Istanbul Crossing

Istanbul Crossing is the seventh book by Timothy Jay Smith and the first reviewed in this blog. Smith is a most interesting character himself, and he has obviously incorporated himself and the cast of characters that he has met in his own peripatetic life into the story. The author is an award-winning author who has apparently achieved some fame for his writing skills. This is an important book about trafficking of humans who are seeking to get clear of the Syrian conflicts and other Middle Eastern conflicts of the current time. Desperately seeking safety in his life, the protagonist Ahdaf fled from Syria. But rather than continue to Europe, crossing from Istanbul to Greece, he found a niche, assisting other travelers who were trying to go farther.

 

The lives of the people involved in this migration were well-described by Smith, and death was a constant possibility for them. However, staying in the war areas meant that death was likely, so the people, nearly all men, kept coming. Ahdaf had a reputation for being honest and helpful, so he was able to get paid for his work. Of course the traffickers had to know the underbelly of this world so they too were doing their best to figure who among their colleagues were telling the truth and who were just running another scam on them.

 

Of course, governmental action was always a threat, and it occurred periodically. Suddenly armed and uncontrolled police would be at unexpected checkpoints and at key border locations. At the same time, fighters for ISIS were looking to move back and forth between Europe and Syria, but they also did damage to the societies along the way which they hated but never understood. It was the fighters who would bomb bars in Greece, just to make an unfathomable point.

 

While Ahdaf was safer in Istanbul than he had been in Syria, he was far from being free of potentially lethal danger. Yet, he could not get himself to flee even farther from his home. To complicate his predicament, he was a gay man who was moving through Middle Eastern cultures that often responded intolerantly to gay men with violence, sometimes murder. In the course of acting out his homosexuality, Smith described Ahdaf’s involvement in various homosexual acts. Ahdaf was looking for the safety of love, and the story hinged on the love he felt for a man he met early in the story, Selim. Throughout the story, Ahdaf was pulled in different directions regarding the issues of his safety and his affections.

 

In the end, I thought Smith has written an important book, but it was not a good book from my persepective. Perhaps I’ve already read too much about the desperation and cruelties that the migrants faced on a constant basis. It’s a subject that I’ve grown weary off. I mostly read for escape and I wanted to escape from that material rather than stay stuck in the morass of it, as Ahdaf found himself doing. Ironically, this book is not one for escape of the Middle Eastern horrors.

 

Although I have respect for the effort that it took to put this story together, and while I imagine that it will have a following from this successful author, I cannot recommend it for the readers of this blog.