That Picture With the Water Cannon
“Are you distracted?” my friend burst out laughing in the middle of a colorful crowd in Chelsea. (A man in Mardi Gras beads had just loudly claimed that NYC’s historically gay neighborhood was not as gay as it used to be.)
I was in the middle of telling my friend a story when I had a hard time gathering my thoughts, so I stopped. I hadn’t realized that she was alluding to the sparkly blue — extremely tight — spandex walking right in front of me.
I was not distracted by that.
Pride flags flying around, pride flags in glitter on faces, pride flags covering people up, pride flags holding people together. People laughing, people holding hands, people kissing, people just being people at their best. Somehow, I think, we manage to do love and we do it really well when we let it take over. Yet, somehow, it also seems to be exceptionally hard. We put barriers for ourselves, we put barriers for others, we get scared of love, we prevent love. We chase, we pull, we push, we cry, we hide, we intervene, we punish, we give up.
But we also fight for love. We hold our flags high, take a single red rose, and move towards love — even run. We move towards plastic bullets, tear gas, high-pressure water, men equipped in heavy gear who could kill us in a split second if they wanted to. Somehow, I still think, we manage to do love and we do it really well when we let it take over — and it doesn’t feel exceptionally hard when there is love and freedom down the line.
Just recently I told one of my friends that I get mad when people, people who haven’t been to Turkey or who have barely read anything about Turkey, tell me I shouldn’t go back home because “things must be so scary back there.” I see the authority in me to say that I prefer not to go back for gazillions of reasons that are not necessarily scary, but I get annoyed when someone else makes the assumption. I find myself defending my country, a fight that I sometimes fight out of love and sometimes purely out of pride.
I have been heartbroken so many times but genuinely, no one can hurt me the way a picture of a water cannon in Taksim Square hurts me. Thousands of miles away, I hold my breath for those who stand for freedom and the thing I believe in the most: love.
At a time when I’ve forgotten how to love as a woman who never had to know what it means to not love freely, people — who use their hearts, souls, bodies and lives as shields — teach me how to love. Love is not a privilege, it is a right, and with some water, the roses will only continue to grow.
Manhattan, June 2017
