Turkish Short Stories and Dr. Mirzeler

I have to be honest, the short stories that were assigned to us to read for Tuesday made very little sense to me.  Maybe it was that I don't know much about Turkish culture yet, but the stories just came off as strange and confusing to me.  I don't have too much to say about them right now because I was waiting for our class discussion to see what everyone else thought about them and how they would be interpreted.  Hopefully we will be able to discuss them during our next class session, but we could not have had a better reason not to discuss on Tuesday.  Hearing from Doctor Mirzeler was wonderful.  

I really enjoyed our visit from Doctor Mirzeler, he is a truly interesting speaker!  I was very appreciative that he provided some background information for us while we read Memed, My Hawk, and he spoke so artfully of his homeland that as I went to continue reading the novel I felt like I could better envision the scenery of the story.  It was interesting to hear his opinions on the issues dealt with in the movies we watched, a lot of his own experiences with these issues backed up the ideas that we had discussed after watching the movies.

Of course the most powerful part of his visit was his account of his own family's experience with honor killing.  Even I, who have no siblings, could feel the choking horror of being told to kill a sister.  The thought is sad, and I am thankful that he was not forced to go through with the crime.  I was impressed that he was so willing to talk to us about it and was fascinated that he brought up the point that there is such extreme social pressure to commit an honor killing, something which we were also able to see in the films we viewed.  It was a great honor to have these accounts brought to our class, and I wish we could have had some more time with Doctor Mirzeler.