No Place, No City

Alice in Istanbul - After the Epiphany

Last year,

I saw Alice.

Only once.

She appeared…

then vanished.

No trace.

No sign.

No road.

As if light

had passed through her shape

and disappeared.

I followed her.

From Haydarpaşa

to the highest hill in Kadıköy.

I climbed after her.

I descended after her.

But I found no path.

Only an echo repeating:

"It is the light, Alice…

What is light?"

I followed her.

From Haydarpaşa

to the highest hill in Kadıköy.

I climbed after her.

I descended after her.

But I found no path.

Only an echo repeating:

"It is the light, Alice…

What is light?"

I followed the voice.

But the voice,

like light,

left its trace

and disappeared.

I came away from the pursuit

with a single certainty:

Alice is not among us.

She passes through us.

She passes

like a luminous event.

A brief pulse

on a dark surface.

And since then,

whenever I try to remember the place,

I remember the road.

And whenever I try to remember the road,

I remember Alice.

In Yeldeğirmeni,

they say there is a tunnel

running beneath the neighborhood.

No one knows where it begins.

No one knows where it ends.

And that is why it remains alive.

For everything

that becomes completely known dies.

The mysterious, however,

continues its presence.

Like Alice.

Like light.

Like memory.

Perhaps that is why

I love photography.

Light,

unlike us,

always knows

how to return.

And Alice

was never

a complete absence.

In some way.