It was an evening in the eighties. I was sitting at the bar of the Azak Hotel in Alanya, Antalya, where I worked as a receptionist. It wasn’t my shift that day. The hotel was bustling, but I was feeling a strange stillness. Arranging reservations, greeting customers, handling ID registrations, answering phones, taking customer orders, and so on—all of it had worn me down. I ordered a drink and found a quiet corner. A grumpy nostalgia had taken over my mind. I missed my homeland. My soul, secretly in revolt, had managed to make my lips move, making me whisper. In a breath of silence, I shouted loud enough for my great mountains to echo. I was begging to the lands I shared the air with, "No, no... I am the free child of the mountains. Please, take me, carry me away, and release me in my mountains. I want to walk on their paths and run on their plains. I want to roll on the lush green grass, prance like a gazelle. I want to scream at the top of my lungs and tear everything apart. I don't want a luxurious life; I want to live among the spectrum of living things, to wrestle with the wild nature."
"No... not even making love with girls in modern clothes and French perfume; I want to look into the eyes of Fadimes in their traditional dresses, belts, and headscarves, whose fragrance comes from their very being. With my heart pounding like a bombardment, I want to say to my beloved in Romeika, 'Ağapo se (I love you).' I want my homeland," I pleaded.
In the end, the flood created by a huge, psychological storm could only burst forth from my poor pores as sweat, not from my stubborn eyes. My stingy eyes had just begun to shed a forced single tear when a voice became the last flash of lightning in my storm. I had just set off on a journey to the Black Sea plateaus, where the melody from a flute along the road met the folk songs of the Fadimes, when my receptionist friend called. I had a phone call. I got up and answered. The person on the phone was a receptionist at another hotel. We had met before. He had told me that they sometimes hosted groups of Greeks. I had asked him to call me when another Greek group arrived. I had told him that my mother tongue was Romeika and that I wanted to learn the difference between it and Modern Greek. My friend said, "Hurry up, a Greek group arrived yesterday. Since I wasn't on shift, I couldn't let you know. They'll be leaving soon," and hung up.
There was no trace of my previous storm. This time, my cells were bubbling and frolicking with excitement, equivalent to the movements of creatures that hide during a storm and become active afterward.
I Found a Fellow Countryman in the Group
I jumped into a taxi and went to the hotel where the Greek group was staying. As soon as I got out of the taxi, I quickly headed for the reception desk. As soon as my friend saw me, he pointed to the bus outside, saying, "That bus over there." I didn't even have time to thank him before I rushed out and went to the bus. I was so excited I felt like I might faint. I couldn't think about how I would communicate with anyone. And I didn't have time to think anyway. The bus was half full. Some people were waiting around the bus for their friends to arrive. I chose to get on the waiting bus. Some of the passengers started looking at me carefully. I wasn't part of the group, and I was looking at people intently, as if I were searching for someone. For a moment, I felt ashamed. Just as I was about to turn back and get off, my mother tongue came to my rescue. From my mouth, the question "Eğrikay kaynis Romeika? = Does anyone understand Romeika?" poured out. As soon as I asked this question, all eyes turned to me.
Perhaps many didn't even understand what I had said. But an elderly woman got up from her seat and looked at me as if she wanted to ask something. I think she didn't know where to start either. I repeated the question I had just asked the group to her, and I managed to untie her knotted tongue. She asked me, "Apoθen ise? = Where are you from?" When I replied, "Asin Trapezunta ime = I am from Trabzon," the woman got up, made her way through the narrow aisle of the bus, and quickly came towards me. I didn't understand what was happening. As soon as she got to me, she hugged me and started to cry. In our Romeika, she was asking questions like, "Na inome ğurpanti sa poδare s’, apoθen ekseves ke erθes? Aδakes nt’ araevis? Esis akome iste? = May I be a sacrifice for your feet, where did you come from and arrive? What are you doing here? Do you people still exist?" while clinging tightly to me and muttering something. She was hugging me so tightly that I could feel her fingernails digging into my body. I was so shocked that I couldn't answer her questions. I was frozen. I had never experienced such a thing. The woman would periodically hold me by the shoulders, look at my face, and hug me again. It was as if we were a mother and son meeting after a long separation. She just couldn't get enough of me. The other Greeks watched us in astonishment. I suppose they couldn't make sense of their friend's behavior. I don't remember the time that passed. But the expected passengers arrived, and the bus was ready to move. Some of the passengers urged the elderly grandmother to return to her seat. The poor woman had to part with me. While trying to get back to her seat, sobbing and muttering something, she seemed unable to see where she was going. I guess her tears were in the way. I could only watch her for a few seconds. I had to get off the bus. After I got off, I looked over to where the grandmother was sitting. She was waving at me from the window. It was as if she, not I, was going into exile. The bus started to move and drove away. As I watched it leave, a sadness enveloped me. Neither the grandmother nor I had been able to ask for each other's names. Her name to me remained "anonymous." My anonymous grandmother had come and gone, adding sadness to my nostalgia.
Can a Single Person from Trabzon Be Found?
Years later, I was a guest of a grandmother in a village in Greece. Her name was Sumela. She told me some of the memories of the exile that the people from the Black Sea region had experienced. She spoke of children lost on the road. Just as it was until twenty years ago, girls in the Black Sea region used to marry early and have children early. Some of those who lost their children were still just children themselves. Because of this, some even lost their minds. As Grandmother Sumela poured her sorrows on me, I was transported back to years ago. I was thinking of the grandmother I had met in Alanya. I now understood the anonymous grandmother's longing hug better. The anonymous grandmother might have thought I was her son. Who knows?... But at the very least, I was from her land, her fellow countryman, in the country she had come to as a foreign tourist. During the exchange period, those who were exiled to Greece lived with the hope of returning for a full ten years. During this time, none of them had laid a single stone on top of another. The people of Trabzon who remained in their homeland had also waited for their exiled countrymen in Greece for six years, hoping they would return. They didn't let anyone into the empty villages. This was the extent of their loyalty to their countrymen. Now, do you think a single person resembling their grandfather can be found in every nook and cranny, even if one searches?
Vahit Tursun
10.12.2007
23/12/2007 Published in Radikal newspaper.