On the Flying Carpet
A night at the annual festival that brings music, circus, light and truth to children in socially neglected regions of Turkey
By Eleni Papadopoulou / Photography Eleni Papadopoulou, Pinar Demiral
Ten kilometers from the Syrian border, the driver cautiously makes headway along the narrow path between rows of corn as high as the bus. Two hours and a few wrong turns later, we reach the rural village of Kaşıklı in the Kurdish province of Mardin, in the southeast of Turkey. In the scorching August sun, thirty five musicians and artists from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Serbia, Syria, France, the United Kingdom, the US and Brazil, along with local teenagers, get off the bus and begin setting up outside the village’s minaret for the third night in the tour of the second annual Flying Carpet Festival.
The village residents greet us with open arms, smiles, tea and watermelon. The plastic chairs are already set in place, Lincoln the sound engineer from California along with Nima a multidisciplinary artist from Iran, unload the sound system as Soheila, a puppeteer from Tehran, assembles “Shek-Shekar” or “Sugar”, the giant puppet-mascot of this years festival. Circo no Ato the circus troupe from Rio De Janeiro start warming up surrounded by village children observing with curiosity while Rezan, 16, from Mardin gives a spontaneous electric guitar lesson to a group of girls.
The Flying Carpet Festival was founded and curated by Iranian-American composer Sahba Aminikia and Turkish videographer Pinar Demiral. Following an international open call and drawing on his large network of friends of artists around the world, Sahba has been able to bring together musicians, acrobats, artists and performers who share the same idea: that music, circus and the arts in general can act as a catalyst for positive change in the lives of vulnerable children. Everyone is involved on a voluntary basis and the festival is financially supported by sponsorships, online fundraising and individual donations. Its purpose is to bring free cultural events to places in Turkey where contact with art and culture is rare to non-existent, for children of Syrian, Iraqi, Turkish and Kurdish descent who have experienced war and are living the consequences of conflict and the political instability of the area. As in the predominantly agricultural village of Kaşıklı where there is only one primary school and children have to bus to neighbouring towns to attend secondary school.
It runs under the umbrella of the NGO, Sirkhane Social Circus school, a “social circus school” founded by Pinar Demiral and Serdal Adam in 2012. In a historic building in the Old Town of Mardin, children from vulnerable social groups attend, during the year, lessons in acrobatics, juggling, unicycle, clowning and other performing arts. Fatma started circus lessons five years ago and now, at sixteen, teaches the younger students. Sirkhane offers children a second home, an opportunity to escape their difficult daily lives, divert their energy, express themselves creatively and develop social skills such as teamwork and communication. It is also the day-to-day meeting point for the festival team. In the upstairs rooms overlooking the plain of Syria the musicians rehearse for the evening performance while on the ground floor is the circus gym and the kitchen where the collective breakfast, lunch and dinner are being prepared.
Sahba found out about the activities of Sirkhane through a friend in San Francisco. He was so intrigued by the idea of a circus school in the depths of Turkey that he decided to visit Mardin during a family reunion in Izmir for Nowruz. After meeting the children and seeing how eager they were for music, he created Muzikhane, a social music school offering workshops and lessons in musical instruments, singing and everything that has to do with music. For the children who can’t come to Mardin, a little pink van with the team of Muzikhane Galaxi- another project of Sirkhane — travels to them.
The first Flying Carpet Festival took place in September 2018 with concerts mostly in the city of Mardin. This year’s festival began in June and hosted more than 100 circus music and arts workshops in the Mardin region, closing the penultimate week of August with a series of seven events in different locations. Among the artists is the Nusaybin Youth Choir who, under the direction of Sahba and guest classical singer Collin Edouard from New York, prepared traditional Turkish and Kurdish songs they performed at the inaugural performance at the Mardin Museum, along with Helin, 6, who will accompany Sahba on the piano at tomorrow’s event in the suburb of Istasyon. Tonight Fatma, Mahmoud, Mustafa, Fehet, Muhammad, Abdulrahim and Ziyad will perform acrobatic tricks that they practiced with with guest acrobats Mario, Raphael and Ipo.
The heat is starting to subside, Shek-Shekar is ready, Fatma and her friends are up on the stilts ready for the parade. In the setting sun, musicians, puppets, acrobats and locals begin to walk the streets of Kaşıklı with music and song. Past the houses, the fields, along the corn crops, a fairy-tale, other worldly image that one wouldn’t imagine in this part of the world.
Returning to the site of the event, the children gather around Damla, dancer and performer from Istanbul who begins to tell the story of the children on a magical flying carpet searching for a world where “ children remain children, play is never ending, birds are flying in the sky and bedtime stories go on all night “. The carpet travels over valleys, rivers and mountains, in sunshine and storms, a tale of a journey of self-knowledge based on the Persian Sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds” by Attar that was written nine centuries ago. Each section in the story is followed by a performance. The younger kids are watching Jamie’s magic tricks wide-eyed as adults delighting in their joy record every moment on their mobile phones. In the back, David, Kasia and Samir are getting ready to play together for the first time, each bringing their own musical influences in the guitar, the banjo and the Santour in traditional and folk songs from America and the Black Sea. The time is 8.30pm a break for evening prayer is on the schedule but the excitement is too great to interrupt. A mother tells Elena, an Assyrian pianist from Russia, that her daughter was so eager for tonight that she woke up at five in the morning waiting.
Nima’s projection on the wall changes from a mountainous landscape to luminous star like dots in different hues moving almost in harmony with the acrobat’s choreography and the music of the seven girls from Iran. Jumps, lifts and turns. Heads turn to the sky in amazement when they form two human columns. The night is coming to an end with traditional Kurdish songs by a local Kurdish singer, Yusuf, students of the Muzikhane and Sahba. Artists, volunteers, women, men and children pull each other onto the dance floor dancing the traditional “Halai”.
After the final song and farewells, the team returns back to base for a midnight dinner of rice, white beans and gourmet Iranian salad prepared by Aynur and Eida in collaboration with Keyvan, impromptu chef from San Francisco. The flying carpet flew over the next four nights to the suburb of Istasyon, Dara archaeological site and the village of Derik , closing with a concert in the border town of Nusaybin.
On the return bus to Mardin, David ponders on the night. “I found myself experiencing many spontaneous feelings of deep joy when I was around all the kids and the artists. I remembered how small the world really is. It is amazing how people from different parts of the world can share the same attitude and feelings.People that never met before become instant friends because they are all here for the same purpose. The world could be like this.”
- The Flying Carpet Festival took place on August 18th-24th 2019. The participating artists where Aleksandra Vrebalov (Serbia/United States), Luciano Chessa (Italy/America), David Rimelis (United States), Soheila Bajelan (Iran), Nima Dehghani (Iran/United States), Sanam Orli (Iran), Ben Opie (Australia), Elena Akopova (Russia/United States), Karam Al-Zouhir (Syria/France), Hatiye Garip (Turkey), Jamie Belfour-Paul (United Kingdom), Collin Edouard (United States), Damla Özçelik (Turkey), Joana Feijó (Portugal), Bengü Kovar (Turkey), Samir Timajchi (Iran), Kasia Kugay (United States/Turkey), Circo no Ato (Brazil), Yekta Ziaei (Iran), Farhood Yazdani (Iran), Mobin Homayooni (Iran), Asli Kusakcioglu (Turkey), Vadi Tebyanian (Iran), Sanaz Es-haghi (Iran), Lincoln Andrews (United States), Rojan Sanaei (Iran), Mohanna Moslemi (Iran), Banafsheh Movafaghi (Iran), Ozgur Mert (Turkey), Saif Muneer Mahmoud (Iraq), Koray Sezer (Turkey), and local artists, Abdurahman Dengbej Ciziri, Yusuf Oğuz, Welat Danish, Mucahit Pöyraz, and Dogan Geçmez.
