Ian and Volkan’s Week at Sundance

You know Eyad gave me the best piece of direction I had ever received,” I was sitting with Ian Tran who played Fasiq in the The Taqwacores movie. It was near the end of the week at Sundance and the house was just about empty. Ian and Volkan Eryaman, who plays Amazing Ayyub, were waiting for their ride to take them to the airport.

“Eyad told me to just ‘be ready for anything,’” Ian continued. “ And wow. It was so simple but it was the best piece of direction I had ever received. It meant that he trusted me.”

“What was this week like for you?” I asked.

“This week was incredible,” Ian said. “And honestly it goes back a couple of months to when we first found out. The whole build up to it.  I’m just the kind of person that wants to share everything wonderful with the people I love.”

“The eighteen days we all spent together. I felt love for everybody. I was scared to watch the film but I was glad to see everybody again. We all shared a journey together. To see everybody here this week, all celebrating, just going nuts over the film, was incredible. I’ll be honest, the first time I saw the film, didn’t pay attention, didn’t absorb one bit of it. And I found out talking to other people that I wasn’t the only one. But when I saw it [the next day] in Salt Lake, I thought to myself ‘That is a great fucking film.’”

“What about you, Volkan?” I said, turning to him.

“It was fun,” he answered  matter of fact-ly. “It was a lot to take in. I feel like such an amateur and there’s a lot to learn so much more to grow and so much more to do.”

“You mentioned yesterday about how you had discovered the Taqwacores and the feelings associated with it. Can you tell me what it was like to discover The Taqwacores?” I asked.

“It was like a confirmation,” Volkan answered. “The same things Mike went through, I went through. So for him to identify with that was really weird. He is an Irish Catholic convert, you know? But he was going through the same thing I was going through. As a kid, I was brought up with a Turkish background. I was not really forced into any religion. In fact, my mom actually is not Muslim. She’s too feminist to be Muslim. And my dad is but he doesn’t force it at all. It was always in a sense half assed with me… Half assed to the orthodox Muslims at least. But I guess Taqwacore made me understand that that was okay. It wasn’t ignorance that made that decision, it was that after understanding everything.’

“I’d be fasting for Ramadan and people would ask are you Sunni or Shia? And I’d say - I don’t give a shit about that. Stupid politics that happened 1500 years ago. It’s not what Islam is about. And they’re like “if you don’t pick Sunni or Shia, you’re not really Muslim.” What about Sufis? What about all these other sects to Islam? I’d question myself because everyone was questioning me…’

“So after reading this book and checking out these characters… I decided that if Amazing Ayyub can call himself a Muslim then I can call myself a Muslim. So I felt good about myself. It was like confirmation and conclusion. And after that I got to meet the real Taqwacore characters and that was like a huge confirmation that the book did something and meeting everyone else just totally solidified it.”

“What was it like meeting everyone else in the scene and letting them into your home?” I asked. I knew that Volkan’s house had turned into a surrogate taqwacore house in New York City, over the past year.

“It was like comfort. Like you have people like yourself. Whether it’s like people that are like-minded politically, sociologically, philosophically - like everything. And it gives you a sense of comfort.”