Gate of Sound

I walked out of Ishtar Gate...

Nameless.

And in the world of Alice,

the farther you drift from your name,

the closer you return to what came before it.

The Promised Shore

When I arrived in Kadıköy,

I had no name for the city.

I heard it before I saw it.

The ferry.

The sea.

A language

that did not know me.

I followed the voices,

before I knew who they belonged to.

The Revelation

Galata Tower appeared,

wrapped in threads of light.

I climbed them...

thread by thread.

Each thread carried a voice.

Then...

the voices began to dissolve

into one another.

Until I could no longer tell...

which one

was the city's.

And which one

was mine.

The Call

Then...

only one voice remained.

I turned.

And the first voice

that had ever known me returned.

Someone pointed toward me

and said:

"Hussein."

That was how

I came to know myself

through its resonance.

Because a stranger

does not return to a name.

He returns to the call

that makes him turn around.

The Turning

I entered

the Sound Gate.

But there was

no gate.

Each thread

led to another.

Until

I reached the last one.

I kept looking.

Until looking itself became the path.

The Question Appears

There, a question

began to take shape.

If everything has its own

resonance...

Can photography see

that resonance?

Name × Voice × Call

I descended the last thread, slowly.

Following the question.

Thinking:

If sound gives things

their names,

and sight

points toward them,

then...

what does light say?

I believe,

as Goethe did,

that seeing begins

with touch.

Perhaps...

it first passes

through hearing.

Every call leaves behind

a resonance.

And every resonance

alters your direction.

The moment

your direction changes...

doors begin to appear.