Istanbul, My Home: Where Beauty,
Pain and Politics Unite

Istanbul, My Home: Where Beauty, Pain and Politics Unite

Home. What an intriguing word. For some, home is a place where you spend all the days of your lives while counting on many generations passed by and proudly can say you are one of the last standing and never moved away. I moved out of home - in my case city and country - when I was eighteen. I left a family, a broken heart, tons of friends, and a city full of living memories behind. Leaving your culture takes something away from you. It strips the very attachments you feel in everyday life, as the familiar reflection you are used to seeing all your life starts to fade away when looking at the mirror. First you think you sound funny with the accent, you are somehow always left out by how things work, then you start to scrutinize everyone around you based on your cultural equilibrium: your so-called values, traditions, mindset and all the survival-kit experiences you have brought along from a perhaps less developed country. It takes you many years to realize that you don't have to be in a constant anxiety mode all the time over your safety, basic needs, and concerns about future. You somehow become more "civilized" by managing to distance yourself from the battlefield called "home" and rather try to focus on opportunities for personal growth and enlightment. Your days start to look like a crossword puzzle to be solved everyday. You live with a sense of wonder and excitement as you are always presented with an overwhelmingly number of choices to make. Still you always tend to carry a very discomforting heart as to when you will be seeing your family next and ask yourself all types of "what if" questions...playing typical immigrant mind games. Istanbul, my home is a city full of many faces, mixed identities, opposing beliefs, unifying humour and never-ending melancholy. It is like a bad romance or a love-hate relationship in which you constantly lose yourself while trying to stay as objective as you can to be able to see the bigger picture of the world. Istanbul is for lovers as much as Paris is. Istanbul is also for fanatics, extremists, political rebels, and revolutionaries. Istanbul, all in all, is a beautiful woman with at least 1,500 years of history, tradition, dialogue and dignity. If the walls of the city could talk it would describe life in three words: forgive, forget, and move on.

This piece was originally featured in The Green Room’s HOME Exhibit, a group exhibit exploring the complex topics of home and belonging, capturing the warm and harsh realities beyond the four walls of a house.