The Janissary’s Paradox: A Chatroom, a Book and Too Many Lost Souls
I often drop into a chatroom called “Sherlock and You”, a place where people from all corners of the globe gather, ostensibly to discuss literature. Of course, literature is only the excuse. The real attraction is discovering how many different ways human beings can misunderstand the same book.
My chosen group is mostly interested in modern literature. Recently, I was reading The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak when I came across an intriguing expression: “Janissary’s Paradox.”
Naturally, I did what any innocent reader would do—I mentioned it in the chatroom.
That was my first mistake.
Within minutes, I was attacked by a barrage of questions, explanations, personal histories, childhood memories and, occasionally, complaints about European weather.
The Janissaries, I explained, were the elite soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. Many were taken as Christian boys, converted, trained and transformed into the Sultan's most loyal soldiers. There was something deeply paradoxical about the arrangement: the empire took children from their original communities, erased much of their inherited identity, gave them a new identity—and then depended on them to defend the very system that had transformed them.
The more I explained, the more I realised that this was not merely an Ottoman historical curiosity.
It was happening all around me.
Helen the Lost, who introduced herself as being from Paris, was the first to arrive.
“I am from Congo,” she announced. “But in France I had to learn French, behave French, think French. Slowly I began wondering—where did the Congolese Helen disappear?”
Then came an Arab gentleman living in Germany.
“I can manage German bureaucracy,” he declared, “but I cannot manage German winter.”
That apparently was his own version of the Janissary Paradox.
Then Bloefeld appeared—the notorious Bond villain, at least according to his chosen identity. He maintained that he had no identity problem whatsoever.
“I have several identities,” he said. “That is much more efficient.”
Lothar from Romania disagreed. He called himself “Lost in the Wild.” He had lived in three countries, spoken four languages and was still trying to decide which country had the correct version of himself.
Lotus from Arizona was even more complicated. She said she had migrated so long ago that she could no longer remember whether she was nostalgic for the country she had left or for the person she had been when she left it.
The Unmindful Philosopher from Dubai then entered the conversation.
“Identity,” he announced, “is merely an attachment of the ego.”
We waited.
After five minutes he added:
“Except when my passport expires.”
That brought the discussion firmly back to earth.
From Istanbul to America—and then to the chatroom
In Shafak's novel, the paradox is particularly poignant in the context of Armenians in America: people carrying the memory of a homeland, sometimes inherited through generations, while simultaneously becoming part of a completely different society.
And suddenly our little literary discussion had become an unofficial conference on the global diaspora.
People who had crossed borders for opportunity, safety, marriage, education, war, economics or simply curiosity began telling their stories.
Some had become completely assimilated.
Some fiercely preserved their old identity.
Some lived somewhere in between—a cultural no-man's-land where the food remained authentic, the language became rusty and the grandchildren answered in English.
And then there were those who had developed a fascinating third identity.
They were no longer entirely from there, but they were never completely from here either.
That, I began to understand, is perhaps the real Janissary's Paradox.
The first generation says, “We must not forget where we came from.”
The second generation says, “Why should I be different from everyone else?”
The third generation suddenly asks, “What exactly did my grandparents lose?”
And somewhere between generations, identity becomes a family heirloom nobody knows how to use.
The diaspora paradox
The modern world has produced millions of Janissaries—not literally, of course, but psychologically.
Migration often requires adaptation. You learn the language, change your habits, understand the local customs, acquire a new passport and gradually learn how to laugh at jokes you didn't understand ten years ago.
But adaptation has a price.
At what point does adaptation become erasure?
And at what point does preserving one's original identity become a refusal to belong?
That was the question our chatroom could not settle.
The Pakistani in London complained that his children knew more about Premier League football than cricket.
The Bengali in New York complained that his daughter spoke Bengali only when she wanted money.
The Indian in Toronto complained about snow.
The Indian in California complained about taxes.
The Frenchman complained about Americans.
The Americans complained about the French.
At this point Sherlock himself might have closed the chatroom.
Yet beneath all the humour was something rather serious.
The diaspora is not simply a geographical phenomenon. It is an internal negotiation.
You carry one culture in your memory and acquire another through everyday life. You may speak one language at home and another outside. You may eat the food of your childhood while listening to music from your adopted country. You may celebrate festivals whose original meaning has become blurred but whose emotional significance has increased.
And sometimes you discover that the homeland you are defending exists mainly in your imagination.
The final irony
By midnight, the chatroom had become unusually quiet.
Helen the Lost was still there.
So was Bloefeld.
Lothar had disappeared into the wild.
Lotus was probably somewhere in Arizona wondering who she really was.
The Unmindful Philosopher had gone offline after declaring that identity was an illusion.
I closed The Bastard of Istanbul and thought about the Janissaries.
Perhaps the greatest paradox is not that people can lose their original identity.
It is that after losing it, they may spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to reconstruct it.
And perhaps that is why a simple phrase in a Turkish novel produced such an extraordinary reaction in a chatroom full of strangers.
I had thought I was discussing history.
They thought I was discussing them.
And somewhere between Istanbul, Paris, Congo, Germany, Romania, Arizona and Dubai, I realised that the Janissary's Paradox was no longer an Ottoman story.
It had become a global one.
