Things left behind

Ibrahimpasa is filled with  abandoned spaces that were once homes, places for animals, storage and work spaces.  Some of them are completely empty and many others still contain the belongings of the people who once lived there. I don’t know the specifics of how or why the inhabitants left, where they went to or why they left their things behind, but it seemed very curious to me that the town was filled with  these time capsules of people’s lives.

Willemijn told us about an abandoned cave that belonged to an older couple she knew.  The husband had died 7 years ago and “they took the wife away”.  Those are the words Willemijn used to explain what happened to the woman.  I was not completely sure what that meant although it did bring a lot of disturbing images to mind.  In any case, Ailie and I visited the house the following day to explore further.   

As you can imagine, it was strange to walk through the relics of someone's life and even stranger to think that these things had been laying around for 7 years.  I tried to imagine how all these baskets, ropes and containers had been used and this was especially difficult since I don't know all that much about daily rural Turkish life.  In any case, it seemed sad to see these object that had been meaningful laying around in disarray. 

Walking through the house and looking at all these object left behind reminded me of when I sorted through my mother's belongings after she passed away.  These objects that she loved, that gave structure and meaning to her life were suddenly meaningless.  It was very hard for me to throw anything out and I took a lot of her things home with me in an effort to stay close to her, I suppose.  Although the result of this was that I ended up with a lot of things I didn't need that took up  a lot of space in my apartment.  

“The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.”  
Eugene Ionesco