Wedding

That Summer of 2007, I learned the Turkish word kilise. I was on my very first visit to Turkiye, heading to Aleppo to visit my relatives. My plan was to stay a few days in Istanbul and then head to Diyarbekir where my family originated from. I was going to get to Aleppo from there by bus. Anyways, those few days in Istanbul were quite monotonous. I got myself stuck in Beyoğlu where my pension was on Galip Dede sokak. I had no information whatsoever about Istanbul and its magical neighbourhoods. I can say that I was a very bad tourist. On that trip I saw almost nothing except for Beyoğlu and a bit of Karakoy. My Canadian telephone did not work at all and everyday I waited for the woman I loved to leave me a message at the pension as to what time we could meet. She was visiting her family in a faraway suburb of Istanbul. Some days we met and on others, I went to bed disappointed.

So, day and night, I roamed the back streets of Beyoğlu, Istiklal and Taksim. It never even occured to me to visit Üsküdar, Beşiktaş Kadikoy or Kinali, even though they were names that had impressed me in my youth in Beirut, when our teachers had introduced us to the works of Istanbul’s Armenian writers like Sibil, Baronyan, Yesayan etc...sometimes I think it was as if I went through a short period of Amnesia during that first visit to Istanbul: as if forgot that their writings had talked about Pera, the ferryboats to the other side of the Bosphorous or the tramways. How much I had dreamt about all the streets and neighbourhoods those writers had mentioned when I had first read their stories!

But my days here were not wasted just hybernating. My camera was with me all the time and I photographed a lot. I was also very curious about Agos. Even though I had discovered who Hrant was just a year or so beforehand, I really wanted to visit the Paper and express my condolences. But it was August 2007 and only a few months had passed since his tragic death. I did not dare ask just anyone on the street about how I could go to Agos. The couple of times that I overheard Armenian words whispered on the Street and I approached the people, stating who I was in Armenian, resulted in cool reception. I asked about the paper, about Armenian churches and how I could visit the Patriarchate, but they did not help. It was as if I was someone to be suspiscious of.

One of the things that I wanted to do while in Istanbul, was to find CD albums of the music band Vova. Sure, back home in Toronto, we had cassette tape copies of their songs that my brother Hratch had brought back from Armenia. We loved those songs. But we did not know if they were from a single album or a potpurry of a few albums. I had thought  that maybe I will buy all their albums in Istanbul. So every time I passed a music store, I went in and asked but always came out disappointed. No one had any of their albums. I think on the third  day I went into a bookstore on Istiklal to ask for Turkish fiction in English translation, and I noticed a whole shelf of music CDs. A young man approached me and realizing that I was a foreigner, aked me with hand and face gestures accompanied by the very few English words he knew, what I was looking for. I wrote down the words Vova and Hemshin on a scrap of paper and showed it to him. He nodded a ‘yes’ with his head and brought me a CD. He also said the words ‘tek album’ with an apologetic smile. I knew what tek meant. He made my day nevertheless.

His name was Murat and coincidentally a Diyarbekir Kurd who claimed a big love for Armenians. Vova’s music brought us together and for the next days, I passed by his workplace every day to say hello. He had also indicated that he would help me with any question I had. And believe me, he did. The next day, when I stopped by the bookstore to ask for some information, he he kept saying the words ermeni patrikhane, kumkapi and maryam ane kilise. I knew most of the words except for patrikhane and kilise. He kept saying, ‘you must, you must. Beautiful’. After a while, seeing that my puzzled face was not changing, he took out a piece of paper and drew a chuch dome with a cross on the paper and kept saying ‘maryam ane kilise…kilise, kilise. patrikhane. Kumkapi’. Finally it dawned on me that  he was talking about a church called mother Mary in the patriarchate in Kumkapi. He drew up a route for me to go there. My good old only friend Murat! How much I wanted to see him again when a few years later I moved to Istanbul. The store was closed and there was no Murat any more. But this photo of a wedding I witnessed at Meryem Ane kilisesi in Kumkapi, was taken that same day he sent me there. His smile always flashes in my memory every time I happen to go to Kumkapi.