Shafak's Tequila Leila : A story of endurance and companionship

10 minutes and 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak, yesterday when I turned the last page I was left with an uneasiness I couldn't pinpoint. As hidden as the protagonist is in my world, the uneasiness equalled that. The unseen, the unnamed, the ones who carry the burden of sins for the so-called honourable. The ones who have seen more ugliness than words can write have seen society naked the righteous and pious stripped to their wickedness. The ignored and the non-existent. Like the ghosts lingering at the back of our minds, they do too. But we accept ghosts, we acknowledge them. We as a society outcast these women for the immorality of men.

The seller of human flesh, the bidder of sex, marketing the obscenity, the mistress of the night, are called by many names. Dancing girls, prostitutes, call girls, Tawaif. They are the harsh reality we try to sweep into the darkness of night, by restricting them to red light areas, by snatching their right to respect. Because those are the women who are condemned for pleasing the men who throw money. The men walk away, leaving behind the impurity and the filth, without a stain on their name, without a question on their way! 

Elif Shafak reduced the abuse to the human level and it's incredibly hard not to get attached. For in Leila, we'll see so many faces. Her story will narrate the horrors of childhood abuse, the lack of understanding, the guilt of blame, and the absence of trust. It'll take you on a devasting journey giving you a background of those faceless women. What goes behind. How nativity of a child is challenged by the cruelty of a metropolitan city, how hard innocence tried to survive midst monsters! How broken souls sought each other in an illusion of a city. How in the end even love couldn't save some doomed souls from the dark alleys.,,,

Shafak's description of the loneliest graveyard in Istanbul: The cemetery of the companionless makes you understand how for some desperate souls death is worse than life. How these discarded souls are banished to a cemetery without a proper burial, without a headstone to mark their final resting home! Even dying isn't enough for those poor souls. 

Leila's five friends are the only source of comfort, for her and the readers. They are living proof of how some bonds outlive blood relations, how we find our home in certain few. They carry part of our souls when it gets heavy inside our skins, they lend a hand when life gets a bit too tough. Those five in Shafak's tale of survival, because that's what it was till the end, against the cruel background of Istanbul were the only right in this very wrong world. Nostalgic Nalan, who defied so much to be just herself. Who didn't accept the gender assigned to her at birth, who listened to the very depth of her soul, who had the courage to make the dangerous streets of a bipolar country her very own sanctuary. The one who fought against the very last injustice society could throw at a dead friend. Sabotage Sinan, the clandestine radio broadcaster of Leila, who for the life his couldn't say what was at the tip of his tongue,. His love for her survived but was never shared, never expressed loudly. It was a secret he kept even from himself!  From Jameela to Zeyanab and her unshoveled faith to Humerya, Istanbul took a lot from Tequila Leila but gave her back all the rejects! These abandoned souls conjure a world of their own. 

Shafak's Leila tells you a lot but asks only one thing of you. It asks you to listen without interrupting, understand without judging. You look at the world from a dead person's eyes. And there is nothing more heart wreaking than a confession of a dead. Taking all the filters away, dead narrate the story. I was in awe of Leila and her five misfits throughout. For the worst was thrown their way, and somehow they survived. Maybe not entirely, with angry bodies and tired souls, baggage full of traumas and past haunting them every single night, maybe with a lot of self shedding, and with unbearable losses, there is nothing more beautiful than people who are ransacked of their dignity and self-respect but they refuse to end their march, they refuse not to sing songs of freedom under the moonlight!