‘A soft answer turneth away wrath’: stories from the bookshop

TURKEY — In the busy shopping street where the Bible Society bookshop stands, trams roll past only yards from the window. On the other side of the glass is a large Bible open for passers-by to read. As this is the month of Ramadan, it is open at a text from Matthew on fasting.

As you enter the foyer, there is another large Bible open on a lectern and surrounding windows display posters of rural landscapes, wildlife, and the face of a girl overprinted with verses from Scripture. Inside, the shop has a quiet, slightly old-fashioned air. The bookcases lining the walls hold a variety of Turkish Bible Society editions of Bibles, the recently published new edition of the New Testament in Turkish, and the Psalms.

The bookshop manager is Zeki Aydin, a young, softly spoken man with a ready smile. He is a Syriac and his first language is Aramaic.

His gentle manner serves him – and the Bible cause – well, given the difficult customers he sometimes encounters. This is the very public ‘interface’ of the Turkish Bible Society, where it encounters not only Christian customers but the Muslim majority, sometimes curious, sometimes suspicious and sometimes hostile.

“A man with a beard came in one day,” says Zeki. “He was very angry and demanded, ‘Why do you sell Bibles in our country?’

Offered him tea

“I offered him some tea and we talked about the Bible.” In due course they got down to details and Zeki showed the man – a Muslim – some key passages. “He was shocked to know that the Bible urges people to ‘Love your enemy’,” he says.

A week later the angry man came back – only this time he wasn’t angry.

He brought Zeki a peace offering in the form of some sweets and apologised for the anger he had shown the week before. They talked some more.

“I should teach my friends about the Bible,” the man said – and he bought several copies of the New Testament – presumably to do just that.

Zeki has to be on his guard as to his manner towards people who come to the shop, because he never knows who they may be. Politicians and police both come to the shop and not always with innocent motives.

On one occasion a chief of police and his wife came in.

“They stayed and we talked for an hour,” says Zeki. It was after one of the anti-Christian programmes that are shown not infrequently on Turkish TV, and the policeman came to challenge Zeki about what he had seen. Zeki had to try to convince him that he was not an “enemy of the state” – the description the programme had given to Turkish Christians. Zeki showed him Romans 13 in which Paul talks about submission to the authorities. The man’s surprised reply was to the effect that his colleagues in the police force should learn from the passage.

About a year later, the man came into the shop again. In the meantime, the explained, his work had taken him away from Istanbul. “I am going to a church in Ankara now,” he told Zeki proudly. (WR 400/24 - 03.06) [3 photos]