ABOUT RACHEL RAQUELLA ASAL

   Asal, born in 1949, graduated from the Izmir American Girls College in 1969.  

She became a certified national tour guide in French and English in 1989.  Asal attended courses in Diavox Institute Moderne des Langues in Lausanne, Course des Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne in Paris, Universite de France-Compte Course de Français in Besançon, and Centre Audiovisuel de Royan Pour l’Etude des Langues in Royan.  She also took Art History courses in the evening educational program of  Besançon’s Open Education University and attended Art History seminars at the Louvre Museum in Paris.   

She earned the French language competency diploma, Diplome Approfondi de la Langue Française, in 1992 from the Ministére de L’education Nationale Académie de Besançon. In 1995 she obtained an advanced Spanish certificate from the Escuela Salamantina de Estudios Internacionales in Salamanca, Spain.  

In the years 1997-2000 she attended seminars on fundamentals of writing, applied writing, literature and philosophy at the Ugur Mumcu Analytical Journalism Foundation, in Ankara, Turkey. 

Asal, mother of a son and a daughter, is a prolific writer who resides in Izmir, Turkey.

An Interview: Gulseren Engin

I graduated in 1969 from Izmir, American College for Girls.  I began my working career in TUSLOG which was a detachment of NATO.  I was the assistant secretary of the commander. After I got married, I began to work at the business we founded together with my husband.  My divorce was pronounced in 1987. 

This event was the changing point of my life as I had acquired the control of my own life.  I asked the following: “What do you feel you lack in your life? You are free now.” 

Education is the primary aim in my family.  I had learned English at an American school.  Our conversations at home were mostly in French and Spanish.  Even though I had private lessons in French, I felt I was not very competent.  I attended language schools in Lausanne, Paris, Besançon and Royan to improve my French.  Meanwhile I had obtained my certificate as a National Tour Guide and began my career as a guide during summer seasons.  My life was enriched with my trips to France to learn French and working as a tour guide in the summers.   

Attending schools that offered different programs at different places gave me the opportunity to enjoy novelty.  My studies of French which began in 1987, ended in 1992 when I obtained my competency certificate in the French language.  During the time I was in Besancon, I took Art History courses in the evening educational program of Besançon’s Open Education University and attended Art History seminars at the Louvre Museum in Paris. I had also become more professional as a tour guide as my French and my knowledge had increased impressively.  Now it was time to study Spanish. 

The Spanish the Turkish Jews speak,  is called Ladino Spanish which is archaic.  It is the five hundred years old Spanish of Don Quichotte.  I wanted to contemporize my Spanish.  I attended “Escuela Salamantina de Estudios Internacionales” in Salamanca and obtained my fluency diploma in 1995.  

I decided to write about Ottoman-Turkish art which was going to be a book to enlighten foreign visitors in 1997.  I attended creative writing courses in Ugur Mumcu’s Research Journalism center in Ankara for three years.  Mehmet Eroglu has been a great help in my beginning as a writer.

And here I am before you. 

This summer you made your entrance in our world of literature with three books.  This is a proof that you have a considerable accumulation.  How did you begin writing? 

To begin with, if I you don’t have anything concrete in your mind and begin by telling yourself “let me jot down something and see how it goes” it becomes an endless void.  It is nothingness.  It is very scary to sit in front of a white empty sheet of paper.  At first, all your contradictions and fears mercilessly attack you.  You resist them and they resist you.  It is quite a feat to succeed in surmounting them. This writing experience is arid, bare, echoless, remote and futureless.  You have to be much tougher than what you want to write before you sit to accomplish something.  You begin to sail to an unknown territory.  As your performance increase, your book develops and begins to follow its course, its direction.  My first book “The Sadness of Volga” was created this way.  I began with my notes and diary I had taken during my trip to Russia.  I pushed myself by saying “come on let us see in writing your Russian experiences” and began to write feverishly.  I lacked the necessary confidence in those days.  One day I pulled myself together and gave the following order to myself “It is better to say I am courageous than saying I am not writing today” and began to continue after the first sentence I had written. 

We find ourselves in the midst of the Spanish Civil War in your book “Do You Hear My Heart” which is a trip taken to Spain.  You have an impressive way to narrate.  Why Spain and why the Spanish Civil War? 

While I studying the Spanish language there, I had seen the wound this war had inflicted on the people of this country.  This sad era’s effects on the people were being taught in the classes.  You could still feel the effects when you mingled in.  During breaks, we came in contact with the victims of the war in the cafés and talked with them.  As I wanted to go into depths of this topic, I began an extensive research.  This is how “Do You Hear My Heart” was born.  I wished to begin with Picasso’s Guernica which has a special place in the world of art and tell about Spain’s Civil War. I wanted to grasp the pieces of this painting and digest their essential meanings.  I started to collect all the necessary material which will be useful for my book, from the whole of the painting as well as it parts.  I aspired to understand and tell about the unimaginable suffering of the Spanish people in this war, the war itself, the horror and the   resistance of the people.  

Behind its impressive façade, the picture is distinctive as well as complex.  This painting that does not divulge a lot when you first look at it, had captivated me.  I had before my eyes, a three dimensional painting that could be divided forever.  As for me I stood there looking at this picture with my intense unfathomable and indivisible emotions and great sorrow. 

3. Your book “Sadness of Volga” seems like a travel story that begins in St. Petersburg and continues on the River Volga to Moscow.  But this is not an ordinary travel book.  The book not only enlightens the reader about the places visited, but also about great authors of the Russian literature such as Tolstoi, Gogol and Pushkin.  It is a though you take a stroll in time and literature.  Let us hear you telling about this book. 

Malraux said “each book is an autobiography”.  Since each author has to begin with his or her life experiences, each will reflect their personal experiences.  It is widely accepted by almost all literature theoreticians that the main metaphor in the exit point of a book is the journey.  The contemporary individual is accepted as a developing, changing, growing and maturing individual.  He is no more rigidly formed with only a basis, just a one dimensional person.  In short, life and every experience lived during this life span is a personal journey. This also includes reading.  The reader, upon finishing the book, is a changed person.  Reading is an evaluation of things and even a changing process that includes settling of scores.  In this journey, the author and the reader are companions in the full sense. In each piece of literature the author’s creativity adventure complements (follows) the reader’s reading journey.    

Don’t all journeys when turned into journeys that go into our inner worlds, become more meaningful, more instructive?  The reflective images of the places I visited along with my impressions on its special geography has helped me to shape my views about the country and through the intermediary of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoi and Dostoviesky that were great men who questioned their past, I tried to understand their history.  In this way I was able to go on my literary journey that I embroidered with rich referrals. 

In your third book “All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past” you have blend your life with your grandmother’s.  We can also see a love pain beneath.  Can you tell us more? 

According to Marguerite Duras “Nothing stays after love, not even memories”.  The hardness to reflect a life as it actually is, has forced me to create an imaginary lover. I am telling this imaginary lover, my grandmother’s life.  I have done this for two reasons.  The first one was; the life I was writing about had taken place in the decade of 1950-1960. It portrayed the terrible life style of the poor Jewish people.  I wanted to lessen the impact of the sadness by adding a love theme.  The second reason; Nothing is lived with this imaginary lover.  It was only a love that was dreamed, not lived.  Therefore love turns sacred when not lived.  But we have a love story that has been lived and turned bitter in its sub motif.  You can not escape love despite the unhappiness and suffering it will inflict on you.  It is essential.  There is no escape from loving someone as it is impossible not to love someone.  

A woman who cherishes her freedom, who does not accept to be a traditional woman of her era, who grasps tightly to her life… In short she is a woman who wants to be what she is. 

I- the narrator, tell about myself in these following words “I am raping my lover in my dreams.  After all I am a woman with guts!” (see p. 87)  In page 88, there is a referral to the book of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “The Mad Women in the Attic”. 

Your grandmother’s life story is very interesting.  Why didn’t you think to write only about her life? 

I aspired to save the text from excess group of people, long lapses of time, detailed setting descriptions and depict it in its simplest way.  I preferred to use a narrator who begins from her childhood and grows learning about the pangs of growing up, rather than a narrator who is experienced and knows and sees everything. Humans have experienced many things through their spans of life. But no matter how grown up we are, we must never lose that innocent, pure voice of the small child that is in us.  I think this is what enriches our personalities.  

I left aside all the things traditional and conventional and turned to a different type of abstract writing. The story becomes at some point silent, sometimes solitary and at some point a cry.  No matter what, the writing is always enigmatic.  I believe I have obtained that enigma through this abstract writing.   

Can this last book you talked about, be a clue that you are going to write a novel? 

I can only say my three books were means to take me to through the intricate road of becoming a writer and to find my style.  I don’t know what the future holds for me. 

You are a new voice in the world of writers. Your books give us the impression that you are in the quest of something.  What kind of books will you write in the future? 

The painter Orhan Peker said “The easel of a painter must never be dry”.  I think this maxim is valid for all branches of art.  I have arrived at something but must not take myself too seriously as I have to work even harder to achieve in the path I have set my goals.  I was very attracted to research writing while collecting material for my books.  Our society is not very fond of reading and therefore I totally concur with Turgay Gonenc’s words “The book must shun from putting the reader into passivity, rather have the stamina to make its readers factors”. 

What have experienced in the writing phases of your three books?  What kind of inner journey did you make? 

I have seen numerous hotel rooms while traveling from one city to another, one country to another, like many of us.  Everything began with choosing the right hotel room to begin my story.  Even though turning my back to the “Life at Home” was nothing easy to accomplish, I did this willingly. It expressed the fever of writing that was in me.  I could only write away from home.  I think I show this more clearly in my book “Can You Hear My Heart”.  “To get away and walk on.  To vanish and to go on a journey.  If I could succeed in disappearing! ...Just getting away… To get away from myself, away from the person in my country that I am bound to be… Just for once, to be able to mingle with the crowd”.

How do you write?

Reading is solitude.  Writing is even a greater solitude.  A person is alone when reading even if someone is there.  Whereas, an author ready to write something is surrounded by the world’s solitude.  Solitude envelops everything.  We must not forget that writing is discipline and also teardrops.  Writing is life as well as settling old scores with your inner self. To write?  I can not… I use to tell myself “just confess, you are unable to write”.  I ask questions and produce answers.  Suddenly I see myself busy writing.  This is the scariest part.  I am alone with my competences and incompetences.  The root of how I began to write goes into the ebbs and flows of these feelings.  In the depths of my adventure to write, I was getting caught to the pitch blackness.  I was either going to go blind or embrace the light.  

Which men of letter influenced you the most? 

Loving literature has the same meaning for me as motherhood.  A mother loves all her children the same.  She can not discriminate.  I am like a mother to books.  I love all of them the same way.  Books are my beloved children and their authors my lovers. 

What were your feelings while you wrote the book about your grandmother? 

One day my mother told me about a short commemorative speech that will be given in honor of my grandmother at the synagogue on a Friday night before the prayers. I had a great disillusion when I went with great enthusiasm to attend the speech.  The speaker who had joined the Jewish community afterwards, was actually from Ankara.  He had compiled some information to give a speech about someone whom he had no knowledge about.  The person he was talking about was not my grandmother.  The starting point of the book was my revolt I had in me during the days that followed this unfortunate speech.  No one but me could depict my grandmother.  Another reason for me to write a book about her, was to remind a community that had forgotten too soon this formidable woman who did so much for the good of them.  Twenty-three years after her death, I felt I owed her a book to bring her back to life. 

Hulya Soysekerci  

We can call the Sadness of Volga a multi-layered travel book.  The layers have been blended with such dexterity that we don’t find any artificialness in the events or the text.  This book with its multi-layers is an original work of literature we are not much used to come across.  Very  refreshing. 

Asal’s book at first seems like a travel book full of impressions by the writer.  Eventually the reader begins to enter into the depths of the book to find it has other attributes that differentiates it from classic travel books and slowly becomes enraptured by the world it takes you to.  We travel pages long with the author on a cruise boat sailing along the river Volga and share her memories, the past, the history, architectural beauties, written edifices, art and literature while she broadens our outlook with her strong pen.  Memory, travel, essay, letter, story, novel, biography, diary and verse intermingle in this book that encompasses intense feelings and deep thoughts.  The Sadness of Volga offers its readers a “symphony of time”.   

Travel in Time

According to the book the author visits Russia in 1998, during the upheaval of Russia before its great change. The trip begins in St. Petersburg and continues to Moscow on a cruise ship sailing on the Volga.  During her travel on the river, she stirs her memories, dreams and her accumulation and takes us on a tour that includes the lives and books of the famous Russian writers of the past.  

The concept of time is the essence of the book.  It is a journey in time taken as a quest to understand man, thyself, society and the world.  It is a journey in time with flashbacks.  Asal, while describing the places she visits, also portrays how deep the past is felt in the cultural and architectural monuments and in the museums.  We become witnesses of the breathing past with her.  At one point we find the revival of Dostovieski, Pushkin, Gogol and Tolstoi who are in deep conversation with the author.  The past continuously oozes into the present.  In the later pages we witness an imaginary love. We find Tolstoi and his pangs to create a great piece of literature.  We become aware of the secret of his creativeness is research, hard work and patience.  Asal’s interpretation of the creation of masterpieces is very interesting: “For a person to create thyself takes as much time as the creation of a masterpiece. Do we spend our time well?  Do we offer the necessary opportunities to our talents to mature and to blossom? Skill is based on repetition.  Attaining the level of mastership needs time.  We are insatiately asking for success, wealth, health, love, affection… Well, everything… And immediately”.   We go into the depth of the reasons why our century that is established on changes that happen at a lightning speed, can not produce masterpieces.

Books

All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past 

About the book… (Published in the      Paper)

The plot takes place at the beginning of the twentieth century in Turgutlu (Turkey) and despite slowly unfolding in places like Australia, Europe and Istanbul, it mostly takes place in Izmir.

It tells about a life dedicated to alleviating the great pain, misery, hopelessness and broken lives of the Izmir Jewish community in the pre and post WWII era. 

It is the story of a woman who fought bravely to give a meaning to her existence. We learn much about the life in the beginning of the twentieth century. It is brought to us by her grand daughter that has adapted it to our modern lives.  It helps us to question ourselves, our lives… 

These are impressions regarding Rachel Raquella Asal’s last book.  The title of this book is rather long: All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past.

Let us continue…

Asal asks:

“How could I reflect this great hearted woman’s life properly?  There was nothing concrete left behind, to base my story on. Just fifteen or twenty pages long memoir that I accidentally came across…”

We can only applaud Rachel Raquella Asal for her captivating book.

From A. Nedim Atilla’s Column in the Akşam Paper

As though in a distant dream of the past…

Even before we begin to read the book, just knowing that a writer dedicates her book to her grandmother that she misses every minute of her life, is enough to find it appealing. Last December I wrote about her three books in my column.  Today I want to share with you her great quest to excel herself.  We know she is a tour guide who speaks fluent English, French and Spanish.  Her books have been published by Boşders Books.

In her book All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past, we read about the fight she puts to keep her name Raquella that she shares with her formidable grandmother.  Things went as far as being advised by Mrs. Blake, the headmistress who is a milestone of the Izmir American College, to formally change her name on her ID.  Every memory that Raquella shares with us is embroidered with great gusto.   We learn the life the grandmother and granddaughter shared was based on a tender love and that this outstanding grandmother taught her granddaughter how to extend a helping hand to the great suffering experienced in that time.  We also learn much about the life of the Jewish Community as well as some interesting marriage customs such as the groom breaking a glass goblet handed by the rabbi, with his foot and a very special custom observed only by the Izmir Jewish Community that is called “Kezada”…We also find fond memories of the past Izmir life, swimming in Kalabak and mosquitos daring enough to attack even through mosquito nets…

We have grand mother Rachel Sabanoglu’s diary…We see from the photocopy in the book that the dairy is written in French.  Pieces from a life that began at the beginning of the past century in the small town of Turgutlu, continues in Australia, Europe and Istanbul. Her life is mostly spent in the city of Izmir.  A fight of a courageous woman to give a meaning to her existence is brought to us by her loving granddaughter who contemporized the story that questions each reader’s soul. 

In Spain and Russia

One can not say Rachel Raquella Asal profession has formed her travel notes to romantic essays.  In her book Can You Hear Me My Heart, begins as a visit to Spain and turns to dramatic scenes reflecting the great suffering the Spaniards had to endure and their fight for their freedom, during their Civil War.  The events are portrayed vividly.   

Her book “Sadness of Volga” is a book relating her travel experiences.  I was not aware of the presence of such a writer in Izmir till I read her books.  Sometimes reality hits me that I am oblivious to many things.  Sundays are perfect for me to increase my awareness on things I was not aware of. 

Abdullah Neyzar Karahan’s Column (Izmir Izmir Magazine published on April 2004)

About the 3 Books

“How can I vividly portray the world of a great hearted woman?  There was no concrete material that was left behind.  Only a twenty page diary, found by sheer chance.  She was a tough woman never relenting on the course she had drawn. While I go back in years, I also remember her disciplinarian attitudes that I had misjudged with my youth.  Now I understand that this was also a power.  Everyone wants to be loved.  She was very strong.  To be loved needs guts.”

Books reflect the truth.  When you think about a book, no matter what kind of a book, the first thing that comes to our minds is the prose of the writer, the use of the language and the writer’s vast knowledge.  I am holding Asal’s three books in my hand.  She has grabbed our hearts and has taken us on a ride in her inner world where there is love, settling with her past and fond memories.

Her book Do You Hear Me My Heart was published on June 2003, All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past, July 2003 and Sadness of Volga on August 2003.  Even though she is a dilettante in the world of writers, she walks with firm steps. Despite her positive outlook to mankind and world, she can not stop from questioning the past existence of the people.  In her first book Do You Hear My Heart she writes about the suffering of the Spanish people during their brave fight in their Civil War.  Dramatic tableaus emerge while these people face the truth of their fight for freedom.  Asal begins her trip in the name of settling scores with the past.  She walks slowly and candidly along the traces of facts and of illusions.  She also finds time for herself too.  While sipping her cold drink at a bar, her eyes rest on the famous “Guernica” painting of Picasso that takes her to the world of pain and sufferings.  As she becomes one with this painting she feels she has to settle scores with the whole world… Even the book cover has this painting on. 

As though in a distant dream of the past

“I barely can see my grandmother amid the fog.  The coachman cracks his whip in the air without touching the horse.  He knows my grandmother.  He has taken her many times from her house on the waterfront that is known as Kordonboyu and drove her to the house of the poor. We pass the old Greek houses.  We cross the Pier of Alsancak and continue to Ataturk public square…We turn right when we reach the Mezarlikbasi (Graveyard) to stop in the house of the poor people.  I don’t remember how many streets and houses we have passed…

I was going to face my innermost gales in these hidden corners of these memories…”

This book based on love depicts the many kinds of love that begin in the 1930s and hurls people around the world.  No matter what, there is always hope for R.R. Asal who now looks to the future with hope… “Tonight I thought once again about the photo album with its black cover.  I slipped slowly into that existence that had disappeared in the past.  My life…Life stopped.  So did time.  Everything went dead.  Love that was barred returned.  We got lost in the night.  I felt so tired that I became silent.  I could understand.  The slowly floating river that had my marred vision took away my loneliness.  I grabbed your shadow and floated with you…” An autobiography written like a delectable poetry… The smooth, soft texture of the “past”; the silky, hairy, warm, loving, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes sad and longing “present”, I run to the past.   It is omnipresent during my nights with its silky hairy head on my pillow, next to my head, with its round nose and gleaming eyes discerned on the sheets…

It always accompanies me on my trips...As for memories; the memory always enters the room dressed like a man wearing a bowler hat… His eyes are light blue, almost transparent… I approach him… He bows to me.  Holds my hands and I get up… I want so much the dance to continue…”

The book The Sadness of Volga is a research piece of writing.  It enlightens us about old and new Russia, the economy, its eco-social life and its art by writing about “now” and “then” while holding conversations with its writers.  It is not a novel about a place visited. She writes about her experiences there, as a true researcher.  At one point you visit Pushkin and then begin a heated discussion with Tolstoi about the true identity of art while you listen to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata… At some point the current takes you to an artificial bank of this river.  Dostoviesky, Tolstoi, Chekov, Gorki, Zyuganoy, the Russian people, The Red Square, the Turkish companies helping to build a modern Russia, the past and the future intermingling, economic crisis and presently a once super-power Russia, in the trails of the  West… all is vividly portrayed in the Sadness of Volga.

Her books The Sadness of Volga and Can you Hear My Heart are not ordinary books about impressions of trips.  The author does not look down on her readers but brings forward her criteria of values which enabled her to create her own style.  She knows what she has to achieve and puts herself in the place of her reader.  The poems and research materials added to the books greatly enhances the stories. 

The three books printed consequently have one thing in common; the reader is not at loss in the integration of place, time and event.  I call her a semantic writer who has keen sense of observation and research.  I wish her a lot of success for the future!

Dilek Yazar’s column in Unlem Art Magazine (July-August 2005)

Can You Hear My Heart?

As Much As Your Mind and Heart Can Hear… 

I don’t think R.R. Asal’s book is a classic text study.  It expects to be evaluated as a “new definition of text” which is formalist, by her readers.   Only then can all the pieces interweave to form the story and its meaning. 

The name, the painting on the cover, the back cover and the foreword by the author are pieces that bring slowly the reader to the main theme of the book.  The reader is ready now to assist the author in her voyage.  The reader is now very intrigued by Picasso’s widely known painting ‘Guernica’ and tries to find more about it.  This way the reader begins to grasp the reasons of the Spanish Civil War and Picasso’s revolt depicted in this painting.   

The author is on a trip to Spain.  This is not just a sightseeing trip.  It is a trip taken to find the impact of this Civil War on the country.  She is well aware of how poignantly Picasso’s Guernica reflects these bitter times.  Concrete visions of this trip intersect with shadows and ghosts of the past through Guernica.    During this journey that takes place in opposite times, the author constantly questions herself and the past, forcing the reader to feel the same emotions.  It is a welcoming novelty to offer the reader a concrete truth.  The book is impressive and interesting with its different patterns that form the main motif. 

The passages might seem as though they not linked to each other but they are combined expertly to make up the main text.  The reader thinks the author is not only reflecting the apparitions she sees during her quest to unravel the mysteries of Guernica, but at the same time she evaluates the country through the painting of Guernica.  Asal, blends the images reflected to her from the painting, with her own feelings.  The reader is moved by the descriptions relating to the horrors of war and saddened to find how unaffected humanity is. 

EXCERPTS OF THE BOOKS

All Now as in a Dream of the Distant Past

You came. You listened. You questioned.  We argued.  You were pleased.  You made me feel pleased.  We shared things.  We multiplied together. We became rich.  We had good times.  We wished time would stop… We tried to stop the time but it eluded from our hands.  Your absence is like a volcano erupting in me.  One part of me is ablaze and painful, the other numb and melancholic.  YOU ARE NO MORE. 

I barely can see my grandmother amid the fog.  The coachman cracks his whip in the air without touching the horse.  He knows my grandmother.  He has taken her many times from her house on the waterfront that is known as Kordonboyu and drove her to the district of the poor.  The dismal district of the poor was lined with old, dilapidated houses on the brink of collapse.  Poverty was prevalent in the rooms, the walls and hung on old and rusty nails protruding here and there.  A foul smelling house on a very narrow street…  One   room slums shared with sewage rats.  This place lacked everything and was shrouded with nakedness.  Destitute people enclosed like snails in their shells tried to go on living in their shares of hell that was ordained to them.

In this place forgotten by God, people shared their meals, illnesses, bad breaths, heavy perspiration, and urine while babies stank of vomit.  The squalid children’s emaciated faces had fear on them.

My grandmother slowly approached a bed on which a sickly man who had bad eyesight tried to recognize me.  My grandmother introduced me as her granddaughter.  I shuddered when the man tried to extend his thin arm towards me.  My grandmother soothed me.  I could hear shrieks, breaking of glasses, the heavy odor of rancid oil afar. My grandmother visited each of them and listened to their pleas.  She had enough time to spare for each one of them.

This experience has always been vivid in my memory ever since. 

My grandmother was my best friend.  Whenever I got mad at my parents, I used to run to her house.  She never questioned me about my frequent visits and always made me welcome.  She called my parents to say I was staying with her.  Later on we lived on the same apartment in different flats.  This was an excellent excuse for my frequent flights from my parent’s house.  When my young sister was born, I became my grandmother’s daughter.   

There were always hordes of people at my grandmother’s house.  Everyone was welcomed, rich or poor.  She had founded a poor people’s house project and ladies used to come to do the sewing and embroidering for the bazaar days.  No matter what difficulties were to be encountered, there was no return from these bazaar days.  I, as a kid, knew something was going on but could not fully grasp the meaning.  The only thing I saw clearly was the cry of help of the destitute. I acted as a messenger for them. They were poor all right but they still had their pride which made it difficult for them to go directly to my grandmother to ask for something.  They handed me their wishes in writing and I took this messages that usually contained help for their medicines, rent or school fees for their children.  

Grandmother’s diary

I was only nine when I began to feel something in my heart telling me to be kind and generous to others. The world never revolved only for me.  I had to love and help others.  I grew in a family where there was always much love and joy.  My sister Cecile Amiel got married in 1919. In their first year of their married life, my sister’s husband made his mind to immigrate to Australia.  His wife and son were going to follow him at a later date.  In 1921, she received a letter from her husband who told her that it was very hard for him to do business there as he had very poor English.  He wanted her to join him as fast as possible. My sister agreed to go to Australia on one condition:  I was going to accompany her.  When we landed in Port-Said, my sister, my nephew and I, we went to the travel agency to get our tickets that had been reserved from Izmir.  They told us they had mistakenly sold our places to some passengers in London. We had to wait for the next boat that was going to sail in two months.  We tried other agencies and finally after much difficulty we found a place on a cargo ship.  There were seventeen Greeks and four Arabs traveling on the same boat.  We were their translators.  The journey was nice and uneventful.  We sailed for forty days and reached Sydney.  I was very impressed by Sydney’s beauty.  We took a room and rested that night and continued our journey to Melbourne the next day by train.  My sister’s husband had become almost deaf after an illness he had contracted there. We stayed three months in Melbourne and returned to Turkey to our loving family who was ready to give us shelter with sincere affection.  The return trip was not also easy.   

Couple of days after we had finally made to Tire (a town near Izmir) a gentleman belonging to Saban family asked for my hand.  We got married three years later.  I had a miscarriage in the first year of my marriage.  Later on I began to feel extreme stomach pains.  I was diagnosed with liver stones.  The agonizing pains did not deter me from continuing with my good will works.   

There was a small house in which refugees of WWI took refuge. I went to see the place that gave me the creeps.  There were nine elderly people living in unbelievably horrible conditions.  I could not stand this sight.  I talked about this place to the ladies of good will and wrote to League de la Paix.  Everyone was ready to help me.  We began by repairing and cleaning the living quarters.  I continued in my quest by putting administering ointments on their bodies and then cutting their flea infested hair. It was something to be seen. They were wailing and cursing me.  People began to gather amidst their cries that said I was going to murder them and throw them to the street.  I did not stop, knowing very well I was doing something good.  Sometimes a person has to persevere in her task to help the poor and ignorant despite their protest as they are not aware it is for their own good.  I had sent them to a Turkish bath.  I did not falter at the thought that one might die and make me a murderer.  Afterwards when they had been cleaned and had seen their clean and furnished living quarters they asked to be forgiven for their misbehavior and innumerous maledictions.  It was the time of being blessed and warm thanks.   

The book continues

I am slowly entering my girlhood.  I don’t see her very often as I am busy with things any normal growing teenage girl has on her mind. I am now a college student.  I have stopped visiting the poor houses.  I have my books and my Seventeen magazines that help me turn into a young lady.   

Years went by.  I wanted to marry the love of my life despite my parent’s protests.  Our marriage date was set.  We began to look for a small house to live but even the rent of the tiniest flat was way beyond our means.  My grandmother, my savior, was again on the scene.  She was opening her house for us.   

Ayda, my daughter asks the meaning of Kezada.  I reply “it is a marriage custom observed only by the Jews of Izmir.” 

She is intrigued and asks me to explain.

“Well, you have a silver tray which has the jewelry to be given to the bride on the bottom with a sweet made of almonds on the top.  The manual skill of the lady who makes the almond sweet, plays a crucial role.  She has to make two bird nests with two birds on them.  The birds represent the bride and groom. You pass the silver tray on the heads of the newlyweds and a lady who presumably is happily married, gives her good wishes and cuts the sweet. The newlyweds are the first to taste it.  Then begins to jewelry ceremony; a ring from the mother of the bride to the bride, a gold watch from the mother-in-law to the bride, two braids of gold necklace from the father-in-law to the bride are placed on the bride while the guests look approvingly.  After the jewelry ceremony the sweet is offered to all the guests.”    

The Jewish religion is based on observance of traditions.  Friday nights are very important for a Jewish family.  The whole family enjoys a dinner around a well dressed table.  I try to observe that tradition despite my divorce.  My former husband, our children and I welcome Shabbats (Friday) together.  

There are some stories that crave to be told even without words, as their meanings permeate from the depths.  They are carried by the wind, by the smoke, by the river.  The words of such stories somehow find a way to reach the avid listeners of far away places….

Sadness of Volga

Everything is hazy, not one written word.  Nothing is put in writing… I think they are coming to life slowly...  Way beyond words…  Tiny bits of something still alive in me.  I want to write about them before they disappear completely… I want to revive my memories of “Russia”.  I want very much to write about them before I forget how they have happened.  There were always kaleidoscopic changes of happenings and instances. What if I continue my way like a blind person groping the way, always seeking and persevering my way towards something?  Where to?  What was I looking for?  I can’t really place it… No one can explain… I have to grab firmly my memories before they elude and push them ahead…Where?  The place is not important provided it is suitable for them to live and develop. 

“I am looking and waiting for my memories to appear on the stairs, streets, on the pictures taken, on the amber necklace I had purchased, on the fur cap, on my notebook, on my travel book on Russia, in my dreams.  I wait for their footsteps on my front door. Here they are, I can hear the bell ringing;   I make a move…And I begin to write. Right now. 

The current date is June 7th 1998.  My trip to Russia that I have been planning for a year has finally materialized.  After the collapse of the former Soviet Republic in 1991 and the decline of Communism, I was going to meet the “Novaya Rossiya” or “Novi Roski” of today. The Bolchevik’s upsurge, the great change of 1991, the era of Gorbachov, the great history of the Russian nation stood right before me.  How much of it could I absorb and understand in my ten days long visit?  

I am before the famous St. Isaac Cathedral in St. Petersburg which is the Orthodox World’s greatest cult center, on the second day of my visit.  The peasant, Maxim Salin has made a couple of models of this cathedral.  He offers one of them to the tsar Alexander I.  The emperor is astounded by the beauty of this mock-up and gives this peasant his freedom and some money.  In the coming years Salin finds a way to attend the School of Fine Arts but can not graduate due to lack of funds.  He dies in poverty.  This mock-up which has been realized without the use of any nails and adhesives, is exhibited in the church.

When we look at the model we have difficulty in understanding how such a simple mind can create such an intricate object that requires the knowledge of math, architecture and drawing.  Education comes from the Latin word educare which actually means “to lead forth” or “pull out”.  Therefore education is not giving new knowledge to our minds but help our minds to take out what is actually innate. We don’t know much about this innate part of our bodies.  According to Jung’s collective unconcious theory, we have inherited it and again according to this theory, it can not be construed like a person’s unconscious, it predates the individual. 

We have to improve ourselves to improve our personalities.

The fight to survive has brought about anger.  Anger helps us to stand up and reciprocate.  Salin’s salvation came with his anger of being a serf.  It helped him to discover his hidden gift. 

We visit Pushkin town which used to be a suburban area of the 18th century. Czar Peter I, gave this place as a gift to his wife II. Catherine.  We see the palace from outside.  Even though Pushkin lived for six years in this magnificent and elegant place, he never forgot the people. 

The father of the modern Russian literature, Pushkin was always on the quest for solutions.  He looked for solutions but never showed ways how to reach them.  He refrained from writing openly but was for an overall change in Russia.  He always turned to his people and by getting to know them better he created such wonderful literary works.   

What we know about the Russian gentry is mostly told by foreign diplomats, foreign visitors and foreigners working in the palaces and of course from the works of the great Russian writer, Tolstoi.  I can almost visualize Anna Karenina in my mind now. 

Everything is in a constant change.  “You can not step into the same river twice” had said Heraclitus of Ephesus.  According to Levi-Strauss history is a myth of norms.  And history was changing.

It was up to the mind to give an explanation to events but unfortunately lost always before intuitive knowledge and the world of illusions.

Art was the means to get rid of mediocrity.  I was lost in my thoughts. 

There was order and there was chaos.  In between we had life.  Well, how to live then?  Which direction to go?  Maybe wisdom was not to question.   

We are sailing on Ladoga River.  Trees, millions of trees, the utter silence and the slow motion of our boat sailing against the current of the river made you feel you were in an eerie world where you were just a speck.   

June 12th 1998.  I am in the island of Kizhi.  Churches here are protected by the Bolschevik Government.  The edifices are made of wood as though they flaunt their strength under the cruelty and oppression they had to endure along with the harsh weather.  The most awesome among them is the Transfiguration Church.  There is a legend which tells it was built by one person using only one hammer.  After finishing this work of art he screamed “Never something like that has been built and never something like that will be ever built.”

Never such pain has been experienced and never such pain will ever be experienced!  This is the soul of the artist behind his creation! 

Volga! The most beautiful of the rivers was flowing right in front of my eyes.  On this river one felt at loss as though on a desert with no way to get out. The river made you feel out of touch with the world. 

The construction of Rybinsk Reservoir started in 1936. One of the former workers of that time explains “There were guards everywhere.  They watched mostly the political  prisoners.  As they were erudites they were the first to die from exhaustion.  The food was awful  Everyday hundred people died for this project.” The filling of the reservoir started on 1941. Many villagers had to be resettled elsewhere. With time, it has been viewed as a whim of grandeur of Stalin.  Today the dam is not very important for electric power supply and the ecological damage is being reassessed.

We are sailing on Moscow’s impressive Canal.  Once again the people who worked in the realization of this project were the educated ones.

One dark night while I was buried under my pile of books and papers, you knocked and entered.  You asked me if I had a book explaining mankind.  I said yes and handed you the book.  I looked at your cheeks emaciated by the suffering of long years, your parched skin, your prominent malars, your heavily bearded chin and your tightly closed mouth.  I caught your eyes.  I looked, we looked at each other. I questioned your eyes with mine but they refused to betray you.  You closed the book and left slowly.  I heard your footsteps.  I made up my mind and began to run after you. I took a short cut and caught up with you.  You asked me “Why don’t you leave me alone?” “Who me?” I replied with a mocking voice and continued “I came to your country to meet you.  Your illuminating life experience I so much enjoyed in your impressive books was not enough for me.”  He did not flinch.   I continued “You taught me to feel the pain right in my inner self, to have the determination to get out of an abyss I had fallen, to believe that there is purification after suffering.  You are the one who gave me exaltation and negation.”

We looked at each other before he left.  His gaze told me that I had to find my own truth.

I am one with the Russian nation in the innumerable sufferings depicted in the works of Pushkin, Tolstoi, Dostoviesky  and Gogol. 

The Moscow river welcomes us with the first rays of morning sun.   I am going to enjoy the view of this fabulous city from the deck. I want to breathe it.  I remember Socrates’ words: “Tolerate my quest to learn new things my friend.  My teachers have been the people of a city and not trees or meadows.”

The best way to learn about the people of a city is to walk along its streets and visit its markets. The market they made us visit lacked character.  Everything exhibited was dull, the vendors sullen and listless.  I left this desolate place without buying a thing.  A new experience for me!   

I see Puskin next to me.  He was returning from something like a book fair.  He asked me if I had liked Moscow and where I had been.  I told him about a story I had in my mind.  I refrained from telling him that this story had enslaved me and that it stopped me from losing my mind.  Neither did I tell him the topic.  How could I tell him?  It was about his life.  “Tell me all you know about me” he said.  I told him “You are the founder of the Russian literature, Russia’s greatest poet.”  I continued “I need a friend like you.  How can I go on living if authors like you did not exist?”

“You have already learned to stand on your two feet.  You don’t need me.”

I replied “Is the reason of your sullenness your four years of exile in the Caucasus?”

We became aware that our dialogue was becoming boring.  I whispered in a sad tone of voice “take care.” He could have said “I will not forget you” but he did not.  He just continued on his way and disappeared among the crowd.  

I am walking along the Red Square.  It Moscow’s oldest and most famous square was built as a place for celebrating church festivals, for public gatherings, hearing Government announcements and watching executions which increased in number with time.  Its name red comes from all the blood that has been spilled during the executions. 

I felt hands on my shoulders. He was right behind me.  He asked me not to turn. He took out my red scarf and wrapped it around my eyes.  He took me to dance with my eyes blindfolded.  We danced.  I could just feel him.  “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” began to play. A song that I was a stranger to its rhythm... I asked him to take the scarf off my eyes and told him I had not a clue about this dance.  He said “Leave it on.  I will teach you.  Anyway I don’t see either.” It felt awkward that his eyes were also closed but I did not object.  We danced.  I said to myself he must be a lunatic.  He took out my scarf after the dance and looked at me exclaiming “Oh…you are beautiful!”  Who me, beautiful?  No.  I was ugly.   But he said the contrary.  From that night on, Gorbachov was no stranger to me, neither were the Russian people, nor Russia. Do you wonder how?

Rouble in Russia lost its value against the Mark by 69%.

The markets are upside down. 

Inept governments come and go.  There is chaos.  Beneath all the news in the newspapers, we have the untold suffering of its people.  Families disintegrate, university graduates are without jobs, long queues of retired people are a common sight, and worst of all, the people are on the brink of famine.  And the mafia of the country, very happy of the situation, is sucking the blood of the people.   

How much can you tell about Russia in writing?

Do You Hear My Heart  

I told Soledad my intention of getting lost, while leaving the house to explore the city of Salamanca the moment I arrived.  What if I got lost?  I had set my mind to get lost in this city.  I had made Soledad laugh at my persistence of getting lost. 

To get lost and to continue. 

I was going to learn the importance of the siesta time during my stay in Salamanca. It took me some time to get used to this welcoming stop during the day that was vital for the Spaniards. Spain was going to seduce me.  I was seduced in the end. 

Salamanca is a university city just like Oxford or Cambridge.  Its mysterious past and its buoyant future are well connected.  The city’s song has a cosmopolitan harmony, well in tune for everyone.   

I am enjoying my drink at a bar. The cigarette smoke, the warm air make heads giddy.  Faces come and go and pieces of conversations come to my ear.  It is time for me to finish my drink and leave. 

And right in front of me stands Picasso’s Guernica.

Yes right there, right in front of my eyes. It is as usual aloof and unfathomable. I turn my head while I open and close my eyes to have a better view… but each time my eyes rest on your milky white face.  I can not take my eyes off the great, black eyes that cloud the face.

I was bewildered and did not know where to look.  Colors turned into colors, grays into white, whites into blacks, patterns into patterns.  Suddenly I saw huge horses tearing this confusion and climbing into the sky.  I approached and saw them to be clowns.  Despite their bulky frame they tumbled one way and the other as though caught in a great storm.  They wore big pendant earrings and large beaded necklaces.  One of the horses walked leisurely past me carrying his colossal body.  I leaped high to be able to touch them.  If I could only touch them I could reach the sky.  Maybe then I could see God and ask Him why he wasn’t visible? 

The gushing characters from the painting were writhing; the eyes were gleaming with crystal clear fury. Heaps of woes, pussy venomous hatred, hearts beating with fury, all the secrets of the universe, secret despairs were scattered in all directions. The brush strokes that tell the story of humanity, the patterns and colors all murmured. 

The elderly woman sitting across me smiled.  The lines on her cheeks, front and chins became more prominent.  The lines on her face were like independent narrow paths stretching all the way.  I will touch her face to understand what the years have given and taken from her.  She was fit and did not stoop despite her advanced age.  

If I had died, my body had to be stiff and therefore I could not feel pain.  So I should not suffer.  Everywhere was full with blood.  I looked with surprise at the deep cut in my palm.  When had this happened?  Who had done this?  Nothing was remembered.   

A drop of blood from the index finger fell into the pool of patterns making rings on the surface.  A spark emerged where the drop fell.  The body was kindled with strong sparks.  Horses with their wide open nostrils, spread their forelegs and hind legs on this valley before they died. The soil became warm with the fire.  Broken bones and charred bodies bloomed.  A bomb exploded followed by another one…Children corpses with their mouths smelling of carnation. 

A painting speaks its own language and finds its own way.  If it can not achieve this, it falls into oblivion… 

And life continues and will continue.

Everything destroyed.

Dreams, people, buildings, nature…

The 26th 1937 bombardment had destroyed Guernica like a curse.   

I want to inhale the history of Spain while strolling along the streets.  I think about its history which never leaves me during my sightseeing tour of Madrid.  Then history whispers to me:

“War… Humanity’s greatest shame!  Despite the great accomplishments of human mind, there is that evil side that urges war and killing. Humans inflict the greatest pains and suffering on each other.  This atrocious act that is assumed justified by certain group of people, could be committed sometimes domestically and sometimes at a place that is kilometers away.  Alas, Spain has had her share of it…”   

After the proclamation of the republic in 1931, workers thought everything was going to be better for them.  Well, it was not true… If one of the workers stood out to ask for an increase in wages, it meant his death warrant.  He was called a provocator and no foreman passing through Los Trabajadures Square would look at him or offer him a job.  Workers solidarity was ditching work to make the others to be hired.  The problem was escalating.  Four months after the proclamation, the homeless workers put fire to the Plaza de Toros.  On February 20, the mob completely out of control, unleashed their fury by burning many beautiful works of art. In no time at all, the whole country was revolting and no one managed to quell the great gap between the rightist and the leftists.  The country was veering towards the civil war.  

The real fight began when the Spanish Armed Forces supported by the rightists and backed by the Church attacked the republicans.  When the adversary proved to be stronger that anticipated they asked the Nazi Germany and Facist Italy to help them.  The republicans on the other hand sought the help of France, England and the Soviets.  Pretty soon, the whole Spanish country turned into Hitler’s and Mussolini’s testing ground for their latest war machinery.  Half a million Spanish people died in this unfortunate war that was a rehersal for the coming WWII.   

George Orwell narrates the following:  “When I first arrived to Spain my head was full with the rigid rules of the British Army.  I was astonished at the lack of discipline of the militia.  Unskilled soldiers scared of gun fire increased their rate of undisciplined acts.  Theoretically a militia squad had no hierarchy but democracy.  I had never seen such equality during a war.  I was horrified to see the state of the army.  How can you win a war with such an army?” 

Robert Jordan recollects “I asked for nothing but win this war, till I met Maria. I had altruistic goals for what I believed was true. Now, Maria counts for me as much as my goals and what I was fighting for.  Many of my comrades fell in this war.  I think a person can live intensely seventy-five hours as well as seventy-five years. I consider myself lucky to believe that I could squeeze a seventy years long life span into seventy hours time span.” 

A militia narrates “I remember how horrified I was of everything.  When I first came to Spain I was not only disinterested in the political situation but also unaware. If you had asked me why I had stayed with the militia forces I would have replied “To fight Facism”.  If you had asked me for what sake I fought, my reply would have been “in the name Truth.”

But nothing was more repugnant than the bombing of a peaceful village in Basque region.

It happened on a Sunday afternoon exactly at four-thirty in Guernica on April 26, 1937.”  

The Priest of Guernica Town narrates “It was the market day and the place was packed with people. I was just getting out of my car when the bombing started.  Terrified people were running to and fro.  The bombing which began at 4.40 P.M lasted till 7:45 P.M.  The whole sky was black with the German planes that first used machine guns, then percussion bombs and finally threw their fire-bombs.  Many people were machine gunned while trying to flee on the roads.  The others died from the smoke and fire that had circled the town.  You could hear the shrieks, the cries of agony of the children and women.  Some transported in great sorrow,   were kneeling and asking the help of God”.  

Manuel recalls the following: “The noise of the bullets fired by the firing squad echoed in the village square.  Three men had been executed not far away from there.  The corpses lied with their faces towards the sun while their feet were in the shade.  A small grey kitten put its head in the pool of blood that flew from the flat nosed man. Suddenly a small boy appeared and chased the kitten. He dipped his forefinger into the blood and wrote “DEATH TO FACISM”.  When he finished his writing he went to the fountain to wash his hands.

The San Carlos Hospital was echoing with shrieks.   Patients with crutches, heavily bandaged men looking like they were shrouded filled the halls.  There were grunts, screams full with utmost agony…The place looked like a ward belonging to a horror world where only suffering existed.   

There was a patient in the ward of badly wounded that uttered the most horrible howls.  I whispered to the nurse of the ward what was the matter with him.  He said he was an airman of twenty-two years old who had twenty-seven wounds he got from the machine gun.  He pointed to the mother and his nurse who were with him.  I said “Tough life.”  The shrieks and howls began again.  What can one say before a bullet-riddled body?  The poor, helpless mother could only kiss him.   

Spain, during that time, was a country which offered numerous death opportunities.” 

Painters enter our lives just like clowns do.  Their works of art are festive of colors and patterns that make us sway in the tide of our inner worlds.  We are lost in deep thoughts while we look at them with our eyes full of awe.

Yes, it had happened.  There was a man who had the identity of an artist.  He could voice.  And he would travel the earth to tell what he had to tell.  Now it was his turn…

He had managed to pierce the outer shell of his people’s suffering. The world had to learn what had happened, what is going on and what the future was holding.  Art had to disclose and talk.  Not only the rhythm of life and death had to be reflected but also the man alive and dead had to be told.  He had to explain the presence of deeds of individuals that sometimes lost and sometimes gained, in this cosmic order. He had to show explosion, fury, happiness and death.  

Guernica was created by destroying to create.  The artist dismantled traditional forms and looked for the inner geometry of things he was going to paint.  He wanted us to interpret the symbols the way we saw them.   

I was so tired that I checked in the first hotel I saw.  I passed out after a nice shower.  I went out in the scorching sun of the early afternoon.  I kiss the places of Barcelona touched by the sun.  I join life.

Many people are strolling in the park amid thousands of light shows and explosion of colors and happy shrieks of children echo everywhere.  They have also joined the joy to exist.