Imagine Istanbul

In his land, I want to lie down upon the harsh sand that burns the skin or to stand at the edge of a mountain where the wind blows a horrible cruel whisper like a silent shriek across the burnt sky. It is the shriek, like a scream when the mouth is open and nothing is heard. I want to be one with this country and record the fear and beauty of the little boy in his land: to know this fear and to know this beauty intimately and to cause those who sleep to awaken. I want a vision that reflects life as it is and how I found it at one moment captured in time. I want for some reason I cannot identify, to understand something which has nothing to do with me, my history, or my faceless culture. I am not a part of this, yet I am because I have found myself to have membership in that organization called “Humanity”.

Or do I really want to understand? I pose this question to myself in reflection. Perhaps I just want to photograph the beauty and the fear for an audience of one. Myself. A journey which is entirely solitary and personal. I am creating memories and impressions to share with only myself. I am like the little child that cannot cease asking her elders – “why?” And then, I photograph it!

So I am imagining I will find the little boy again, but on this next journey, it is not in the city of 15 million, but rather in some unknown place. It is in a land so strange and foreign to me, 24 hours away by bus.

Someone said to me, with amusement twinkling in his eyes, that maybe when I go back to Istanbul, the little boy will not be there. I had never thought of the possibility. In the dream, the one where I could save the boy, heal the boy, I had ignored the reality for one instance, that change is a certainty, a very distinct and exacting possibility. Life is harsh like that. To condemn you to a possibility of a scope you had never imagined or dreamed. But, I cannot accept that I will not find him again.

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