Journeys I´m made of... - Deeper in Turkey (1989)

Second time in Constantinople. It left me once again with a sweet melancholic feeling. We then headed south: Smyrna, Ephesus, Myra. Always welcome, especially for being who we were. I remember an old fisherman in Smyrna, speaking very little english, asking us where we were from. And when we answered, he started crying. He said he was from Crete. And I, still so ignorant at that age, couldn´t understand why someone who was not speaking greek was crying and saying he was from Crete.

And then we took the road to the interior and reached Afyonkarahisar, where we were supposed to be hated (see the statue, we are the ones on the ground…) and where we avoided saying where we were coming from. The roles were reversed here and the feeling was awkward.

Afyonkarahisar
Many-many years later, after I read the books I had chosen (not the ones taught in school or even university), I was revolted. Not only for what had happened to 'us', but also for what we had done to 'our' people and to the 'others' (whos´s who, though...). Look it up in Wikipedia, it´s called the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

I call it a fisherman crying in Smyrna in 1989. This is for him. From Tassos Boulmetis´s film "A touch of spice" (Politiki Kouzina): "Baharat, tarçin ve buse" (Spice, cinnamon and kiss), music by Evanthia Reboutsika.