The Street of the Cauldron Makers

Elif Shafak at the top of Kazanci Yokushu

I found on the web a material related to a radio documentary that was exploring the dialectics of tradition and modernity. The documentary was dedicated to a country situated, historically, geographically, politically, at a crossroads between Asia and Europe, Islam and secular values, East and West: Turkey.

The documentary producers invited Elif Shafak, whose books are straddling, like Turkey, East and West, Islamic and secular universes. Elif Shafak splits her time between Istanbul and Tucson, Arizona (where she is teaching Near Eastern Studies at the University), some of her books are written in Turkish, some others in English.

Says Elif Shafak, the secularized, western orientation engineered by the country's modern founder, Kemal Ataturk, taught Turks always to look forward, never back, but this one-way gaze came at a cost: the loss of a national memory, of both the beauties and the atrocities of the past.

She is right, modernization comes everywhere at a cost, the loss of memory.

A couple of days ago I was in downtown Bucharest, at the University. The construction of a huge underground parking has been started there, so the four statues erected in front of the University are no more in their place. Four statues, four founding fathers of modern Romania: Ion Heliade Radulescu, Michael the Brave, Gheorghe Lazar, Spiru Haret. The statues should come back to their place after the works are finished, in several years.

After the statues were displaced, the remnants of St. Sava came back to life: the monastery that had hosted the first school where teaching was done in Romanian language. The four statues, symbols of the beginning of modern Romania, were covering more ancient symbols.

St. Sava Remnants, in Front of Bucharest University
(http://www.telenews.ro/articol/vestigiile-descoperite-la-universitate-apartin-academiei-sfantul-sava-2524.html)

And that happened throughout the whole history of Bucharest. Each new epoch built over the old ones.

Is there a spirit of the place, traveling from epoch to epoch, alive while well hidden, talking only to those who know how to listen? A spirit of the place, a keeper of our collective memory, of the beauties and atrocities of the past?

A documentary movie that I watched a couple of years ago comes to my mind: Invisible City, made in Singapore in 2007. It tackles the same question. Today's Singapore looks like it was brought from another planet right now, this very morning, with the skyline, the businesses, the busy people. No traces, even of its most recent past. A city without history. The conclusion of the movie is pessimistic: the memory of the past disappears while the last survivors are fading. Marks cannot be but ephemeral.

The Invisible City Hidden in Singapore

Well, Elif Shafak believes the spirit of the place resists history. New generations come with new ideas, new styles, new buildings, while their basic ways do not change. To discover the spirit of the place, one should listen to the voices of a street, a single street.

Sea Black Pizzeria on Kazanci Yokushu - the owner is also a passionate domino player

And Elif Shafak took a single street in Istanbul, from top to bottom, Kazanci Yokushu, the Street of the Cauldron Makers: a lane tucked below Taksim Meydan and the İstiklâl Caddesi. And she discovered many layers of history, listening to the voices of the street: the barber, the butcher, the tailor, the grocer, the domino players.

Mehmet, the liberal grocer

Is that possible? There is a splendid sentence at the end of the material I found on the web: according to Proust, the smell of a biscuit dipped in tea can liberate memories long sequestered or suppressed.


(Elif Shafak)