A Street Piano in Halicarnassus

It is not easy to scribble something in the land where the Father of History, as Cicero called him, was born. We have the responsibility of thousands of years on our shoulders and the wealth in our being.

Life, playing the piano in the square, extends its notebook. We pour our sad, calm feelings into the notebook.

"Expectations tire," says the life at the piano. What's left to wait for after all that pain? Halicarnassus presents the grace God has given to it and to nature, with the notes flowing from its fingers to the keys, to its thousands of years of history.

On a cold and sunny afternoon, while we feel the tiredness and pain of the days in our hearts and bodies, our feelings come to life with the notes that describe that tiredness and pain. Our feet carry our bodies to the piano of their own accord.

We feel good. We need good. We need to know that good people exist. We need to experience goodness with them. We need to find strength in hearts united by goodness.

We have seen so much evil, we are so tired. We are tired of bad people and their evil. We long for a world and a country where goodness reigns.

Art is the expression of feelings. Art is social therapy. Art is music, poetry, painting, cinema, sculpture, novel, theater. Art is the historical notes of humanity's experiences. Art is the most beautiful, most aesthetic, most humane, most sublime, most sacred way of spreading goodness. Art is to describe humanity. Art is the core of civilization.

A bright sun in the sky. As if telling eternity from the past to the future. Chopin's sorrowful notes hit the clouds. The notes echo in our ears from the fragmented clouds suspended over the Archipelago. As it penetrates our brains and hearts, it fills us with the history of humanity, the Father of History, Cevat Şakir, Cretan immigrants, Azra Erhat, Maria Callas (*) , Hippocrates of Kos. We sip the goodness, the wealth of good people in the lands where our steps are also mixed into history.

How is it possible not to remember Yıldız Kenter's Ben Anadolu at that moment? How is it possible not to sense Kibele, Artemis, Halide Edip Adıvar, Nilüfer Hatun who come to life in that magnificent acting? Especially when the Anatolian women are watching us in the square decorated with musical notes.

Man gets up with art. He straightens up with art, comes back to life. He is sad, in pain, and laments. He challenges death, knowing that he will die one day. He leaves his own experiences as a gift for those after him. A whole, short life is an effort to create immortality from death.

We are chatting accompanied by notes. Life cannot be lived without hope, he says. How sadness and hope are mixed is hidden in the sparkle of his eyes. Sad, helpless. Hopeful, his hands tied, his fingers interlocked. There is no other way than to keep goodness alive and spread it with good people. His face wrinkled with sadness, his shoulders hanging down to his body are the embodiment of the pain experienced.

He had to escape from Çorlu because he was constantly playing the piano, which he learned on his own after he turned 55, in order to spread goodness. An escape from the soul and mind that cannot tolerate people expressing their feelings.

How sad that the lands where art has been made for thousands of years are once again drowning in pain. If asked to show a place where everything that can be experienced on earth has happened, would anyone else come to mind other than Anatolia? Those lands are now bone dry. This cradle that has created civilizations from civilizations is in one of the driest times of its history. This barrenness is the legacy of evil.

Evil will be defeated. Evil will vanish in the long flow of time. Good will win. Evil must vanish. When it is said again, “Let’s bury you, come, you don’t fit into history,” the eternity emerging from the notes of the piano will remain in mind, it will become life itself. Notes that will rise to the sky. I, the women of Anatolia, will listen to those notes. The Father of History will hear the notes hanging from the piano keys to the clouds of the Archipelago. And again, another father of history will emerge and tell these days to eternity. In the notes of laments and pain. As it is today in Halicarnassus.

(*) In the 1940s, the mayor of Rhodes came with his daughter to the restaurant in Bodrum, which opened in 1927 and was later named Körfez. Songs were sung that evening. The mayor of Rhodes wanted his little daughter to sing as well. The girl sang her song. First there was silence, then applause in the restaurant. Years later, this girl went to Bodrum again. She also visited the restaurant where she sang at a young age, and her memories came back. The name of this girl who came to Bodrum, Körfez, years later was Maria Callas.