Clumsy Anti-Terror Investigation

It is something one hardly dares to imagine: Islamic terrorists carry out an attack during the New Year period. They managed to poison the contents of numerous bottles of sparkling wine before they hit the supermarket shelves. Nine people die as a result of the poison, and countless more have to receive medical treatment. The entire country is plunged into a state of anxiety and fears that other foodstuffs may have been poisoned. Fortunately, this story is not real, but an invention by the writer and journalist Hilal Sezgin, an idea for a clever and entertaining novel on Germany's relationship with Islam and the Muslim members of its society ("Mihriban pfeift auf Gott. Ein deutsch-türkischer Schelmenroman." [Mihriban does not care about God. A German-Turkish picaresque novel]).

The Turkish-German woman Mihriban Erol lives with her brother Mesut and his daughter Suna in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. She doesn't have a proper job, and occasionally works as a kind of 'Girl Friday' at a nursery school. She describes herself as "a highly accomplished washout". She's not really interested in politics, and she's had little experience with men, despite the fact that her lips are "very kissable".

Then, during a New Year holiday in Egypt, sex and politics suddenly burst in on Mihriban's life: As the storyline would have it, in a far-flung corner of the hotel, Mihriban finds herself kissing a man whom she has only just met. Then news of the terrorist attack on Germany reaches the holiday resort, and Mihriban is directly affected. She finds herself wondering whether her brother – a devout Muslim – perhaps sympathises with the terrorists.

Religion as decoration

Up to that point, Mihriban had viewed religion as nothing more than superstition, and God as "a kind of decoration". Up to that point, she had always regarded her brother as an overly correct and respectable "Supermuslim". Mihriban and her brother Mesut personify two apparently quite different world views, as the author explains:

"Even before this terrorist attack, Mihriban is not very impressed by Mesut's religious development. Both were actually raised in a non-religious environment, and this is very common among people of Turkish origin. When he starts to get closer to religion at a later stage, it makes her feel uneasy. She thinks religion is either superfluous, or even damaging."

Back in Berlin, Mihriban then finds something worrying on her brother's camera: a film about the production of sparkling wine in a factory. Is there a connection with the attack, is her brother perhaps even more than just a sympathiser?

Clumsy anti-terror investigation

This is where the story gains pace and suspense – Mihriban tries to find out whether her brother really was involved in the attack, whether the impossible has become a reality. Mihriban becomes an anti-terrorism investigator within her own family, and her detective work turns out to be quite adventurous. It is at this point that the narration incorporates picaresque elements.

"It is a picaresque novel in as far as it is ultimately about a political story, a highly complex political story in fact, but that it is portrayed and experienced by a heroine who is herself not especially interested in politics, and not especially smart," says Sezgin in an interview with Qantara.de.

Mihriban's research, which is at times clumsy, and at others delicate, brings her into contact with things that she really knows nothing about, for example 'Federal Trojan' software and the protection of the constitution. Sezgin makes clever use here of the topos of all intelligence service stories: deception.

But it is not only the secret services that revert to deception. When Mihriban hears a news reporter from an Arab country explaining that Muslims make use of what is known as "Takiya", a kind of disguise to allow them to survive as a minority in an enemy environment, she soon starts perceiving "Takiya" as a kind of synonym for terror and underhanded behaviour. And this is despite the fact that the concept actually means something quite different, as the writer reveals.

Although Sezgin's novel does not undertake any clear criticism of the media, the attentive reader will hardly fail to notice that supposedly enlightening media reports on Islam are not really helping the heroine to any better understanding.

Conciliatory turnaround

Despite the jokey, light-hearted narrative style, Sezgin does also give voice to socially critical views. And although the novel depicts the atmosphere of living under a terrorist threat, the story takes a conciliatory turn at the close. Overall, the book reads like one of the contributions that the Muslim writer regularly makes to the Islam debate in German newspapers – a debate in which she holds unequivocal views.

"Islam is often viewed in Germany as a source of problems. Muslims are perpetually concerned with explaining that they're not the way the media portrays them," says Sezgin. "The overriding view of Islam as a potential source of danger – whatever that might be – is wrong. Unfortunately it's very widespread and that must change."

"Mihriban does not care about God" is a thoughtful and enjoyable appeal for more sensitivity and less anxiety between German and Muslim communities. A wonderful, fascinating and political novel that will have you grinning and laughing out loud.

Nimet Seker

© Qantara.de 2010

Translated from the German by Nina Coon

Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

Hilal Sezgin: "Mihriban pfeift auf Gott. Ein deutsch-türkischer Schelmenroman." (Mihriban does not care about God. A German-Turkish picaresque novel." Dumont 2010, 320 pages

Qantara.de

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