Maraş; the naive city of beautiful people, loneliness, sadness, togetherness, friendships and separations.
If the season is winter: It is a crazy northeaster blowing like a purification ceremony over the city standing on the skirts of Ahır Mountain with the majesty of a dervish wearing a white cloak.
If it is summer: It is like a girl at the age of marriage, tossing its hair in the garbi wind that smells of thyme, tarhana, red pepper, salep and licorice.
The loneliness of Yalnızardıç, who takes its chest against the northern winds, is accompanied by the spiritual guard of the city, Malik Ejder, in the south.
It is a resigned city that always contains a 'DENIAL'; that never surrenders to sieges, occupations, impositions;
that is the city of elegant 'men' who grow roses.
A city that surrenders only to Allah and absorbs it into its stone and soil like a rose scent.
Every author has a unique perception of the city. The poets and authors are more passionately attached to the cities where they were born and grew up and spent their childhood and adolescence. Perhaps the fact that they left the cities where they were born and grew up and stayed apart for many years is of great importance. Therefore, it is very important to read cities from master authors who are the children of that city.
The impressions and memories of Kahramanmaraş occupy a large place in Nuri Pakdil's books. Nuri Pakdil redefines Kahramanmaraş in his books; he tells about the sides of it that we do not know, maybe we are not aware of. Kahramanmaraş, where we walk and wander in its streets, avenues and bazaars takes on a completely different meaning.
Before the Notes, let's enter Maraş with a writing from the author's work called Biat II. It is night; we approach the Aksu Bridge from the south road under the moonlight and listen to Nuri Pakdil: “Moonlight on one side, unquenched spirits on the other. As you approach a small river bridge after passing through smaller settlements, the tomb on the hill gives you a hand, like the faith symbol of the city: Malik Ejder: You gather and pay your respects. This river washes the city every night; the ceremony of the city washed entering in the bosom of the moon is often repeated... It will soon be morning in K. Maraş.”
These lines are the impressions of the author coming back many years after leaving the city. However, the author's first impressions of the city go back to his childhood years. Moreover, memories, impressions and dreams of childhood are much more burning and clear. First impressions of the city are impressions of the street. The streets of Maraş of childhood are like something out of an imaginary fairy tale.
“When the boy first went out, he was walking in space, was that called the street? I would walk, I would walk, wouldn't it end? Infinity; was this it? Was it the land of the moon in front of our door? Were these tiny stones also stars? Were we in heaven or was heaven far away? Would our eyes be able to withstand this much light? Were those ants also the first workers I saw? Did these comings and goings of ants symbolize virtuous, righteous, progressive, honest and patriotic people?”
Later, these childhood dreams take on flesh and bones, and they begin to grow with the child under the careful labor of the mother and father. He now goes to the city's bazaars and mosques with his father. “My father used to take me holding my hand on holy nights and feast nights; even though everyone greeted each other with peace, a heavy, bitter sadness coming from the deep would still bleed on their faces; when we arrived we would take off our shoes (if it had been a feast, mine would have been new), we would go in and take our place in the lines; it was a participation to this family; to a movement; the mosque would lengthen, widen, deepen; we; eternal father, eternal uncle, eternal grandfather, eternal brother, would join each other; the sounds of birds, the scent of flowers, and never-before-seen rainbows would fill everywhere; we would take wings; we would see the sun even at night, and it also wanted to be among us; was it a miracle, was it not setting at all, or was it rising rapidly, I would see a real sun; I remember very well saying to my father once in a while, 'Oh, the sun!' ‘Yeah, huh; the sun' he would say; from time to time the ceiling would open, we would fly in the sky; we would become humans/birds, glide over the Mediterranean, and we would land in Africa with those salty waters touching our wings!”
For some reason, Kahramanmaraş is associated with Africa and especially Algeria. Perhaps the Algerian stories he heard from his mother in his childhood are of great importance in this. N. Pakdil takes a break from school for a while after primary school and starts secondary school a little late.
During his break from school, he goes to his father's shop in the Grand Bazaar. Especially on the days when his father does not leave the house, he opens the shop himself. But, on his way to open the shop, he feels an abstract chain on his foot. Before opening the shop, he has to untie the invisible chains on his feet from his mind.
Here is the dream of the boy working in his father's shop in Maraş Grand Bazaar: “Sometimes, with a sudden enthusiasm, would I soar from the Grand Bazaar to the sky, my mother on one wing, my father on the other, and fly? Then, from the skirts of Ahırdağ, would I enter the city while marches were being played at the head of a fairy tale army? Would all Maraş stand and greet me?”
The Coppersmiths' Bazaar, which is right next to the Grand Bazaar, is the hammer that rattles: “There are hammers that make sparks in the Coppersmiths' Bazaar in Maraş, Sir; while it is about to go out, every bell suddenly becomes a 'Gang' and slides into the Grand Bazaar!”
The streets of K.Maraş take on a different meaning in Nuri Pakdil's Notes. Perhaps this is the true meaning of these streets and avenues. For example, “If I cross the Boğazkesen Street, would there be a bellowing calf all around me? Uzunoluk street; would it turn into lambs with their rattles on their necks going up and down without stopping?”
According to Pakdil, Maraş's unique northeaster, which fills the entire city with dust, is a harbinger of fear: “Especially in winter, would that terrible wind of Maraş flutter on the roofs as if it was a harbinger of fear?” The northeaster has a different meaning for the people of Maraş, especially in summer. Because the summer months are the season for making tarhana and tarhana only dries in the windy weather. Garbi wind, on the other hand, softens, calms and moisturizes everything. The Garbi wind is not at all suitable for the drying of the tarhanas laid on the roofs of the houses. “A new undisturbed dark blue is added to the shirts of the workers, from the geraniums, violets, partridges, and tarhana dried on the roofs of Marash houses.”
On hot summer days, a glass of 'licorice sherbet' cools people down. On the streets of K.Maraş, have you ever seen a man shouting 'sherbet' with sherbet churns on their backs, rows of glasses in front of them and a bucket of water to wash the glasses? Stop and drink a glass of ice-cold licorice sherbet. At the first toss, it will give your head a strange taste. Shortly after drinking the sherbet, you feel that it leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth: “You can smell the light, magical, healthy smell of licorice on earth. With strong muscles, you say 'Hello' to a person.”
The people of Maraş do not stay in the city much when summer comes. Those who have a village origin go to their village, and those who have a vineyard or a garden at the foot of Ahır Mountain go to their vineyard houses for a few months. This is more common in the author's childhood. Going to a vineyard house takes an important place in An Author's Notes. “Would we pluck grapes from the vines as soon as we arrived? Would there be tiny vines in every vineyard? Would we sit under them and rest? Would the baskets then be filled with grapes and would the baskets be covered with vine leaves? Would the cheese bread and grapes we ate in those little vineyards be so sweet? Would nature collect the flavor of grapes, gather them, even distill them, and present them to us with the grapes we ate that day?”
At the end of the nineties, the author makes a journey again to the city where he spent his childhood. He describes this journey in his book called The Castle of Pen. He may have gone once in a while, but this departure is again a journey back to his childhood. He cares so much about this journey that he does not go directly to the city. He departs from Ankara, and stays overnight in Kırşehir, Nevşehir and Kayseri. Then Pınarbaşı and Göksun. We think that he will pass from Göksun to Maraş immediately, but we would be wrong. The author intends to make a slow but extensive journey to the city. That's why he wanders around the city. While wandering around the city, his mind is always on K.Maraş and his childhood.
“Göksun: While drinking tea in the coffe house: 3-4 days of my childhood came here and was written next to the tea glass on the table(!): My aunts were here because of her husband's duty in those years and she was uncomfortable. I came to see her. I read my sojourn until I finished my tea, though not in all its details, but quite in its entirety. While I was drinking my tea, I was visiting and seeing that house, the streets we walked, the places we visited.”
After Göksun, he turns east and passes through Afşin, Elbistan, to Malatya. The next stop after Malatya is G. Antep. He spends the night at G. Antep. K. Maraş is so close that it is as if the smell of the city is coming. “In the hotel, I opened the window of the room: Even though it becomes Antep, you can smell the smell of Maraş, eighty-seven kilometers away: pıt pıt pıt: I hear my heartbeats: This smell, this voice is calling me to an action: Ah! It was nothing new; it turns out that this was the act I had named when I was in middle school, and that I kept inside me like a good news: The act of writing.”
The next morning, he sets off for Maraş. Now let's listen to what's next from the author. Because now the journey will reach its destination; the purpose will be achieved. The childhood, mother, father, in short, everything about K. Maraş passes before the eyes of the author. “It was nine thirty; right, towards Maraş. In Maraş; at ten thirty.
Towards the place where my father is: three to four inches apart: twenty minutes: Sır, The Ancient Word with Armor: with a very dynamic attachment: without leaving my mother in Merkezefendi out of my sight: all the Believers pass through the screen one by one: as if they re-internalize the new culture of resistance: believing firmly in the necessity of connecting the earthly veins one by one to myself from these stances leaning on metaphysics and deploying that metaphysical depth and stability in the form of very strong bases on earth: then, stopping by our others one by one: I came out through the tall trees. Wandering in Maraş: the wheels do not turn, but the storm takes to the hurricanes: however, it is a sunny, calm weather. And a stone-like, heavy, simple, revolutionary silence in the air. Honestly, our neighborhood, our sold-out house, and countless other places, anyway, I couldn't help but see the building where I went to secondary school and high school – it was the same building: the environment was meadow, grass, empty, wooded; now, it's cement all over the place. We left Marash at noon, at twelve forty-five.”
We rediscover cities in Nuri Pakdil's books. In cities, where these notes, which we can call a guide to seizing cities and people, take us by the hand and leave us in the middle, we do not feel alienated at all. We read the city in the middle of which we were left, line by line, and solve its secrets one by one. Here, the city stands naked before us, free from all its lies, additions, subtractions and divisions.