izmir, the city of my heart. my mind was molded in Stockholm, but my deep in izmir. at bus rides along the shore, looking at people in other busses, taxis.. Standing at the back of the bus, or the side, never sitting, never being in the middle. Because being crushed by others is not a big burden, if one is too far away to carry it. Just looking, observing. Smelling the iodine through little bus windows (ajar in winter, opened as much as possible in summer). Mithatpasa coming back, Inonu Street going away. Just wondering what passes through people's minds.
izmir, my first bigger sister, later came everyone else, with it, E., G.B., Z etc. i wouldnt think of izmir, my eyes closed. as orhan veli thought of istanbul. rather i would turn my head towards the sun and see the asphalt burning in summer. riding cool in daddy's car. or in the evening, he would always take the road on the shore, watching the lights of Karsiyaka. wonder if Tampa bay would be like that. would Tampa bay bring me back to Izmir?
izmir, where i have never been loved by a man, apart of my father. With him I danced in my junior high school graduation. everyone lived the adult life in Izmir. People partied all night at the Kordon. Much like Greek tavernas, as if to keep up with our neighbors on the other side of the Aegean sea. Even my "friends", who were at that time 12-13, tried to enter Bonjour in the weekends, trying to persuade the guards that they were somehow older through make-up and newly developing female coyness. They would all be in Alsancak shopping before that. And they would all be in Cesme in the summer.
izmir. when was I last there? Yavuz returned. E. returned. They dared to go back. As for me, I always wanted to be living in one of those flats behind ours. Clearly inhabited by a "lower" class of people, that is poorer. But none the less those who make conversation across the street, when sitting on the balcony, having breakfast. maybe the same balcony where all contents of their wardrobe will be displayed in the afternoon, hanging to dry. Definitely the same balcony full of pots filled with pinkly flowering plants. My mother was never such a woman. She never sat in the balcony and we did not have pink flowering plants. I do not dream anymore. My last dream was to become a philosophy teacher in the nearest high school and to sit at such a balcony in the evening. Having raki, aubergine sallad, fava most certainly (i hate fava) looking at the mehtap, feeling the meltem. After this would be a stroll on Mithatpasa, or by the shore, licking an ice-cream, looking at everyone else. Bumping into people, many many people. Relatives, neighbors, collegues, students.
Is it nostalgia? NO. It is not a lost time. It is a time that I live forever in. The place I always seek. Why do I mention it now? I just know although I had nothing there, no lover, no trend, no nightlife, no power whatsoever, and not any friends in the beginning, still I had my own traditions. I had my own Izmir, through which I walked invisibly, but happily. Izmir fitted to me, although I did not fit in. ANd now it is just the other way round. I fit in here. As much as everyone at least. I have everything. Yet stockholm does not fit to me.
