turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

would get to do there. One day before I took the ship for Rhodes I packed my
things. It was two in the morning, I was all alone and very tired. Suddenly I got
goose bumps all over and I didn’t know why. I felt as if I was about to fall from
a cliff. There was a great adventure waiting for me, looking at me in the face.
I approached the edge of the “cliff”. And I jumped.
The following day, when we arrived at Kayaköy, I got to stay with four of Sophia’s
friends, Eugenia, Vicky, Nikos and Stefanos. A well-built but too outspoken
middle-aged Turk, mister Abraham, took us to his place and we stayed in a
little house that was decorated with a fireplace, a wooden table, divans, sheep
furs and a small ancient Greek pillar that would keep the door open so as to let
the air in. When the afternoon came, Eugenia, Vicky and I went to the central
point of the festival and the girls started teaching the passers-by how to dance
traditional Greek dances. A tall dark girl with short hair and glasses asked if
they could teach her syrtaki, the dance of “Zorba the Greek”.
The next morning I took my pencils and papers and started making sketches
of the Turks who had come to Kayaköy for the festival. One bespectacled boy
wanted to pay for his sketch but I refused, so he bought me an ice-cream.
Another boy with glasses and shaved hair, who was in the dancing workshop
(Hakan!), paid for my dinner. They were such cuties!!!
Some other time I got together with fifteen other people and we started
painting on a huge tableau. We did mountains, houses, cows, buses, the starlit
sky. I drew a dozen faces of the people I had met. As I was drawing I got to know
Bilge, the girl who had asked Eugenia to teach her Zorba’s syrtaki. She was
also an artist and she lived in İzmir. Smyrna was my grandparents’ homeland
too, what a coincidence! She said she had worked at the 11 th Biennale of young
artists that had taken place two months before in Athens.
I said that I had participated there with my work, which was illustration. She
remembered the pictures I had exhibited there and really liked them, even
though she didn’t know me back then! We were both happy that, even though
we hadn’t met then and there, art brought us together again. She invited me
to İzmir and I promised I would go as soon as I got the money for it.
The day of our departure came. We took one last picture together, Turks and
Greeks. We almost loved each other because we felt like brothers that had
been separated at birth. The media and our prejudices had kept us apart for
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
so long, but now we had finally met our long-lost siblings. We had the same
faces, the same words, the same customs. You just had to look at our faces,
you couldn’t discern Greeks from Turks. Just look at us.
I jumped over the cliff after all. And I flied.
I don’t think I will go back there, I don’t think I’ll even meet Atalay, Tuçe,
Ceyda or Ragıp again. But it was quite a jump, quite a flight! We will grow up
and we will have families of our own, we’ll grow bald or fat, or I don’t know.
But once, just once we got to Kayaköy. We’ll forget. But these words will stay
for those who want to get an idea what it was like to be there, in the shadow
of the Magic Mountains of Kayaköy.
WE…
It was the times that we didn’t know each other’s names. We used to gather
and talk about a single thing. The reason that clusters our thoughts on a single
point. Our first time does not look like other “first”s.
Then the time came for concretizing our common points. However, it shouldn’t
have stayed only here. We were together for one thing and this festival should
have gone beyond the borders. It should have been heard from all over Europe.
We should have taken action soon and have started working. We were together
here and there. Constantly thinking and brainstorming. Time passed by. Things
have changed. We learned each other’s names then. We knew what we wanted.
We have shared lots. We have shared. In our meetings, before and after. We
have shared in the bus queue, on the exam nights, in the exam questions, in
the answers given. Unknown. We shared. We were friends..
Friendships influence our lives, us... We were such friends that we had done
something that influences the lives of thousands. We highlighted the festival
with the light of our lives. Highlighted till eternity. We followed the steps, we
caught the rhythm, we spiced our festival with that rhythm. We were human;
we put our minds, ourselves to this festival. We role-played; we performed. We
included our dance. We thought about the places where we live. The warmth of
our house, its architecture, its walls. All mixed in the festival.
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