By the time i met up with Berna on campus there was a full moon (almost), high over a couple of pink magnolia trees near her office, in a sky that was still blue and only slowly turning to dusk. On the other side of the horizon: an ever-so-slight fog lingering in between the trees, with golden rays of sun playing around in the forest. Beauty for Berna’s birthday.
We met Feza in a restaurant downtown. I was so happy to see both of them. Berna full of stories of the May Day march in Santa Cruz. This is how Feza wants to remember Santa Cruz, she said. Feza looked radiant. When i asked him how he was, after all this time, he laughed: “Good. I’m going back to Turkey in three weeks.”
He couldn’t believe i actually went to the European Social Forum, and he was still full of the “banner incident”. The huge MLKP banner (Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/North Kurdistan) at the main entrance of the ESF, which was at some point torn off by participants who didn’t want the faces of the holy trinity, and particularly Stalin, to be watching over the forum. This was deemed as “very anti-democratic” by the dogmatic Marxist forces that were strongly represented in the forum and in the organisation committee in particular. Those trying to tear the banners down were subsequently labelled “Trotskists”. Ah, the fossilised slogans, heros and tribal wars of the left – very tiring and this year, with the luxury of not being involved in the organisation of the forum, to be ignored all together. Feza lamented the pathetic state of the left in Turkey, that it was no coincidence that it had to be a Turkish banner with the face of Stalin, that Istanbul indymedia is totally in these dogmatic hands, etc. Hm, yes, of course the left in Turkey is very broken. But i’ve been seeing, much to my dismay, posters of Stalin at the other social fora, where the Turkish participation was not so marked. And what about our friends of the Socialist Workers Party, so strong in the UK and Greece? And let’s not forget how Indymedia in Belgium is in the hands of the stalinist left as well, with no other way of cutting through this dominance than starting up other indymedias – we have about 4 or 5 indymedias in the tiny space of Belgium by now, with different cities names masking different political tendencies. (So indymedia Ankara as the answer to indymedia Istanbul!) A wide-spread symptom, i’m afraid.
Anyway, it’s nice when Feza gets upset, cause then he writes an opinion piece about the sad state of the left (in relation to the EU process this time) and gets it published in Radikal Iki. For the friends who read Turkish, look here.
A sweet birthday dinner, with one story in particular i want to write down here as it made everybody laugh a lot (and me blush). With Berna and Feza leaving Santa Cruz soon, Bettina is looking for new house-mates. When one woman came to visit and they realized that she was living in the Chavez coop, they asked her whether she knew me. “Oh yes,” she responded, with a sceptical smile as Berna told the story, “she made an impression…” It seemed that a number of people in the house had a crush on me during the interviewing process, and so some of the boys in the house were all of a sudden – at least for the time of the interview – talking about feminism-this feminism-that… [ah right, i remember the particularly cute punky-anarcho boy who kept on asking questions about feminism…]. It still made people at the table laugh a lot, and while i was blushing it striked me again what a tiny place Santa Cruz is…
At night in my bed, in my room veranda room with all those windows, the moon was impressive. In a more down-to-earth mood of the night before – no good company to have dinner with, no laughter and wine – and having already taken my lenses out, i remembered thinking: “Why did Leta install a new lamp that shines right in my room at night? If some place needs extra lightening it’s the street and not our backyard.” Ah, it was the moon, and she’s doing something powerful here these days and nights. Giulia, il faut qu’on comprenne mieux: quand la lune est pleine ici, elle est comment où toi tu habites?