalism, in-depth analysis, literary festivals, books, and

And for wisdom, hopefully, I think we need to bring the heart into the conversation. We need emotional intelligence and empathy. So how do I relate to AI myself? Of course, I use it. And I think we need to use it selectively. We cannot completely brush it aside. Same with social media. But let's choose our platforms carefully. So I like Substack.

because it allows me to write essays. I keep it free and I cherish that, you know, word-based encounters rather than polished images and definitely not Twitter or whatever it's called. So let's choose our platforms carefully and let's focus on knowledge and wisdom. Allow me to... Glass houses or glass walls. Glass walls. Within publishing world, how do we...

How do we overcome? It's not easy, but we can, if we have this kind of awareness and allow each other to journey, you know, you don't have to be Turkish in order to be able to write about a character, a Turkish character in a novel. And I know, and I'm saying this carefully, but if you do your research very well, and it has to be more than research, if there's a genuine connection in your heart...

in your soul, if you really make that transcendental journey, why not? And the reader will be the judge of that novel. The reader will tell whether it works or not, and we have to respect that. But all I'm trying to say in a nutshell is, for me, literature is not necessarily autobiographical. The very first thing that we teach students in creative writing, and that's wrong in my opinion, is write what you know.

And so people think I can only write about my story because this is the only thing I know. But if we can tell them and if we can tell ourselves, write what you feel, the heart is always bigger than the mind. Then people dare to journey beyond those boxes. And if there's a genuine connection, then why not? It has to be more transcendental, in my opinion, literature. We did start a couple of minutes late, so I'm going to sneak these last two in. So one here and then one just behind.

Please, yeah. Hi, my name is Maliha and I was here at your last event and I thought both this event and last event was so inspiring. Essentially, my question for you today is...

As an aspiring medic and somebody who also thoroughly loves literature, my question is, do you think literature can heal? And if so, do you have any examples? Thank you. Gosh, you get great questions. I mean, I get good questions of mine. Normally it's about battles and dates. Okay, that's so great. And there was somebody else just behind who had their head up. Yes, with the glasses, please. Thank you. What a great question. Yes.

Hi, Ulyss. It was such a pleasure listening to you today. It was my first event listening to you. My questions are two-pronged and slightly mundane, so please excuse me. Firstly, I just wanted to understand, we live in an age of hyper-consumerism, and I

as an author, especially the profile that you have, how much does a publisher's expectation or, for instance, your own perception of what the audience might want to read weigh down on what you actually end up writing and delivering? The second thing I actually wanted to ask you was, this was touched upon in one of the very earlier questions. As an author, do you feel that your voice being heard as much as it is

Do you feel like you have a responsibility towards activism, towards promoting a certain thought, correcting something even perhaps? So, yeah, that's about it. And start with that and then end with healing because then we'll all just leave happy, hopefully. I'm not sure what you're going to say. You're absolutely right. Let's do it that way.

You know, if I start thinking how people are going to respond to what I'm working on, I cannot write. I need to forget that. And also earlier I touched upon some of my experiences. I was put on trial for writing a novel called The Bastard of Istanbul. Two other books of mine have been sent to a prosecutor's office. One was for insulting Turkishness.

The others were for crime of obscenity because I wrote in 10 minutes, 38 seconds about a sex worker. So lots of concerns you might have in your head as an author. If you start thinking, oh, how will publishers react? How will authorities react? How will readers react? You have to shut down all those voices and you have to leave them outside the door. The only way I can write is if I stay in that imaginary zone, right?

the imaginary world that I build, I have to stay there as long as I can, as deep as I can. And those fictional characters, whether it's Arthur or Ziliha or Naren, they become my companions every day, every night. And I spend my time with them. Only when the book is done and I finish, then I hand it to my editor and then I start having panic attacks, anxiety attacks.

Then I start worrying, how are they going to respond? But by then it's too late. The book is born. It is independent. It has its own journey as it should be. So I think we need to be careful about those voices. Does it make sense? Otherwise it can lead to a lot of self-censorship. Equally with regards to activism, I don't like it when writers try to teach or preach, but I try to write about issues that are close to my heart, that really come from within my soul.

And if I can create a space of nuance and multiplicity, I'm hoping that might make a contribution, which hopefully will bring us to the first question. Does literature make a difference? Can literature make a difference? I think it can. And why do I say this? Because it happened to me. You know, can books change us? They can. They changed me.

I thought my life was very, very boring. I was a single child raised by a single working mom.

And while I was, when I was in my grandmother's house, it was a very conservative, patriarchal, inward-looking environment. It was books that showed me there were other worlds, other possibilities. That's why I'm much more interested in that transcendental journey that books allow us. And I think, as a maybe final note, the faster this world spins, the bigger these piles of snippets of information bombard the dream on us,

I think the deeper our need for the ancient art of storytelling, which is so interesting because you will remember there were all these predictions about the death of the novel. Nobody was going to read novels anymore in late 1990s, 2000s. That didn't happen because deep inside we have a need to slow down absolutely.

and journey into other worlds. That is a very ancient and universal art. The form might change, but our need for stories, I don't think it's going to disappear anytime soon, I hope. Well, on that note, thank you very much to the team here at Smithsco who looked after us. I'm really sorry, you're...

You're going to have to clap again. That's just the first round of applause. Thank you to the team who have looked after us this evening, from Mia and the Intelligence Squared team who put this event together. You can look at their website to see what's coming up next. It's Steve McQueen, amongst the things coming up next, Steve McQueen, the director, on the 25th of April. Alif will be signing books in the coming weeks.

It is a spectacular book. It would be great for it to be a Sunday Times number one bestseller as it deserves to be. But please, I'm very proud to call you a friend, Elif. But what a pleasure and a privilege to hear you talk with such eloquence and beauty and hope tonight. Everybody, Elif Shafak. I'm so grateful. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Mia Sorrenti, and it was edited by Mark Roberts.