Pomegranate Tree (Book)

Nar Ağacı is a novel by Nazan Bekiroğlu, one of the writers of Turkish literature, published in 2012. Roman stands out for its deep exploration of characters’ inner worlds and its evocative atmosphere. This work weaves together historical events to create literary bridges between East and West, and between past and today.

Summary of the Book

Nar Ağacı is a novel that portrays the personal and social hardships experienced during the Balkan Wars and the First World War. The shadow of this fragile and painful era, marked by mass deaths due to warfare, fronts, defeats, expulsions and epidemics, reached even Trabzon, an important city of Anatolia far from Istanbul. Just as Muslims in Balkans were forced to migrate, minority groups in Anatolia also had to leave their homes during this period. As a result, the novel’s characters transform in response to changing political and sociological conditions and embark on a process of redefinition as character.

Typologies of the Novel’s Characters

Nar Ağacı presents multiple characters with distinct narratives.

• İsmail: İsmail, introduced as Zehra’s brother, is an introverted and emotionally sensitive character. A literary portrait is drawn of him in the novel. He expresses his inner feelings through words, poetry and letters. A final-year student at Trabzon Sultanisi, İsmail enlists as a volunteer for his homeland and dies of typhus while serving at the front.

• Zehra: Zehra, the narrator’s grandmother, is an extroverted and emotionally expressive character. She attempts to alleviate the pain and longing caused by her mother’s absence and father’s death through her bond with her brother İsmail, yet she was raised under the watchful but distant care of Büyükhanım. Zehra strives to overcome the suffering and hardships within her family and never retreats from confronting adversity. Uprooted from Trabzon and forced to relocate to Istanbul, she later returns to Trabzon, enduring the difficulties of these journeys with resilience. Zehra embodies the individual who must change in the face of life’s upheavals.

• Büyükhanım (Sabire Hanım): She is an extroverted and intellectual type. In the novel, she is portrayed as a type who unites all family members under one roof, remains rooted in tradition, holds firm personal principles, extends compassion to everyone in need and openly expresses her emotions. Büyükhanım develops her own belief system based on intuition and experience. Despite having received no formal education, her observations and analytical skills enable her to make daily, monthly and even annual weather predictions.

• Hacıbey: Hacıbey, Büyükhanım’s lifelong companion, is also an extroverted and intellectual type. Although he lost a leg during the 93 Harbi, he never withdrew from life or lost touch with the outside world. He remained engaged with the nation’s problems, sought to produce solutions, and when unable to do so, accepted change with grace.

• Setterhan: He exemplifies the extroverted intellectual type. The son of Iranian merchant Mirza Inn, Setterhan learned trade from his father and combined it with his own talents to earn his father Mirza Han’s trust. Due to the demands of his profession, he undertook numerous journeys and acquired diverse experience. His communication skills and dedication to his work, demonstrated during commercial interactions, reflect his extroverted nature.

Main Narrative

The novel begins with the narrator seeking to understand the origins of her roots and the historical events that shaped them. She seeks answers to questions such as how her Iranian grandfather and her Trabzonese grandmother met, married and began living in Trabzon. Curious about the story of her grandfather Setterhan, one of the novel’s central characters, the narrator examines a few old photographs and finds herself transported to the early 1900s, in Trabzon during the Balkan Wars and the First World War. She becomes an unseen observer accompanying her grandmother Zehra in her youth. When she looks at another photograph, she sees her grandfather Setterhan in his youth, traveling to Throne-ı Süleyman, Tabriz, Batumi and Baku. Throughout the novel, there is a constant journey—both through time and space.

Themes of the Book

Nar Ağacı presents an intertwined narrative of personal and collective history. Its central themes include:

• Love and Fate: The relationships experienced by the characters are shaped by events guided by fate.
• Time and Memory: Traces of the past merge with the present, illustrating how memories and historical realities are transmitted.
• Journey and Migration: The characters’ displacement across different geographies narrates the processes of change and transformation.
• Cultural Transitions Between East and West: The novel explores individuals’ search for identity at the intersection of East and West.

Quotations from the Book

"You are in the time when your beauty conquers everything, and wherever you touch me, I weep from that side."

“My back faces Ağrı Mountain, my face turned toward Iran. How strange! Here is the Turkish flag, there is the Iranian flag. Is it these wires that divide this land? Yet the root of this tree is on this side, its branches hang over to the other side—the tree does not care.”

"One’s journey was called muhacir, the other’s tehcir; both stemmed from pain, and their sentences were lines moving in opposite directions along the ridges of mountains."

"If you had not called me, I would never have come like this..."