Growing up to the City

The film starts from far away, from the birds whirling on the sky, from the minaret leaning against the sky. These have been left. The rest: just like colored postcards coming to life in the imagination.

The story is simple: the Greeks who had lived for three thousand years in Istanbul now have to go. There they had been romioi while in Athens they have become Turks, just like Transylvanian Hungarians who are mocked bozgors there and rommagyars here. They speak, live and cook differently: this is what distinguishes them and this is what preserves them. Fanis who had left as a child returns as an adult to the funerals of his grandfather of whom he had received everything and who was unable to leave Constantinople until his death. He is tempted one last time to stay, but then he has to admit that his grandfather’s grocery has finished and his childhood love was married by their common Turkish friend.

The most beautiful feature of this film is that everyone raises above himself and above his own pains and losses. That the Turkish medical officer and the Greek astronomer are able to meet and to speak to each other without hatred in the Turkish bath “where the souls open up like shellfishes in the vapor”. That they do not attempt to belie and to resolve the pain that is insoluble, but they are able to feel compassion with each other’s pain. That the Greek can let his love and his childhood’s Constantinople go. And this is how also the film raises above the sensual level of the Eastern spices and the πολίτικη κουζίνα, the kitchen of the City.

Bir tutam baharatla gittin Çarşı içinde bir gölge Ve yollarıma tuz serdin Seni bulayım gizlilerde Baharat, tarçın ve buse Tavanarasında saklı tarife Ay ışığı ve Boğaziçi yalnız O fener bizim çocukluk aşkımız Beni bıraktığın o gece Seni aradım gizlilerde Bir tutam baharata kandım Ben acıyı tattım seninle Baharat, tarçın ve buse Tavanarasında saklı tarife Ay ışığı ve Boğaziçi yalnız O fener bizim çocukluk aşkımız Bir tutam baharatla gittin Çarşı içinde bir gölge

You left with a handful of spice A shadow in the market place And you threw salt on my path To find you secretly Spice, cinnamon and kiss The recipe is hidden in the attic The moonlight and the Bosporus are alone The lantern is our childhood love The night when you left me I looked for you secretly I was persuaded by a handful of spice I tasted bitter pain with you. Spice, cinnamon and kiss The recipe is hidden in the attic The moonlight and the Bosporus are alone The lantern is our childhood love You left with a handful of spice A shadow in the market place

This is the theme music of the film, but the song is not sung in it, only on the soundtrack CD. Its text was written in Greek by Tasos Boulmetis who directed the film on the basis of autobiographic elements, and sung in Turkish by Dilek Koç. I wrote this on 4 June 2010, the 90th anniversary of the treaty of peace which has broken up my homeland Hungary and has turned its ethnic groups against each other.