FORM-Idea

The novel Women who Blow on Knots, by legendary Turkish journalist and novelist Ece Temelkuran looks at the lives of four women, three young women and one mysterious older stranger. The novel charts the road trip they make from Tunis to Lebanon while the Arab spring is raging.  The novel was published in 2013 and quickly became a publishing phenomenon. It went on to be translated into twenty-two languages and subsequently sold 300, 000 copies. The renowned adapter and Arcola Theatre co-founder, Leyla Nazli has now adapted this much-loved novel into a startling, original play, which opens this fall in London. Nazli has produced a thrilling work, which very much highlights the beautiful complexity of women’s lives. The play charts what happens to women when they are forced to leave their homes and form extended families in order to survive.  It’s a theme Temelkuran returns to in her work, most notably in her novel The Depth of Mount Ararat which was also about a group of women forced together because of war and migration.

In Women who Blow on Knots you are immediately drawn into these women’s lives.  The characters include Amira, a Tunisian dancer and blogger who turns the tables on a person she feels belittled by, Maryam, a melancholy Egyptian academic obsessed with Dido, Queen of Carthage, who was present at the protests in Tahir Square, and standing in for Temelkuran herself, a young female Turkish journalist living in exile.  They encounter a beautiful older stranger, Madam Lilla, a former Cairo courtesan and possible spy, who persuades the three to accompany her on a road trip to Beirut, where she intends to confront a man who betrayed her. 

Adapting Temelkuran’s six-hundred, page novel into a play, was obviously not an easy task, but one Leyla Nazli, succeeds at beautifully. From the opening moment, you feel fully engaged in all these women’s lives while the events of the Arab spring are brought to life. Watching this play you are reminded of the fact that despite the historic events taking place, people’s lives carry on.  In many ways the play asks the question, which is as authoritarian leaders, are toppled how much do these changes really affect the lives of women.  And as we know now these political changes were not long lasting.

Ece Temelkuran wrote the book when she herself was forced to flee Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian government in Turkey and go into exile. Temelkuran in a recent interview promoting the play states:

Temelkuran’s title refers to the belief that women who blow on knots are in fact witches with supernatural, magical powers.  And this production indeed conveys a very special magic, directed beautifully by Lerzan Pamir making her UK debut, as it makes you believe in the magic of female friendships, a magic which helps women heal no matter what scars they may bare.   The play, also reminds you of the fact that women’s battles against the dark forces of patriarchy are not battles restricted to any one country or region (as perhaps the current US presidential election illustrates) but they are universal battles which women everywhere will have to continue to fight but they are battles where we will always find friends.