Milföy (Puffball), the soul mate of Barış from Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (Don’t Shoot the Kites), looks at the world as innocently as he does. She can’t understand what humans do to nature, animals, cities and themselves.
Have you ever waited for someone to adopt you?
This is a very bad thing.
You are asked to try to please yourself.
To look cute, to look deep, to be nice.
But I am what I am. Why should I look different?
Somebody should take me away and I should show my true nature later, is that it?
That’s called dishonesty, I wouldn’t do that.
I wanted to say these things. But how?
The best thing is to pretend I don’t realize anything, to lie there sulking, not looking at anyone coming or going.
The story of the pure-hearted Milföy begins with these sentences.
In this novel written after a thirty-year hiatus, Feride Çiçekoğlu asks us to listen to the voice of Milföy, a dog abandoned in the forest. Milföy tells the story of her “re-homing” and its aftermath, along with the stories of the cats and dog friends she meets; as she tells them, she opens doors in her memory about her sad past.
Milföy, the soul mate of Barış from Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar, looks at the world as innocently as he does. Because she looks at the world in this way, she cannot understand what humans do to nature, animals, cities and herself.
When we read Milföy ve Arkadaşları (Puff Pastry and Friends), enriched with Senta Urgan’s beautiful illustrations, we realize that we actually build most of the walls around us with our hands.
Book Title: Milföy ve Arkadaşları
Author: Feride Çiçekoğlu
Publisher: Can Yayınları
Series: Contemporary
Genre: Novel
Page Count: 128
…
FERİDE ÇİÇEKOĞLU was born in Ankara. After her undergraduate and graduate studies at METU Faculty of Architecture, she studied utopias and urban design in her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. With her love for utopia, she spent four years in prison during the military junta of September 12, 1980. During this time, he turned to literature and cinema. After receiving national and international awards for his screenplays for films such as Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (1989), Umuda Yolculuk (1990) and Suyun Öte Yanı (1991), he returned to academic life in the field of cinema. In addition to the trilogy Vesikalı Şehir, Şehrin İtirazı and İsyankâr Şehir published in Turkish, he has articles and reviews in English on the city and cinema. He is currently lecturing on architecture, literature and cinema at Istanbul Bilgi University.
