Reviewed by Denis Ferhatovic
It is no longer unusual, at least in the case of living individuals, to be able to see an author’s face, their body in a swim suit, their pets, their friends, what they had for brunch, and what they saw on a vacation, thanks to the ubiquitous social media. A fleeting image from Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç, a photograph shared as a story on his Instagram account (@ozkeskinkilic), came to my mind as I was reading the English translation by Özgecan Kesici-Ayoubi of Keskinkılıç’s poetry collection, Prinzenbad, published this year in a bilingual format. It was a picture of someone’s, presumably the poet’s, clean and pedicured feet standing on a colorful rug. The image was halal in every way, depicting a Muslim believer about to perform one of the five required daily prayers. At the same time, it potentially functioned as an erotically tinged hint for a viewer attracted to feet. Which one is it, a representation of a young man’s fulfillment of his Islamic duties, or a kinkster’s playful provocation that flies under the radar of digital censorship? Does it matter? Why should it not be both? Keskinkılıç’s Prinzenbad powerfully inhabits a similar unresolvable tension – or balance – of the sacred and the profane. It brings together many aspects of his multilingual queer Muslim lyric subject(s) of Turkish and Arab heritage, while preserving poetic opacity and mystery that resist a reductive, ethnographic approach to literature by minoritized authors. A German poet and sociologist of Muslim immigrant background like her author, Kesici-Ayoubi handles the various stylistic registers with sensitivity and confidence, giving Keskinkılıç’s German (-Turkish-Arabic-English) text a fitting English (-Turkish-Arabic-German) version.
The book in the original and translation announces its religious framing directly and right-away. It begins with “بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم”, the bismillah, a common Muslim invocation in Arabic which translates to “In the name of God, Merciful to all, Compassionate to each!”1 I quote from The Qur’an in Tarif Khalidi’s English translation. The devout repeat it before beginning any important task. An epigraph follows in both versions of Prinzenbad, a quotation in translation of chapter 2, verse 245, of the Qur’an. The original German edition (2022) has an additional pious formula at the end, after the table of contents and the indication of the first publications of sixteen poems: “الحمد لله,” in Arabic “Praise be to God.” Because of these paratexts, occasional Qur’anic allusions in individual poems do not surprise, such as “in the bat of an eyelid/ are signs for those who believe (“im wimpernschlag/ liegen zeichen für die gläubingen”) (“flying while muslim,”2 If I do not give the title of a poem in German, it means that it is in English in the original. 16-17, 22-23)3The first page number refers to the German text and the second to the English because the original and the translation face each other in the book under review. , nor do references to Muslim practices such as ritual ablutions (in “placing your face backwards” [“das gesicht rückwärts legen”]). What does intrigue is the juxtaposition of queer practices and orthodox expressions. In “display,” the lyrical speaker describes a sexual encounter facilitated by an unnamed digital application that resembles Grindr. The following interchange takes place:
what do you think
of my underpants? you ask. Allahu a’lam i say and
grab the word by the seam and exchange the fabric
for my lips.
( wie findest du meine
unterhose?, fragst du. Allahu a’lam, sage ich und
greife das wort an der nahtstelle und tausche den stoff
ein durch meine lippen.) (98-99)
“Allahu a’lam,” a transliteration of the Arabic phrase “الله أعلم” meaning “God knows best,” acknowledges the limitations of the human knowledge of the divine, and often appears at the end of Friday sermons. The practicing Muslim and the practicing homosexual come together in this passage without hesitation or shame. Temporarily, the underwear of the lover for the night gains the status of a heavenly mystery. Keskinkılıç describes the erotic act in neither explicit nor obfuscated fashion. The lyrical subject grabs something by the seam and puts his lips in place of the fabric of the other man’s underwear – carnal actions, no doubt – but the presence of “word” makes the reader pause to consider any metaphysical implications. Here, we notice how Kesici-Ayoubi uses the linguistic closeness of German and English, keeping many cognates (“meine”/“my,” “unter-”/“under-”, “sage”/“say,” “wort”/“word,” “lippen”/“lips”) and following the syntax closely, down to the line breaks (“sage ich, und/ greife das wort an der nahtstelle”; “i say, and/ grab the word by the seam”).
Not only alert to the German, the main medium of the collection, Kesici-Ayoubi carefully treats the other three languages that largely contribute to its multilingual texture: Turkish, Arabic, and English. She provides a brief foreword called “Translator’s Notes” that draws attention to the poet’s “linguistic world” and explains no more than seven terms or references. Most Turkish, Arabic, and English words remain the same in the translation, unexplained paratexually, which encourages the reader to look them up or understand them from context if they do not already know them. Nevertheless, the quadrilingual dimension of the original is reduced to trilingual, since Kesici-Ayoubi generally renders both Keskinkılıç’s German and English as English. Some of the German does remain, such as a fraught ethnonym (“once a türke, always a türke, says the officer” [19]), and assorted Berliner toponyms (“the admiralbrücke,” “skalitzer straße,” “kotti,” and “adalbert-/oranienstraße” [55]). More could have been preserved or introduced, leaning onto the previously mentioned similarity between the two Germanic languages. The English in Prinzenbad spans many areas, attesting to its many roles world-wide: from the post-9/11 securitization through the digital media to fashion and flirtation (“security check” [18]”; “tab1 […] youtube playlist” [102]; “underdressed” [20], “boxershorts” [94], and “low fade cut” [48]; “i’m here to eat ass” [96] and “what ur into” [104]). The bilingual format of the book helps because the readers can look at the left-hand side to note the English in the German.
There are fascinating moments when Kesici-Ayoubi translates English into English and even German to German and Turkish to Turkish. In “intoxicating ourselves in their words” [“uns in ihren worten berauschen”], the first line begins “kindergarten closed, conference call at home” which renders “kita geschlossen, telko im homeoffice” (86-87). “Kita” is the abbreviation for “Kindertagesstätte” [children daycare center] and “telko” for “Telefonkonferenz.” A translingual statement appears in “zero zero nine zero” (“null null neun null”), consisting of German and Turkish parts:4 I bolded the Turkish components. “sag ihm ben wald’da fahrrad fahren yapıcam” (34). Kesici-Ayoubi renders the line “tell him ben forest’te bicycle sürecem” (35). She translates the phrase “fahrrad fahren yapıcam” (literally, “I’m gonna do [Turkish] bicycle riding [German])” as “bicycle sürecem”5These are spoken forms; the written standard would be “yapacağım” and “süreceğim.” (literally, “I’m gonna ride [Turkish] bicycle [English]”).” Because she is familiar with Turkish, Kesici-Ayoubi respects the vowel and consonant harmonies, making the post-preposition accord with the “e” and “t” in “forest” rather than the “a” and “d” in “wald,” so we have “-te” instead of “-da.” She also changes the main verb, since “sürmek,” not “yapmak,” is idiomatic in “bisiklet sürmek,” “to ride a bicycle.” One might here question the intervention in a representation of a child’s code-switching. Although philologically exact at most times, the new version of Prinzenbad does not always follow the original, thus creating an additional layer of translanguaging. A perceptive reader can note that languages like English, German, and Turkish are varied within themselves and that one can indeed translate them into themselves.
The larger point, that Kesici-Ayoubi carries admirably across, is that Keskinkılıç and his lyrical subject(s) refuse to compartmentalize individual experiences despite normative pressures, hetero- or homo- alike. Queer practices, kink, religious devotion, everyday multilingualism, and many types of food coexist in the text, as they do in the lives of many of us. Prinzenbad has it all, and it does not discriminate between the high and the low, the sacred and the profane, the majority and minority cultures: the collection invokes the great Persian poet Hafiz (in “like wine for hafiz” [“wie für hafis”]) and the hookup application Grindr (in “display”); sings praises of a late-night snack of baklava (41) but also of “the exotic goods/ coke and snickers the originals twix and hanuta the originals” (35); and employs both an exact term and a periphrasis when referring to hummus (81) and “chickpea purée” (“kichererbsenbrei,” 110-111). Yet, these components do not add up to a portrait of a subject to be exhibited for an outsider’s gaze. Visibility can be a trap, especially for multiply minoritized people, and besides, we are not always transparent even to ourselves. We could be mysterious like God or like a casual hookup’s underwear. .الله أعلم
Keskinkılıç, Ozan Zakariya. Prinzenbad. Translated by Özgecan Kesici-Ayoubi. Broken Sleep Books, 2026.
Denis Ferhatovic is an associate professor of English at Connecticut College (New London, CT, USA). He has published translations from BCMS, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), Karaim, Kosovo Gorani, Old English, and Ottoman in The Riddle Ages, Turkoslavia, The Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, DoubleSpeak, Ellipse Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Ancient Exchanges, MAYDAY, and The Third Wheel. His reviews of translations have appeared in Asymptote, Exchanges, Reading in Translation, and Hopscotch Translation. You can find his poetry (in BCMS) on Strane and in Polja.
Works Cited
Keskinkılıç, Ozan Zakariya. Prinzenbad. Elif Verlag, 2022.
The Qur’an. Translated by Tarif Khalidi. Penguin, 2008.
Denis Ferhatovic’s review brilliantly captures how Keskinkılıç weaves intimate, mundane details into profound poetic reflections on identity and migration.