A Bilek go there by accident. It 's so lonely and bare this village in the desert of stones ocher and blacks, among the sparse trees, nuts and fruits that you want a good reason to push you over there. Is about an hour from Gaziantep, lying on the rocks, topped by a small hill. There are farms around rivers and some field. Majestic eagles glide on and around the country, aiming carcasses. Shortly before the scattered houses to appear gray, swarms of goats along the way and slow down the pace. And smothered hot see the distant mountains to the light, dazzling in their hardness, before a sea of \u200b\u200bsand harsh, sharp and dry as a dead man's throat. Only a few men lost and still, watching, greets you in silence, others, farmers, prance through red scooters. What are you doing to Bilek? It is an attractive small town, not a town of art, and there is no landscape or cultural event to expect. Case, raw concrete with brick in sight, mosques closed for decades. Donkeys stunned as statues engaged in constant rumination of stunted brushwood. And roads are not roads, yet simple mule full of holes. I went down to the village, however, that reception. "Hos geldiniz" is the word that resonates after the creak of the gates that scihudono, Welcome. The atmosphere is festive. "It reminds us," and the timidity of veiled girls in the country for the first time can temper curiosity about trying to host foreign perilous.
I went with my class in sociology for research purposes, to observe the traditional methods of preparation of desserts premises. And to know and talk to the people, to ask ourselves together as is their life. Interesting discoveries are made in isolated places, such as whether the lack of a steady stream of innovations to retain memory blocks that are resistant to aridity. Many actions are repeated the same Bilek from time immemorial. Almost all the courts, those who can afford it, families working in the production of Cevizli sucuk and Pestil. The Cevizli sucuk are gems of walnuts or pistachios, dipped nell'uzum and left to dry in the sun raging east, while the sheets are Pestil of Uzume, necessary for the preparation of the famous baklava of Gaziantep. The Uzume, this sweet molasses and hot boiling relentlessly on a crackling fire, it's simple grapes crushed and mixed with other ingredients that increase the consistency. Sweet in the mouth, with no added sugar, you can enjoy even a spoon in the bowl, and is said to be healthy and energetic, a natural panacea. We offer it with a smile, and I can see the bright whiteness of the teeth, even though they produce sweet and consume in quantity, that makes me understand the goodness of the ingredients, the absence of sweeteners, and leading a healthy life here, against the desert . It 's a long and patient work to make Cevizli. Each pistachio nut or laundry is in the center with an awl and then passed through a piece of string twice. This chain broke, twenty or thirty fruits, then you add others, and are linked to a young industry. I'm so ready to be dipped one by one and many times, nell'uzum bubbling. The gesture was decided, as sinking into soft cloth in water, leaving gold and dripping and are left to dry on long poles with hooks. Once they are hardened Cevizli have a color of ancient amber and soft chewy candy with a hard-hearted and delicious. A kilo costs 20 pounds, about ten euro, and you just for a month. Here's a good reason to go Bilek, to get a bellyful of Cevizli, or maybe take in large quantities and sell them retail center in Gaziantep, and earn the bread. I met an old man who does this for twenty years, and there bell.
Women Bilek continue to pierce nuts and wait for guests and patrons. They are the soul of this work, he shall make every step working in silence or singing songs unknown. No matter the age, young and very old alive every backyard, in their pants funny, put to good with colored veils and hair dyed with henna. Kurdish, or seem likely, some do not even know, in this country does not really matter as long as you work. There is an old lady who invites me closer to the great cauldron. He wants to show the emergence of pastries from next door, and keeps me close my shoulder. E 'proud, or is simply everything he has. The wrinkles on his face tell hardships, but have not ditched the sweet smile that gives me serenity. Our eyes speak. And close in her dress torn, with tears and stains, with huge, sagging breasts, and bare feet, I think the guardian of the secrets to give Cevizli sweet taste they have. His granddaughter plays with a goat tied to an iron ring, and a daughter waiting for what seems to work without giving me confidence, so beautiful in its silence. The women here have no habit of talking to strangers, especially men, only the elderly who now have all the rites of growth behind it no longer worry of due discretion, and the community let him. But where are the husbands, the fathers of their children? Men do not take part in the work. A little farther on the road, next to an oven that cooks Borek, there is a shack of a bar with four tables and a television. There, heavy smoking cigarettes, you find some suspicious, all taken from the cards and Tavla, while the TV sends video turkish pop repeatedly. Other men are in the nearby countryside, others have left and live in the city looking for a job, but none is devoted to the preparation of desserts. Division of roles, slow the flow of time changing costumes, or patriarchal hierarchy? We can not know for a visit only, enter the life of Bilek means changing into his everyday prejudice Bilek.
we walk through the streets followed by a large group of children, almost all male. I am incredibly excited by us, they want to show the corners where their beauty lies, and their favorite places to play. They took us to a ruined house, where they love to hide in the rubble, hide in unlikely. Or on the hill where they found a litter of dogs, which pull out of a hole in the wall. They smile, cry, rant, argue. They are a force of nature, and I realize how all their energy explodes in every direction, looking for something to stick in the innocence of desire to have fun. My hand is stretched and some verrebero me in her arms in this commotion, except that we get to go into a tomb, where an old man who tells lies for 110 years, who speaks of a dead child, make me afraid to take all together. I say the dead are there. And we're all scattered around in a small house with a tiny entrance, and fetid. They do not have much here. Apart from the trees to climb, at the risk of broken bones, and chickens to chase, not even a place to pull four kicks the ball, a place that has the semblance of a children's park. There is a school, the building of the modern village, with the golden statue of Ataturk and glittering, but the doors broken open and no control. We entered, and all the kids love it, somewhat 'violent. While jumping on bugs and chairs, I had the unfortunate idea of \u200b\u200bproposing a flash of English lessons, just to teach the basics to get to know someone. All very happy of my initiative, I jumped on him repeating what I said without any consistency, as a game, which was soon transformed into a take the "master" by the throat, in the ecstasy of increasingly daring jumps and screams piercing. Has saved me a friend, Ercan, who explained me how these kids can lose control, neglected and poorly educated family members, often absent. Not so different from kids in Naples, eager to intense life and discoveries, to live a really hard, repetitive, or with dreams that are too large for these mule or arrive at a stone's throw from here. The next time you bring him a ball.
The professor, the only one who speaks English for miles, approaching curious about my reactions. Still reeling from the 'attack' kids, and the strong sun gave me a little 'head. I'm confused by what surrounds me, my reason for seeking connections with other places and other times I visited, and found shelter in the countryside of my childhood, whose spirit is similar to the everyday life of this village, the stories and visions of the past. They seem to only the most neglected and most distant, to escape a large scale restructuring program by Ankara, which does not even have a mayor to turn to fix the roads. A place also left at certain times, you look through, from immoral traveler is not responsible for their destiny as you are, as yet another link in a long chain of events that do not touch them, do not change. But there is something wrong. I hear that Bilek is an ancient village, and had its solemnity and fame. Nobody knows me now, as it had just been born. The homes say it all, made of brick recent, some still under construction, building emerging from the mud as abortion, without any beauty or sign that characterizes them. Indeed, he says the professor, with no more than fifty years these houses, and have been brought up by their more practical function to enclose men, and not as a result of cultural expression. Bilek was an ancient Kurdish village, but houses and people were swept away in the twenties, from office and dall'esplosivo turkish army, in the work of "cleansing" of the country, carried out by the fathers of his country in the chaotic years of war independence and consolidation. The people had been evacuated, houses destroyed. There was nothing and nobody, just rubble, filled with memory. The new residents have come from the countryside more dispersed, they began to rebuild the places to live on the ruins of ancient residences. There was beauty, and was buried under concrete. The memory has been replaced with more memory, traveling wagons and on foot, to solidify, until one day after another. Bilek now know is that out of the village is the vast world, and some of the chase. E 'alive though, and churn out as Cevizli children, caring little where else to go to both.
We share the same crowd of kids which has the euphoria that greeted so warmly. Clap their hands on the window as if to say "do not forget to come back," chasing the bus and swallowing dust and throwing a few English words they have learned from the foreigner. Ercan looks at me, Bilek is strange for him, and I realize that only by living closer I could understand what it means to be born.
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