Yollarda

The Goethe-Institute in Istanbul organized a literary tour titled “European Literature Goes to Turkey/ Turkish Literature Goes to Europe” that took place from May 2009 to June 2010 in 24 cities in Turkey and eight cities in Europe. The tour, which was financed by the Cultural Bridges program of the EU, took 48 notable authors and numerous musicians, filmmakers, photographers and artists from the eight participating European countries to Turkey. The tour was accompanied by a bookmobile that offered visitors works by the participating authors as well as Internet and multimedia facilities.

The “Yollarda/On the Road” project, which was staged in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, expressed various dimensions, being an encounter, a journey, and a process in which many people participated. For the Mercan Dede family it became one of the most exciting and productive projects of recent years.

Roads separate people, but they can equally, with the help of the language of art and culture, bring together the fates of numerous intellectuals, artists and scientists and thus create bonds and dialogue between different places and traditions. In this regard, “On the Road” was an extremely significant and important project.

Our conviction that our contribution to a project of such diverse cultural, social and political dimensions should not be limited to music but should also include other areas of art and culture brought us together with Elif Shafak. We keep track of her literary works with tremendous interest, and for a long time we had been hoping to work together with her in a project. For this reason, “On the Road” has had a particular significance and an especially gratifying aspect for us.

The Mercan Dede family would like to express its deep respect and heartfelt thanks to the highly regarded team, which masterfully planned, directed and, through its round-the-clock commitment, successfully completed a project that was authentic and unpretentious, but also complex and intense. Through the project, a variety of endless roads were used to build completely new bridges. These roads did not separate us but instead brought us together, and the traveller was not the finder but the seeker.

I think I will never forget the reading I held together with Ayfer Tunç in the Duisburg public library for an audience of Turkish, Kurdish and German young people. My God, what questions they asked! What liveliness and what joie de vivre! As I stood in front of these young people, each one more curious and less restrained than the one before, I felt, in spite of their tremendous diversity, the joy in being human beings and in being alive.

Once again I understood the following truth: actually all of us are equal, and if capitalism - in other words, this economic hustle and bustle, all the prejudices, brutalities and injustices - just leaves us alone, and if the educational systems that transform us into cogs in a runaway machine give us some breathing space, then nothing can stop us from living a happy life together with one another and in harmony with nature.

15 June 2010. We set out in the morning with Murat (Uyurkulak) and arrive at Atatürk Airport. We meet the wonderful team of the “On the Road” project, Çiğdem, Tijen, Melis and Özlem, and we immediately feel at home with them. At this point we don’t yet know that by the end of this journey we will be close friends.

We land at Düsseldorf Airport and drive to Duisburg, where we will stay at the Ferrotel. “Ferr” means iron - we are in the Ruhr region, which was razed to the ground during World War II because it was the heartland of German industry. Today Duisburg is dominated by modest four or five-storey houses that all resemble one another. They are very different from the venerable but aristocratic-looking and even secretly snobbish buildings of central Europe. A few buildings dating back to the pre-war period also exist here and there. The traditional heavy industry has given way to new energy sources and modern technologies, and as result the city’s population has shrunk. Duisburg seems calm, quiet and introverted. It is purposefully filling the emptiness in its life with art and culture.

The temperature in Istanbul when we left was 30°C. When we arrive in Duisburg, the sky is covered by clouds, but the sun breaks through in the afternoon. After a short stroll in the tree-lined square near the hotel, we treat ourselves to a beer as we sit on one of the long benches of a café and are bathed in the sun’s rosy glow. That evening we eat dinner with the entire team in the restaurant of the sculpture museum. Here we get to know the other members of the team: Claudia Dollinger; Hakan, the driver of the bookmobile; Mehmet Bey, who is responsible for the technical aspects of the tour; and Sabine and Thomas Büsch, who make films and conduct interviews with the authors participating in the project.

The working-class city of Duisburg goes to bed early. The streets are empty at 7.00pm, but we stay in the restaurant and amuse ourselves until it’s time for the restaurant to close. If we’re already having so much fun on the first evening, I don’t know how things are going to end.

The next morning we have a reading at the Gustav Heinemann comprehensive school in Essen. The school is situated in the middle of a green park. The pupils must be in their classrooms, because it’s completely silent. Preparations are being made in the library for the reading. We drink coffee in the garden.

It’s time for the reading. Fügen Uğur is the friendly chairperson and simultaneous interpreter at all the events we participate in. As the questions increase, her task will probably become increasingly difficult, we think. But the students are apathetic. It’s not so much a lack of interest as a general silence, as though they don’t know how they should behave. No questions are asked immediately after the reading is over. Then a German teacher asks a couple of questions, as though he is trying to motivate the pupils, but it’s not much use. One or two obligatory questions follow, but that’s all. In the garden we talk to Murat. We can’t claim that things went well, and we’re even somewhat worried. But suddenly we are surrounded by Turkish pupils. They’re full of a liveliness that they didn’t show when we were all inside. They ask us an unbroken string of questions. Why do we write? What are we writing? Where do we come from? Most of the questions are about Istanbul. The pupils show a strong interest in us, and they seem to want to show their pride in the situation to their German friends.

That afternoon there’s a press conference in Duisburg. The landscape conservation park, which has been transformed into a cultural center, has an exhibition of rusty old trains and some mechanical devices in its garden, and it conveys a good impression of Germany’s heavy industry in the 20th Century. During an earlier visit to Essen I had already visited the Zollverein mine, which is a World Cultural Heritage Site. The stories I heard at that time made a strong impression on me and led me to reflect on the capitalism that dominated the 19th and 20th Centuries and on the working class. The press conference is held in a former command center. The machines are well-kept and very impressive. Even the instructional posters from the 1950s have been preserved.

Claudia (Hahn-Raabe) provides information about the project. The director of the landscape conservation park gives us strong support. One of the participating journalists attracts my attention. He is listening attentively and making notes. He’s over 50 years old. In Turkey, the least experienced interns are sent to such conferences - it’s a sign of just how much importance the Turkish press attributes to cultural events. At lunch we are visited by Mehmet Bey from the German Association of Employers. He tells us that 2011 is the 50th anniversary of the arrival of migrant workers in Germany, and that efforts are being made to establish an immigration museum. It’s an exciting and significant project. The immigration museum is a way of being “integrated” into the “integration process”.

We take a tour of the Duisburg mosque. It’s the biggest mosque in Germany and the second biggest in Europe. The gigantic chandelier and the carpet that covers the entire floor both come from Turkey. The mosque was largely financed by the EU. It is a carefully built and attractive mosque. Nonetheless, the question that comes to mind is when and why the Turks lost their aesthetic sense regarding mosques. None of the mosques built in the 20th Century can compare with the Ortaköy mosque, for example. The Duisburg mosque is part of the inventory of the city’s tourist business. The imam, who allows us to enter even though we’re not wearing headscarves and doesn’t even make a comment about their absence, is preparing to lead a tour of the mosque for a German group that is waiting outside.

Once again we have a lot of fun at dinner. Melis acts out for us the story of how she once asked a Turk for a telephone card. She tells the story so well that we keep asking her to tell it again and again. In the following days we continue asking her to repeat the story, that’s how much we like it!

17 June. We are in Bochum to give a reading in the cafeteria of the Maria Sibylla Merian Comprehensive School. Preparations are being made busily, and the cafeteria is full to bursting. Everything goes unexpectedly well; it’s lively and cheerful. The pupils, who are German and Turkish, ask us lots of questions. The Turkish students try to speak Turkish. They participate energetically, and through their laughter at the jokes they seem to be showing off to their German fellow pupils.

After the reading we sit in the garden and answer many more questions. One pupil talks about pride. He says he would like to say to his German friends, “We’ve got authors too.” The Turkish pupils clearly need something they can be proud of. They live between two worlds, and in both of these worlds they feel like stepchildren. Their excitement, and one could even say pride, as they listen can be felt very clearly. Some of them listen to the text that is being read in their mother tongue, which they haven’t perfectly mastered. They listen attentively and make a tremendous effort to understand. They climb into the bookmobile and browse among the books with great interest.

The school director receives us in his office and presents each of us with a book illustrated by Maria Sibylla Merian, the nature painter and illustrator who lived from 1647 to 1717 and after whom the school is named. The book is very beautiful; one can hardly tear one’s gaze away from the illustrations.

Because of the heavy traffic we arrive that afternoon in Gelsenkirchen a little late. We’re going to give a reading at the Grillo Gymnasium (college preparatory high school), which has a portal surrounded by four magnificent pillars. This high school can look back on a one hundred year history. It’s not just a school, it’s an institution similar to the Galatasaray Lisesi in Istanbul. Being a pupil at the Grillo is important. The historic building with its high ceilings, huge double doors and broad stairways is extremely impressive. The school director, who seems to be a member of the 1968 generation, is an enthusiastic advocate of multiculturalism. The teacher of the school’s Turkish courses tells us that the school director strongly advocated the introduction of Turkish as an elective language at the school and successfully reached his aim. The school director is in fact a fine human being. He buys two copies of Murat’s book “Rage”, one for himself and one for the school’s library.

Here too, the reading proceeds in a lively atmosphere. Only a few of the Turkish children living in Germany manage the leap into a Gymnasium, or college preparatory high school. Accordingly, the Turkish pupils at the Grillo are a cause for pride for the Turks who live in the city. Unfortunately, however, there are only a few Turkish pupils. Sitting outside, we read a long and very beautiful poem that was written on the wall that surrounds the school. It is a lively and impressive poem, and the Turkish is flawless. Either the Turkish instruction has been very successful, or the writer of the poem comes from Turkey. Such excellent Turkish and such good poems are rare even in Turkey. I regret not having written down some of the lines of this poem.

In the evening we once again have dinner in the garden of the sculpture museum, and once again we have a lot of fun. The weather is growing cooler, to the point of discomfort.

18 June. We are in Duisburg. This morning we will give a reading in the city’s central library, a generously proportioned building on the edge of a square. There’s a lot more going on inside than we expected. The audience is largely made up of Murat’s readers, including people who would like to have him autograph their copies of his book. One of the Turkish young people asks whether you can earn money by writing. We laugh about that for a while. Yes and no. It depends on how you use your talent. However, we can see from the young man’s expression that he is not satisfied with our answer. The listeners’ questions of course have less to do with literature than with life in general and with themselves. The listeners would like to know what impression they are making on us. They want to know what we think about the Turks living in Germany, what the people in Turkey think. Some of them speak sentences that are full of homesickness. From the first sentence spoken by one of the listeners, I can tell he comes from Rize, because he speaks Turkish with a strong Rize accent.

No reading is planned for this afternoon. I meet Semra and Fatma, who live in Essen and organise the Literatürk literature festival. We chat until it grows dark. Claudia Hahn-Raabe invites us to join her for an evening at the theatre. We are delighted. She says we should dress warmly, because the production will take place outdoors. We drive through a relatively prosperous neighbourhood of Duisburg to an area outside the city. We are in an industrial zone that is now being used as a venue for cultural events. Before the performance, the two Claudias, Murat and I drink wine in an adjacent green park in an area that has been set up for a reception.

Claudia Hahn-Raabe introduces us to the director of the play, the 48-year-old René Pollesch, who is a world-famous name in the world of avant-garde theatre. Pollesch, who participated in this year’s Istanbul Theatre Festival, is a strong, cheerful-looking man with grey eyes and white hair. He’s a heavy smoker and always has a cigarette in his hand. He wears a playful prankster’s expression. I don’t know yet that this playfulness will seem more significant after I have seen the play.

The play is about to begin.We leave the park together and walk through the industrial park over coal dust and gravel. The sun is going down, and it’s getting even colder. We come to a large flat space. It’s not merely large, it’s the endless site of a former industrial complex. Seven or eight mobile homes that remind one of a circus stand around, randomly placed. White plastic chairs have been set up in rows. A gigantic balloon is floating above the site, and I suspect that it bears a picture of Pollesch’s face. It has a wonderfully fluorescent effect. On a billboard made of iron girders we see a neon sign announcing “La camera de la muerte”. We are in a remarkable and impressive space. However, the temperature is 8°C and I’m freezing, even though I’m wearing all the clothes I’ve brought along, one thing on top of another. The German spectators are better equipped. Some of them have brought blankets, others are wearing fur coats. Murat is very lightly dressed. How I regret not having bought a warm piece of clothing! I look enviously at the people who have brought along thermos bottles and are drinking coffee or something alcoholic during the performance.

The play, which is called “The Perfect Day”, begins. Fabian, who Claudia (Dollinger) has told us is very famous, steps onto the stage/into the square, dressed in a tiny fur loincloth that covers only his hips. He starts to tell the story of the human race, from the discovery of fire to the invention of the telephone. At one point he even takes off his tiny loincloth. Wearing only his underpants, he steps into the shower. In the cold! The play is performed in German. Actually I’m not supposed to understand the lines, but I do understand the shared language of art. However, I don’t understand Fabian’s jokes, which make the German audience burst into laughter, and I envy the Germans. The play is certainly very amusing.

After an hour and a half the play is still going on. Fabian asks the audience to pick up their chairs and sit down again in a different place. The audience is set into motion. If only I weren’t freezing, I could continue watching until the morning. But the two Claudias take pity on us, and we return to the hotel. Claudia Dollinger brings us chocolate from her room, Claudia Hahn-Raabe orders tea and cognac at the reception desk, and we warm ourselves up over chocolate and tea with cognac.

19 June. My first official act in the morning is to go to Kaufhof to buy an outdoor jacket. Because it’s summer, I have no other choice than to go to a shop that sells camping equipment. The shop windows are full of summer clothing, but it’s cold. If I had only gone shopping on my first day here, I wouldn’t have got so sick.

On this day I don’t leave my room, because I can’t. And because I don’t feel well I can’t attend the gala concert “Sounds of Love” this evening. I sleep, wake up, go back to sleep. In the early hours of the morning I am woken by cheerful voices. I look out the window, but there’s nothing to see. The voices are those of our people, who are making this noise in the quiet Duisburg night. The front door of the Ferrotel is locked, and they think they have been locked out. However, Fügen knows that some hotels lock up for the night and that you can use your room key to unlock the front door as well. The jolly scene in front of the door sounds seductive, and I’m sad that I’ve missed out on the fun.

20 June. It’s the day of our departure. The events of the “On the Road” project in the Ruhr region are coming to an end. Murat is travelling back to Istanbul, but he will meet us again in Brussels in a few days. I travel on with the rest of the team by bus to Brussels.

The “On the Road” programme is part of the overall project called “Cultural Bridges”. The concepts of the bridge and of being on the road are important for me. Bridges and roads are structures that are of vital significance. They are themselves rivers and avenues of communication. They are the freedom that enables us to come and go and get to know others. They hold the possibility of entering into other people’s lives and forming relationships. An individual is enriched to the same extent that he or she is able to enter, to form relationships, and get to know other people. I thank everyone who has worked to create this bridge.

We first met up in Zurich and then travelled on to Basel. It was early summer, and the weather was unexpectedly Mediterranean. As far as I can remember, when the weather is like this people generally avoid literature, and the creature known as the writer is then put aside for a while. However, the hall where we were to give the reading was crowded. The guests from Switzerland listened attentively to the reading in Turkish. They sat there bolt upright, and the interest in their eyes as they watched our lips revealed them to be true readers. Of course, they treated us like honoured guests. Aslı shared with us the most beautiful pages from “The City with the Red Cloak”, and I read from “Gold and Wine”. To the audience we did not seem at all distant, extravagant or exotic. Fortunately, there were no embarrassing “Orientalist” questions from the audience. In events like this one, you find a family.

We also became acquainted with a few people from Turkey. Most of them had been hurt and had gone into exile, hurled, out of necessity, to the far end of the world. For example, there was Elif, who walked with a crutch. What a gracious hostess she was to us! And how shocking was her life story, which could have been the subject of a film!

Haydar Karataş was there too. His “Moth” (Perperık-a Söe) had just been published. He was still quite excited about this debut.

Other people, passionate, reliable people... Setting out on a journey really means moving into the path of other people. Meeting them, bumping into them by accident, getting to know them... The impressions each of us leaves behind, the effect we have on one another, are things we actually only realise in retrospect. What we have learned from one another we only understand years later. In my opinion, the project was a surrender to time; it was an attempt to give the future a few words in advance. What was at stake here was certainly not only Turkish literature. On these journeys, we represented the literatures of who knows how many different languages. The point was not only to set out on a journey and to arrive somewhere; the aim was also to bring something back home with us from our travels. What I gave to others during this journey came from my heart; what I received in return I can never repay.

A bus brought us from the airport to the Piazzale Roma... We were in Venice, the city that has always made a deep impression on me, that I want to see again and again, whose air I need to breathe in again and again... In Venice, which waits quietly and patiently for its story to be written one day... However, the route the bus followed was very different to the image I had of the city. I had never seen this face of hers before. Fethiye Çetin, who I knew would be accompanying me on this journey, was with me. I had not been able to meet her before. However, I had been keeping abreast of her work and her efforts with great respect and admiration. Fate brought us together that day, but each of us was involved in our own battle in our own way... A few polite phrases... The fact that we’d not had a chance to meet beforehand in Istanbul, that our meeting could not take place until today... What was in store for us, and whom would we meet? We didn’t yet know the answers to these questions.

Then we reached our goal – Piazzale Roma.. A bit further on we could see the sea, or rather the water. We were in Venice, the city I knew and had been missing. There we met Claudia Hahn-Raabe and her colleagues. Tijen was there too... As we got into the vaporetto that would take us to our hotel, where we would stay for two nights, I felt that the story of this water would also be written in other lines. We started off. Now we were in the Venice I knew - or rather, thought I knew. “Thought I knew” is a more correct way to phrase it, because every time I travelled along these canals I encountered unexpected images. The most beautiful thing was the constantly recurring feeling that I had lost my way.

Claudia Hahn-Raabe had started her work right after moving to Istanbul, and thanks to her energy, warm heart and interesting projects, she succeeded in winning the hearts of many people in a short period of time. Now the right moment had come to talk to her about the point we had reached in the journey. She told us that she and her colleagues had already been to numerous project venues in many cities. The project was continuing as planned and reaching many different kinds of people in the process. Here, too, we would be addressing different kinds of people. At this moment I remembered the early days when she first told me about the project. Under the aegis of the Goethe-Institute, Turkish literature was to set out for Europe via another route. Various authors would travel to different cities. I was given the opportunity to choose a city for myself. Without hesitating for an instant, I chose Venice...

Later on, this dream came true. The discussions in which I participated together with Fethiye Çetin with the help of my simultaneous translator Gianpiero Bellingeri were extremely interesting. I will never forget how I explored obscure corners of Venice in the time that remained to us after the readings, with all the energy I had gained during this journey through new or intensified friendships. How wonderful it was to eat pizza in a restaurant on a piazza whose name I can no longer remember, or to eat a sandwich in a typical Venetian café during one of the short lunch breaks that our schedule allowed... To take a walk in the Piazza San Marco and drink a glass of wine, or to stroll along the streets of the ghetto and listen to its story... To wander through the narrow lanes with the feeling that at any moment I could lose my way... The most beautiful thing about Venice is to enjoy that feeling of being lost to the very end, in order to become one with the city... One thing is a fact, however. We shouldn’t have come to Venice in the summertime. In the heat of that June, in spite of everything I experienced there, how poignantly I missed the melancholy Venice of the winter months...

In order to have a celebration of sorts, we wanted to join the other authors, who had made various short trips to other cities, in Brussels about a month later. If you think about the possibilities we have today, these distances are short. By contrast, the journey that Turkish literature has to make, and will make, is still a long one... But we have speeded up our pace. I firmly believe in this journey, in the task we need to accomplish, and in what we are capable of... Claudia and her colleagues, who have worked so selflessly, have achieved something great. The results and the gains give us so much strength to continue...

My city was Vienna. The reading, in a high school attended by Turkish pupils among others, happened to be on my birthday. “Today is my birthday,” I said at the beginning of my reading, and all the pupils applauded cheerfully. Then all of them sang “Happy birthday” for me. It was the happiest and biggest birthday party I’ve ever had in my life.

My grandmother used to say, “Start your speech with something beautiful.” It was a good thing I took this advice to heart and mentioned my birthday at the very start on that day. The reading proceeded in a very pleasant atmosphere. A Turkish pupil observed that Turkish novels presented us Turks in a negative way. “What do you mean by that?” I asked her. “They make it sound as though we were a country full of honour killings, where girls are married off at a very young age and women are forced to wear the headscarf,” she answered. “In these areas it’s life that we have to criticise, not literature,” I said. Her face brightened, as though I had made a magical remark. These young people growing up in the middle of Europe are far removed from their roots. It was obvious that they were full of confused emotions. I wanted to give them courage, so I said, “Don’t forget where you come from. You come from the country of Orhan Pamuk, Yaşar Kemal, Adalet Ağaoğlu, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Ara Güler. But don’t forget that you are living here in the country of Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Haneke and Freud.” When I told them that it broadens their horizon if they nurture themselves from both cultures, they smiled. I explained to them that it is possible to transform the fragile feeling of being a migrant into its opposite, as Fatih Akın has done in such an exemplary way. At that point they were beaming and laughing. After the reading they surrounded me like a happily twittering flock of swallows.

A Turkish pupil said that that he was supporting his older sister, who wants to be a writer. The simple and straightforward way in which he expressed this helped me understand immediately how strongly he was encouraging his sister on her way to becoming a writer. The sincere feelings this young man shared with me were my birthday present. At one point somebody in the crowd asked me how old I now was. Thirty-seven, I said. “You look younger,” he said. “About 35...” At that particular moment I wasn’t able to smile about this bitter truth, but when I told my husband and my daughter about it after my return to Istanbul, I was laughing.

For me, Vienna means Freud, because for a time I seriously devoted myself to psycho-analysis. On this visit I went to the Freud Museum for the second time. I remembered that during my first visit Freud’s cocaine bottle was on show. This time the cocaine bottle was not in its former place. I was surprised. I would really love to know why Freud’s cocaine bottle is no longer part of the exhibition.

But let’s get to my birthday presents: black crocheted gloves, a teacup with a Klimt motif, and a lilac-coloured shawl. They remind me of Vienna. Like Sylvia Plath’s heroine, who was reminded, every time she looked at the cosmetics bag she had received as a present, of the beauty contests in which she had participated. Another beautiful day awaited me in Vienna. I met my husband’s cousins and their mother, and they took me on an unforgettable tour of the city. They have lived there for years, so they showed me the city in the light of their own memories. That made this tour even more precious for me. Then we had a fantastic schnitzel and drank a fabulous margarita, not to mention the coffee and apple cake. This is a wonderful family consisting of three sisters and their mother, plus the daughters’ husbands and the grandchildren. I had not previously met all the members of this family. Finally I met them on this day in Vienna and understood why everybody likes to talk about this family and is full of affection for them.

At the reading I gave in the library, I was asked what feelings Vienna aroused in me. I don’t know why, but I thought of my grandmother Fatma from the village on the Aegean Sea where we spend the summer months. I unconsciously connected that with Freud, I said. Grandmother Fatma has played a special role for the last 90 years in the strange relationship that exists between the inhabitants of the village directly across from the peninsula of Midilli, where we live only in the summertime, and the island. They speak of the island as though it were a living person. For example, they will say, “Today she’s close” or “Today she’s far away”, “Today she’s showing her face” or “Today she isn’t.” And the way Grandmother Fatma looks at the island is supposed to be different from the way everyone else looks at it. People say that she looks at the island as if she were in love with it, so much so that her husband had their house built backwards, because it’s a sin to look in such a loving way towards a piece of land that is inhabited by people of another faith. People also say that Grandmother Fatma can see the island anyway, even when she sits in her backto- front house and closes her eyes. At one point she rebelled against her husband for having the house built backwards so that she couldn’t see the island of the “infidels”. She asked him, “Didn’t God make them, just as he made us?” On that day, a window opened up in the solid back wall.

I think that literature and the “Yollarda/On the Road” project are opening this kind of window so that we can see one another better.

Even though we don’t hear or know much about it, there is a city called Pécs far away in Hungary. In fact, Pécs is even a European City of Culture. If you think that a city of culture has to be like Istanbul, densely populated and chock-full of traffic, with a deeply rooted history, a city in which life pumps breathlessly 24 hours a day without stopping, chaotic and magnificent at the same time, then you’re quite mistaken, I’m sorry to say.

Pécs is a city with only 150,000 inhabitants, calm, tranquil and without any traffic to speak of. But what a city it is! A fairy seems to have touched this place with her magic wand and caused time to stand still. Because of a sense of civic pride that is unimaginable to a Turk, nobody in Pécs has ever damaged the centuries-old buildings, nobody has ever driven a nail into them, torn a building down in order to build a new one, or built an additional storey on top of one. As a result, the styles of Western Rome, the Ottoman Empire, and the Gothic, baroque and rococo periods have remained undamaged to the present day, except for the effects of natural catastrophes. This city, which resembles an open-air museum in which every building is as valuable as a brilliant cut diamond, teaches those who stroll through its narrow lanes a lesson concerning humanity and civilisation. As you stroll through Pécs, you move through history from the Middle Ages to the present day. I regard myself as very lucky that the “Yollarda/On the Road” project gave me four days in this city, which has safeguarded the past and also lives in the present.

Pécs is famous for its churches; the Gazi Khassim mosque; the statues of the Madonna; the monuments to the national hero Johann Hunyadi, who liberated its people from the yoke of the Turks; the university and its library; its narrow lanes and tiny houses with bay windows. But it is equally famous for its coffee houses, bars and inns. Groups of students playing music stroll through the streets. It is a university town, and, especially at the weekends, the narrow lanes are bursting with students enjoying life. In Istanbul you see one bank after another, but in Pécs you find bookshops wherever you go. You rarely see shops selling brand-name products; instead, there are many markets where itinerant traders offer products they have made by hand.

In Hungary, the service sector is still slow and ponderous. After all, the Hungarians were long under the influence of their Soviet masters. Let’s not even talk about ordering food. After you’ve ordered an alcoholic drink, you have to wait at least a quarter of an hour to be served, a period of time that is absolutely unbearable for impatient Turks. In comparison to us Turks, the Hungarians are very quiet people. Even in cafés frequented by lots of young people, we didn’t come across any customers who were laughing loudly or carrying on a loud conversation, as we were. We could probably serve as models for the Hungarians in areas such as having fun, laughing or giving customers speedy service. But there is something very important that we can learn from them. I will try to explain it by means of an example. In Hungary there is a cemetery that was granted the status of a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000. In this Christian cemetery from the third century AD, which includes mausoleums several storeys high, there is an area where works created in our own time are exhibited. Here there is a sculpture that people from all over the world should look at and take as an example. It will soon be taken to the Vatican. When you look at it from one angle, you see the Star of David; from another angle you see the cross as a symbol of Christendom; and from a third angle you see the crescent moon and star, which is the symbol of Islam. In a brilliant process, the artist has merged the symbols of the three heavenly religions into a unity. I believe this is the most outstanding quality of the Hungarians: their ability to bring together religions, points of view and opinions and to integrate them. They succeed in creating integrity rather than conflict out of differences, and in judging, with the eye of the philosopher, their 6,000 years of history and the foreign occupations and torments they have suffered in the course of that history, without the slightest trace of hostility.

The second conquest of the city of Pécs by the Turks
From 20 to 23 May 2010, the inhabitants of Pécs experienced a second onslaught by the Turks. This time the Turkish attack was not carried out by a thousand soldiers on horseback, but by two women authors, a composer, a soprano, a brilliant player of the reed flute called the ney, and a dancer. I mention the two women authors only so that I won’t quite lose sight of the readings that Perihan Mağden and I gave in several places. For after all, how much did our readings count - no matter what we read there - by comparison with an impressive concert and a dance performance? Tuluğ Tırpan with his symphonic poem “Mewlana-Alchemist” and his piano, Burcu Karadağ with her ney, Sertap Erener with her voice, and Su Güneş Mıhladız with her dancing took the Hungarians prisoner, enchanted them, conquered their hearts. From now on, when the inhabitants of Pécs who experienced these performances think of the Turks, they will think of the ney with which Burcu breathed into their souls, Sertap’s crystal-clear voice, and the contemporary compositions for string instruments and percussion with which Tuluğ thrilled them. And they won’t be able to forget Su Güneş in her mystical robes, who whirled around for three quarters of an hour without stopping, shed her ego and became a symbol of rebirth.

If we always set out to conquer every country with a team like this one, we would never come back with empty hands.

Art and wine
For three days, Perihan and I uncomplainingly performed our tasks as part of the “Yollarda/On the Road” project. We read from our works, answered questions and posed for videos in various places in the city. Then came Sunday. The organisers had decided to reward our entire team for our intense work by taking us to a wine festival in a nearby village. The grapes that ripen there in rich soil in a sunny region under practically Mediterranean conditions yield an outstanding white wine. Our hosts wanted us to try the Chardonnay and the Cirfandli that are grown there on 630 hectares of vineyards, as well as the red wines from the Villány region. At the start of our wine-tasting tour, which was to take us to 14 different wine cellars, we approached the first house together with the two Claudias from the Goethe-Institut and the project organisers, wineglasses hanging around our necks and wine coupons and assessment questionnaires in our hands. By the time we left the fourth wine cellar, hardly one of us had a clear head. One of the Claudias was stung by a bee, so I picked up a clump of damp soil and pressed it against her cheek. Perihan came to help her with a piece of chewed-up bread, and Claudia didn’t protest against these Turkish remedies. The last thing I remember was that we were soaked to the skin as we waited for our car during a sudden rainfall. At the evening concert, in which Tuluğ’s composition was interpreted by the Vienna Classical Players, tears kept running down my cheeks. Initially I attributed this to all the wine I had drunk, but the Hungarians in the hall were at least as moved as I was. Outstanding art and outstanding wine know no boundaries, my friends. A heartfelt thankyou for the visit to Pécs, which offered us both of these things so generously, goes to my friends who created the “On the Road” project.

As part of the “European Literature Goes to Turkey/ Turkish Literature Goes to Europe” project carried out by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul from 2009 to 2010, I was invited to go to Bucharest, Romania from 12 to 15 May 2010 to read from my novel “Kumral Ada - Mavi Tuna”, which was translated into Romanian in 2007 (Vals Mediterano, Ars Longa Verlag, Bucharest), and to participate in discussions with Romanian readers about Turkish literature and culture.

The concept of “World Literature” was a gift to world culture from the great poet and humanist Goethe, whom I consider one of my literary fathers. Long before our present era, this concept possessed the intellectual courage to say that literature does not have a nationality and can simply be written in diverse languages for the human race as a whole. I think the project carried out by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul, in which European authors give readings in Turkey and Turkish authors give readings in the European countries into whose languages they have been translated, is having a positive impact on these diverse cultures thanks to the influence of literature.

Participating in the “On the Road” project was important for me. Many sincere thanks to everyone who helped to implement this extensive project focusing on multiculturalism, and above all to the Goethe-Institut Istanbul.

I am very interested in travel and the changes experienced by people who travel. Making a journey is a promise-a promise that the traveller is ready for change and transformation. At the same time, it’s also a risk. In the course of transformation it may become necessary to face up to one’s memories. That’s why transformation is a difficult process. It means transforming the old into the new and in the process once again exploring the large gaps between remembering and forgetting.

Real journeys have always meant something to me - journeys that become multicoloured, complicated because of the distances covered; journeys that branch off in new directions. In addition, I’m also interested in abstract journeys - journeys into the spirit, into memory. To be honest, I am among those who believe that the most important element of our globalised world is made of blocks of memories. In my opinion, the best journey is the one we take into our memories, especially in view of the heavy burden imposed on us by the history of the 20th Century. This is what I’d wish we would do, not only with regard to my own country but on behalf of the whole world. It seems to me that if we can simply face up to the past and forgive, we could move in new dynamic directions much more easily.

Whether we look at the processes of the modern world from a critical standpoint (we can at least say that we can still always learn something from it) or whether we take a post-modern perspective in order to study its very obvious decadence, one thing is clear: the dynamics of life today are taking place in the conservative style of neoliberal politics. One proof of this is the direct or indirect racism that is occurring almost everywhere in the world. This is a strange kind of conservatism that is directed at religion, language, ethnicity and gender identity, and knows no limits. In the course of the “Yollarda” project I found the opportunity to sit over a cup of coffee or tea with lemon or a glass of chilled wine with a large number of authors, readers, schoolchildren and journalists and chat about these and similar topics. It was equally depressing and cheering to see that we have similar worries even though we live in different parts of the world. It’s obvious that our strength will not be enough to change the world. But we can ask questions of the world. We can ask, we could have asked.

And sometimes that’s the most important thing of all.

A bridge is a construction that connects two things that were originally unconnected. That is why bridges were invented: so that people could, like the Prophet, walk across the water without getting their feet wet. History is nothing other than the stories of bridges that were built, blown up and then rebuilt. In other words, a geographic area that cannot look back on blown-up bridges does not have a history. And because there is no such geographic area, the human race is unified and human beings are all connected with one another.

There is a bridge that connects Europe and Asia. When I crossed that bridge for the first time, I cried. That was almost 20 years ago. At that time, even crossing the River Danube was an unforgettable experience.

It took exactly nine hours to travel between the two neighbouring countries, Romania and Bulgaria, across the bridge in Giurgiu. Accordingly, I had every reason to blow my nose into a tissue until it was completely sodden while we drove between two continents across the Bosporus in a rumbling and rickety bus. By the way, at that time I would never have imagined that 20 years later I would be able to hold back the tears. I would never have imagined that it could take only one and a half minutes to cross the bridge in Giugiu rather than nine hours. I would never have thought that history could be written in black ink rather than red ink. Actually, none of the ideas I have today would ever have occurred to me back then.

I’m telling you all this because I crossed this bridge once again. Like many other authors, I too was invited to come. I participated in discussions and gala dinners, conducted unnecessary conversations for hours with mayors and chatted animatedly with students. I was invited to be a guest so that I could see differences and point out similarities, just like a living bridge. A European Hungarian author in the European Turkey of tomorrow. A Hungarian author who has never erased 150 years of the past from his memory. Those 150 years have to be explained to the reader who is not Hungarian. During that time the Turks ruled our territory. Our magnificent kings had always conquered them, but we had only a few magnificent kings. In Mohács they were eliminated one after the other. Today the city of Mohács is the River Danube port that marks the limits of the European Community, but not even the natives of Mohács themselves know this, let alone the Europeans or the Turks. Nonetheless, I am here; I came here in a pink bus in order to be a bridge. I lean forward: here you are, walk across me to Europe. That is why I’ve come here.

Over dinner on the last day of my tour, I realised that I - in other words, a bridge - was not necessary at all. A bridge is needed when existentially significant things are located in different places. Of course there are important things that make it possible to distinguish between us here and them there, but these differences are not of vital importance. The really important thing is the ink that people use to write their own fate, and I have realised that this ink is the same in both countries.

I am deep in animated conversation with the Turkish translator of my novel, Sevgi Can Yağcı. Together we search for words - words that exist in both our languages. For example, the word tabut (coffin). What a coincidence! Then we catch ourselves building logical sentences in our two languages using these words. By means of the mother tongue, the words lead to the death of her mother, who died shortly before mine. Both our mothers played the violin. That too is a great coincidence. Who would believe that two mothers on separate sides of the Bosporus would both play the violin and die before they could raise their children to adulthood?

Is your father a writer, like mine? Did he write a book for you? Of course, fathers who are writers usually write one of their books for their children. That is quite normal. It might be a matter of conscience. The book my father wrote for me is called “Stones and Herbs”. And yours is called “Snowdrops”? But here there are more stones and fewer snowdrops than in my country. Obviously something has become confused here.

Your father published his book after he was released from prison? And he was really, just like my father, a political prisoner for seven years? In other words, people in Asia Minor were interrogated in just the same way they were in Europe? Are fingernails pulled out here in just the same way? When that happens, does the blood shoot into one’s brain in just the same way? Yes, in just the same way.

The bus
The rolling bus. A library, an embassy on wheels. A kind of flying classroom.

In Istanbul it gets stuck, unavoidably. The traffic! Initially I think we would have moved faster on foot. But after the first reading I understand: the bus has to come with us. The bus is the main thing, the secret protagonist. But what am I saying? Not the secret protagonist - the sensation in the schoolyard!

The schoolchildren listen to me politely, cheerfully, with interest. But they storm into the bus with enthusiasm and don’t ever want to leave. I sense that this is not only because of the books and journals. Nor is it because of the comfortable seating in the corner where they can lounge. Most of all, it’s because of its soul. Yes, the bus even has a soul: Claudia, who charms everyone with her stories. What would the bus and its books be without her?

The tie
Something I notice immediately: that here I am the only man who is not wearing a tie. At first I still have a hope: maybe the younger pupils, the janitor, or some teacher won’t be wearing a tie. No chance. I’m the only one in this whole school who is running around tieless. How is this supposed to end well? And now the German teacher whispers to me that before the reading I should go immediately to the principal’s office. Old memories of my school days arise... back then, that was not a good omen. This could get very strange, I thought to myself.

A room consisting almost entirely of different shades of brown, like the tea on the little table. The only touch of colour is provided by the bright blue eyes on the wall behind the gigantic desk: Atatürk looking boldly into the distance. The eyes of the principal are looking at me. To be precise, they’re looking at the place on my collar where a tie should be hanging. A stern look at a vacuum.

We talk a little, about the school, about German as it’s taught in the schools. The conversation is a bit stiff, but we try hard. A ritual and its rules. The German teacher translates back and forth in great detail. He’s translating more than we’re actually saying, I think. It’s better that way. At one point he mentions that I live in Barcelona. Suddenly the principal’s eyes light up: Barça, the world’s best football team! Suddenly we’re chatting, the names of players and clubs are simply bubbling out of us, we talk about scores, and we don’t need translation any more.

Fifteen minutes later we are cordially shaking hands. I even receive an invitation to come and watch the football match that will be played tomorrow evening by the teachers from the school. Of course he’ll be playing too, says the principal with a smile. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to come. That’s really a shame, but just the idea of it appeals to me. A completely tieless idea...

Istanbul
Once again, there are some things I won’t be able to see. I was in the Blue Mosque for all of ten minutes yesterday, but there was no time left for the thermal baths. Apart from that, I saw hardly any mosques and no museums at all. Not a good haul, from a tourist’s point of view. If my travel guide were not a book, it would be shaking its head in wonder. Why did you take me along at all? it would be asking me the whole time.

I know, I know. The church here, the palace there, an absolute must. But I simply can’t.

I did cross the Bosporus, but not on the earnestly recommended all-day tour. Instead, I crossed on the workers’ ferry at 6.00am

Yes, the travel guide must be completely dissatisfied with me. I’m always on the go, but not on any one of its recommended routes. And I’ve seen most of its top ten attractions only from afar, as silhouettes on the horizon. Nonetheless, I don’t have a bad conscience at all!

Days full of surprising experiences and interesting encounters, the coveted look behind the scenes, the warm hospitality - I’ve had the privilege of experiencing all of that here, seeing the country and its people close up, as my travel guide would put it. My palaces are the schools, and my treasure chambers are the classrooms. Istanbul, up close and personal! What more could I want?

Stop, and then after my work is done I take a break on the way back, down by the Galata Bridge. With a piece of fish on a roll (balik ekmek, my favorite Turkish word) in my hand, I spend some time watching the fishermen. This too means happiness for me in Istanbul... And it’s even in my travel guide!

Günter Grass, one of the greatest living writers in German, was on a visit to Turkey. Grass, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was accompanied by the equally great Turkish writer Yaşar Kemal. Grass arrived for the finale of the series of authors’ readings in Turkey called “European Literature in Turkey — Turkish Literature in Europe”.

Before Grass met with his Turkish readers in the Muhsin Ertuğrul Theatre in the Harbiye quarter of Istanbul on 15 April, he held a press conference together with the organisers of the project. After addresses by the German ambassador to Turkey, Eckart Cuntz; the EU ambassador to Turkey, Marc Pierini; and the head of the Goethe-Institute in Istanbul, Claudia Hahn-Raabe, Yaşar Kemal stepped up to the podium. Günter Grass had given the encomium for Kemal when the latter received the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in 1997, and the two writers had met subsequently on a number of occasions. Kemal now introduced his friend with the words, “There is no other author in the world like this one.” He went on to say about Grass, “I am a politically and socially committed writer, I have said that often before. I am very proud of this. I actively promote peace and oppose war. Günter Grass is also a writer of this kind, and I have even learned from him how to be proactive. I’m very glad he is visiting Turkey, and I would like to give him a warm welcome.”

Günter Grass spoke after the introduction by Yaşar Kemal. He began by talking about his life and about his own country, before going on to make a bold speech about Turkey which truly demonstrated his political engagement. Grass said, “Yaşar Kemal has been my friend for a long time now. I don’t speak Turkish and he doesn’t speak German. But we got to know each other by reading each other’s books. I was born in Danzig, Poland, and Yaşar Kemal comes from Çukurova. In the manner of megalomaniacs, both of us have put these places, which are tiny in the context of the world in general, at the centre of our writing and told our stories.”

Grass continued: “In 1945 I was 17 years old. I was under the influence of the Nazi ideology. For 12 years I did not want to admit to the atrocities the Nazis had perpetrated. Then the evidence of these atrocities gradually came to light, and I saw pictures of these deeds. I had to learn to accept the fact of these crimes. That was not easy for me and my generation. But these things had happened in Germany. Those who didn’t want to accept this fact said, ”You’re twisting the facts”, but history caught up with us again and again. Turkey is also carrying a heavy burden from its past. When will Turkey face up to what was done to the Armenian people in 1915 and 1916? I wish Turkey would deal openly with these events and become part of European society. Taboos have to be attacked. Wherever there is a taboo it must be attacked. We have done that, and Turkey must do that as well.”

“I know how difficult it is for a country to carry a burden from the past. Pınar Selek is still being prosecuted in the courts. An Armenian journalist was murdered. But I remember that after his death hundreds of thousands of people went out into the streets to demonstrate. A process of change has started in Turkey and no diplomatic or political process will be able to stop it. This is the most important step Turkey is making toward Europe.”

“During a discussion I took part in today at a university, a student expressed the thought that one should let the past rest and turn toward the future. I do not believe that this is appropriate behaviour. In Germany we heard that same advice over and over again. But one should be particularly thoughtful about this. On his journey to Poland in 1970, Willy Brandt fell to his knees before a concentration camp to which thousands of people had been sent and asked the Polish people for forgiveness. I think that the time has come for such a gesture, for a request for forgiveness from the Armenians.”

“You will have noticed that I am not using the word ‘genocide’. I think that Turkey itself must decide what name it wants to give to these events.”

“In 1997 I talked about the Kurdish problem and expressed my opposition to the use of German weapons in the struggle against the Kurds. This struggle has continued for years now, but it has not led to any result. The existence of the Kurdish people is an enrichment for Turkey, but Turkey is wasting this wealth by calling all of its citizens Turks. Instead, Turkey should make use of this wealth and profit from it. Such problems have never yet been solved through the use of weapons.”

“I would like to say to the Turkish Prime Minister, who will meet the authors on Saturday, ‘Listen carefully to the writers. They are the best observers of their respective countries. And the Kurdish writers can report about their respective countries best of all.’”

It was a great pleasure to take part in the cultural project “On the Road” organised by the Goethe-Institut Istanbul. And I am saying this not only as a writer but also as president of the Balkanika Foundation which awards the annual prize of the same name for literature of the Balkan peoples. Balkanika has been helping the communication between writers, publishers and researchers from the seven Balkan countries for 15 years now and its aims as a whole are very similar to those of the “On the Road” project. The exchange of culture and of literature in particular; meetings with readers of various generations and nationalities; visits to unknown or barely known foreign countries, learning more about their unique world and history; translation and publication of literary works, as well as their promotion – all that not only enriches the artist’s senses, but also helps create useful and strong artistic friendships and sincere human contacts.

These impressions of mine are shared by all Bulgarian colleagues who walked down the various “branches”of this colourful literary journey. We all feel that the “On the Road” project could evolve into a established periodic event, including other arts as well – fine arts, for example. It would be good if, along with literary readings and meetings with readers, the “On the Road” project started organising creative discussions between authors and translators from different countries, so that they can share information on new developments and phenomena in their national literatures. And why not plan a meeting of writers from all the countries included in “On the Road”?

But these are really business ideas; my mind, though, keeps going back to the emotional atmosphere of those few days I spent in Odrin. This city’s closeness to the border places it, somehow, in a unique situation. If you travel to Istanbul, you are always in a hurry to reach your destination, leaving the visit to Odrin for some other time. And then, of course, it always turns out that you are late. You see from a distance the magnificent minarets of its mosques and the curves of Maritsa and promise to yourself that next time you certainly will… How clever are Kavafis’s words: “When you start on your journey to Ithaca, then pray that the road is long.” Once time was measured in kilometres, not in hours and the road passed through the colourful world of Odrin’s open market with its merchants, barbers and wizard-coffeemakers. Alas, the modern highway now “steals” travellers away from Odrin. But it so happened that this time our destination, mine and the playwright Konstantin Iliev’s, was Odrin. It’s impossible to forget the oriental kindness of local people who didn’t mind stopping their sweet talk and leaving their companions to guide us through the labyrinth of winding little streets to our hotel. Then our guides, they themselves getting confused, handed us over to another kind person, who, on his part, asked someone else, but in the end we arrived at the place we were looking for.

Intimacy is the unique advantage of smaller cities. In Odrin you could easily go from past to present, from historical and religious monuments to symbols of the 21st Century. The borders of three countries converge here, which creates a feeling of contest, of competition. There is a Thracian University both in Greece and Bulgaria, but the one here seems newer and more up-to-date. And obviously built by very ambitious people. Almost nowhere in the Balkans, a region I know well, have I seen so stylish, modern and functional space as that of the private Odrin College. And I was equally impressed by the Yıldırım Beyazıt High School. In fact these were the venues for my literary readings, for the meetings and conversations with the young people of Turkey. Almost everywhere my readings continued for more than two hours. I was overwhelmed with clever questions about my books, the roads to success in art, my acquaintances with Turkish writers, life in my own country.

All these events were very professionally organised and the associate professor from the Ankara University, Hüseyin Mevsim, the translator of our texts and host of all discussions, once again proved to be one of the best experts on Bulgarian language and literature in Turkey. And it was Hussein again who drew my attention to the several magnificent old bridges in Odrin. And the bridge, as we all know, is a rich metaphor and a wonderful reality. I wonder now – is it accidental that bridges in the Balkans are greater in number that anywhere else?

For me, waking up in Edirne was like a daydream. Countless images of the old town of Lovech, as far as I could remember them from my childhood, came to life before my eyes. There were small shops full of their owners’ cheerful morning hustle and bustle; barbershops full of early-morning customers and chatty people thirsting for the latest gossip; steaming glasses of tea; and cats that lent the narrow alleys a sense of domestic tranquility... traces of the quiet provincial regions of the Balkans, unspoiled by the passage of time. This was the atmosphere of the city and the historic neighbourhood in which our hotel was situated. However, right next to us was an area where globalisation ruled with full force. It was a long shopping street with the familiar fast food restaurants and the same glittering shop windows we can see in every European city, currency exchanges and numerous shops selling cell phones and cameras. That evening there was a jazz concert on the street, and its volume was deafening.

The word Müdür gave me a start. I saw it written on one of the doors of the library where I was to do my public reading. For me, the word “director” means a director of police, a rank that elicits respect but not necessarily sympathy. In my investigation, on which I have been working for a long time, two directors play major roles; one of them is a Turk, and the other is an ethnic Greek in the service of the Ottoman Empire. However, the door with the unsettling label led to the office of the lady who was the director of the Edirne Library. After the reading she, together with the deputy governor, politely invited us to drink a glass of tea with them. Vali, or “governor”, is a word that for Bulgarian ears has associations with literature and history.

At the first reading, the audience was very diverse. Accordingly, the event could not be expected to proceed perfectly. The students in the front rows asked appropriate questions. One woman asked me for my opinion of Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. To be honest, I could remember this work only vaguely and superficially from my own student years. There were also questions about the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

By contrast, it cost the teachers a great deal of effort to keep the 13 and 14-year-old teenagers in the back rows in their seats. On an April day like that one, when everything was sprouting and blooming, how could a person whose own schooldays lay so far back in the past not wish to be there in the back rows rather than in front of the microphone?

At the next day’s reading, the audience at the university - students and professors from the Department of Philology - was completely different. Guests had come from Istanbul as well. I had asked the organisers to entrust my play “Francesca”, which had also been translated into other languages, to an actress aged between 55 and 60 who was to read the monologue of the play’s main character, Grandma Bonka. At breakfast that day, they had introduced me to the actress, an extremely attractive young woman of about 25 years old. The fans of the many Turkish TV series that are nowadays being watched in our country as well immediately recognised her. It turned out that she played the main role in one of these TV series. Her name was Elif Sönmez. She was actually a sculptress by profession and had recently completed her training in Italy. She read a few scenes from the play in an experienced and skilful way. Every time she turned a page, a rustle went through the hall - the kind of rustle that can be heard when musicians reading a score turn the page simultaneously. The staff of the Goethe-Institut had taken the wise precaution of distributing the text of the play to every member of the audience, and also projecting the text on the wall. Our discussion of the theatre and playwriting lasted about two hours. A few years before, young Germans in Erfurt had asked me almost the same questions. The world is truly growing smaller and more predictable.

When you cross the border that separates one country from another, you have time to think about things, because as a rule you have to wait at the frontier. At the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, you don’t have to wait as long these days as you used to. Nonetheless, you still have plenty of time to think about things. The bones of my grandfather are buried here somewhere in a cemetery for unknown soldiers. In my pocket I carry a device weighing ten grams and made of plastic and a bit of metal: a USB stick. On it is everything I have written so far. It’s lighter than an empty bullet casing. Fortunately, I don’t need any more gear than that.

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ОДРИН

За мен събуждането в Одрин се оказа равнозначно на заспиване със съновидения. Картини от стария Ловеч, така както го помня от толкова далечното си вече детство. Малки дюкянчета с бодрото утринно суетене на собствениците им, бръснарници, отрано населени с клиенти и жадни за разговори кибици, димящи чаши чай, котки, създаващи домашен уют на малките улички – всичките белези на тиха, неподвластна на времето балканска провинция. Такъв се оказа кварталът в старата историческа част на града, където беше хотелът ни. Съвсем близо до него господстваше обаче вече глобализацията. Дълга търговска улица с познатите заведения за бързо хранене, витрини както във всеки европейски град, чейнчбюра, изобилно предлагане на GSM-и и фототехника. Вечерта там имаше джазконцерт с взривяващи ушите децибели.

Стресна ме думата мюдюр. Видях я написана на една от вратите в библиотеката, където предстоеше да се състои литературното четене. Мюдюр за мен е полицейски началник – вдъхваща респект, но не непременно и симпатия фигура. В изследването, с което доскоро, в продължение на дълго време бях се занимавал, важно място заемаха двама мюдюри – единият турчин, другият – етнически грък на турска служба. Оказа се обаче, че зад вратата със стряскащото обозначение е просто кабинетът на жената, която управлява Одринската библиотека. След четенето тя любезно ни покани на чай. В компанията на заместник-валията – друга будеща в българското ухо също много асоциации за литература и история дума.

Аудиторията на първото литературно четене се оказа твърде разнородна, за да може да мине то съвсем безупречно. Студентите от първите редове задаваха видимо добре обмислени въпроси. Една слушателка искаше да знае мнението ми за “Западно-источния диван” на Гьоте – произведение, за което имам само смътни спомени от студентските си години. И за философията на Фридрих Нитше… На последните редици учителките явно с мъка удържаха 13-14-годишните момчета на столовете им. Как в такъв ден на разцъвтяващия април един толкова отдавна забравил училището човек да не си помисли, колко по-хубаво би било мястото му да е там, на тези последни столове, отколкото отпред, пред микрофона.

На другия ден в университета аудиторията е друга. Студенти и преподаватели от филологическите специалности. Гости от Истанбул. Бях помолил организаторите да дадат преведения текст на пиесата ми “Франческа” на по-възрастна, примерно 55-60-годишна актриса. За да прочете монолозите на централната женска фигура – Баба Бонка. Сутринта на закуска ми представиха актрисата. Някъде около 25-годишно, впечатляващо красиво момиче. Любителите на толкова гледаните напоследък сериали веднага я разпознаха. Играела централна роля в един от тях. Elif Sonmez – така се казва. Всъщност е скулптурка по професия, наскоро завършила образованието си в Италия. Чете с интелигентност и артистизъм откъсите от пиесата. След всяка страница от столовете в залата се разнасяше еднократен задружен звук от прелистване, като при проследяване на музикална партитура. Предвидливите сътрудници от екипа на Гьоте институт бяха раздали текста на всички присъстващи, проектираха го и на видеостена. Разговор за драматургията и театъра. В течение на близо два часа. Приблизително същите въпроси ми задаваше преди няколко години една също така младежка аудитория в германския град Ерфурт. Светът става наистина малък и обозрим.

Когато човек минава междудържавни граници, разполага с време, което би могъл да използва за мислене. Защото на граница обикновено се чака. На българо-турската граница вече не така дълго както преди. И все пак време за мислене има достатъчно. Някъде по тези места в незнаен войнишки гроб лежат костите на дядо ми. В джоба си нося десетграмово съоръжение от пластмаса и мъничко метал. Флашпамет за компютъра. В него е всичко, което съм писал през живота си. По леко е от празна патронена гилза. Нямам нужда от друго въоръжение и това е добре.