Silent Turkey

The village of Çarşamba (Wednesday) is next to Perşembe (Thursday) and Pazar (Sunday) is also in the region, and not a million miles away.

When I first landed in İstanbul all those moons ago, I was intoxicated by the noise, the atmosphere, the winding streets which İlber Ortaylı so lovingly writes about in Discovering Ottomans and whose history you can still feel under your feet. The roads that Fahim walked down in the last years of the Ottoman Empire (Mister Fahim Abdulhak Sinasi Hisar). But this is not Turkey, it is the glitter but down dusty roads lays places steeped in history that are forgotten or ignored. If İstanbul is the beating heart, then these places are the veins which now require intensive care.

It was to this that Saturday I arrived in Çarşamba for a book signing at the annual book fair. The bus dropped us on the main road and we regrettably walked the remaining distance. The people were holding together but the place was struggling, with building showing signs of disrepair. The centre needing some love and tenderness, the place appeared neglected by the powers that be. These people deserve better.

At the book signing I encountered only love, care and interest as each person, family, couple I spoke to drifted past lighting up my day. The children who couldn’t believe an English man was here. Many cast doubts on their own country in almost lyrical tones. I expressed how lucky and beautiful this country and its people are. Some couldn’t understand why a foreigner would want to live here, which saddened me. 

At one point a middle-aged woman who declared herself as old spoke with such glee and happiness. “I can’t get enough of books.” Her husband had died a number of years ago, she then discovered reading and books. The midnight lamp burning through the night in her village house, a personal library that was growing. She spoke of worlds opening to her. That my book now sits on her shelf brings tears to my eyes.

There may not have been urban sophistication here but it had an abundance of honesty and openness, their horizons are not closed of far from it.

Around each town, city in Turkey lay such places, laws unto themselves, grave stones close to road sides or near where they live, never moving away even in death. But the tentacles of crude industrial expansion are reaching the gates of all of these places, "disposable" people and communities. 

I’m quite sure the old middle-aged woman will read and do something about it; she now knows a thing or two.

You can read about my life in Turkey here.