Istanbulistan: Guernica, anKARA
Before she even had a chance to overcome the trauma of the Feb. 17 terror attack, Ankara was hit once again yesterday. 37 lives ended abruptly. Many more are seeking treatment in nearby hospitals, where over a dozen wounded are holding on to dear life as I write this.
In a highly statistics-driven world, 37 may not mean much (though nearly 200 have been killed in three attacks that rocked the Turkish capital, my hometown, in the past five months). After all, hundreds have been killed in the government’s war with Kurdish separatists in the southeast and hundreds more die each day as they embark on a perilious and illegal journey towards West in the hopes of holding on to their humanity.
History is not written in ink in this land, but with blood. And blood spills everyday.
Hence, the western ambivalance towards ‘yet another attack in the Middle East.’
Oh how heavy is the white man’s burden.
The explosive-laden car that painted Turkey black yesterday went off in the heart of the city — three streets away from where I grew up; a block away from the ultimate meeting spot of my middle school days (or as we used to say, Vakko’nun önünde buluşalım — let’s meet in front of Vakko) and half a mile away from the buildings I mindlessly entered and exited only three days before the attack for a series of meetings. It exploded near a metro station where my parents use regularly on their weekend excursions to the city’s many bookstores and cafes.
In short, it struck too close to home.
But so did the previous two bombs that left Ankara in bottomless grief since Oct. 10 — when the first act in the capital terror trilogy claimed 103 peace-seeking lives at a rally in the bloodiest terror attack in the nation’s history.
When I try to process this mindfuck of a situation, my mind’s eye sees only one image — a painting of life imitating art imitating life. Though you will undoubtedly say the conditions that inspired this piece of art were nothing like what’s unfolding in Turkey today.
True. But that doesn’t make it any less applicable.
In a memorable college class that explored war-inspired art and literature, I got to study closely one of the world’s most famous paintings — Picasso’s Guernica. As you may already know, Picasso depicts in his giant masterpiece Franco’s civil war in the Spainish town of Guernica. Because the artist gets to experience the war mostly though the print media, the black-and-white images from the day’s newspapers are transferred to his canvas in the same monochromatic fashion.
Over the years, my obsession with and love for this painting only grew, thanks in part to the incurable human condition we call human nature that causes history to repeat itself (cue in Einstein’s stellar definition of ‘insanity).
Later, I was reminded of just how powerful and relevant this painting still is, when then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a fellow George Washington University alum, asked the Guernica replica that hangs over the entrance of the UN Security Council in New York to be removed before he was to lay out the fabricated case for the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
To many of us in the Middle East, that fateful day set into motion a chain reaction, the consequences of which we grapple with today and a by-product of which prompted ‘honorable’ European leaders to enter into blood negotiations with Turkey.
Yes. I am referring to the ongoing bargain over who will keep Syrian ‘refugees’ (I abhor that word — it creates a different ‘class’ of people that further contributes to the process of dehumanization) at what price.
Will you take a million ‘refugees’ for three billion euros?
Here we are, talking in numbers again.
Guernica, a copy of which hangs in my home, albeit in much smaller scale, depicts rather powerfully the human suffering that is translated to us only in numbers. (Shortly after yesterday’s attack, as it has become the norm here, the Turkish government moved quickly to block access to Facebook and Twitter in the hopes of curbing the rapid dissemination of images that screamed blood, suffering and loss.)
Amid bombs falling from the sky — symbolized by Picasso’s agitated lamp — the indiscriminate suffering finds many faces in Guernica. A woman screams in pain over her dead baby, a wounded man tries to drag his leg along that no longer receives commands from his brain; and a soldier’s lifeless body stretches across the bottom of the painting with his eyes open.
The statistics come alive in this painting that refuses to turn a blind eye to the human toll of a human-waged war.
What makes Guernica potent is not only its honest description of suffering, but its depiction of indifference all on the same canvass. Like the monochromatic ying and the yang, Picasso’s black-and-white painting aptly depicts the duality of the human condition and lays out in plain sight what indifference to suffering looks like.
Tucked away in the upperleft corner of Guernica is a bull that appears unfazed by the carnage unfolding beneath its hooves. Instead, it stares the observer directly in the eye, and with a simple brush stroke, screams ‘so what.’
I followed the news of yesterday’s attack as much as I could stomach the masquerade. The reporting ban that came into effect yesterday evening meant that we would only hear an update when a government representative felt compelled to release a well-manicured statement. After hours of talking-in-circles-reporting that could reveal or show nothing new, we finally heard from a handful of ministers who stood in front of microphones to say nothing, while one prominent pro-government journalist was busy telling us that we needed to learn to live in and with terror.
There are too many bulls running the show.
And we are too consumed by our own suffering, grief, anger, pain and helplessness to do anything about them.
As I sit in front of my Guernica and type this, I challenge the bull to lose this mindless staring contest and to begin to mind the suffering around him.
