Meczup
It was obvious that this little boy was operating within the separate norms of a different world, like eccentric Düldane near the Fatih Mosque or Dobri, the 100 year-old living saint of Sofia.
I was in another world reading, of all eccentric things, Gilles Deleuze in a discussion on nomadology and the non-state when suddenly I heard a piercingly enthusiastic and friendly small boy's voice:
'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus go to Küçük Gümüşhane!!??
'No, but if you go to Antepliler Mahallesi you can walk there in a few minutes'
'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus pass by Wolf Village!!!???'
'Yes...'
The small take-charge boy, with his smooth tan olive skin, a messy homemade haircut and akward shoes, boarded with his father, or another male relative, behind him. The man had, strangely, allowed this boy to handle the entire procedure, almost as if he did not speak Turkish or had a speaking impairment, or was simply in awe and deferential. The boy stepped on to the bus and reaching over the driver's glass shield, tried to hand coins to him, ignoring years of electronic ticketing and many thousands of lira in technology. It has been several turns of several seasons since anyone has accepted cash on an Istanbul bus.
This leader in miniature, with his commanding yet childlike voice and demeanor, would have seemed like an actor of some kind, were it not for the sun-wearied and worn quality of hard-living Anatolian seasonal workers written all over the body, clothes and face of both him and his older companion. Perhaps in his Southeastern village, or his home in Syria, he was indeed a miniature thespian, a small heart capable of calling out to his community in an orange grove, or a refugee camp. His projection and enthusiasm had its origin somewhere else, certainly not urban Istanbul. Not knowing his name, I remember him as 'Little Leader'.
Little Leader found someone with an electronic ticket, borrowed it and paid them back in cash. He used it twice and then had to return back to the helpful woman on the front row to whom he enthusiastically smiled and beamed, 'Would you please take five lira for both of us!!!??' Finally, he took his seat.
In the ever-reaching-to-modernity spaces of modern Turkey, the bourgeois neighborhoods of Istanbul and other similar cities, such unusual characters have come to be few and far between. But their heterotopic eruptions do take place from time to time, not just via subjectively unusual country folk, but also in the figure of the 'meczup,' the insane saint who may be seen begging in a mosque or wandering around the center of town acting outside the boundaries of social norms and occasionally giving you an earful of what you might least like to know about yourself.
Some have made a minor celebrity of a saintly Bulgarian man known simply as 'Dobri'. He wanders Sofia giving charity, rather than begging, despite having very little. He is often seen praying in the churches of the capital or doing such eccentric things as kissing the hands of children and asking for their blessings and has somehow raised many thousands of Euros for the building and upkeep of monasteries while living on a pension of 80 Euros a month.
I met Düldane at a tekke (dervish lodge) where I was both apprenticing in some of the Mevlevi arts and making field observations, during my PhD. Düldane was known for her roaring AMİN at the end of every prayer said in that space and an equally roaring AMİN to her own private prayers carried on as the tekke's life continued unnoticed by her, and her unnoticed by the buzz of the tekke. Düldane often looked around in an unusual sort of state and made invocations for those around her, sometimes turning over her upturned praying hands and shaking them, as if cleaning them of dirt when praying for release from negativity and unbelief. At times she would make embarrassingly personal comments, the accuracy of which could only really be known by the verbally assaulted one, him or herself:
'You there! You'd better get rid of that girl of yours! If you don't stop hanging around with the likes of her and her friends you will never get married, will you? They are not as rich as you think. Oh never mind! You're a hopeless case anyway, alhamdulillah, subhanallah, all praise is for Allah, all blame is ours estağfurullah al Azim,...'
She might giver her salaams to everyone as she was leaving, all except one poor unfortunate soul who she would brush away with dismissive gesture and an exasperated grandmotherly 'eeehh'.
In contemporary Turkey, many of those one could categorize as healers have often slid further away from the mainstream than this, from eccentricity to shadow. But that is another story...
I was in another world reading, of all eccentric things, Gilles Deleuze in a discussion on nomadology and the non-state when suddenly I heard a piercingly enthusiastic and friendly small boy's voice:
'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus go to Küçük Gümüşhane!!??
'No, but if you go to Antepliler Mahallesi you can walk there in a few minutes'
'Chauffeur Bey! Does this bus pass by Wolf Village!!!???'
'Yes...'
The small take-charge boy, with his smooth tan olive skin, a messy homemade haircut and akward shoes, boarded with his father, or another male relative, behind him. The man had, strangely, allowed this boy to handle the entire procedure, almost as if he did not speak Turkish or had a speaking impairment, or was simply in awe and deferential. The boy stepped on to the bus and reaching over the driver's glass shield, tried to hand coins to him, ignoring years of electronic ticketing and many thousands of lira in technology. It has been several turns of several seasons since anyone has accepted cash on an Istanbul bus.
This leader in miniature, with his commanding yet childlike voice and demeanor, would have seemed like an actor of some kind, were it not for the sun-wearied and worn quality of hard-living Anatolian seasonal workers written all over the body, clothes and face of both him and his older companion. Perhaps in his Southeastern village, or his home in Syria, he was indeed a miniature thespian, a small heart capable of calling out to his community in an orange grove, or a refugee camp. His projection and enthusiasm had its origin somewhere else, certainly not urban Istanbul. Not knowing his name, I remember him as 'Little Leader'.
Little Leader found someone with an electronic ticket, borrowed it and paid them back in cash. He used it twice and then had to return back to the helpful woman on the front row to whom he enthusiastically smiled and beamed, 'Would you please take five lira for both of us!!!??' Finally, he took his seat.
In the ever-reaching-to-modernity spaces of modern Turkey, the bourgeois neighborhoods of Istanbul and other similar cities, such unusual characters have come to be few and far between. But their heterotopic eruptions do take place from time to time, not just via subjectively unusual country folk, but also in the figure of the 'meczup,' the insane saint who may be seen begging in a mosque or wandering around the center of town acting outside the boundaries of social norms and occasionally giving you an earful of what you might least like to know about yourself.
Some have made a minor celebrity of a saintly Bulgarian man known simply as 'Dobri'. He wanders Sofia giving charity, rather than begging, despite having very little. He is often seen praying in the churches of the capital or doing such eccentric things as kissing the hands of children and asking for their blessings and has somehow raised many thousands of Euros for the building and upkeep of monasteries while living on a pension of 80 Euros a month.
I met Düldane at a tekke (dervish lodge) where I was both apprenticing in some of the Mevlevi arts and making field observations, during my PhD. Düldane was known for her roaring AMİN at the end of every prayer said in that space and an equally roaring AMİN to her own private prayers carried on as the tekke's life continued unnoticed by her, and her unnoticed by the buzz of the tekke. Düldane often looked around in an unusual sort of state and made invocations for those around her, sometimes turning over her upturned praying hands and shaking them, as if cleaning them of dirt when praying for release from negativity and unbelief. At times she would make embarrassingly personal comments, the accuracy of which could only really be known by the verbally assaulted one, him or herself:
'You there! You'd better get rid of that girl of yours! If you don't stop hanging around with the likes of her and her friends you will never get married, will you? They are not as rich as you think. Oh never mind! You're a hopeless case anyway, alhamdulillah, subhanallah, all praise is for Allah, all blame is ours estağfurullah al Azim,...'
She might giver her salaams to everyone as she was leaving, all except one poor unfortunate soul who she would brush away with dismissive gesture and an exasperated grandmotherly 'eeehh'.
In contemporary Turkey, many of those one could categorize as healers have often slid further away from the mainstream than this, from eccentricity to shadow. But that is another story...
'eccentricity' daniel thomas egerton
This reminded me of Muchona :-)
ReplyDeleteI see. And who is muchona? :-)
DeleteAre you talking about the Muhcona that Victor Turner wrote about? Somehow I was thinking of a flamboyant Mexican actress or something similar.
Delete