The Melancholy of the Hedgehog
On the sweet sadness of Turkish gatherings and Soviet cartoons.
Still from Hedgehog in the Fog.
When I was eight and my brother nine years old, we moved from Ankara to London where we awaited clearance for our father’s work in Copenhagen. Our parents were both thirty-three, without income, and endlessly creative about our finances. It was a year of free museums, of shuffling through metro gates with a single ticket, of boxes of sweaters sent to us by our grandparents. When we were bored of the few toys we’d brought from Turkey, my brother and I made puppets from newspaper sheets, sticking their limbs together with glue.
It was a strange year, in our house with a fake fireplace, situated at the edge of a cemetery. Our parents made friends with a group of young Turks—students, doctors, a ticket-booth worker at the cinema—and met up with them for nights of fasıl. Someone played the oud, and the others sang along with the help of a small black book called Ah, Those Beautiful Songs.
A fasıl is a gathering to sing classical Turkish music, grouped by maqams, or melodic modes. As a social event, the goal of fasıl is a communal purge of grief.
I complain to no one, I shiver, like a felon, at my fate.
