A shaman in the basement

Turkish airport security staff are men of brute force. I cannot leave Istanbul’s Sabina Gökçen Airport without something going wrong with my hand luggage. It is one thing that all the batteries of my wireless guides were confiscated (I still have to research carefully on the dark web about what spectacular thing I can do with them when they are on my person, once they remove them from my carry-on). But the protective glass of my Canon lens also broke somehow as I passed through the security check. Two large cracks straight across it. No big deal, after all, that’s why I bought the protective glass, so it would break instead of the lens. But it is disturbing, because the light is interrupted in it in the most unexpected situations and ruins the photo. For a month I will visit one of the least known and most exciting regions in the world, and I must play Russian roulette with every click? It would be good to at least unscrew the broken glass so that does not happen, but the screw mount is stuck to the lens. I try with all the photographers of the group, and then with Turkish and Kurdish power artists, but at this point they all return their gold medals. The protective glass stands firmly in place over the lens.

The first major city of our tour is Diyarbakır. Upon arrival, I show the broken glass to the hotel reception. They give me an address: Doğuş Elektronik. Today it is closed, so I will try it tomorrow. The next day, when the group leaves on free time, I am by chance standing right in front of a Canon store. I go in and show them the camera. They cannot unscrew the protective glass either, but they give a business card: it is Doğuş Elektronik, again. It’s a ten minute walk away, after so many recommendations I have to try it.

On the other side of the highway running along the basalt city wall, there are large electronics stores and department stores. 18, 20, 22, 24. It should be here, but I don’t see Doğuş Elektronik among the huge shining billboards. I turn the corner. On the dark ground floor of a run-down department store, an old tailor is having tea with two clients. “Don’t you know where Doğuş Elektronik is?” “Down there”, they point to the spiral staircase leading to the basement, which could well bear the motto of Dante.

At the bottom of the spiral staircase, all my illusions are definitely shattered. In the dark basement, one single small workshop is lit. Behind a table covered with creative chaos, under the light of an operating lamp, a jovial figure sits welding something. He glances up at my arrival. “Doğuş Elektronik?” I ask with the secret hope of being wrong. “That’s me”, he declares, with the confidence of the burning bush.

“Can you change this?” I ask, showing the protective glass of the lens. He also tries to unscrew it, but he can’t beat the Olympic power team. “If I force it, the thread will be ruined, and we cannot put a new one on it. I must saw it off.” He continues examining the camera. “The rubber is missing from around the viewfinder.” He rolls down the lens. “The SLR is dirty. It should be cleaned.” I just had the entire camera cleaned in Budapest for two hundred euros, but I let it be. “It is altogether… two hundred and eighty and seventy, that is, three hundred and fifty lira.” Twenty euro. “Can you do it quickly?” I ask, thinking of the golden afternoon sunlight seductively flooding the old town. For this job, in Budapest I should leave the camera for a week, and in Berlin for a whole month. “Sure,” he smiles encouragingly. “You are our guest, I must help you.”

And now begins a sumptuous performance, a concert of a great violinist in the back room of a day and night shop. Aziz attacks the edge of the glass with a fine-cutting tool, then switches to a freehand saw blade, and finally he flips out the circle section with a microchisel.

 

He then puts on white gloves and provides wellness treatment to the lens. He attacks it with a toothbrush and cleaning liquid, proudly showing the removed dirt on the cotton. Then he takes a brand new protective glass from the cabinet, and rolls it over the lens.

Meanwhile, more and more desperate users descend with their dying devices. Aziz has a kind word for all of them. He immediately takes care of the faster matters, and he asks the more complicated ones to sit down and wait a bit, offering them tea. In the meantime, I look around. A photograph pinned to the mirror of the entrance wall: Aziz, still with a black beard, sitting at the same table (I even think of recognizing some spare parts), with a nice good friend behind him, and a Turkish lute lying on the table. It might be the witness of a beautiful phase of life. Later I see his present self on the wallpaper of his laptop, with his four beautiful little boys in his lap.

“Madjaristan?” he inquires. He hesitates for a while, whether it is the neighbor of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, but then he switches to the right track. “It was part of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman the Great conquered it. At that time it was still a Muslim country. You see, I also love history.”

The phone is constantly ringing, from IT professionals on the verge of suicide to the mechanics of service centers of Anatolia’s big cities who have reached their limits. Aziz suggests a solution for everything, while toothbrushing the Canon, as if by relaxing. “Once we took it apart, don’t you want a full camera cleaning? One hundred and fifty lira.” The final account is five hundred lira, thirty euros, including everything what the Budapest service did not do for two hundred.

“In the meantime, have a look at the commentaries of Doğuş Elektronik on the net”, he suggests. I look at them.

“A careful, sensitive and honest master. You can trust him with complete confidence...”

“A reliable and impeccable workshop. The only master who does his job properly in and around Diyarbakır…”

“The only place you can trust your camera to.”

“Thank you, Master.”

At the end of the repair, Aziz draws up a computerized service file, with type and identification numbers, and a precise description of the repair. I have to type my name. I feel like I left my mark on the earth. Mesopotamia is the land of millennial monuments. Doğuş Elektronik’s computer records will always remember that I existed.

Next time I have any problems with the camera, I buy a ticket to Diyarbakır.