These days what
I’m feeling isn’t pride, but sadness. Or perhaps it is melancholy. WorldPride was celebrated in Toronto
this year, but I’m not there. I’m in Yerevan where the word “pride” doesn’t
have the same meaning. No
gay pride parade and not even a march — nothing that is even close to
resembling what was happening in Toronto last week and what happened in
Istanbul on Sunday.
It reminded me of the origins of Pride, of what was fought for and what was gained. And it reminded me of how far we still have to go. If you only saw the faces of the people in that march in Istanbul, the plethora of signs and rainbow flags — I can’t remember the last time I saw so many rainbow flags at a Pride parade! I can’t believe Istanbul has been celebrating Pride for 22 years (that’s what I was told, though Wikipedia tells me the first Istanbul Pride was celebrated in 2003). That fact alone is amazing; however, the fact that it is still a struggle, that people still feel the need to shout and chant and hold signs and flags is the other amazing thing. Because Pride celebrated in other cities (at least the ones I’ve been to) are more akin to festivities with feathers and men in tight, short shorts dancing on floats. Music blaring from loudspeakers. Big banks and corporations and political parties with their own floats and representatives. It has almost become fashionable to be gay and “gay-friendly,” to be in the Pride parade, to kiss someone of the same sex on that day even though you’re straight.
And not
to say there was none of that in Istanbul: though I didn’t see any political
parties or big corporations, I did see some feathers and some men with bare
chests; others in outlandish clothing (some in drag and some who were trans*). But
no floats. Just thousands and thousands of people of all stripes marching,
holding signs in Armenian and Turkish (probably in Kurdish too) and so many
rainbow flags. A couple of big banners and a couple of people with bicycles. Some
dogs. Only a handful of children. And the music that stayed with me the most
was the beat of the drums. Men and woman playing various types of drums at
different points in the march. This is the sound of a struggle, and this is how
you know that what we saw, what we were swept up in (my gay Armenian friends
and I) was a march for human rights.
It was powerful
and intense, and probably too overwhelming because my gf and I decided to sit
part of it out. To sit on the second floor of one of the döner restaurants along Istiklal and watch the march
from above and wait for our friends to join us. To me, the ebb and flow of
people (so many people!) was like the waves of the Bosphorous, which was only a
few minutes away from us. It is this energy that gives Istanbul life — not only
the river, but the people in the city. The people that never stop.
So why melancholy?
Before my trip, I began reading Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City. Pamuk for me, as for so many
others around the world, is the eyes through which I see Istanbul. Though I
have yet to finish the book, what has struck me most is his use of the word
“melancholy” to describe the city. He writes:
“We might call
this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its
Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal rather
than private. Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the
condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter’s
day […] But the view outside can bring its own hüzün. It is time to come to a better understanding of this
feeling that the city of Istanbul carries as its fate." (p. 89)
Pamuk mentions the affinity between hüzün and “another form of melancholy,
described by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques.”
He writes:
“Tristesse is not a pain that affects a
solitary individual; hüzün and tristesse both suggest a communal
feeling, an atmosphere and a culture shared by millions. But the words and feelings
they describe are not identical […] The difference lies in the fact that in
Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No
matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete
monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as
the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner […] inflict
heartache on all who live among them." (p. 101)
I don’t know if what I felt in Istanbul was hüzün, but it felt very much like what Pamuk describes. However,
for me, the underlying tristesse, the
communal feeling, comes from being an Armenian in Turkey. The “glorious past civilization"
Pamuk refers to, as all Armenians know, includes the Armenians (and not only)
who were deported and massacred and whose existence on these lands continues to
be denied today. But what I felt, I think, was not only the consciousness of
being Armenian in Turkey, but also an awareness of the country’s present-day
policies and its ongoing human rights struggles. Turkey is a complex country —
almost everyone will tell you that — and it cannot be defined by one four-day
visit to Istanbul. But I can’t imagine anyone going to Istanbul and not experiencing
something of this complexity and feeling this intense, indescribable emotion.
And yet there’s more. I brought with me to Istanbul the malaise (if it can
be called that) that I was feeling in Yerevan. The experience of returning to
Yerevan after a year abroad and still not quite fitting back in. A feeling of
disconnect, of discordance that after several months does not seem to want to
go away. Furthermore, I don’t doubt that there is a communal melancholy, a sort
of hüzün, also in Yerevan. So what I
was feeling on the micro level was magnified at a macro level (in Yerevan) and taken
to Istanbul (you might say to a meta level), resulting in a very overwhelming
feeling that I am still processing a week later. Needless to say, Istanbul was
a shock to my system.
In itself it is a city of contrasts, of gay pride yet police crackdown, of
Twitter and YouTube bans yet women with tattoos and carefree youth drinking
beer on the street, of boutique shops and modern cafés in “hipster" Cihangir and the
call to prayer from mosques heard throughout the city several times a day. I
was a fool to have thought Yerevan (Armenia, or even the South Caucasus) was at
the crossroads of East and West. There is no doubt that it is Istanbul that is
between Europe and Asia (whereas the South Caucasus feels more like it is
between the West and Russia).
However, what I loved most about my trip was being able to spend it with
friends, and the opportunity that Istanbul, with its clash of cultures, gave me
— to visit Arzu, a friend from Baku and one of the nicest people you’ll ever
meet; to meet a Turkish friend of Mika’s who recalled fondly his five-day visit
to Yerevan over a year ago and who is convinced Mount Ararat will one day be
returned to the Armenians; and to spend such a wonderful time exploring the
city with an old Armenian-American friend who spent some time living in
Yerevan. Because that is truly the beauty of Istanbul: the clash of cultures is
also what allows us Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Turks, and more to meet and talk
and create and listen. Istanbul, having its own conflicts to resolve, in my
opinion, can never be peaceful, but it can allow you to connect to others, to
find common ground, or at the very least look out toward the Bosphorous and be
comforted by the hüzün inside all of us.
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