BY MELEK CANSU PETEK (ELIT/II)
petek@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
If you are Turkish, or you’ve stayed in Turkey for some time, it is most likely that you’ve visited İstanbul. It’s a must-do to walk the streets of that mysterious and beautiful city, and have a firsthand experience of its fabric. My personal attachment to İstanbul started rather late, unfortunately. Even though I’d been there before as a “tourist,” this summer I got to see what it feels like to be in İstanbul. My trip left me with many unforgettable memories, and one of them is visiting the İstanbul Modern Museum for the first time.
As its name suggests, it’s a museum of modern art, and you can spend hours walking around in it. I simply loved most of the exhibitions and works of art, but there was one work in particular that really had an effect on me: “Bring Yourself to Me” by Handan Börüteçene. In this installation, which is set up in the lower lobby of the museum, you see 19 chairs and 19 old suitcases, with 30 magnifiers mounted on wheeled stands placed around them. It’s a work about immigration, and all those suitcases belong to Turkish migrants to France, while the chairs have been brought from the National Museum of the History of Migration in Paris. The viewer is encouraged to retrace history by looking at the suitcases through the magnifiers to see the marks on them. It’s a journey that takes one back in time and enables one to recreate the memories of the old. While you’re still amazed by how much of the past you can imagine by only “looking” at some old suitcases, Börüteçene strikes back again with a breathtaking poem on the wall, which starts with these lines:
“And thus spoke the place:
Bring me the thrills of the first time you saw me,
Each of which became a path for you in a different work.
Bring yourself to me.”
I don’t know about you, but reading those lines sent a shiver down my spine and touched the traveler that abides in me. I’ve always loved traveling, not just the idea of seeing somewhere new or experiencing a different place, but simply being on the road as well. Whenever I get on a bus, in a car or on a plane to go to a different city, a feeling of excitement permeates my inner being. It isn’t a joyful shout like “Yayyy, I’m moving again!” It’s a mixed sense of adventure, serenity and fear, even if I’m going to a place I’ve been to many times before. Thus, I knew what she meant by “the thrills,” yet I’m not sure whether I’ve ever brought myself to a place fully, or whether there is a place that would call me to it.
I continued reading the poem, smiled at the fact that she quoted Rumi, and when I came to the last stanza, I stood there, transfixed with astonishment:
“Bring me people,/May each be the storytellers of their home towns./Bring me your dreams,/Those dreams that turned me into you, head to foot, as I lived./Bring me my own memory/That memory I yearn to meet./Bring me everything,/Each thing the everything of something else.”
These lines, combined with the exhibition, were so powerful that I had to write them down and dwell on them before I could write about them. Even though it’s been two months now, I see that I’m still not ready — maybe I’ll never be. If the first stanza of the poem touched the traveler in me, these lines spoke to my very soul, as a dreamer, as a storyteller. Being a storyteller is something I’ve always enjoyed. My love for writing started quite early, and the only thing that dates back to an earlier time is my love of reading. However, accepting the fact that I am a dreamer was way harder than that. I thought it sounded a bit too romantic — maybe I was afraid of ending up like Don Quixote — but it took me quite a while to come to terms with that part of my identity. Now that I think of it, being a dreamer, a stargazer, is one of the best “jobs” one could ask for, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
If you are like me, if you know the joys of being quixotic, you’re probably nodding and smiling right now, but if you’re not, I strongly recommend that you take courage and start dreaming. Do whatever you can to bring those dreams into reality, to make them true; but even more importantly, encourage your fellow dreamers. After all, aren’t we all migrants who dream of home, carrying ourselves in suitcases with the hope of finding someone who won’t be repelled by looking at us through a magnifier?