THE DERVISH

Kazan explores the exciting and dangerous time in Turkey—or Anatolia—shortly after World War I, when Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal are fighting to establish a post-Ottoman regime.

The narrator is Mary Di Benedetti, an American whose husband died at the Battle of the Somme—though Mary narrates these events from a perspective some 40 years after her husband’s death. After visiting his grave in France, she goes to Turkey to spend some time with her sister Connie and her brother-in-law John, a diplomat. Mary is an artist who likes to roam about unhampered to do her sketching, but one night, she witnesses an event that will change her life forever—a British soldier kills Halil, a Turk, in cold blood, though not before Halil gives some mysterious documents to Mary, who secretes them among her sketches. Halil also says something that sounds to Mary like “Holiday hanoom.” After this almost Hitchcock-ian scene, Mary finds out that a woman named Halide Hanim (the latter word an honorific, not a name) is working with the nationalists and is happy to receive the unexpected documents. Mary and Halide become good friends, as Mary starts to become more and more enamored with Turkish culture. She also meets Mustafa, Halil’s grieving father, and they begin a romantic relationship that must be carried on sub rosa. Although both the Allied (i.e., British) troops and the American consulate warn Mary of the dangers involved in her growing entanglement with Turkish politics and personalities, she increasingly devotes herself to the nationalist cause, even to the point of being threatened with arrest.

Despite some wooden dialogue, Kazan opens a window into a time period and a culture largely ignored or forgotten in the 21st century.