He looked at the woman struggling in her elegant evening dress among the rubble, hoping to find a piece of her savings, her needs, her memories. She knew very well that it was impossible to move in that dress, let alone to sit with her bum comfortably positioned. The woman was climbing on top of the piles like a mountaineer, digging through the rubble with her fingernails. On her face was the shock of the sight she encountered, in her body was the energy of the adrenaline triggered by the disaster.
Berna asked Yaşar for a cigarette. As she inhaled the smoke, thin tears were flowing from her eyes. On one side, the wailing ambulance and fire brigade sirens, on the other side, the police’s efforts to remove the curious crowd, everything is a complete chaos…
The street full of buildings lined up side by side, smelling of poverty and despair, was completely covered in grey with the dust cloud left from the collapsed building. İnönü Neighbourhood was a neighbourhood established in the early 80s when the migration from the village to the city increased at a logarithmic rate. First a family or two from Kars, then aunts and uncles, and then children of aunts, it became a neighbourhood named according to the population of its fellow countrymen, just like many other slum neighbourhoods in Istanbul. In time, the makeshift shanties were replaced by tasteless, insecure apartment blocks. With the confidence in the “zoning amnesty” promised by the presidential candidates, floors were thrown one by one on the roofless apartment blocks according to the number of male children in the household and their “power”. With the increasing Afghan and Syrian migration in recent years, immigrants started to replace those who left the neighbourhood.
Now, the crowd, who shared the same fate but spoke different languages, had come out of apartment blocks that were little better than ruined buildings and turned into a gathering that perhaps came face to face for the first time. Men, women, children, young and old gathered in front of the building on the street where there was not a single space to breathe.
People were jostling among themselves, leaving themselves to “deep” analyses as they went further to the edge. “Allah Allah, how did it happen?” “They won’t take that last floor.” “Allah Yahmik” “No, no, the foundation was not strong anyway” “Alhamd Lilah” “Why did the municipality allow the creek bed” “Fortunately, no one was home. ” ” Allah protected….”
“What did we do?” said Berna as if talking to herself.
- “The right thing.” Yasar replied calmly and clearly.
- “Is it the right thing to ignore people’s will, to immobilise them!” This was not a question, it was just an expression of anger, regret, and sadness. Even though Yasar knew this, he did not refrain from answering.
- “What is right? What is will, Berna? Do they have a choice, is the truth shared with these people, in poverty, in poverty, will, freedom, choice are all just aesthetic words, luxuries. You know we’ve talked about this many times before.”
- “We never tried to explain, to share, but Yaşar, we acted as if this was the only option and here is the result…” and pointed to the ruins.
- “Come on Berna! Now we would either be in jail or in an asylum, so yes, we had only one option. It was either this or forget it, however it was going to be…”
He was inwardly agreeing with Yasar. He took another puff from his cigarette. Both the smoke filling his lungs and Yaşar had relaxed him once again.
XXX
It was 1 month ago. While their bodies, tired of making love, were entangled with each other, they woke up from sleep in blood sweat, looking at each other in fear and shock. They could understand from the horror in each other’s eyes that they were living together a moment far beyond the nightmare. Berna began to cry convulsively as if she was experiencing catharsis. She had no strength to speak. Yaşar did not know what to do. The “reality” they were going through had aroused a deep anger in him, two drops of tears could flow from his eyes out of anger. Reaching for the cigarette at the head of the bed, he could only stroke Berna’s hair.
When Berna regained her breath, he handed her a cigarette too, Yaşar was putting out his third cigarette. They started to scan the social media to check what had happened. There was nothing. #dolar, #kısmetseolur, #bagcilartravesti … No one was saying earthquake, disaster, catastrophe, everything was going on as it was. Only two of them could not have seen what they saw, but it happened. Or so they thought.
XXX
They met 2 years ago at the urban transformation meeting in Tarlabaşı. Berna had attended for legal information on behalf of the Urban Right Platform. Yaşar was one of the future victims of the transformation. He was the resident and owner of a two-storey building dating back to the Greeks on the way down to Dolapdere. He had turned the lower floor into a body shop, the best job he could do. When I say “building owner”, I don’t mean a wealthy person, on the contrary, the money he had won and lost as a national wrestler and the poverty he had fallen into was barely enough for this. Now, with the pressure of rent, this was about to be taken away from him.
After the meeting, Berna, Yaşar and eight or ten other people sat in the café in front of the door to drink illegal tea in the Baran Coffeehouse, which was a place for tradesmen during the day and prostitutes at night. At the end of the conversation about how they would withstand the pressure of the municipality, politicians and investors, Berna asked if she could come by and have a look at her car. Yaşar happily said that he would wait as soon as possible.
Afterwards, they met with all kinds of excuses, they examined each other, inhaled their smells, started to avert their eyes from each other.
There was an attraction between them, neither of them had ever been with any woman or man similar to each other before. This mystery increased the attraction even more. They had been kissing for 18 months and making love for 17 months. The difference of 1 month was due to the back and forth. Finally they surrendered to their desires.
XXX
They didn’t speak for a few days after that day. They still could not digest the shock they had experienced. On the 3rd day Yasar brought up the subject.
We have to do something.
I know, but I don’t know what we can do, Berna said desperately.
It was not an agony they could forget. The process in Tarlabaşı had taught them both that they could not tell what they had seen, that no one would believe them even if they did, and that no one would take action even if they did. There was no time anyway. But they made another decision. TO DEMOLISH.
XXX
They had identified this apartment block as one of the most risky buildings in the municipality records. In fact, almost 2/3 of the neighbourhood was in agreement for the transformation. However, 4 other property owners, together with this apartment building, could not come to a compromise because they rented out their buildings and expected more profitability. The owner of the 3-storey building lived one neighbourhood away in his newly built building. They had rented it to 3 brothers who were market vendors and 3 Syrian families.
While they were wondering how it would be possible to evict 6 households from the building on the same day, the wedding of the second son of the middle brother came like a lifesaver. Poverty and destitution brought the Syrian families closer, they were dressed up like the original owners of the wedding and they were also included in the wedding team. Berna and Yaşar had been waiting for this moment for 3 weeks. As soon as the crowd left, Yaşar, with the agility of being an athlete, albeit an old one, went down from level 1 to the basement floor and left his “preparations” in the stairwell. And 2 hours before the end of the wedding, the neighbourhood was shaken first by the sound of a faint explosion and then by the roar of the building collapsing into itself.
Within 2 weeks after that day, two apartment buildings in the neighbourhood and the construction company of the contractor, who had put the neighbourhood in difficulty with the uncompromising conditions they offered, also collapsed.
XXX
They knew that for change, nothing should be left behind from the existing one, and that even any of its tissues would make the new one sick like a cancerous cell…
