“Over time the bust of a saz collapses … When that happens the action on the fret board is too high. When the body is curved the lower half of the fret board is high, and the chest low.

When the chest falls there is a deeper, more heartfelt sound. With that in mind I asked for a flat-chested saz …”

Our moral compasses have cracked. These orphans lost their fathers too soon, the chests upon which they once rested their untroubled heads have long since fallen. Have you noticed? When these chests fall the tyrants loom ever larger. And strings are stretched over our twisted and tangled pasts. Which is why the sounds we hear are so heartfelt and so deep.

Now let us remember the bequest of a Hittite king to his sons a thousand years ago in these ancient lands known as Anatolia where we now madly wage war and fail to make safe havens:

“When I die wash me gently, press me to your chest and leave me in the earth. That is all.”

Well then how much longer will you sit and watch these sad orphans on your plasma TVs, longing for the chests of their fathers as they embrace coffins draped in flags? Or the anger of those abandoned, rebellious children whose relatives were not granted the right to be gently washed? Has it not been long enough?

3

What Has That Got to Do
with It, Dad!

In his usual calm and absentminded way dad walked up to the garden gate and stepped inside. Resting the tip of his foot on one of the jugs of water mom had lined up against the wall he washed his hands. Then drying them with the handkerchief he always kept in his back pocket, he went inside.

I’m reading on the somya in the corner of the room, leaning against the pillow mom knitted herself for her dowry. I can hear the sound of the centrifuge filling the garden pool with water. Mom is in the kitchen. In the air is the smell of something toasting.

My exam results have come back. I am going to study in the politics department. Ringing in my ear is that Cem Karaca song I listened to the day before in the Democratic Cultural Society:

This year the young brother is going to study politics/

But with no money for a coat he’ll have to wear a parka, too.

As I mull over where I might find a nice parka, I have in my lap a book, Deniz, Yusuf and Inan, Three buds in the Gallows, which my uncle, an ardent supporter of Bülent Ecevit, had given me in the hope of, “raising my consciousness,” to use his words. No matter where my uncle was posted due to his politics, he never tired of the food that was on offer in the far-flung corners of Anatolia.

Switching on our Philips radio, dad says with a dash of sarcasm in his voice: “Nothing will come of those people of yours.”