Adapted, with some additions, from Erkan Canan’s article in Radikal Kitap 24.06.2005
The author of this book of short stories, ‘Niko’s Kemence’, is Omer Asan, who has already published two books: a biography of Hasan Izzetin Dinamo, a well-known Turkish author; and ’Pontus Culture’, which is the result of his research into the sociological and folkloric features of this Black Sea region. Pontus was the name for the region when Greeks and Turks lived there together. Omer Asan was prosecuted for political reasons by the Turkish authorities after the second edition of this book and the book was banned for about two years. Many of the stories in his new book ‘Niko’s Kemence’ are essentially about Black Sea/Pontus culture.
In 1923, the Turkish and Greek governments agreed to a population exchange between Orthodox Greeks living in Turkey (Pontus Greeks) and Muslim Turks living in Greece. Their intention was to create coherent nation states after the ravages of the war between Greece and Turkey. There was no consultation with the people and those who had to migrate were given no choice. Some stories in the book show the profound effects of this political decision on all the ordinary people involved.
The characters in these stories are the typically cheerful Black Sea people. However under their surface cheerfulness, we can see communities that have been shaped by the traumatic exchange of populations.
The most painful aspect of this forced relocation is the refusal by the authorities, in the interests of creating a national homogeneity, to recognise those aspects of the emigrant community’s identity that came from their previous culture; in the case of the Black Sea migrants, it was the Greek authorities’ lack of recognition of what the migrants had brought with them from Turkey. In spite of this, the Black Sea migrants have managed to keep their former culture alive. The story that gives its name to the book ‘Niko’s Kemence’ centres on the emotions involved in this. The hero of the story, a Greek called Niko, who was born and brought up in Trabzon, was resettled in Salonica. In this new home, bringing with it new suffering, we witness Niko’s longing for Trebizond and Of. Although it was a whole community that was resettled, in the character of Niko we find an individual suffering. The migration was traumatic for him because the decision was made against his wishes; it was decided by outsiders and was forced on him. So we see that Niko was just a tragic victim of politics.
For Greeks like Niko living on the Black Sea, relocation was not tolerable. In fact, in the early days, all those like him who had to migrate wanted to believe that this was not a long-term resettlement; as if it was going to be very short and they were going to return to the region where they were born, where they belonged and which they loved. Niko expresses this common bewilderment “‘When that damn migration time arrived, we didn’t take anything with us. We left everything just as it was. We wouldn’t have known: we thought we were only going on a short journey. When we left our houses, we left glasses and bowls on the table. If anyone dropped in, they could eat and drink as they wished, and keep the hearth warm, so that our house would continue to provide a welcome.’ (page 14) But to Niko and to the others like him, however much they pined, cold hard-headed politics made no concessions.
At the time of the migration, the Greeks took nothing with them because they believed optimistically that they were going to return. To Niko, the only thing that is left from his life in Trabzon is his kemence. In his present emptiness, the only thing that brings comfort in his loneliness is the kemence, the symbol of his life before the migration. The kemence brings back clear memories: the icy cold water of the high pastures of Trabzon, the stream of the Virgin Mary, the horon dance, the folk songs, in short memories that evoke all the images of his life in the past.
The story called ‘Gracia’s Alavita’, seems to be about human evolution. However, the theme of the story, though describing evolution, centres on exposing the conflicts in modern life for modern human beings. The author compares present-day human beings, who have millions of years of evolution behind them, with the first human beings. People who are isolated from their culture as a result of political decisions, he likens to primitive man. According to him, an individual whose language is forbidden, whose culture is not acknowledged, is like a primitive man deprived of his senses, his perceptions, and his intelligence, facing all the dangers of nature. In writing about one individual, the author is writing about any individual in this position.
The author is concerned with individuals and groups whose languages are not acknowledged; in this particular story, he focuses on the sense of loss of Greek experience. Here, language encapsulates the latest phase of evolution for modern man. Whoever is forbidden to use their mother-tongue and who is prevented from living in their own culture finds themselves living under the rule of others. Their background is the same as that of those first human beings who had no developed language or history.
The story called ‘Hey Gidi!’ is also based in the Black Sea region. Unlike ‘Niko’s Kemence’ which takes place after the migration, the story is set during the course of the migration. The story centres on the closeness between Heva and Yorgia, and so on the closeness of Muslim and Christian. On reading the story, we experience the richness of the Black Sea before the migration, in contrast to the depopulation we see in the present day, after the emigration of the Greek population. Here is summed up the solidarity and closeness at the heart of the community, in spite of the actions of Greek and Turkish gangs.
The most interesting point made in the story is that, from the Turkish point of view, although the exchange targeted the Greeks, in the long run it also somehow infected the Turks. In reality they were bereft; Heva and Yorgia represent two communities that had a warm relationship but which were victims of political ideology. The exchange did not only separate two very good friends, Heva and Yorgia, but also painfully shaped Heva’s life for ever after. We hear in Heva’s own words, sixty years after the exchange, what happened to the village of Zisino. Sixty years went by after the exchange, but the promise between Yorgia and Heva trapped Heva in the past, on that day when her dearest friend was made to move away from the village with her family. Both of them went up to the high pastures, the ‘yayla’, for the first time and on this first time they promised each other that they would never go there separately. Forever after, the tenacity Heva showed in keeping her promise did not speak only for her herself; the promise made to Greeks who were separated from Turkish neighbours was made on behalf of all the villagers who were deprived of the enrichment of another culture. This tenacity, at the same time, is a stance against a political rule that divides, excludes and does not acknowledge.
‘Silent Resistance’, the story of Sergeant Ilyas, is about a man who is trying to pick up the thread of his past. He returned to live in a village called Erenkoy, where he had spent most of his former life, but which was deserted because of the economic migration of the inhabitants. One important reason for his wish to return to this deserted place was that it was there that his mother and wife were buried. He wanted to die here, to be buried beside his mother and his wife; he wanted his life to be ended in the same soil where it started. Sergeant Ilyas was coming back from Istanbul, where he had migrated with his children. He called Istanbul the ‘Dark City’, because he was not born there, he did not spend most of his life there and most of its history was unknown to him, so that he could not identify with it. By returning to the village, he was going to rebuild the relationship between him and his past, a relationship that had been cut off by the general migration. He would return even though the village had been abandoned and in this way the darkness and lostness of this unfortunate place would be overcome.
In this story, Omer Asan draws our attention to the important relationship which exists between nature and human beings. We can say that in ‘Silent Resistance’ this strong relationship exists. The story is like a lyric folk poem in praise of nature. The migration, for Sergeant Ilyas is an instance of ingratitude, of disloyalty shown towards the soil of one’s home. For him, migration is the greatest treason you could commit to your mother earth that feeds you. The abundance of the soil cannot be felt strongly except by those who live on it. Because of this, his anger against people who are alienated from nature is understandable. He is a man who lives close to nature.
In Omer Asan’s ‘Niko’s Kemence’, not all of the 13 stories are set in the Black Sea region. Apart from the stories introduced above, there are also the following: stories about modern life and individuals (‘Terrorist’ and ‘Failed. Failed. Failed.’); a story called ‘The year 2050’ which is science fiction and is based on a vision of Utopia; ‘Can you give us your shirt?’; ‘See, Idris, See!’; and ‘A sense of story’, which is about a writer who is himself searching for a topic for a short story.