The Esmer is on the third floor of a palace on the boulevard that bisects the center of Gaziantep, near the district Armenia without Armenians. Of them are now only houses and churches, people were deported or emigrated many years ago, when things go wrong for Christians. Under the banner painted in red and green stands the inscription "Sanatçı Kahve" coffee of the artists. When you enter, you have to greet everyone present, including the owners, if not by hand at least a nod. Here we use it. A dozen small tables are distributed in the only room in the lower room with chairs around small, the fabric of the padding, once bright, is worn and frayed at the corners. From the rough wall hang oil paintings that give warmth and beauty to the environment, despite its poverty. The windows on the sides facing the street, and from there the afternoon you can see the old men sitting on benches to meditate and turn over the rosary between her fingers, wrapped in their shawls, brown and purple. A large poster of the movie yellowed "Umut" ("Hope") is hanging on the wall near the counter. The hollow face of Yılmaz Güney, actor and director, stands out with small, piercing eyes, surrounded by women and children dressed poorly interpreting his family in the film, as he is bony. All'Esmer Güney you do not know if they teach now. With pride the operator Zafer, a tall and wiry, he will tell you which is the greatest director of turkish cinema: in his films told the Anatolian culture, the life of the Kurds, he was a hothead and has shown the truth, that's why they put him in prison. At one corner, sitting at Çay cooling, Sheriff plays with sentence fragments absorbed saz, looking lost and curls that fall over his forehead, until someone asked him to sing. Ferhat can not stop shaking his leg. He runs his hand in the sparse beard nervously pulling long drags on cigarettes. Watch the door. Then the window. He stops and smiles on my face. Tics do not give him peace, is traversed by a constant anxiety, as if the ants that walk him. It is capable a joy to go from harassing a black humor in a few moments, then clearing with a point-blank question: "What is your political position? ... Believe in God? ... Have you ever been on a mountain at night alone? '. Stops and listens to your response, really care. Behind his glasses, his eyes are moving and friendly, yet there is something inscrutable that stirs in the fund. A need, a pain, a past heavy as a stone. "I am a communist and atheist," she says resolutely, "and for brotherhood among peoples, the nationalists do not like them, of any nation ... no, not even the Kurds. I am Kurdish but this does not mean that we must act like the Turks ... those are not the solution to the mountains, the PKK is, of course I support them, we do not have anything, but if they have taken so far on the pride and hope now we must focus on culture and economic conditions, preserve, forward, with new tools to improve, also legal, as did Musa Anter ... We must take back what they took, to keep our culture alive. The Newroz for example, our New Year's Day, March 21. It is the most important feast of the Kurdish calendar, and also Iran. That there are only sixteen days of national holiday, is not here. Newroz us to meet, we dance, celebrating. But all Turkish institutions militarizing Eastern cities have turned into a day of clashes and protests. Change the meaning of things, you know? Another issue is education, from infant schools to university, which is essential to improve, what takes a Kurd? The more I learn, the more you forget his language, because education is only in turkish. Become a lawyer, doctor, architect and knows nothing of its history. I also have difficulty writing in Kurdish, I learned to do it in turkish. We need more autonomy, recognition of our diversity, so just stop hating Turkey for the lies they teach to our children. Otherwise, the war will continue and we will not get nothing, everyone will lose ... you can not wash blood with blood. Coexistence is possible, but first must stop fascism in Turkey. " Ferhat has settled in Gaziantep only a few years. Thirty-seven years ago was born into a family of shepherds in the mountains of the province of Hakkari sharp, the poorest country in the district of Yüksekova, the most infamous and most remote settlement in the province. Iraq is fifty kilometers to the south, Iran closer, beyond the high mountains, and Yüksekova was an important hub for the caravans of old. Today, the local mafia runs the heroin trafficking to Europe. We grow up under occupation in its village: it is one of the areas which are periodically renewed the "special security measures" and the soldiers entrenched camps on the rock outcrops. Where the pressure to prevent the unfolding of everyday life, it is more likely to opt for extreme choices. Many friends of Ferhat have chosen the path of the mountains, some are dead. He tells me that he would not have left but not the time. "At sixteen I went to prison. What have I done? Nothing! I had some books on socialism and I was with older kids ... one day I came to pick them took me too. Eleven years I've spent the best years of his life ... you know, it is absurd to some but the prison Sometimes I miss. Among the politicians were like brothers, people were more true. There was solidarity. Here are only out the money, even people on the street looks at you, all ready to fuck at the first opportunity, especially in Gaziantep. And I've got no money. I live for friends, if I had I would have killed them a long time. " The Esmer starts to fill, it is getting dark and the faces of those who have finished work or to study talk about the need to stay together. Ferhat abi , older brother, is not short of embracing the "family" but then goes back to my table, he wants to open tonight. "I want to study philosophy at university. I do not know why ... I like to read, Nietzsche in particular. Even if I wanted after I can not teach, ex-prisoners public competitions are prohibited. What should a guy like me? Only die I tell you ... My girlfriend left me after six years. Hath been sick of waiting. In my culture, if you do not have a house and money you can not ask to marry and find jobs that are not enough. Luckily, it does not matter Esmer ... To my children, if they ever will have, the Kurdish teach him. This is my first language! The turkish I learned from seven years ... when I went to school the teacher did not understand, then came home and said to my mother, "I do not go to school! because I have to learn turkish? He can not learn Kurdish? ". Then Mother convinced me and now I know two languages. " Sheriff's voice, sweet and plaintive, began chanting "Giderim" Ahmet Kaya. They put the chairs in a circle around the stove and we join them. Here the past comes back to gusts of wind that sweeps away the supposed uniqueness. Before my eyes, there are Turks, Kurds, Laz, zaza, Circassians, some pieces of the cultural mosaic of Turkey shuffled into the bar. The membership of each wire is inextricably linked to the other. You can feel the overlapping stories, held together by simple things: work, love, music, weapons. A dizzying narrow differences about feelings. Ferhat seems to understand what goes into my mind and without stopping to beat with his hands on my knees saying " It's like the Kurds, can not erase the feelings! Why did they call Turkey? United States of Anatolia had to call them! '.
back home alone at night on the outskirts of Antep. The colored lights in a garden where you listen to music and smoking shisha is an island in the pitch dark of a few feet away. A darkness that continues and expands, stretches to the plains of Anatolia, the mountains, sometimes illuminated by the forgotten villages on the valley floors, wrought by the power madness of the metropolis, but by the inexorable Black Sea to the Mediterranean covers the hungry land of Turkey. Resist the efforts of the men at night, sleep inducing, which leads to oblivion. The effort of a man driven by great ideas of independence was able to persuade other men to conquer those boundaries within which the home is built. The ideas of Turkishness, the essence of exclusive, unique identity, which alone in his vision could bring together diverse membership toward a common goal, are stones in the cemeteries, government buildings in stone, stone prisons. And the same ideas are also fires, energy, engines and turbines, mediations between ancient and modern, holds in relapsed groping men in history to a place they can call home. In the dark, waving flags do not stop in the darkness cleared languages \u200b\u200bcontinue to whisper their presence. The light is the eternal night of someone for someone else, because this idea does not leave me in peace and go up the hill? Other boundaries, other divisions, these may just be the way to self-determination of a people? Then persecute other differences, and so on ... a car stops close to my feet and brings me back into the cold night on the road for a way to climb in Gaziantep. Smiling boys offer me a ride, I read the kindness in his eyes. Jumping up and roared off. I regret to be alive even if I do not know who I am, I do not know where they are. Every word that new learning is a new way of being, anyway, a man.
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