Have you ever fallen in love with a character in a book? You want to read what happens to him so quickly, you turn the pages as swiftly as you can. You’re interested in every page that features him. You turn turn turn then BOOM! An anticlimax. The writer messes with your mind. He is not the ‘man’ you were made to fall in love with. He’s supposed to be a monster. Worst of all, it was not his fault.
When I first read about Prof. Azur, I knew I was going to write about him because I felt he was such an outstanding character. The writer did put him on a pedestal, I was in awe of him. Elif Shafak, the writer, stripped him of all his glory and reduced him to nothingness.
I don’t want to write about a man whose pride was violently taken away from him, had no choice than to live in shame. I still think about Shafak’s unfairness and it irks me.
The story......
Prof. Azur, the God lecturer, he was a charmer. He brought together people who loved their religion, loathed the concept of religion and the confused (people who didn’t know what to make of God) under one roof to discuss what united them ‘God’
They asked themselves the hardest questions and respectfully poked holes in each other’s beliefs. Sometimes too controversial for his unorthodox way of teaching God, you can’t blame him, ‘God’ is a complex topic.
He brilliantly embraced uncertainties.
“Uncertainty, gentlemen is a blessing. We do not crush it. We celebrate it. That’s the way of the Third Path.”
A complex character he was just like the subject he lectured. I agree he pushed his students so far they all wanted to impress him somehow.
The confused girl was jealous of her friend’s relationship with the Professor she almost committed suicide. The confused didn’t testify at the disciplinary committee to defend Azur. She didn’t show up at all and it was assumed Azur had something to do with her attempted suicide. Thus Azur was punished. She walked away from truth. Azur paid dearly for a sin he didn’t commit. I wish the story was different.
Later in his old age, Azur attended a lecture organized by a visiting Islam advocate. That was where the advocate decided to make fun of him. This is where Peri should have referred the whole room back to the incident which happened in Oxford 14 years ago and told them the TRUTH. “Years had to pass before she came to realization that her passivity actively contributed to the ruination of the man she loved. When she betrayed Azur, she betrayed truth”.
LOVE should never be an excuse to act stupid.
That man deserved TRUTH and the writer denied him of that one thing he sort to find for each person with his seminars.
He didn’t like apologies but this man needed to be healed from assumptions and the weight of a sin he didn’t commit.
I was hoping he would’ve been reinstated to his former glory. The man I admired with Peri didn’t have to go down the way he did.
Most importantly, mental health is not an excuse to ruin someone you claim to love because your love was not reciprocated.
I now understand the reviews on this book. It’s quite an annoying read.
By Chilombo for Corona (Omicron) feelings
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