THE COMPASS

 THE COMPASS 

When I read your prompt “Take me to the Alley” and the story behind it, I remembered a place where my father used to frequent to buy toys for me when I was a little girl. My father was a painter, with almost zero interest in chasing big money. He never had a regular income. But whenever he earned a considerable amount, he would rush to an ancient bazaar near Topkapı Palace. He used to come home each time with a surprise pack inside his pocket or his James Bond suitcase! These was sometimes a rooster-shaped alarm clock, sometimes a cute doll, a magic cube or a microscope! These toys and little gadgets fueled my imagination and built a kind of powerhouse of inspiration inside me which still keeps running, even in these very hard days I’m having in Turkey as an independent musician. 

So, to start, I decided to find an item Daddy bought from that bazaar. Under my bed, inside a heart-shaped box, I found it. This was a compass. Bingo! He had bought that because I was terribly interested in geography (among other fields of science). But to be honest, for all these years I didn’t know where to use this compass exactly. Then I said “okay, maybe now is the time.Why not let this compass show me the way to my past?I imagined telling the compass to take me to that bazaar. 

So, with a videographer friend of mine, IsaKurt, we got on a boat in the early hours of the morning, passed the Bosphorus, and went there. This bazaar is called Tahtakale. It is a very ancient bazaar with roots going back hundreds of years. It emerged just inside the walls of Constantinople. In Byzantine times, they used to tie horses here. Then, in Ottoman times, the city spilled out of these walls, and this area became a bustling shopping center—the heart of trade across the Empire. There was never any order inside, with dungeon-like khans where blacksmiths and goldsmiths would work with sweat dripping from their foreheads. When I was a kid, the shops sold every type of product imaginable. The toys, especially, were the best quality you could find in Turkey. In other words, you can imagine Tahtakale as the first Google Shopping browser here. You could spell any random three letters in sequence, ask where you could find it, and you would find it in this hectic search engine. 

With Isa, we dived into this busy and complex playground through the gates of the Spice Bazaar. It was amazing to be there after 30 years. I tried to look at the stalls from my father’s eyes. Yes, it was still messy and hectic and rich in variety, but unfortunately, much poorer in quality after being hit by the harsh post-pandemic economic crisis. 

With Isa, I bought toys, as much as we could. We bought some crying plastic chickens, plastic bells, little kettle drums, harmonicas, jigsaw puzzles, magic cubes... I used the money a student of mine gave me for an hourly vocal lesson. Isa also helped me when I was out of my limit Then, we sat on an ancient stone bench and asked this question: “But what will we do with these toys?” Yes, the compass showed me the way back to the source of my childhood inspirations, which built a big powerhouse inside my heart. So why not give these toys to some other kids so they can use them as some kind of arsenal for their future dreams? But, well, these were really humble things made of pure plastic. Yeah, they were colorful, but who would be inspired the most? 

Then we called some friends to get advice on where we could find children who might be inspired by these little toys. Some poor kids maybe… But it was a delicate issue. Our purpose was never to show off by giving poor kids toys and telling a story about how good-hearted we were. No, never. We just wanted some kids to feel just like I did when I was a kid. That was all. 

Our friends advised us to go to Balat, an old district along the Golden Horn, famous for its antique shops, cafes, its Greek and Armenian community, but also notorious for its Gypsy ghettos. It was a bit dangerous to enter there without any help, even in the middle of the day. But Isa and I were ready to communicate no matter what happens. So we entered the heart of the Gypsy ghetto. 

There were teenagers and elderly people sitting around the corners like wardens, asking questions, either directly or mixing them with their sense of humor. We were like two aliens there. Maybe some tourists or some fame-seeking digital content creators. So talked with the people and told them my story and our real motivation to come there. 

To our big surprise, it was all okay. The kids were so friendly. They really appreciated these little toys and shared them among themselves. There were no troublemakers contrary to common belief. They were in their own neighborhood—friendly, talkative, energetic, caring, and curious. We just lingered there and talked with them about their future dreams and fears.

I still have the compass with me. Now I realize its importance much better. Also inspired by your prompt, now I ask the compass another question: "What’s next?" 

Maybe next time we can drop by there and bring the kids more stuff. Not to help, but to inspire them. Maybe we can inspire them to read, or draw, or design, or film their real-life stories. But whatever it is, I feel that it must be them who do it, not us. 

We, as artists, can show the way, like that compass Daddy gave me, to keep going in the right direction and not be bothered too much by bad influences. Maybe a magic cube teaches the patience needed for solving major life problems. Who knows? And maybe one day, in Balat, we can see a new graffiti ending with these words: "Trust yourself."

Some final notes on how we produced the film

We did a real gerilla shooting with a single handy cam, purely following our intuition instead of any storyboard. After coming back home I penned a script based on our experience and recorded a voice over. And asked Onur Yeniçeri to play the guitars on the chords ofa song of mine “Aşk Kumbarası” (Love Bank) which I thought was a perfect match for the project. And we paid extra attention not to be exploitative when reflecting the lives of the children in the ghetto. We muted the audio of their talk and contacted and filmed them under the surveillance of their relatives and other elderly people from their quarter, never entering inside any house or framing details oftheir private lives.

Stock pictures of the old bazaar were taken from https://www.fikriyat.com/

Other archive photos and footage belong to the artists.

Generative AI was used just to fit the frame size of the following images: 

My photo with my father (the left and right margins) and the cover art (the upper part of the image)

Sanat Deliorman, Istanbul, June 2024