Burning Bodies in the Land of Dreams
The ink these lines are written with are made from tears. Ink from tears so thick, pitch black and red, making these lines ineradicable and inextinguishable. Ink so thick seemingly impossible to pour in such large quantities out of my crying eyes; gently pushing like a freshwater dwell giving life to a desert oasis. That life giving is you.
Ink red like blood because it is made from blood. Blood that is knowing, honest, aware, ancient. It is your blood my dear aunt Semra. Even though decades passed since your physical passing, you passed on your work and life to us and you live through us: your sister, your niece, me your nephew, and many more. And we pass it on. So your blood is my blood now; fresh and fluid, gushing out of my eyes, and through that magical fountain pen I hold in my trembling hands as ink into these lines onto sheets of cloths. Like the white cloth that swathed the remains of your burned daintily wiry body over three decades ago. Your blood is not dead blood, it is alive, and writes, and makes hearts beat.
Ink pitch black like ashes. Like the ashes of your burned body swirled up by furious wind spirits outraged by the injustice, racism, and xenophobia you had to face. Your ashes carrying the sounds of your voice I hear whenever I talk with myself trying to make sense and give meaning to life. Your ashes swirled up by the same wind spirits, enchanted and aroused by the beauty of your poems, full of love, faith, hope, creation. Your ashes quietly falling like leaves in autumn covering the world, carried away and mixed with your, mine, our blood creating that ink tincture that form these lines. The ashes are alive, my lungs filled with furious fires, both devouring and nurturing my mind and life. Did your furious lungs fill with fire, when the flames eat into your skin and flesh?
The Magical Fountain pen I hold in my trembling fingers putting that bloodred pitch black ink onto paper is carved out of the rare and blurred memories and experiences I carefully collected in my head and heart since childhood during my countless explorations into our basement and in grandmas vast cave-like cupboards combing through your poems, works, archives, articles. We created it together, an harmonic interplay of thoughts, emotions, dreams, and ideas about who we want to be and what we want to create both unified in the unconditional love for writing. You guided me, I followed your instructions, you carefully listened to my input, we bantered; always seeking understanding, being understanding, questioning the world around us. That is how we forged this Fountain Pen.
Strangely I kept our relationship — originated from my explorations —hidden not knowing how to translate, put and communicate our imaginary conversations, language and bond into comprehensible forms for it was good enough for how and what it was. And still today I don’t know if people will understand my words and thoughts manifested here. I hope people do, but I honestly do not care. I do not do it for them, I write for the sake of writing. I write for you.
I write to tell your story, the power your stories, poems, your life can give to others. Because it is meaningful, kind and matters. And because it is time.
It is about time — though your works are timeless and always timely — that people hear and read your words and works. Too many bodies burnt and are burning in the land of dreams.
Down with a land of dreams that made you burn yourself for it still exists. I want to live the land of dreams. Not for me, but for the ones to come. For the ones that share our heritage and history, and for the ones who do not. For no one must be confronted with the final choice of being a burning body. For a land of dreams of blooming bodies. For it is fine to not bloom forever. But it is everyone’s right to bloom to the full of hers/ his potential and aspirations. Everything else is burning.
My dear aunt Semra, for that I have not yet found the words to make my love and gratitude to you explainable in forms it can be transmitted here. But for you and me, for our bond, we know and don’t need to. You are life and your life is one fire of a story to give life meaning. A meaning of beauty, of rage, of love, of pertinacity.
Saying that, the least I can do and what I do here is to proclaim your works and story, So I write with that Ink and Fountain Pen to make your works known to as many people as possible. So that with every person more encountering you, there will be one more blooming body, and one burning body less.
