We talked about precariousness in class. The main idea was that differences cause us not to become sad about other people’s deaths. But what makes us become indifferent to the death of people who are similar to us? Such as people from our same nationality and religion. I have an example about this.

Turkey went into war with the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) in Syria. The YPG was fighting against ISIS in Syria, so the government’s decision to go to war with them was criticized by a lot of people as a political move. Like every war, there are casualties from both sides. But my main argument for this blog isn’t about YGP, It is about Turkish casualties. I wonder if governments think about who will die when making the decision to go to war. Government officials say that they would be happy to go to Afrin to help the soldiers in every place possible when they get a microphone in their hands. But a picture is worth a thousand words.

A martyr’s dad in the funeral of his son.

Turkish president Erdogan placing his elbow on the coffin of a soldier which is considered a really disrespectful act in Turkish culture. Photograph by Kayhan Özer/ AA

This photo of Erdogan was widely criticized by the opposition. Which made me remember the photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s photo in the funeral of the Russian Turkish ambassador in 22 December 2016, to show why Erdogan’s elbow photo is problematic.

photograph taken from euronews.com

It is really interesting to see how different leaders act in the event of death. It is impossible to know their intentions but when a governments decides to go to war, they also decide on giving casualties. It is important to think about precariousness in this concept. Are the Turkish Muslim soldiers’ lives expendable in the eyes of the Turkish president. They are similar in identity but I think that precariousness isn’t always about identity politics. It can be much more simple; even if the other person is similar to your identity, you will always sacrifice someone else’s life instead of yours. So even if people all become same in a melting pot, there will always be a problem of precariousness.

Reading Safe Area Gorazde brought back my memories from Bosnia. The way Joe Sacco wrote about the people that he got to know there, made me remember the people of Bosnia. I have been to Bosnia and Herzgovina twice. Once in 2009 and the other time in 2016. I had the chance to see the change of a war-torn city and how they decide on what to restore and what to leave as it is. The first time I went, the city was pretty much still healing itself. It was usual to see the ruins of what once were homes of Bosnian Muslims.

A house with only some walls left, also the walls are full of holes left by many types of projectiles.

But the second time in 2016 there were no houses like this, most of the ruins were fixed. But I realized that some of the places were left as it was before. I learned that they chose to leave it that way for it to become a symbol of what happened in times of war and genocide. The change is best seen at the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is Sarajevo. I chose two of the symbolic buildings of Sarajevo: one of them is the national library and the other one is called the tunnel which I’ll explain later.

The following photos are a side by side comparison of the National Library in 2009 and 2016. This is a building that they chose to restore for next generations to benefit. The library was newly opened in 2016, it took a long time to restore, as I remember that they had started the restoration process back when I first got there. It is incredible to see how the city heals by seeing it twice after the war.

2009 National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina

2016 National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This sign on the door of the library says: Do not forget! Which was a recurring theme in the ASTU class. Remembering is an important part of Bosnian people’s lives because they still live in a city which feels like it is filled with the ghosts of the loved ones. It hasn’t been much since the war and people still try to heal from the horror that they have faced. They never forget what happened and neither should we. This sign is a good example of why remembering is important.

On this place Serbian criminals in the night of 25th-26th August 1992, set on fire National and University’s Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 2 millions of books, periodicals and documents vanished in the flame. DO NOT FORGET, REMEMBER AND WARN!

Another important war site in Sarajevo is Tunel Spasa which translates to The Tunnel of Life. This tunnel was dug because the city didn’t have any resources such as food and humanitarian aid was at the other side of the airport. It was dug 800 metres and it was wide enough for a person to pass. It is said that during the war 1000 people passed it to go in and out of the city. It was turned into a museum after the war.

The following photos are of the Tunel Spasa in 2009 and 2016:

2009 Tunel Spasa

2016 Tunel Spasa

They haven’t restored most of the tunnel because it shows the hardships of a city under siege, and how they had to help themselves while the world was watching them die. The walls haven’t been restored and the inside of the tunnel is a museum which has stayed the same since it first happened after the war. The opening of the tunnel is even open for visitors to see how small it was. “Leaving it as it is” has helped the Bosnian people to convey the memory of war to other generations. I wasn’t born when the war was happening in Bosnia, but when I went there both as a child and a teenager, I understood their pain. It is important to preserve the memory in cases like the Tunel Spasa.

It is hard to decide on what to preserve in the heart of a city, while the people who saw the war lives in it. I kept asking myself “is seeing the memories of war everywhere, better than forgetting the pain?”. There are many parts of Bosnia full of the memories of war. But the people living in it might want to forget.  Leaving the remains would make their  forgetting process harder. But I am sure that these remains teach the outsiders a lesson. Bosnian people lived all through it and the only way to understand the pain is by looking at what the war left behind and their memories.

A graffiti near the grave of Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo. The people of Sarajevo wants no one to ever forget about what happened in Srebrenica because it is important to remember what happened to prevent it from happening again in the future.

The decision to restore the library is a nice way of looking at the future as bright. The decision to leave the tunnel as it is after the war is a way of preserving the past.  Sarajevo is an incredible city to see because it is a great synthesis of the past and the present at the same time and at the same place. Seeing it twice in ten years, I saw how fast the city has healed and what they left for us to see later. Choosing the right remains and memories to preserve and giving the right message about the war is very important in Bosnia because they want people to see how they were left alone with the inhumane conditions of the war in what we call the “modern world”.

I entered the Amazonia exhibit in Museum of Anthropology, there was an object that I saw when I first entered the exhibit. The object was a wooden doll which got my interest but it was the first object of the exhibit so I didn’t lose much time and went to see the other ones. At the end I saw myself coming back to the dolls because of the designs on them. The drawings on the dolls were very geometric and mostly everywhere around the doll; the face, torso, arms and legs.

Shipibo people’s geometric designs on a doll

It says that these dolls belonged to young girls on the explanation below. The girls used these dolls to practice painting on real skin, the dolls were also toys even if they are for practice.

The thing that was interesting for me was the part where it explains that people drew shapes on their torso when they are not healthy. In Shipibo beliefs, health is connected to beauty so these drawings made by shamans were used to cure the people. I think that this belief is somehow connected to how we try different things with our appearances to feel better. Getting a hair cut, doing makeup, getting tattoos and dying our hair are examples of how we change our appearance for our mental health. While it does not compare to modern medicine, it is still considered medicine in my opinion.

There is also another explanation about health: ‘Beauty and health are one and the same thing. Both are likely to be obtained and maintained by the morals of a good life.’ (Amazonia) Which got me thinking about the beauty standards of the Amazonian people. Beauty and health standards are both determined by  fairness. Which is in my opinion something that we have a problem with as a society. There are a lot to learn from Shipibo people of the Amazon about standards, such as if we should consider someone who is healthy and beautiful but malicious, a healthy and beautiful member of the society or not. I think that Amazonian people are better than Western societies in determining the beauty of a person. Which is something to think about if we want to build a better understanding in my opinion.

Works Cited:

Porto, Nuno. “Amazonia Exhibit.” Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, 10 Mar. 2017.

Dear Readers,

Last week we went to the Rare Books and Special Collections Library in Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to take a look at the Kogawa Fonds. Fonds means “the whole of the records, regardless of form or medium, automatically and organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular individual, family, or corporate body in the course of that creator’s activities and functions” as defined by the Trent University Library. The word is used in plural form because it is always an accumulation of many different documents. Kogawa Fonds are documents that Joy Kogawa has given to University of British Columbia and there are many different documents like letters, drafts and official records which show the process of “Obasan”.

While we were looking at the Kogawa Fonds, I saw the rejection letters that came from many publishers. I thought about how she wrote the book for a specific audience and not only for the sake of literary purposes. This book was written to be published because it has the purpose of educating Canadians about a specific event, the Japanese internment. In the rejection letters her storyline was found distanced from the reader and it was said that the reader wouldn’t be able to connect with the story or the characters. I think that her, writing with a purpose caused the characters to become much less important than what happened. The story didn’t let the reader connects with Naomi because she does not talk at all, she is only the character needed for this story telling. Creating perfect characters and a story line is not the purpose of the writer. She wants to write about the internment not about Naomi. Also the story moves inside Naomi’s head and we go into Naomi’s mind very fast in the book without getting to know her personally. This book is like a puzzle that needs solving and definitely not a book to read for just the sake of reading, this book needs to be read as an education tool over the literary aspect of it. The publishers also decided that the book won’t be sold because readers look for different characters, not dull characters like Naomi. The three publishers that denied to publish the book all thought that the characters were not clear, which made the story unclear.

A rejection letter from Oberon Press to Joy Kogawa from Kogawa Fonds at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections Library

It is very interesting to see how a writing is chosen to be published. When I think about “Obasan” in particular, this book had to be published to have an effect on society as Kogawa intended. She probably had to make sacrifices in her work for it to get published because that was the main goal. This book has educated many people in Canada about what happened during the internment. I think that Kogawa, writing to give a strong message about trauma and memory didn’t want to make the characters the main focus of this book instead of the theme of memory and coping with trauma, which confused the publishers because literature is used as an education tool in “Obasan”.

Dear Readers,

In the past week we watched a documentary about Japanese UBC Students during 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack in the joint lecture. Watching this documentary made me think how insufficient my knowledge about history is. When we learn about history we learn the dates, causes and the results. But what we don’t learn is witness based history because memories are considered to be subjective. I think that real history is based on these memories that people take the time to remember, talk and write about. In the documentary Mary Shinko Kato breaks into tears when she talks about the night which her father was taken away by the state’s police they are a citizen of. I don’t think that talking about this event was easy for her. When we tried to distinguish between memoir and historical article in class, most of us thought that memories might be altered therefore they might not always be true. Watching this documentary made me feel the opposite way. I thought that our historical knowledge is very limited because we don’t know anything about what happened to minorities at that time. I believe that memories give minorities a chance to talk about their side of history because they were declared as an enemy of the state that time so their pain wasn’t news coverage worthy. Memories are a chance for us to learn about another side of history that has never been told before.

When I ask myself what is the most significant event that has ever happened to me that I could see myself writing a memoir of, I think about the events that has affected my life the most. What affected these Japanese students’ lives the most? A father taken away, people having to leave their homes, students who can’t get the education that they deserve etc. Have we seen any news before this class about them? I didn’t. If memories are considered subjective, who is going to feel the pain that they had to endure at that time? Memories are important because we can’t just know about what the news cover or what we read in a history article if we want to become real global citizens. We need to learn about different sides of an event, read the stories people wrote about their own lives. It is not the same reading about the Iranian Revolution on a history based article and a memoir written by someone who was a child at that time. Everyone has their own fights, their own pain that they had to endure for a long time that nobody has ever heard of before.

I have a sad example about what I think;

This screenshot is from a footage shared on Aleppo Media Center. Everyday we read on the news what happens in Syria, if he had a chance to write a memoir of his life, what would he write about the same event? Would his memories be considered altered if he grows up and decides to write a memoir?

I have a very different example from my own country about this discussion;

This man is Veli Saçılık from Turkey and the photo is by Adem Altan. Veli Sacilik is a sociologist and he was in jail in 2000 because he was in a proletariat protest. Riots happened in jails so the riot police went inside and a lot of prisoners were dead because of this operation. During this operation his arm was torn off by a building crane while he was sitting on his bed. Today, 17 years after that event the government took a lot of civil servants’ jobs away from them and their defense is that these people were enemies of the state. Veli Sacilik is still protesting against the government with his one arm. Media coverage is nearly zero about this purge that is happening. So he uses the popular social media website Twitter to get his voice heard to a lot of people. Are his tweets considered memories? So is Twitter letting people write their memories by creating a new genre? This genre of tweets are 140 characters, you can post some photos with whatever you are writing and you can share what people wrote in less than a second with your own subscribers. Which is pretty neat when I think about how fast a lot of memories are actually getting around. Mr Sacilik uses this genre as a memory device. He tweets about how the crane tore his arm off and also which protests he goes to on a daily basis. He can’t share his memories on a TV show or a newspaper so he uses Twitter to share what happened to him. Him sharing his memories on Twitter instead of an academic article or a news article doesn’t make him an unreliable source in my opinion. Memories are written because the writer’s point of view hasn’t been written before anywhere. Which is what makes memories a special genre to learn from.

When there is no chance for minorities to get their voices heard they only have their memories in their minds. These memories that they later write or talk about are the reality of a situation which we only saw the facts of. People write memories because they had a significant incident which happened to them. Writing memories is not easy and it takes a lot of courage to write memories of traumatizing events. So what we actually learn when we read or listen to memories is how to emphasize with others. Memories are based on what people have been through. We don’t read memories to learn facts, we read memories to feel what people feel in a significant event. I believe that a huge part of  being a global citizen is emphasizing with others and memories teach us how to do that.