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By Sunday morning the police were no longer police. Between the 12 men that drudged below there were 8 uniforms, evenly spread out so that everyone had at least something that looked official. Some had only yellow POLİS vests and rumors were they were deputizing sympathizers —it seemed Erdoğan wanted a war. I saw a policeman throw stones.

The sun had risen like molasses, nothing seemed to be advancing. No one had slept and many of the small bands still roaming the city had been there for 12 hours. I hoped the police had rested —they are dangerous enough already. Gas crept in the morning windows, and the explosions of their guns didn’t cease. Old men covered their heads with their newspapers as they ran across open streets on their way back from getting groceries.

The state used gas like a maid uses a broom —pushing everything to some non-existent “away”.

The police stomped through the corner barricade we had held all night, and took the street. Damla told us that in 30 minutes the university exams would let out, there would be thousands more on the streets. “You should get out now” she said, “after the schools let out I don’t know if you will be able to. This will not stop today.”

Heads down, on the street. This is where time is precious. Go. Small streets get blocked easily; their trucks move fast. Gas makes walls you can’t see across. Look around. You always need to know how to get out of there, but you don’t. The streets felt wide after so much time in crowds. Deer in a clearcut forest. Steal a glance at a corner. Osmanbey was still resisting. Keep it in your mind: this is the last you will see of it. Watch behind you, but know where you’re going. Five streets collide. Look around. Good luck. Go! Now it seemed calm. Damla found a taxi. We were gone.

Outside the city center children swung from their parents arms and women wore high heels and chirped into their phones. The metro escalators vomited people onto the bright street endlessly. Cars zoomed by. Everyone waited for the light to change before crossing the road.

Madness.

Late that Sunday afternoon a rain came and drew a clear breath into the lungs of Istanbul. Big drops fell and we knew everyone would go home. It was time. The water wiped the gas from the buildings and the smoke from the air. It cleaned the blood from the bruises and watered the flowers that had been trampled underfoot. I’m sorry. It cleared the eyes that had been crying in the gas for so long. People opened their windows, for there was air again. Stray cats curled up inside everywhere and everyone slept soundly. Water rained down on this world we dream.

Suddenly you find yourself without a body. Everything is still there: your love, your ideas and your sight —but you have no body. Where do you go?

Gezi was gone, surrounded by thick lines of trained humans. But what had been incubated in that park: in the free meals and the all-night dances, was inoculating the air like pollen.

Gezi had given a body to an idea. Indeed, any idea you wished to contribute fit into the park’s strange alchemy, brewing medicine from a precise recipe of outrage. So what was Gezi if not a park? There are as many answers as there are people. But, it was so dangerous it had to be stopped —what were they so afraid of?

Gezi was gone and now it was everywhere.

“Everywhere is Taksim, Everywhere resistance.” It filled the air like the oxygen dispersing from its trees. It was a symbol we inhabited, a place for ideas. It was anything we made it. Inside that place — that symbolic space — everything had changed as if a spell had been cast over it and us. Everyone smiled, everyone danced. The tea was free if you wanted and cookies were everywhere. No one wanted for anything except the chance to do more. This was that dangerous space they feared. The infection of freedom. Dangerous like a flower —irresistible.

You breathe it into your body. It becomes you.

So let us! remember that once there was a place called Gezi Park. And in that place there were trees so magic they could make sweet air for you to breathe. And in that place above a cemetery and stones —a dream was and so will ever be.

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