Gâvur Mahallesi (Infidel Quarter)

Published in 1992 for the first time and received a great deal of attention, Mıgırdiç Margosyan's cult book is now in English. Through a series of colorful stories, complete with a snuff snorting midwife, a simple-minded church caretaker, and a superhuman blacksmith, Mıgırdiç Margosyan explores the city of Diyarbakir, Turkey as it existed in his childhood. It was a time when the city was still home to a diverse population of faiths, languages and characters, resembling what New Yorker Staff Writer Raffi Khatchadourian calls a kind of “Anatolian Macondo.” Introducing his birth place and region, Diyarbakir which left its mark in Armenian and Kurdish cultures, and daily lives of ordinary people especially in ‘40s and ‘50s, Margosyan leaves a both sweet and bitter aftertaste through his peculiar humor and storytelling. In Infidel Quarter, a world in which history is in part a story and stories are in part history glances at us through the doorway. “In my writings, I told about our neighborhood as I saw and lived. I presented the characters and names almost as they are, without making any changes. Most of them, those sisters and uncles, must have passed away already. I wanted to cherish their names and memories in these lines...” Published in Partnership with Gomidas Institute (London)