Two Articles on Haiti

Following two articles below are taken from www.socialistworker.co.uk. It is inspirational (and equally frightening) to see the other side of the picture. The side that major news agents do not show and major rulers of the world want to hide...

If you want to read them in the source, you can click on:

1. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20069


2. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20077

3. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=20076

Hell in Haiti as aid turns to occupation

A UN soldier on Port-au-Prince

Charlie Kimber examines what has happened since the disaster

For all the talk of aid, ordinary people in Haiti are still waiting for basic supplies – and many have had nothing. Geographer Kenneth Hewitt coined the term “classquake” when examining the 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, because of the accuracy with which it hit the poor.

It cost the lives of 23,000 people. The classquake in Haiti today, in which at least 150,000 people have died, is even worse.

The earthquake was a natural event. Yet the scale of the suffering is about the way society is organised.

The US could use its vast resources to help people. Instead it is using the catastrophe to intensify its control in Haiti.

It is preparing a long-term occupation that will be justified as a “humanitarian mission”.

Haiti’s poverty, following generations of imperialist and capitalist oppression, is the backdrop to the overcrowded and fragile housing that has proved so disastrous.

And now poor people’s interests are coming second to those of the US and the Haitian elites.

IRIN, the official United Nations (UN) news agency, distributed a press release last Saturday headlined “Haiti: hungry and angry”.

It quoted one woman who said that two large camps hosting 30,000 homeless people had received no organised food aid since the earthquake on the 12 January.

Port-au-Prince resident Jean-Marc Duvert told IRIN, “We are hungry and tired of elected officials taking food intended for us”.

Aid is distributed in a way that keeps UN and US control – and takes power away from Haitians. Racist attitudes mean Haitians are treated like children.

Some 60,000 Haitians have set up a temporary shelter at the Pétionville golf club in Port-au-Prince. The US 82nd Airborne division polices every drop of water and morsel of food they receive.

It distributed 10,000 meals each day until Saturday, making this camp the US military’s largest distribution point in Port-au-Prince.

The military then decided that “the food attracted too many people to a volatile site” – and suspended it.

Behaved

Lieutenant Brad Kerfoot said, “We told them we wouldn’t give any food away today, because of the way they behaved yesterday.

“My soldiers and I think they’re ungrateful”.

While hundreds of thousands starve and go thirsty, the US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport and neighbouring UN compound have ice-cold beers, internet access, food, blankets, generators and other aid relief from around the globe.

Journalist Caroline Graham wrote last weekend, “Never, in more than 20 years of covering disasters, has the void between the might and power of the Westernised world and the penniless and pitiful people they have been mobilised to ‘save’ been so glaringly obvious to me.”

This gulf is causing entirely justified resentment. On at least two occasions Haitians have marched on the UN compound demanding aid and jobs.

The UN’s answer is repression.

A Cuban television team filmed scenes of UN troops firing rubber bullets and tear gas grenades at crowds of Haitians.

The Haitian police are using the chaos after the earthquake to murder activists who oppose the present regime.

There are dozens of reports of bodies in the streets, hands tied behind their backs – the signature of state death squads.

There are constant media stories about “looters”. The reality is that desperate people are doing whatever is necessary to survive.

Journalist Rebecca Solnit writes, “After years of interviewing survivors of disasters, and reading first-hand accounts and sociological studies from such disasters as the London Blitz and the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, I don’t believe in looting.

“The great majority of what happens you could call emergency requisitioning.

“Someone who could be you, someone in desperate circumstances, takes necessary supplies to sustain human life in the absence of any alternative. Not only would I not call that looting, I wouldn’t even call that theft.”

While there are not enough flights to get aid and medical supplies into Haiti, the parasitical rich are still arriving for their photo-ops.

Princess Haya of Jordan flew in last week in her role as a UN goodwill ambassador. She met her country’s troops then flew back to the Dominican Republic – in a private 747.

US officials claim to be helping Haiti’s people. Yet they are making a huge effort to make sure that any Haitians who flee the island are driven back – or drowned.

“Operation Vigilant Security” backs up a small fleet of navy and coastguard vessels with aircraft.

Repatriation

“The goal is to interdict them at sea and repatriate them,” said the US Coast Guard Commander Christopher O’Neil, of the Haitians who may be driven to risk the 681-mile sea crossing to Miami.

Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to Washington, recorded a public information message in Creole warning his countrymen not to “rush on boats to leave the country”.

“If you think you will reach the US and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case,” he said.

Hundreds of immigration detainees have been moved from a South Florida detention centre to clear space for Haitians who do manage to reach the US.

In addition, a large tented city, initially capable of holding 1,000 people, has been readied at the infamous Guantanamo Bay to hold Haitian refugees.

People are needlessly dying in Haiti because those in positions to help are refusing to do so.

Just like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, the Haitian earthquake is a condemnation of the world’s rulers.

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How could Haiti win its freedom?


Haiti has an incredible history of resistance – but could it go further? Mark L Thomas argues that, even in the poorest countries, the working class can spark revolutionary movements that can transform society

The people of Haiti have a powerful record of resistance. They have fought back even in the most appalling conditions – from the great slave rebellion in the 1790s, to the movement that destroyed the brutal regime of “Baby Doc” Duvailer in the 1980s.

They are not alone. People in some of the poorest countries have driven out hated rulers.

But could they go further? Could they defeat the power of US imperialism and make a revolution?

And even if a revolution did take place, aren’t countries like Haiti – or Somalia, or Bangladesh – simply too poor to develop a socialist society?

The revolutionary Karl Marx argued that capitalism creates the preconditions for socialism.

Capitalism creates enormous wealth compared to previous societies. There is now enough food, shelter, clothing and so on in the world to end poverty.

At the same time capitalism gives birth to a new class: the working class. Forced together in large workplaces, the collective production by this class is the source of capitalism’s vast wealth.

Workers occupy a unique position at the heart of the capitalist economy. Without them, no buses or trains run, no steel is made, and virtually nothing can be produced.

Marx saw workers as the force that could use their power to create a classless, socialist society.

Yet there are many countries in the world, like Haiti, where workers are a minority of the population – in some cases a tiny minority. How can they lead a revolution under such conditions?

Socialists have debated similar problems for centuries, and their arguments can offer valuable insights for today.

As capitalism spread out from Western Europe and North America from the 19th century onwards, the rest of the world was increasingly drawn into the global market.

The big capitalist powers like Britain and France, and later the United States, carved up Africa and Asia between them. The remaining independent states were forced to rapidly industrialise to survive and fend off predators.

But the pattern of capitalist development in these countries did not simply repeat that of Britain or France a century earlier.

Some older industries were destroyed – a flood of cheap machine-made cotton goods from Lancashire ruined India’s once prosperous textile producers.

In other countries, small pockets of advanced industry grew up alongside millions of peasants who continued to till the soil with rudimentary tools.

This was the situation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Old meets new

The Tsarist regime turned to promoting modern industry from the 1880s onwards to ensure it could compete with its rivals in Western Europe as a major military power.

The new industry that was created often employed the latest technology.

By the First World War, the Putilov armaments factory in St Petersburg was one of the largest and most advanced in the world.

Yet Russia’s population was still made up overwhelmingly of peasants.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky called this “combined and uneven development” – old and new methods of production coming together. It remains an important feature of 21st century capitalism.

Today, China’s coastal regions have become one of the great workshops of global capitalism, supplying vast quantities of consumer goods to the world market.

Yet only 30 percent of rural households in China own a fridge, in large part because of the lack of electricity.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world, has over a million mobile phone users. Street vendors use car batteries to recharge phones, despite often patchy and limited power supplies.

In such situations countries which have only very recently industrialised will leap to the most advanced techniques without going through all the previous stages of development. And the working class can equally move forward at a rapid rate.

But didn’t Marx argue that the working class must become the majority before it can act as the agent of socialism?

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that the revolution against the Tsar would have to be led by workers even though they were still only a minority of Russian society.

Russia’s capitalists were too weak and too tied to the old order to lead a revolution. The peasantry could strike blows, but were too dispersed and politically backward to play a central role.

The new working class, on the other hand, was concentrated in big factories and was capable of leading the peasantry. Having overthrown the Tsar, workers were not prepared to stop and allow the creation of a capitalist state founded on their own exploitation.

Trotsky put it well­ – “The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic enslavement”.

This raised an immediate contradiction. The material wealth to build socialism did not yet exist in Russia, a point Trotsky fully accepted.

The solution lay in spreading the revolution, above all to more industrialised countries.

“How far, however, can the socialist policy of the working class go in the economic conditions of Russia?” he wrote.

“Only one thing we can say with certainty… without direct state support from the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power.”

A revolution could begin on a national scale in a country with a small working class, but could succeed only if it linked with the global working class.

Trotsky called this the theory of “permanent revolution”.

The events of the 1917 revolution in Russia vindicated it brilliantly.

Workers gave leadership to the peasant rebellions on the land and in the army, overthrowing the Tsarist regime and establishing a workers’ state.

Revolutions swept the whole of Europe in the following years­ – but their defeat left the Russian Revolution tragically isolated.

The spread of global capitalism and the emergence of new centres of development, from China to Brazil, mean the process of one revolution sparking others can be repeated today. The global working class has grown massively since Trotsky first developed the theory of permanent revolution in 1905–6.

Decisive

In Haiti the working class is small, and globalisation has left the economy ravaged by neoliberalism. But even here, workers can still play a crucial role.

The wealth workers create remains vital to the ruling class – and workers possess the capacity for effective collective action, like mass strikes.

A militant workers’ movement can pull behind it the thousands of former peasants pushed off the land into vast slums, often in close proximity to the industrial centres.

Haiti’s biggest slum, Cité Soleil on the edge of the capital Port-au-Prince, is home to up to 300,000 people.

Workers there could pull peasants behind a revolutionary movement. But it’s only by looking to allies beyond Haiti’s borders that the workers’ movement could turn such revolts into successful socialist revolution.

Haitian workers will find allies if they look to the working class across the Caribbean – in big capitalist states like Mexico and Brazil in Latin America, and the working class of the United States itself.

This does not mean simply waiting for revolution to break out in more developed countries.

Revolutionary crises can develop more quickly in weaker states, and then radicalise workers in stronger ones.

The mass movements in Venezuela and Bolivia that have developed over the last decade are still a long way from socialist revolution. Nevertheless, they have inspired those fighting back across Latin America and beyond.

Imagine the impact of a revolution in Haiti that swept aside the US and the local rich and started to create a society run by ordinary people.

In the 19th century Haiti inspired people across the world. The slave rebellion led by Touissant L’Overture mattered far beyond the Caribbean. It struck a blow against slavery as a global system.

Today a revolution against capitalism, even in the poorest states, can have huge resonance.

And Trotsky made one final point. He insisted that the process of permanent revolution ultimately rests on the strength of workers’ “tradition, initiative, readiness for struggle”.

This is what socialists must direct themselves to fostering, wherever they live.

Avatar: An anti-imperialist saga or a technical self-indulgence?

Most of the times what you hear about a movie before you have chance to see it makes you disappointed at the end. Once you see it you realize that it did not deserve any of the praise you have heard in advance. Yes, I saw it and I did not like it as many movie-goers suggested that it has a strong and unique message against the current imperialist system. Avatar carries a very classical and extremely cliché story with technological decorations and a few imaginative powers (floating mountains, colorful big birds, instantly blossoming flowers, a planet that lives like a colossal organism, the giant neural network, pantheist harmony which reminds the uniting power of religion etc…) sprinkled around it to make it look pretty and impressive. It is like an old motorbike painted with glowing colors. Yes, it is shining but it does not go anywhere!!! Yes, it would be an amazing experience to see 3D images but unfortunately I saw it in 2D because the tickets for 3D have been sold out till March. It is successful as a technological thriller but it is definitely a failure as a movie to offer something new, as a story which is told millions of times in the exactly same way and as a theme which leads to an incomplete, immature conclusion on the nature of wild capitalism that actually seems the true reason behind the problems mentioned in the movie.




First of all, I should start with director’s obsession with J. Jack in Titanic, John Connor in Terminator and now Jake in Avatar. Can we say this is a coincidence or would James Cameron really like to see his own initial as a hero in the movies? Does he want to create an alt-ego like Kafka’s K? But what we see in this movie is another imperialist look in which the salvation of Pandora people is provided by the human race. They are not capable enough to protect their lands from exploiters because what they believe is harmony and some sort of pantheistic approach to the nature. This makes them weak against power-crazy, profit-oriented human minds. Then they need a hero, a human-navi hybrid, or a body of navi (strong but not smart enough) with human mind (smart but not strong enough). What will happen to them after they defeat the humans? Will they keep their simple life or will start developing weapons against them so that they will be able to defend their land during the prospective invasion attempts?

Let’s start with the story. What is good about the story? Didn’t we see the same story before at “Dances with Wolves”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “The Mission” or many other post-colonial / anti-imperialist novels / movies? Couldn’t the director create something better than repeating the well-known stories? The only difference in this story is this one is set in a different planet and it has some elements which are related to today’s political agenda. So what? There is love in the story like all other blockbusters. Of course! It is the engine of the plot as usual although “hatred” is supposed to be the engine of this story once we think what the movie is dealing about. There are good ones and bad ones! Despite movie’s three dimensions the characters are one dimensional. This makes the movie very predictable. Of course the natives are irrational –or rational in a way that rational human beings cannot understand and can have right to call them “savages”- and humans are scientific, advanced in medicine, defense mechanisms etc…




Second problem was the “happy end”. In one scene, the soldier shouts with anger “We will fight terror with terror” (reminding Bush) although the story does not need a statement like this because there is no terrorism in the story, there are navis trying to save their land from exploitation. So there is war and it is justified for the navis as they are about to lose their soil. This part of the story has a historical value and can be considered as a realistic approach. But the more the story advances, the more it loses its real point. At the end, again with the help of humans, the navis can fight against the human soldiers. Isn’t it surprising? But in reality, the exploiters do not give up until they consume all the exploitable materials. Movie is optimistic, therefore not realistic. In reality, things happen in a different way. Exploiters leave the exploited lands only after they use up all the materials they need. So a sad ending would be better as it can give people to think about the future of the world and its residents… If we look at the world as it is now, there is not much to hope for the future. Happy ends are good for common movie-goers but at the same time it makes people’s mind numb in a way they stop seeing the movie as a reference to the reality. It just stays in minds as pretty images with heroic actions.



Thirdly, the movie is misleading people’s mind by showing Bush or his war policies as the main target. Now, Bush has gone, any change in US policies in Iraq or Afghanistan happened during last year? Nobel Peace prize is given to Obama and he ironically justified the war in his Nobel lecture in the most fashionable way. I think even Bush must have felt very happy when he listened to Obama’s speech because if he has said the same things, he would have been hit by a shoe. But Obama was clapped and considered as a hero. So what changed in the world? Nothing changed and nothing will change in the future either. The reason is simple: It does not matter if it is republican or democratic; the American imperialism has the same agenda around the world. Since they lost in Vietnam, they keep losing the wars. Because they keep losing wars, they keep waging new wars as well. It is scary for a power-driven economy like US. It is like a wounded bear trying to bite more and more while losing power. The more it loses, the more it gets angry. The more it gets angry, the more it attacks…

I understand that the director does not like Bush or he has moderately left views. But making a block-buster movie whose success is heavily based on its technical extravaganzas is not the way for an artist to show his anger. For me I look at the sincerity of the artist if s/he is criticizing something. The movie made more than a billion dollars so far. It will probably exceed two billion dollar in the near future. So how much of this money will go to the people who have been suffering in the exploited lands? I am not talking about only Iraq and Afghanistan; I am talking about almost every third world country where the huge corporations of developed nations play their dice on human lives since they cannot do it in their own homelands where human lives are costly.

These days it is fashion to criticize Bush and his warriors as he has gone away. It is also fashion to talk about how white man wiped out American Indians in the past, how European powers divided the nations of Africa and Asia on tables, how England left India after consuming up all the resources. All these sound like a old sad story which we like to talk about when we want to look smart among our modern friends. But imperialism is not a past story, it is going on right now, everywhere we look. Avatar is this kind of movie in which exploiters behave like thieves, like bad people who are evil by nature. In reality, exploiters are also fathers of innocent children and they too have pretty wives, they too laugh at good jokes and they too help poor when they want to purify their souls. Nothing is black and white as shown in the movie and this makes the movie failure in another way. I believe Avatar is another form of cultural imperialism where we are forced to think that exploitation comes from outside, from those who are bad people with bad characteristics. But in reality, exploitation comes in the form of money, debt, unregulated foreign investments which benefit only a few rich people in the country, IMF, World Bank etc… Exploitation is everywhere there is a huge gap between poor and rich. Exploitation is on the street where we see beggars, poor people who are forced to sell their kidneys to organ mafia to have some pocket money, poor villagers who work hard not to lose their lands to the big corporations… It is in the factories where the cost of the lunch for a Vietnamese worker is less than 5000 VND while their boss spends thousands of dollars for a sumptuous dinner at 6 star hotels. There is no need to go to Pandora or any other planet to see how things went wrong in the last few centuries… We just need to open our eyes and see the real pictures in 4D (fourth dimension will be “heart” if you would like to call it) because the movies made in 3D are made to mislead us to believe that enemy is outside although it is actually living with us…



Finally, if you would like to see a sci-fi saga with vivid colors and extremely lavish settings, Avatar is there. It is a movie which deserves some Oscars in technical areas. Just do not expect any originality from it as it is not original at all... And the message given in the movie is not something more than you can get from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Bad cat deserves to be humiliated and good mouse enjoys its smart moves.

You Are Kissing a Colossal Child

I wish you know what exactly you kiss when you kiss me!

In an evening everyone withdraws one by one

you kiss the loneliness that flows towards the road like black water. 

In your mouth, the urgent taste of plums, 

You kiss the slap landing on the dreams of a boy, 

whose hands are clouds, eyes are a field with crops.

Rain does not always bring the rainbow. 

The throbbing of waiting at the door ajar, 

the more she loses, the more it adds to my life,

you are kissing the long nights and pale body of a woman. 

The moonlight that catches the distant mountain villages

creates palaces with mud-bricks towards poverty.

Neither the vibrations in the water nor the sky nor the wind; 

you kiss an unstoppably darkening country whenever you kiss me. 

Drunken men on Sakarya street to the nights that are misted with raki. 

They are drawing something with their high-pitch voice.

Loneliness can always find a shelter, I say. 

You reach and kiss my trembling lips. 

Love in the heart of men who grow up silently 

beats ferociously wherever it falls. 

To utter elegance with the taste of rust in one’s mouth 

is a ridiculous sincerity, late and meek. 

You kiss the sedimentary of a wrong life whenever you kiss me. 

Love is one’s only chance against time. 

It can find its mirrors among innumerable doors and walls. 

Do you know what you kiss when you kiss me? 

In an evening everybody becomes pitch-black

you kiss the seven-colored sky with its stars. 

You, with the light of a mother in your eyes 

kiss a colossal child who was born out of pallidity. 

 Şükrü Erbaş (1953) Translated to English by Ali Rıza Arıcan. (30.12.2009) 

Sen bende neleri öpüyorsun bir bilsen 
Herkesin perde perde çekildiği bir akşam 
Siyah bir su gibi yollara akan yalnızlığı öpüyorsun 
Ağzında eriklerin aceleci tadı 
Elleri bulut, gözleri ot bürümüş ekin tarlası 
Bir çocuğun düşlerine inen tokadı öpüyorsun. 
Yağmur her zaman gökkuşağını getirmiyor 
Aralık kapılarda bekleyişin çarpıntısı 
Bir kadının eksildikçe ömrüme eklenen 
Uzun gecelerini, solgun gövdesini öpüyorsun. 
Uzak dağ köylerine vuran ay ışığı 
Kerpiçlerden saraylar kuruyor yoksulluğa 
Ne suların ibrişimi ne gökyüzü ne rüzgâr 
Sen bende gittikçe kararan bir halkı öpüyorsun. 

Sakarya Caddesi'nde sarhoşlar 
Rakıyla buğulanmış kaldırımlarına gecenin 
Yüksek sesle bir şeyler çiziyorlar. 
Yalnızlık her koşulda bir sığınak bulur, diyorum 
Uzanıp dudağımdaki titremeyi öpüyorsun. 
Örseler acıyla düştüğü yeri 
Susarak büyüyen adamların sevgisi. 
Ağzında pas tadıyla bir inceliği söylemek 
Bir gülünç içtenliktir, gecikmiş ve ezik 
Sen bende yanlış bir ömrün tortusunu öpüyorsun. 
İnsanın zamana karşı biricik şansıdır aşk 
Onca kapı onca duvar içinde bulur aynasını. 
Sen bende neleri öpüyorsun biliyor musun 
Herkesin simsiyah kesildiği bir akşam 
Yıldızlarla yedirenk gökyüzünü öpüyorsun. 

Sen bende, gözlerinin anne ışığıyla 
Bir solgunluktan doğan kocaman bir çocuğu öpüyorsun.

Şükrü Erbaş (1953)

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Lethe* is passing through inside me, dragging the past loves and the untold stories.
Despite the police and the government, I keep moving, struggling and being adrift.
A half of me is compassion, the other half is scrimmage, the rest is human
I ride the circles that are made of my compasses, my radius and my center.
I am approaching to an abyss behind a crippled guide, to cliffs and to a river.

Ants have taken the roads, with or without rumbles, ruptured from soul.
A wounded cockroach is walking lame, surrounded by millions of motored ants.
I am diving into the crowd, to the lights and noise, to the city and carelessness.
A couple of hands begging for Christmas, for the sake of waste pouring from the sky.
While a few coins land to his hands, merry Christmas he says and waves a good bye.

A little girl touches my leg, a lucky lottery ticket from an unlucky childhood!
A life passes through my trousers, my orbit is love, my radius is revolution**.
I buy a ticket and pay with a smile for the portion of happiness that she deserves
Passing the houses whose balconies are full of kitch, dangling down to the streets.
God is great says the little girl. God is love, God is love, God is love, she repeats .

A few more steps, a thief, perhaps a bag snatcher, perhaps a banker or a politician.
Written on their foreheads, impossibility of difference, one is out-law, one is above.
When all boundaries are drawn by money, is there still a difference between in and out?
A pegasus with white wings, a santa clause, a sparkling princess and an old blind musician
God is mercy he shouts behind his lightful darkness, his voice lacks of ambition.

The fake smile that I borrowed from my friends is lost at the end of the road
Irresponsibility is freedom, freedom is capitalism and free market.
Whenever I stare at this abyss, I see myself and the lying mirrors.
Like an invisible man, my absence is being noticed only when I return.
Pleasure is possible only when the pain ends, when the suffering burns.

You, I, we and they cannot live together in peace so we have this crowd.
It is the dream land at where we dont look, we will never look.
There is no god, there is only human, love, mercy and happiness.
Till the day all people of the world are content and free
There will be no Christmas happy and merry.

Ali Riza ARICAN, 25 December 2009

* Lethe: the river of forgetting in greek mythology.

** The phrase "my orbit is love, my radius is revolution." belongs to a Turkish poet, Pinar Nurhan, Modern Cinayetlerin Kokusu, 37.

Yarım Porsiyon Aydınlık / Half Portion Intellectuality

At your usual corner
At your usual bar
Whiskey and carrot in front of you
And your hand is at your chin
Your eyebrow is a bit high
You look so pedantic!
Without producing anything
You only know how to criticize…

You know the best on cinema
On theater and music too
Sculpture, painting and literature
must be asked to you
You don’t know the price of the bread
But economic-politics…
When you beat your wives
How scientific you are!…

This summer you were in the south again
Plenty of raki*, sun and sea
Everything was perfect but
You did not like the local people

Here and there, it is all the same bars
It is the same half portion intellectuality
The same faces, the same words
Swear to God, you did not change at all…

Here and there, it is all the same bars
It is the same half portion intellectuality
The same faces, the same words
Swear to God, you did not change at all…

* rakı: Turkish alcoholic beverage, similar to Greek ouzo.

Her zaman ki köşenizde
Her zaman ki barınızda
Önünüzde viski ve havuç
Ve bir eliniz çenenizde
Kaşınız hafifçe yukarıda
Bakışlarınız ne kadar bilgiç
Hiçbir şey üretemeden
Sadece eleştirirsiniz

Sinemadan siz anlarsınız
Tiyatrodan müzikten
Heykel resim edebiyat
Sorulmalı sizden
Ekmeğin fiyatını bilmezsiniz
Ama ekonomik poliika
Karılarınızı döverken siz
Ne kadar bilimselsiniz

Bu yaz yine güneydeydiniz
Bol rakı güneş ve deniz
Her şey bir harikaydı ancak
Yerli halkı beğenmediniz

Burda da orda da o aynı barlar
Hep o yarım porsiyon aydınlık
Aynı çehreler aynı laflar
Vallahi hiç değişmemişsiniz

Burda da orda da o aynı barlar
Hep o yarım porsiyon aydınlık
Aynı çehreler aynı laflar
Vallahi hiç değişmemişsiniz

Namus Belası

Honour Crime

Once I fell in prison cells, so many people start giving advice
If I put those advices together, a road from here to village can be made
On difficult days, mother, father, sister, brother become strangers
The blood we spill for the honor crime is ours

We are all from Turhal, we all look alike
One thousand times we quit and again we start drinking wine
The horse is ours, the woman is ours, the weapon is ours, the fame is ours
The prison where we are locked in for the honor crime is ours.

My bride, my tall girl, before we arrive to each other
Before I opened your veil and sit with you knee by knee
They kidnapped you and brought to far away
The life we take for the honor crime is ours

Forgive me my aga*, forgive me my bey**, I regret my wrongdoings
Neither a word is missing nor is a word extra. I said everything
Break the pen***, give me my punishment, why would I want to live more
The life we give up for the honor crime is ours.

* Aga: Turkish word which means elder brother. However, it also means the respected person in rural areas who own a lot of lands and rule the village.

** Bey: Turkish word for respected man. It can be translated as “sir” or “master”.

*** Break the pen: In Turkish tradition, if the judge breaks the pen, this means the final decision of the court is death penalty.

Namus Belası

Düştüm mapus damlarına öğüt veren bol olur
Toplasam o öğütleri burdan köye yol olur
Ana baba bacı kardaş dar günümde el olur
Namus belasına kardaş döktüğümüz kan bizim

Hep bir hallı Turhallıyız biz bize benzeriz
Yüz bin kere tövbe eder gene şarap içeriz
At bizim avrat bizim silah bizim şan bizim
Namus belasına kardaş yatarız zindan bizim

Kız gelinim suna boylum varamadan biz bize
Besmeleyle yüzün açıp oturmadan diz dize
Almış kaçırmışlar seni çökertmişler ıssıza
Namus belasına kardaş kıydığımız can bizim

Ağam kurban beyim kurban hallarımı eyledim
Ne bir eksik ne bir fazla hepsi tamam söyledim
Kır kalemi kes cezamı yaşamayı neyledim
Namus belasına kardaş verdiğimiz can bizim

Give me Your Hand, Istanbul / Ver Elini Istanbul

A quick translation:

Give me your hand, Istanbul. Let’s walk with you.
I have things to tell you, to your towers and to your sycamores.
I loved a girl, Istanbul. I admire her and she admires red
You are a cauldron, I am a scoop. I am wandering in your streets.
My dear friend, with seven hills; I know you are great.
Do me a favour; knot her roads to my door.

Believe me Istanbul, I am getting exhausted slowly
If I knew love was such a thing, would I have said “I love her”?
This pain does not go away, Istanbul and my words do not affect her.
Rumour it is, she would not love me. For days, all my words are for her.

My dear friend, with seven hills; I know you are great.
Do me a favour; knot her roads to my door.

Imagine all the words you want to say queued up in your throat.
You have no more power, you are obsessed and you are burning first time
My dream is there, Istanbul; sleeping somewhere in you.
Do me a favour; knot her roads to my door.

Ver Elini Istanbul

Ver elini İstanbul gezelim senle şöyle bir
Anlatacaklarım var sana, kulelerine ve çınarlarına
Bir kızı sevdim İstanbul ben ona o kırmızıya hayran
Sen kazan ben kepçe dönüyorum sokaklarında peşi sıra
Yedi tepeli kadim dostum benim
Büyüksün bilirim
Yap bir büyüklük düğümle şunun yollarını kapıma
Bana inan İstanbul tükeniyorum inceden
Bilseydim aşk böyle bir şeymiş, seviyorum der miydim önceden
Bir sızı geçmiyor İstanbul bir de sözüm geçmiyor ona
Sözüm ona sevmeyecekmiş beni günlerdir her sözüm ona
Yedi tepeli kadim dostum benim
Büyüksün bilirim
Yap bir büyüklük düğümle şunun yollarını kapıma
Düşün ki boğazına dizilmiş söylemeye yeltendiğin her söz
Mecalin yok, mecnunsun, yanıyorsun ilk defa
Düşüm orda İstanbul bir yerinde uyuyor
Yap bir büyüklük düğümle şunun yollarını kapıma
özer atik ver elini istanbul şarkı sözü şarkısının sözleri
ver elini istanbul

An Advice from a Soon-To-Be-Executed

İdamlıktan Öğüt Size…

Bir darağacından ötekine atlarım
Dar ağaçlardır bunlar.
Aralarına
Çamaşır sermek için ip takmışlar.
Beyazlar ayrı, renkliler ayrı.
Onları ayrı sokaklara
Ayrı yapılara koymuşlar.

Sen, ben, hepimiz ama hepimiz
Kirlenmişiz bu düzende.
Asmışlar bizi, renkli-beyaz demeden.
Yaşamasak da
Yaşıyormuşuz gibi görünmek var töremizde.
Bedensiz giysiler olmak daha çok yakışıyor bize.
Zarf, mazruftan daha değerli olmuştur herzaman.

Bir ipten ötekine,
Bir ‘öteki’nden başka bir ipe.
Bir maymun bir de ip cambazı.
İzleyenlerin, avuçları patlarcasına alkışları.
Evler arasına dizilmiş çamaşırların ulaşılmaz sanatsallığı.
Bir bayrak, bir simge taşımazlar onlar.
Çamaşırlardan anlaşılır evde kalanlar.
Bak şu Çe tişörtü de ipe serilmiş
Ama karanlığın cübbesi de.
Bak asker var şu evde, izne gelmiş herhalde.
Bak şu köylü giysisi, ninenindir belki.
Konduların köylü modasının üstünden ne çok sular aktı geçti.

Size bur’da meramımı söyledim, yine de,
Hanımlar, beyler çok kızdılar bu işe.
Düşürdüm diye çamaşırları
Yasakladılar bana tüm sokakları.

İşte bunun için, bir hücrede
Uzağında gecekonduların, sokakların,
İdamlığın öğütü şudur size:
Çamaşırlarınızın kirlenmesi dünyayı temizleyecekse,
Bırakın kirlensin o çamaşırlar.
Çamaşır da asılır iplere, insan da asılır.
Kopsun ve koptu kopuyor inceldiği yerden ip.
Üstü başı bu uğurda kirlenmeyenler
Aydınlık bir dünyayı hakedemezler.

Ulaş Başar Gezgin





An Advice from a Soon-To-Be-Executed…

I swing from one gallows tree to another one
These are narrow* trees.
Between them
There is a rope for the clothes to be hanged.
Whites are here, coloured ones are there.
They put them in different streets
In different structures.

You, I, all of us but all of us
Are dirty in this system.
They had hanged us regardless of our colour.
Even though we don’t live,
to pretend living exist in our customs.
To be a cloth without a body fits us so well.
The envelope has been more valuable than the enveloped one all the time…

From one rope to another,
From one “other” to another rope.
A monkey and a funambulist.
Spectators clap till their hands hurt.
Unreachable artistry of clothes, hanged between houses.
Neither a flag, nor an image they carry.
Residents of the house can be known through the clothes.
Look, there is a Che t-shirt, laid on the rope.
But the cassock of the darkness is there too.
Look there is a soldier in that house, perhaps furloughed for short time.
Look at these peasant clothes, belong to a grand mother perhaps.
How many streams passed over the peasantry fashion of shanties…

I told you my intention here,
Madams and Sirs got very angry at my behaviour.
Just because I dropped the clothes
They banned all the streets to me.

That is why, in this cell
Far from shanties, from streets,
This is an advice from a soon-to-be-executed:
If the dirtied clothes will be able to clean the world,
Let those clothes get dirty.
Clothes can be hanged on ropes, humans too.
Let it break off wherever it gets thinner.
Those whose clothes do not get dirty for this ideal,
Do not deserve to live in an enlightened world.

Translated by Ali Rıza Arıcan

* Darağacı: gallows tree / Dar ağaç: narrow tree

Motorsiklet Üzerinde Aşk

Motorsiklet Üzerinde Aşk adlı ikinci öykü kitabım Gürer yayınevi tarafından basıldı ve piyasaya sürüldü. Kitabı büyük kentlerde bulunan merkezi kitapçılarda (D&R Mağazalari, İnkilap, Remzi, İstiklal, Mephisto vb.) gelecek hafta itibarıyla bulmak mümkün. Emeği geçen tüm dostlara ve Gürer yayınevi çalışanlarına sonsuz teşekkürler...

Kitabın kapağını ve tanıtım yazısını aşağıya ekliyorum:



“Tram, her ne kadar Khan’ın söylediklerine inanmak istemiyorsa da affediyordu onun geç kalışını kısa sürede. Çünkü Khan yanında yokken saçları tek tek yolunan bir zavallı gibi acı çekiyordu elinde olmadan. Hiçbir şey olmasa, motosikletin üzerine birlikte oturup, ellerine birbirlerine kenetleseler; suyun içinde dans eden iki yılan gibi gövdeleriyle birbirlerini sararak yoldan geçen arabaları ve insanları izleseler yeterdi onun için. Ve şimdilik bunu yapabilecekleri tek yer motosikletin üzeriydi. Bedenler birbirine değdiği ve gözler birbirini izlediği sürece, motosikletin üzerinde de olsa aşkın devamı olanaklıydı.”



Ali Rıza Arıcan, Vietnam’da yaşayan bir matematik öğretmeni. Rakamlarla uğraştığı kadar sözcüklerle de farklı dünyalar kuran bir yazar.

Vietnam’da yaşayan insanları konu eden öykülerinde, Budacı rahiplerin sömürülerini, çarpıtılmış din ve Tanrı kavramını, toplumun ikiyüzlü ahlak anlayışını, kör inançlarla kafası karıştırılmış, toplumun dayattığı kalıplara hapsedilmiş insanları ölçülü bir mizahla eleştiriyor. Arıcan akıcı diliyle, Uzakdoğu insanına ilişkin gözlemlerini ince ayrıntılarıyla aktarıyor okura. Her öyküde içinde yaşadığımız toplumla da benzerlikler bulacaksınız. Ali Rıza Arıcan’ın öyküleri sadece Vietnam’ın değil, tüm az gelişmiş ülkelerin aynası sanki.

“Pasifik Öyküleri”nden sonra ikinci öykü kitabı olan “Motosiklet Üzerinde Aşk”da Uzakdoğu insanın hikayesini anlatırken “insanın” iç dünyasına, duygularına doğru yolculuğa çıkarıyor okurunu…

Barkod: 9786055785161
Eser Adı: Motosiklet Üzerinde Aşk-Vietnam Öyküleri
Eserin Dili: Türkçe
Yayınevi: Gürer Yayınları
Yazar: Ali Rıza Arıcan
Editör: Nemika Tuğcu
Kapak Tasarım: Kerem-Mustafa Mutlu
Kağıt Bilgisi: Ensokrem
Baskı Tarihi: Eylül 2009
Baskı: 1.Baskı
Sayfa Sayısı: 214
Ebat: 13x19
Cilt: Amerikan Bristol
ISBN: 978-605-5785-161
Etiket Fiyatı: 12 TL
Türü: Öykü/Gezi

Motorsiklet Üzerinde Aşk'ı internette satış yapan kitapçılarda bulmak da mümkün. Aşağıya benim bulabildiğim sayfaların ağbağlarını geçiyorum:

Kitaptürk
Kitapyurdu
Antoloji
Idefix

Dalgakiran / The Wave Breaker

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzguZq45d7I


Dalgakıran

Aşk herkesi kırar biraz
Eksilmesin acısı şükret
Varsın ağlasın dalda kiraz
Herkes kendine sürgün biraz

Çocuk gülüşün dünden bir yara
Aşk bize sıla
Günler gelir ve büyürüz elbet
Aşk bize gurbet
Ayışığı dalgakıran
Yarada tuz aşktan kalan
Ayışığı tende bıçak
Giden sürgün kalan kaçak
Aşk bize sıla
Aşk bize gurbet

Kapansın yarası şu gecenin
Ayrılıklar örtsün üstümü
Kimim kimsemdi ah gözlerin
Gidecek yeri yok kimsenin


The Wave Breaker

Love hurts everyone a bit.
Do not let the pain go away, be thankful
Let the cherry on the branch weep
Everyone is exile to himself a bit.

Your childish smile is a wound from yesterday.
Love is a reunion for us.
Days pass and of course, we grow up.
Love is a foreign land for us.
Moonlight, the wave breaker
Salt in the wound is what left after the love.
Moonlight is a knife touching the skin
The one went away is exiled, the one left behind is fugitive.
Love is a reunion for us.
Love is a foreign land for us.

Let the wound of this night close
Let the partings cover my body
You eyes were my everything.
No one has a place to go now.

History of Broken Hearts - Chapter 1

HISTORY OF BROKEN HEARTS

Chapter 1 – No map is complete.

Whenever he gets disappointed with the decisions he made –what else can disappoint a person other than his own wrong decisions?- he ends up at a bookstore where he can find old books and historical maps in dusty shelves. It is a kind of taking revenge from life, a way of negotiating with the fiascos to mitigate the damage they might cause. Another one might find his oblivion at a bar, chatting with a bar girl whose job is to make him talk and drink more by the help of her fading beauty in the dim light coming from the flash lights set behind the bar and a few salty peanuts in a small bowl. Some might look for a sexual encounter to forget the pain, with anyone, at anywhere… Or in most cases to increase the pain afterwards because all men know that although sex could be a great way of self-indulgence that can wipe out the memories for a few hours it can also be the source of the pain when failure repeats itself like a grasshopper hopping in a deep transparent bottle. Men fuck to take revenge from their lives, from their frustrations. When even the revenge fails, the pain multiplies by tens, hundreds. Some others look for sleeping pills or antidepressants or the best friends at the other end of the telephone line but for him, Mr. K, it is the moldy smell of the books which make him forget other smells coming from cheerful moments of his past; it is the filthy shelves which carry the scars of time along with the excrements of geckos and mice, layer on layer, time over time. K believes that the life in the books is as real as the life outside therefore it deserves the same amount of attention.

He always imagines this bookstore as a graveyard of the great writers. Here on his right one can find all those Russian Classics with their realist pictures of city people’s lives, “Anna Karenina” committed suicide on the railway but still alive on these shelves to be appreciated for her courage and to be killed again and again. Raskolnikov is right there, with an axe in his hand, ready to butcher the old lady just because he believed she is the source of all evils in the society. “The Kiss” left on the lonely soldier’s cheek in a dark doorway can still make the reader excited if he knows how to understand the great vacuum of loneliness, created in Chekhov’s stories. On the left there are French and English, sometimes boringly empiric, sometimes stubbornly enlightened. They know better than everyone else therefore they have right to teach. Emile is here, waiting to be discovered by the education enthusiasts of 21st century. Sartre and Camus are looking at the world with suspicious eyes as if the world outside is what they have foresighted a half century ago. Asian poets with their sweet descriptions of lotus flowers, glowing nights and misty mornings are ahead of him as if the pain does not belong to their rainlands. At the end of this corridor, there are Latin American writers; the illusionists like Borges who like to play all the possible tricks with the reader’s mind or the poets of rebellion like Neruda who can recite his poems as loud as possible even during his own funeral. They said what they wanted to say and went into a deep sleep. Mr. K walks around them, smiles at them, sometimes talks with them, listens to their complaints, shares their loneliness. Once he enters the shop, time gets frozen for him. The motorbike honks, the massage saloon advertisers, marijuana dealers are all forgotten once he is inside as if he pulls a black curtain over the reality of the life outside and opens up a new bottle of elixir to reconstruct his own utopia. A utopia or a labyrinth!

Like everyone else he looks for his labyrinth in which he will get lost for a while. A book is a labyrinth and the only way to get rid of its brain teasing, heartbreaking temptations is to leave it for another one. But today, Mr. K is here not to find another reading adventure for himself. Quite the contrary, he looks for a gift for his lost sweet heart with the hope that a last gift can ease the tension between them, if not to make her return to him. He walks around these dead men, listens to their whispers coming from centuries before and seeks a new labyrinth which will take him in its mouth, continue chewing him as if it cannot spit or swallow, and disintegrate his soul into pieces so that the connections which make his history alive will be wiped away indefinitely. Maybe he should go to Madame Bovary for a quick advice! Maybe he should find Esmeralda who loved Quasimodo despite his deformed body and ugly face!

At the end, he considers himself as a book –or is he a character in a novel written by God?- and he too needs to be read like others. His pages would be the days with ups and downs, his cover would be his appearance of an isolated man, his editor is the social bounds which make him behave this way or that way and his conscious reader would be his lover who caresses the pages, kisses his cover and challenges the editor to re-create him from the scratches of pure reality. Like every good reader, he too knows that books and labyrinths are the same and the one. And every labyrinth is a love story. There is determination in love, there is hatred and pleasure, and there is obsession and insanity… That is why the biggest and the most intricate labyrinth is the desert. The most dangerous and the scariest, the one which makes you see yourself as if you look at a plain mirror of sand dunes and whistling winds. It is scary because it has the infinite ways of salvation and each one of these are like the broken pieces of mirrors, reflects the sun and the image of earth truly, without leaving any space for doubt. Then one left in the desert is left to form his own labyrinth in which he will spend his life, feel safe and content and most probably will pull some others to share his unique experiences.

Mr. K walks through the shelves to arrive at the old photos and maps. Here is where he feels extremely melancholic with the pictures of young soldiers celebrating their homecoming, happy brides with their future babies inscribed between their eyes, cheerful high school kids who do not care their future, not even their tomorrow. Here is the place where the time is replaced by frozen moments on the photos. They tell stories and Mr. K likes to look at them to extract the stories as if squeezing a weak cow’s breast to get the milk drop by drop. Here is a father and son, standing beside the Saigon river. Father has a fishing rod in his hand, trying to teach his son how to hold the rod stiffly that it will not fall into the river when a large fish pulls it. The boy might be thinking the fish in the river bigger than him, even bigger than his father. He has to be careful not to put their lives in danger. His face has the anxiety of a learner. Father looks calm, he is almost proud of his son learning how to fish, therefore how to be patient, how to stand on his own feet, how to survive and also how to feed others. Another photo shows two young girls in their ao days, waving their hands to a soldier. They might be the wife and sister of the man, or the two sisters or two wives… He smiles with his last option and walks through the old encyclopedias and all sorts of school books –Mathematics, Science, Geography, History etc…- Mr. K never pays attention to these things at this part of the shop. He also thinks no one pays attention to these books. School kids now buy new books and read nothing more than their textbooks and a few popular magic stories. As a person who dedicated his life to educate young minds, he feels the embarrassment for his students whenever he sees them sitting idle around the corridors with their flashy mobile phones or reading Japanese mangas.

He makes a left turn and sees the old maps. Then he stops, staring at them as if he stares at a beautiful horse ready for a race. Maps attract him as nothing attracts. Sometimes he thinks himself as an intricate map, drawn by a passionate cartographer and now waiting to be discovered by another passionate map lover. Every man is a map he used to say to his ex-wife, expecting her to appreciate his words, expecting her to understand him. Every man is a map because every map is a projection of real world onto a piece of paper. The closer you get, the more difficult it becomes to understand the tiny details of earth’s surface. That is why the earliest maps are dedicated to the heavenly objects. The stars and the planets were the most distant, the least dangerous and of course the most useful to find direction and to determine time.

He likes old maps because as a teacher of humanities at a prestigious high school in the city he realized that maps tell more than what many people can learn from them at first glance. They tell the cartographer’s worldview or the dominant ideology of his time. They tell how the old process of making maps –forcing a spherical surface of an apple to a plane surface of a blank paper- was intricate and painfully time-consuming. They tell the stories about the silent conquers, cruel massacres, blood-thirsty emperors, beautiful princesses, charming princes, class struggles, bourgeasian tendencies, changing middle class habits and minds… A map says more than what is written on it. Greeks believed they were in the centre of the world and world became stranger and stranger when a traveler gets away from Greece. At the edge of the earth, there were humans behave like savages. There were all the unknown monsters and wild, uncivilized people.

“Aren’t we still the same?” Mr. K sometimes asks his students in his class. “Don’t we discriminate the people whom we do not know much about?”. Despite his students’ empty faces, he continues talking as if he found the hole to exit after a long struggle in his dark cave. “Since birth, we create maps on which we are at the center. The closest cities to the center are our family members, then friends, then work or school acquaintances, then those who support the same football team or the same pop star. Those who do not qualify in one of these circles are strangers, most of the times dangerous people from whom we should stay away. That is why in medieval maps, every blank zone in the map is filled with sea serpents, monsters, freakish exotic people, dragons etc… That which we do not know troubles us in our dreams. That is why we should know more about the world and about ourselves.” Sometimes, the students clap him for his enthusiastic speech, sometimes they cannot get into his metaphoric language so they keep silent in order to pass the storm without any damage.

Once, a girl in his class was crying incessantly because her boyfriend dumped her. He sat next to her and told her that “It is ok! Take this as a lesson instead of a blunder. It was a wrong map and we cannot make the perfect maps before we fail with the wrong ones. Columbus would have never had the courage to start his journey if he did not have the wrong map of Ptolemy which showed the distance between Europe and India much shorter due to the miscalculation of earth’s circumference. Now start drawing a new map and do not even include him in this map. To love someone means to draw that person’s map or find a right place for him in your own map. Once you have the skills of moving things around on your map to find the perfect place for your lover, you will be aware of his value and how indispensable he is for your map’s future. It is a skill that you need to develop, not the feelings” What did she think of his words at that time? Can a high school student understand that love is not a feeling which needs constant attention like the camp fire in a summer night but an ability which can evolve with the help of failures? Even if she understands this, can she implement it to her life without getting pounded by the bitter experiences of love? What about him? If the bald had the medicine, he would have used it for his own head first. Can he believe what he advised her? Can he get over the pain easily by rationalizing it with a few cliché analogies?

He stared at a few maps on the top of the basket. From the dust smeared on his fingers, he concluded that no one touched these maps for long time. There were some bad copies of French and Arabic maps at the top. When he removed a few of them he saw a copy of a Ptolemy’s world map, the one which accurately connected Africa to Asia and also made a good depiction of Indian Ocean but failed locating America and Antarctica. It was printed a few decades ago by a local print house so the colors were still vivid and the paper was not dampish. While looking at this map and trying to figure out how a man lived 2000 years ago could make such a beautiful map by only relying on the historical records, literary works and mathematical calculations, he heard the foot steps approaching him behind. This must be the owner of the shop he thought. He turns back slowly, not to make noise to awaken the sleeping books or the people in the photos. The owner of the shop, a 68 years old man with a genuine smile –K always thought that old people have the most genuine smiles because they have nothing to gain with the borrowed faces.- was holding a hardcover book in his hand. When he saw that K. is holding a map, he hesitated for a second.

-Did you know that original of that map was stolen from Spain’s national library in 2007. They found it in an art gallery in Sydney.

K. looked at old man’s cheerful face and wondered how he knows this weird information and why he feels the urgency to tell this to a customer. Instead answering the question with another question like his lazy students, he chose to answer it properly.

-No I didn’t. But funny, isn’t it? Sydney is not even shown on the map! Maybe it was the map who wanted to travel and see the lands which are not depicted on. A kind of executing the last wishes of Ptolemy!

-Ha ha! You might be right! It is stolen by a Uruguayan researcher and then traveled to Buones Aires, New York and London. Two of three are not on the map. Then it ended up in Sydney.

- So, you see! Map wanted to complete itself. What is the point of waiting all day in a library and showing its face to the ignorant young crowds? Only mapmakers and historians can appreciate its beauty. Now it knows the new continent and Australia as well. I believe it will be stolen again and somehow will travel to Antarctica to complete the continents.

- You are a funny man! You can be a good writer, do you know that? Why don’t you write the story of a map which travels around the world just to see what is missing on it and complete itself after discovering new lands? Like, Escher’s two hands drawing each other! Anyway, I came to show you this book.

K. wanted to say a lot at that moment. He wanted to erupt like a volcano and rain on old man’s head like dark ashes. He wanted to scream like a little child who lost his favorite toy. He wanted to say that “I am a map and I complete myself with every new experience, I re-draw myself with new loves and new frustrations. I am an incomplete map who knows that no map is complete. Let someone else write the story! I am not patient enough to be a writer. But I am smart enough to find original ideas for new stories.” But he didn’t. He did not want to make things more complicated with this sweet old man who only wants his customers smile and gets the best he can offer. K opened his eyes widely and looked at the book.

“What is that?” K. asks with a low voice, pretending not knowing what it might be. The old man, his sparkling eyes can be seen even when the large square-shaped glasses cover almost one quarter of his face, shows the book to K and keeps talking about it. “It is 1902, Maxim Gorky, from London.” K. stares at the dirty cover with a little bit disgust, thinking on what might cause the stains on it. But the name Gorky excites him. He imagines his wife reading this book and thanking him. He imagines his wife taking the book to one of the youth meetings and reading to them loudly. He imagines her hugging him after receiving the book and putting a soft kiss on his cheek. He imagines they read passages from it together until their eyes get tired. He imagines they make love right after closing the book while the smell of a-century-old odors fills the room. He imagines all and wakes up with old man’s voice. “There is no single name written on it. Just a stamp from a bookshop called Spids in Paris.” K notices the interesting geometric figure at the middle of the cover. The same figure is also inscribed at the spine of the book. “Look, there is a small signature here but I think it is written by the bookshop owner in May 1958.” The book seemed old, even older than those from Victorian period. “It says V. H., like Victor Hugo, ha ha! You know Victor Hugo, right? Les Miserables is written for the people like you.” The cover has some white stains and a few small patches at the corners. The entire picture of the cover was like this:

(There is the picture of the book's cover here but I don't know how I could post it to the blog)


- This book came a few days ago. I kept it behind my desk because I knew you will be coming this weekend.

- Thanks for that. It looks pretty good. I hope you won’t ask a fortune for this.

- No, no! Let this be my treat… It is only $100.

- What? You are kidding, right? I can buy more than ten books with that money.

- Yes, but you cannot buy a 1902, Maxim Gorky with nothing written in it. This book challenged time, denied the men’s carelessness and arrived at my bookstore as one piece. You have to adore it, instead of complaining.

- I am not complaining about the book. It is just too much. Make it $50! I will buy it.

- No, no! You can negotiate for the other books, the used ones. For this, I cannot go down. It is already cheap.

- Come on old man! Do I look like a rich book dealer? I am a history teacher! I will buy it as a gift for my ex-wife. I think this book will make her happy.

- For your ex-wife? You are really insane! If you give it to her, you accept that you will not see the book again. Buy something else for her, flowers or pillow case… Women appreciate those things more.

- Look, I know my wife. I mean my ex-wife. She loves books and flowers will make her think I am trying to reconsolidate with her. I am actually not sure what I will expect her to do after I give her the book. The book itself is not important to me. I read almost all stories of Gorky. I just like its dirty cover and moldy smell. As you said it seems like it denied the existence of time. Like eternal loves! Sell it to me! $70. I cannot give more than that.

- $80 is the lowest I can make. Please do not ask! Buy it or leave it. I have some other customers coming this evening to look for old books. I can sell them even for more than $100. I make it cheap for you because I know you.

- Ok, ok! Just wait then! I will go to an ATM and come back quickly. I have a flight to Hanoi tonight. I don’t have much time.

- Alright young man! Hurry up! What time is your flight?

K did not hear old man’s question because when he looked at his watch while telling him about his flight, he realized that absence of time in a bookstore can be deadly for a man who has a scheduled flight a few hours later. He ran to the nearest ATM but all he found was the message on the screen saying it is out of order. He cursed to his bad luck. Whenever he needed money so urgently all he found was broken ATMs. He asked one of the xe om drivers in front of a shopping center. The driver accepted to take him to another ATM. When he arrived, he saw that the machine is working. Or maybe he only saw that the lady before him got her money and left. Or he just saw a lady leaving the machine with her hand in her purse. Or most probably he only saw a lady just passed in front of the ATM without even noticing its existence. He inserted his card, entered his password and wrote the amount a bit more than he needs for the book. Then the machine started to grumble, then mutter and at the end a long beep came which sounded like a car on reverse gear. Although he heard that the banknotes were counted in the machine and he got his card back, nothing came out from the slot. He waited for a while but still nothing. The screen was saying “Please take your money” but there was no money. He thought it was a joke! He looked for another slot but there was none. If the machine claims that it gave the money out how could he possible deny it? Or maybe he took the money but forgot it after a few seconds…What about the lady before him? Who was she? Did she really get …? He got disappointed but tried to control himself without knowing what to do next. There were people around and there was nothing he can do. Being lonely and helpless in crowds, he thought his ex-wife, her white cheek leaning on a window when she watches the rain, her lively lips which resembled the coolness of a beach where dryness and wetness are at the edge of amalgamation.

He turned his back to the ATM and looked at the people around. Everyone was busy with something to do; everyone was having a healthy mental life… No one seems broken hearted or suffering from extreme guilt of being apart from their lovers. No one except for him is in excruciating pain of having done something very wrong which caused an ultimate separation… Or is this just a cruel method he applies to himself to increase the intensity of his pain? Everybody is happy but I am … Everybody loves someone but I am … Everybody is satisfied with their lives but I am … Don’t they have any troubles in their lives? He was sure that he could be easily happier than that old beggar on the pavement. However, even that old lady seemed happy, or at least content with what she had. She was smiling to the people –to warm their hearts, perhaps!- and somehow making a few thousands dong a day to make her life endurable. He felt like an undiscovered island at the middle of the Indian Ocean. An island with no name, no coordinates, no geography, no climate… No human has ever set foot on it, only the birds that lost their flock or a small fish that was chased by the big ones and somehow arrived at the shores of this unknown island. A lonely island waiting to be discovered, waiting to have a name, waiting to be recognized as an island! A little boy –or a little fish- crashed him while he was escaping from his mother, he woke up from his daydreaming.


He looked at his watch again. “Take me back to the … road” he shouted angrily to the same guy who brought him. The xe om driver smiled without knowing what made his passenger so upset. The driver drove the bike against the traffic in busy streets, crossed a junction like a running chicken and whenever the red light stopped him, he jumped over the pavement to pretend as pedestrian. In less than 5 minutes, he was again at the bookstore. He told the old man that he could not get the cash now but when he returns from Hanoi, he will come to his shop directly from the airport and buy the book. He asked the old man to keep the book for him. Then he paid him $10 as deposit so that the hope just emerged in his heart will not slip like a cube of ice melts and drips through fingers. He ran out the bookstore and picked another xe om to go home to get his bag. Two hours later, he was at the airport as the last passenger boarding to the airplane. He sat on his seat and gave a big breath out. He tried to read during the flight but somehow his eyes were forcing him down. The music in his ears slowed his heart beat; the soft turbulences of the airplane made him feel he is not on this earth any more. Then without giving notice to anyone, he took his second flight towards his dreamland where the poisonous scorpions crawled in his head.

He flied in a wide-open book, like he was one of the characters from One Thousand One Nights Tales, sitting on a flying carpet and discovering new kingdoms which are known to many with their rich cultures and prosperous merchants. He looked down from the book’s edge and saw the rivers, lakes, mountains and even the villages. The book was Gorky’s Tales –he knew that intuitively- but he could not read the letters in the pages. It was Russian perhaps or another language that he has never studied before. While he was enjoying the scene, suddenly he saw a dirty hand pulling the pages under his body one by one, ripping them off, and causing the flight having disturbing turbulences. He realized that with the missing pages he is losing the altitude very quickly. Then the announcement came from the inner pages of the book that they have to make an emergency landing to somewhere in the ocean. He was scared as he does not even know how to swim. Water made him panic and idea of being in water without any earth to step on was quite difficult to adapt. He tried to keep the ripped pages on the book, using his both hands to hold them, to keep the book as intact as possible. But as it was impossible to hold the gears of time, the pages were flying away and disappearing in the twilight of the sky so quickly. Landing was unavoidable. “Those falling from the sky are the ones which have wings.” he thought and chuckled as if someone reminded him this stupid fact in the worst time ever. The wings were getting weaker and weaker so he prepared himself for the crash, closed his eyes, held his breath and thought about good things happened in his life, all the half loves he lived so far or all the flowers he has given to the girls in the name of love, all the beers he drank with his good friends… He was ready now, ready to die happily, ready to end at the bottom of the sea and being forgotten as if he has never lived. But the book crashed to a piece of land, not to the water. It was a small island, one that is unknown to anyone, one which is not shown on maps. That is all I needed he thought and smiled by himself! He was safe, uninjured. He exhaled after the landing as if he deserved it now, opened his eyes and looked around more carefully. He heard the voice coming from above his head that the temperature in Hanoi was 29 centigrade degrees and time was … He saw people walking beside him towards the exit door. The mp3 player was singing a song with a very melancholic voice… Love is an exile to us. The vaporized water was being pumped inside the airplane as if the whole plane was burning and the fire extinguishing system was on alert. He changed his position on his seat, tried to figure out where he is and how he came there. Once he understood that he is no more wanted in the book –or at least in this chapter-, he grabbed his bag and walked out…






Chapter 2 – Mappaemundi is a map for sinners, not for navigators.

Hep Kahir / Deep Sorrow

DEEP SORROW

Stop,
Let the water for the coffee boil
Tell me about Istanbul, how was it?
Tell me about Bosporus, how was it?
Tremblings of June, with the fugitive rains
They have been washed, can they be dry again, those seven hills?
Under the sun as warm as mother’s tenderness
Tell me people were laughing
On the train, on the boat, on the bus
Even if it is a lie I like it, tell me
Deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow
Enough of this

Stop, leave it, do not turn the television on…
Tell me about Istanbul, how is it?
Tell me about the city of all cities, how is it?
Looking at the hills of Beyoglu with your illicit eyes
At the bridges, Sarayburnu, minarets and the golden horn
Did you say a clandestine “hi”?
Tell me people were laughing
On the train, on the boat,on the bus
Even if it is a lie I like it, tell me
Deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow
Enough of this

Freeze, leave it, do not move, stay as you are, pleaseee!
You smell like Istanbul, your eyes are like Istanbul nights
Now come to me, hug me, hug me my hennaed lover
Under the heavenly sky, together there as well.
The dream of starting again, saying thanks to God
Is like a well spring in the desert of my yearning
Tell me people were laughing
On the train, on the boat, on the bus
Even if it is a lie I like it, tell me
Deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow, deep sorrow
Enough of this


Hep Kahır

dur ! bırak !
kaynasın kahvenin suyu...
bana istanbul’u anlat nasıldı?
bana boğazı anlat nasıldı?
haziran titreyişlerle,kaçak yağmurlar ardı.
yıkanmış kurunur muydu o yedi tepe
ana şefkati gibi sıcak güneşte...
insanlar gülüyordu de,
trende,vapurda,otobüste
yalanda olsa hoşuma gidiyor söyle
hep kahır,hep kahır, hep kahır,...
bıktım be...

dur ! bırak !
kalsın, açma televizyonu!
bana istanbul’u anlat nasıldır?
şehirlerin şehrini anlat nasıldır?
beyoğlu sırtlarından,yasak gözlerinle bakıp,
köprüler, sarayburnu, minareler ve haliç’e...
diyiverdin mi bir merhaba gizlice?
insanlar gülüyordu de,
trende, vapurda, otobüste,
yalanda olsa hoşuma gidiyor söyle...
hep kahır, hep kahır, hep kahır,
bıktım be...

dur ! bırak !
kımıldama,kal biraz öylece ne olur...
kokun istanbul gibidir,
gözlerin istanbul gecesi,
şimdi gel sarıl,sarıl bana kınalım.
gök kubbenin altında orda da beraber.
çok şükür diyerek yeniden başlamanın hayali,
hasretimin çölünde sanki bir pınar gibi...
insanlar gülüyordu de,
trende,vapurda,otobüste,
yalanda olsa hoşuma gidiyor söyle...
hep kahır, hep kahır, hep kahır,
bıktım be...


Söz: Cem Karaca
İngilizce’ye çeviri: Ali Rıza Arıcan/ 09.06.2009

The Contract

The Contract

13 years after Susan Boyle’s fifth failure (this last time she came third) in her attempt of winning the talent show, 7 years after China banned heterosexual marriage in order to control the exponential increase in the population and 1 year after Mongolia joined to European Union to make sure that a new bridge can be set up between shamanism and Christianity; a couple of mid-30s sat on their kitchen table to discuss the expiry of their marriage contract. At the beginning of the conversation, they were determined to solve the issues quietly so that the secrets they have kept for the last five years will still be kept as secrets. However, the plan did not work and soon after the old wounds came into the conversation, both of them started to hit ferociously to give the maximum damage. Man blamed her for her extra-contractual affair with a pianist who plays for charities and high-class orgies only. The woman blamed him for not taking care of the children as the contract requires, spending more time with his friends at the “Gentlemen’s Self-relief Club” than the time in the bed with her, not listening to her when she speaks in the kitchen while he is taking shower at the other corner of the house and of course sleeping on the coach while their two kids imitate the scenes from a 20th century horror movie with knives and hammers in their hands…

-Ok, it seems it does not work! Why don’t we start from the beginning?
-Beginning? What beginning? There will be no more beginning. From now on, we can only talk about the end… I will not sign a new contract.
-Alright! No worries. I won’t sign it either… So tell me who is that pianist? Why did you bring him to our house?
-I told you millions of times, he came to teach piano to our kids.
-In our bedroom? When the kids were at nursery? And we don’t even have a piano at home, for God’s sake.
-So?
-So what? How can he teach piano to our kids when they are not at home and we do not have a piano?
- I told you that we should buy a piano but you never liked the idea. Of course, there is no time after spending all your energy in that stupid Gentlemen’s Masturbation Club.
- It is Self-relief, not masturbation. If every man masturbates once a day, there will be less war in this world. It is a contribution to the world peace! And remember, we asked our lawyer if it violates the contract and he said no. It is a recreational club for men who work hard for their families and need some time to relax.
-Of course he will say no. He is a premium member of that club.
-Let’s get back to this pianist! Did you sleep with him?
-None of your business!
- It is my business! If I can prove it, the break-up contract will come up very easily and I won’t have any liability for the past five years and I can have my son with me because you are not a trustworthy mother.
-What about the damage you have caused?
-What damage? Are you kidding?
-Mental and physical damage! Look in five years; I gave birth to two children. I endured your sexual fantasies while taking care of the kids. Look at my breasts! They look like small cabbages…
- They were cosensual and according to the contract we signed 5 years ago, nothing is wrong with that. And I did not damage your breasts. I don’t even remember when I saw them last time. Ask your pianist for the compensation. And the children, I will take one and you will take one. That is fair.
- No way! Both are mine! You will pay for their schooling and will come to see them once a month, would be nicer if you come once a year or never come. That is it! I cannot let my child to learn all the bad habits from you. Drink, get drunk and sleep on the floor like a sack of wet potato, watch sports for 48 hours non-stop, sleep without taking shower, whistle in the backyard to attract the birds and then when the cats appear, kill the cats, pee into the neighbor’s garden while they were sleeping in a tent. Do you want your children behave like you?
-No I don’t. But I don’t want them to bring a pianist to our bedroom either. Especially when there is no piano at home! So what did he play here? Swan Lake or Eternal Climax?
- You keep changing the topic. I am talking about your carelessness, your self-indulgence in sports and animal sacrifices, your stupid toy collections… You even did not come to the hospital when our first child was born.
-I promised my friends at the club, could not break my promise! Plus, there is nothing in contract mentioning I have to be physically present at my child’s birth. I did my job 9 months before you give birth. If nature is unfair to us, I cannot help. Go and complain to God.
-You are an idiot! This is your child!!! Have you ever considered that?
-So does he play piano well? Better than me?
-You don’t play piano!
- Ha ha! You know what I mean! Huh, the lawyer came… Exactly on time! We were just talking about the piano. Do you play piano?
-What piano? I thought you called me for the break up contract. I brought it. It is 3 years contract with no liabilities for the both sides as long as another unification contract will be signed at the end of three years.
-No more unification! I cannot unify with someone who unified with another person in our bedroom.
-Shut up! Nothing happened!
-As you say so!
-Listen please! I know this is hard for both of you and especially for the kids. But get over it. It is just a contract. Life is going on. Have some time off, away from each other. Maybe you will feel each other’s absence after a while and will want to come back.
-Ohh! In my absence, she has someone to feel the space! Then I will never be able to beat him because he plays better piano than I do.
-Please, Mr.! It is done! What happened in the past happened. Maybe because you could not play the piano well so she brought a better pianist!
-Can we just not talk about the fucking piano or the pianist?
-So, we do not need any reason for breaking up because it seems you have completed your contract obligations successfully. Then I will just note it as “termination by performance”.
-What? Are you crazy? He knows nothing about being a good husband. And what about the kids? Who will take care of them?
-Well, according to your contract you are allowed to have only one kid. But you have two. In this case, law calls the situation as “act of God” and considers it as an accident.
-It wasn’t an accident. He did it deliberately so I will be off his sight for one year. It is his act, not God’s.
-It was an accident. It happens to everyone, right Mr. Lawyer? Sometimes you cannot pull on time. Especially if your woman’s finger nails stick into your buttock like the teeth of a dog crashes one’s thigh. Plus, it is her fault because she stopped taking contraceptives without telling me. So she wanted to have a second kid just to shut up the first one’s never-ending demands…
-Can we stay away from details? Some people may not be interested in your private lives.
-Private lives? You are our lawyer and you supposed to know the details so you can make a right decision.
-Yes, yes! She is right. I should tell you also how she enters the kitchen with a helmet on her head because she is afraid of the pressure cooker… Or how she asked me to make a hole in the bed to put her large belly inside so that she can sleep easily!
-What about you Mr. Smart? You are the one who farts in the nursery in front of the Japanese kids and their mothers… When the teacher warned you, you are the one saying “They are Japanese. They don’t understand”.
-Heyyyy! Let’s get back to the main topic. Who will take care of the kids? Since the second one is an accident, we can give him to a state-owned orphanage. The first one stays with mother.
-No way!!! I will not let my child to grow in an orphanage while both parents are alive. I am their mother and I can take care of them. Just make him to pay for their expenses.
- I will take my son, she will take our daughter. That is it.
-Mr. Lawyer! You see him! He is not even capable of taking care of himself. He cannot even pee into the toilet hole without messing up the entire bathroom.
-Only in the mornings Mr. Lawyer. And again, this is because she does not like having sex in the mornings. You understand what I mean, right?
-No I don’t… I don’t even want to understand.
-But Mr. Law…
-Shut up!
-Yes, shut up!
-I just terminated my 6-month contract with my 31st wife. In fact, I could not even wait till the expiry of the contract because she pukes on me whenever I sit in front of TV to watch “Antarctica got talent” show. So I gave up all the deposit.
-What was the deposit?
-Some expensive jewelry from 18th century I got from the 29th after she broke with me.
-So your 29th broke with you in the cost of jewelry. You are such a sweet man! Why would a woman want to divorce you?
-Ohhh! It is a long story but I can make it short for both of you. She had high cholesterol and consequently had some heart problems. Doctor banned her to smoke. Then she asked doctor if she can smoke after having orgasm. Not knowing what kind of hidden conspiracy is lying behind her request, the doctor gave the permission as one cigarette for each orgasm. Then our wild rhythm started. We started to have sex five times a day. Two in the morning, one during the lunch time –usually at a cheap motel near my office- and two before sleeping.
-Lucky bastard!
-Well, I thought so at the beginning but it was not the sex she wanted. It was the cigarette. As soon as she falls from her climax, she was having her cigarette, leaving me on the bed, with more hills to climb. And at that time I was 43 years old. As you can imagine, I was not a walking vibrator. After a few days of hard-work, one evening I told her that I cannot keep going like this. Next day she broke the contract and signed a new one with a nineteen-years-old boy.
-Wowww… That is how you got the jewelry from her.
- Yeah. It was the same jewelry I retrieved in my 30th contract successfully. Anyway, the important thing is now I am available.
-You are what?
-I am available.
-What is it supposed to mean? Are you proposing to my wife?
-Now, I became your wife! This must be the last trace of the evolution in your male pride…
-Shut up!
-Why not! I am sterile since birth! I cannot have children and I always wanted to have. Now, once you sign the break up contract with “termination by frustration” due to the child problem, you and I can sign a new marriage contract for next one year without waiting 6 more months as law requires for “termination by performance”. We can live in my house with your two kids. I have a nice garden and I also have a piano at home. But I don’t want a pianist at my home until the expiry of our contract. And you sir!, you can stay in this house and can come to visit the kids once a week. I can add all these items into the new marriage contract.
-Wait, wait, wait! I cannot believe this! You came here to end our marriage contract but now you are signing another contract, taking my wife and my kids from me and leaving me with nothing in this ghost house.
-Not really sir! Law says that in a marriage everything we own, we own them during the contract time. Nothing is permanent! Once it expires, we lose everything. When you sign the break up contract, you only own this house and your second child. But since it is your fault –confirmed by your wife- you cannot keep the child with you. Then you have two choices: Orphanage or mother. I guess you will choose mother.
-Hey hey hey! No one asks me if I want to marry you! Are you guys dealing with the law with your little brains but what about me? What about love? I don’t love you Mr. Lawyer… I cannot marry you!
-Madame! I wish I could offer you a better option. I believe in the recent five years, you also understood that love is not an instantaneous feeling; it is an ability to last. We will learn to love each other…
-Wowww, Mr. Lawyer! You are so logical. What is this? Modus tonens? Or Modus Pollens? But you also must know that love cannot be rationalized by your stupid syllogism.
-It does not matter Madame! My question is, do you or don’t you accept my offer?
-Give her some time! I like the idea actually. At the end, I will have some freedom and my kids will be safe. That is all I care about.
-Yes, I accept…
-You see, 5 seconds is enough for a woman to make life-changing decisions. Even shorter than the time they need to get ready to go out.
-Ok, then. I will prepare the marriage contract this evening. The break up contract will be ready in a minute.
-Ohh, good! Anything else do you want to ask me before signing the marriage contract, Mr. Lawyer?
-Yes, do you still want a hole in the bed for your belly?

Ali Riza ARICAN – 10.06.2009

No Man is an Island

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND…

When the island is first seen from the window of the airplane, without any reasonable reason, I thought of the words “every man is an island”. Who said this? When? In what conditions can one say such a powerful –but still controversial- sentence? What men was s/he talking about? It might be a good “first sentence” for a novel or even for a short story. It can be said in parties while someone mentions his affiliation with loneliness and solitude. It can be used as a cliché on different occasions to block provoking thoughts… But now, seeing the island from top and thinking about the pain I have inflicted upon myself for the last two weeks, I am thinking the opposite of the statement. The island appears in the immense blue of the sea like a green monster in the darkness, a living creature at the middle of the ocean, breathing, eating and of course defecating.

The more the airplane gets close to the island, the more I kept saying to myself “No man is an island”. We are all connected and this connectedness makes us social animals in the chaos of the modern world. Isn’t the six degree of separation a valid proof for this? Take any two people from different parts of the world, one from Mongolia and one from Congo. The conjecture claims that on average we can connect them with 6 people in between. There is no mathematical proof for this but empirical studies show that 99% of the people can be connected by maximum 9 edges. That means we are not as lonely as we thought. The beautiful girl I see in the bus can be my 5^th degree friend or the beggar on the street can be my buddy of 6^th degree. The pilot of this airplane might be closer to me than one of the students in my school.

Another interesting fact about the islands is their secret ugly faces which wait to be discovered with long time stay only. It is like people! When we meet someone, it is easier to see his/her good characteristics first because by default we are good people and want to see good things. However, the more time we spend with him/her, the more we realize that s/he has many negative points that we may not enjoy to experience. That is why I usually spend very few days in islands. The more I stay, the more I get bored of seeing the same thing everyday. Then I start to figure out those underlying scars, hidden under the thick protection of the clothes. This time we plan to stay only one night. Not because I will get bored in two days but because I have to get back to work by Tuesday.

At the airport, we wait for J’s colorful bag to appear behind the black exit. It is like Pandora’s Box. Wait enough, you will get yours… Fortunately, we don’t wait long. It is quick and clean. Airport is small so things are easy here. We take a taxi to the resort we have booked online assuming that it is very close to the airport. It turns out that it is actually 10 km from the airport. We pass the dirt roads, dusty lanes with motorbikes carrying live chickens, empty lands which seem promising big investments for the island’s future and poor village girls selling all sorts of things nailed on a wooden board which they carry along the roads. It is on the other side of the island and in a very isolated location. Once we arrive at the resort, we noticed that there is nothing around the place where we are going to stay. I saw only a few fishermen on the shore, a few red graves looking at the sea and several local women scanning the beaches for god-knows-what! Since we arrived very early in the morning and will leave later in the afternoon next day, I was afraid that the resort management may not let us into the room before the checking time. But the hospitality is beyond our expectations. The manager not only welcomes us into our room 3 hours earlier than the fixed check-in time also offers us a free breakfast as if we have spent the previous night at the resort.

We sit in the little restaurant section of the resort and have our breakfast, looking at the sea and thinking of what we might do after the breakfast. While we have our breakfast I could not stop myself eavesdropping to the conversation of two men sitting at the next table. One asked the other one, “Where are you from in Germany”. The other one answers “If you fold the Germany map from the middle, my town stays at the middle”. First one asks again, “How do you fold it? Vertically or horizontally?”. The other answers “Both”. They laugh… I laugh too! I like the dialogue because it was creative and unpredictable. Instead of saying I am from central Germany which would be absolutely true, he makes it a brain-teasing puzzle, like a painter who combines intricate methods of painting to depict a simple event. Then they talk about politics. Somehow I detect the word philosophy at one moment but I cannot understand how their conversation went from politics to the philosophy. Once we finish the breakfast, we go to our room… Then we more realize what makes this place different from others.

It is far from the main road and at the entrance there is one mango farm. Once you enter, there is also a butterfly farm –shall we call it farm?- . I don’t know how they make butterflies but it should not be difficult once you have flowers around. Every tree in the garden has its name written on it, both in Vietnamese and Latin. I understand neither of them so names do not bother me. The rooms do not have air-conditioner; do not have TVs, refrigerators. There are lamps on the ceiling which gives a small dim light when turned on. And there is also a large ceiling fan which revolves with a slow motion even if we maximize the power. The whole idea behind this resort is to create an eco-friendly environment and not to cause any trouble for the animals/plants living around. I see the solar-energy pane on the roof of the next house and assume that we also have one on our roof.

The bathroom is not closed with a roof. It has a wall, around 2 meters high and that is it. If someone behind the wall jumps a bit or stands on a few pricks, s/he can see us nude, taking shower. At the beginning, I feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea but soon I realize that I have nothing to hide. And who will want to see me nude anyway! However, I thought this might cause problem for J. Finally I found that she is even more comfortable than I am. She did not mind at all. I guess this must be something to do with the customs of the region she comes from. Women in the villages of Thailand usually take bath outside their homes –mostly in the dark- with a tight cloth wrapped on their body, below their shoulders. Although the village people behave freely like this, the city people have their own bathrooms in their houses and they lock themselves in before even taking their dresses off. The more we get civilized, the more we get shy, the more we get alienated to our bodies. Or is it religion makes us enemy of our own sensualities, enemy of our desires? Romans had bohemian lifestyles –of course for the cost of blood of the lower classes which constituted majority of the society- and Christianity could be considered as a reaction to this sensual world of Roman bourgeoisians. The rich were brutal and their world was purely hedonist. The slaves and the lower class needed to take revenge and they take their god beside them. At the end, like all other religions, Christianity too is a political standing and an economical revolution. They won the war by winning people’s hearts. However today they themselves become bourgeoisians, living in beautiful palaces or cathadrels without holding a real job which creates a tangible value for the society.

After taking a shower, we wanted to go to the beach to see what we have got in our large front garden. When we walked through the trees and colorful flowers, I saw a small green snake, crawling on the ground by drawing sinusoidal curves. It was crossing the pathway to get on a tree so that it will be invisible. Animals know better than us that invisibility is invincibility. Once it noticed that there is someone watching its movement, it stopped and waited for the danger go away. I got the camera from J and took its photo on the ground and later in the tree. It was very thin, probably as thin as my litle finger. J was scared and did not let me to have a closer look. I was also scared but did not want her to notice it. I guess this is what courage is: to be able to prevent others to see your fears. Once the little snake got camouflaged in the greenness of the tree, we walked to our ultimate destination.

The sea was so calm that it was not so difficult to imagine an ant on the rocks leaning down to the sea to drink water. It had the flatness of a lake and the silence of a misty morning in a mountain village. We were at the southern end of Vietnam but we did not feel like that. In fact, in the resort, almost every guest was foreigner. I guess the Vietnamese do not prefer a place where they cannot watch TV or they cannot have the privilege of sleeping under the cool blow of the AC. There are some fishermen on the shore, trying to bring their little boat back to the beach. The boy on the boat jumps down and pulls it. I can see his little muscles getting tense under his arm even though he is a school boy, not older than 12. A boy who lives in the sea, breathes in the sea, feeds from the sea, dreams the sea and loves the sea. This boy, most probably will trust the boat’s wobbling interiors more than the stable crust of the earth. He will chase the fish all day and will come back home everyday with the treasures he gets from the immense womb of the sea. He will bring colorful seashells for his awaiting lover, will bring unknown animals for those waiting in the market, will bring money for his parents so that they will find a suitable girl for him to marry, will bring dreams for himself to foster and rely on.

I sat on one of the deckchairs and tried to read the book I had brought with me. After reading a few pages, I was tired of the names of the places, people, different kinds of drinks and food. The book was supposed to be an erotic story and I was supposed to like it. However, the more I read it, the more I despised it. It was more like a fantasy story with fictional creatures. There was no love but just lust. I wanted to stop reading it before I totally detest this kind of literature. I also realized that it is not the erotic literature I like. It is the erotic scenes in novels where the characters seem genuine with their history of weakneses and strengths. I made a mistake but have no way to undo it. Unfortunately I had brought only one book with me. So I had to stick with it. I felt like I am a castaway in an island where the only other person is an unattractive woman with a face similar to mine. Wrong book equals to the wrong woman. Wrong woman equals to the disaster…

In the late afternoon, after having some sleep in the room, I went into the sea again. This time I wanted to swim as much as I can and enjoy the silky touch of the water on my skin. The feeling can be felt only in winter nights when you are wrapped in a wool blanket and try to read a melancholic story. The water was warm and soft, like the breasts of a Mediterranean woman. If you look at it for long time, you might get lost. If you dive into it, you might never come back. The sun seemed like penetrating to the surface of the sea in front of me. I thought it was sinking to complete the cycle so that it will rise back next day, through the mountains behind me. The sea was quiet. There was a big guy swimming far from me but I did not have courage to go that far. I stayed in the safe shore to make sure that my feet always touch the bottom of the sea. That is my connection with the earth. My existantial being depends on this feeling of safety. If I lose that contact with the ground, I will probably scream, make the world larger for myself while making it smaller for others. There was a family of three on the shore, a mother playing with her son and a father trying to sleep. A few Europen tourists were reading books –crime stories- and they seemed satisfied with the power of the sunlight which baked their skin through the long afternoon. I spent all my time there, diving into the water to see some little fish, swimming short distances and trying myself holding my breath up to ninety seconds beneath the surface.

J was busy taking photos of me and herself. That is what she liked the most when we go somewhere new. If she does not take photos, the place cannot be counted visited. It is not a habit, it is an obsession. Many people in Asia consider traveling as a proof of certain status. Every photo is an evidence of happiness, of affordability of travel expenses, of experience of something new. For me photos usually do not tell the truth. They do not depict inside our minds so we can easily cheat them. A forced smile cannot be differentiated from a genuine smile on a photo; a broken heart cannot be pictured with all the pain it caused to the bearer.

In the evening, we sit on the beach and have a nice dinner. After having a few beers, my mind is getting smoother, like a blank canvas waiting to be painted with a surrealist picture. I watch the blackness of the sea, holding the little body of J, feel her warmness close to mine and think about my past weeks when she was away. The more I think, the bigger the sea becomes. I feel as if the ocean will come over me and take me away. But what size of tsunami can clean us from our sins? What size of waves do we need to redeem ourselves? What size of sea monsters do we have to fight with to compensate our wrongdoings? Is there a fixed price of atonement for this indefinite blackness in front of me? If there is, will it be enough to enlighten the deep blackness inside me as well?

Next morning, I go to the little shop beside the reception office and look at the books left by other guests. There is a sign saying that we can exchange books. Most of the books are Dutch, French or German. There are a few books in English and they do not look like something I can enjoy. At the end, I find a novel about the lives of Porto Ricans in USA. The book won Pulitzer Prize so at least there is something I can rely on. I leave my supposed-to-be-erotic novel and take this supposed-to-be-funny story.

I read during the breakfast, after the breakfast, in the taxi and at the airport. J says “You look like you were hungry for days.” I nod quietly and keep reading. The airplane is small and we walk to the airplane. J takes the last photos, this time next to the airplane, meaning this bird will take us home. I keep reading in the airplane. I don’t even look out the window to say goodbye to the island. When we arrive at the HCMC airport, I feel home with its bitter memoirs and painful endings… “Yes”, I repeat to myself. “No man is an island especially when there is no island on which you can live forever.” “No man is an island when there is an unavoidable return to the reality”. “No man is an island when the waves carry the memories to the other shores as quick as the light travels, as short as an illicit love lasts…”

Phu Quoc, Apr. 2009