Mens jeg tog billeder af balet ved Torvehallerne sagde en ung mor til sin datter:

“det er nok mest turister der synes det er sjovt at tage billeder..”

Reflecting a bit over this statement I came nearer to the fire place and sat on a
bench although it was really too cold to sit there. Still I believed that it was the only right place to be at that moment. Watching each individual who were passing by the fire and seeing how the apparently Asian man put his hand through the fire as he was walking past it as if this was a very common thing somewhere else in the world where he grew up, giving me a glimpse into his “sehnsucht” (no other word explains this emotion better than this German word that one of my dad’s books of Nazim Hikmet which were in both German and Turkish). he was smiling a bit to himself not caring about the way that Danes would usually stare at him..Then the apparently Kurdish woman who smiled and grinned to herself sharing this with me as she was approaching the fire, then she stopped and played a bit with the fire, inside her geographically somewhere else she was at a Newruz bonfire with people that she loved and left, remembering them ..

This explains it all maybe this is the only way to survive as an immigrant to pretend that you are always somewhere else that you have something of bigger importance deriving from somewhere else, a melancholia and a richness that can always escape the hurtful racist gazes and make you feel loved and at peace.

I still pretend to be a foreigner even here. But this time somehow more empowering and less artificial and much more emancipating. It gives me an exit from a vulnerable and victimized position of being a Danish immigrant or rather a descendant of Turkish immigrants (gastarbeiter) or a second generation “new dane”. I refuse to committ to the rules here or anywhere. I prefer being a Londoner. Then some how I like to be Danish and proud and superior to the Brits in London as we Danes are much better with design and quality of course :).In Turkey on the other hand I pretend to be a European in order to save myself from the eternal claws of being an “almanci”.

Who the fuck are you Hulya? “Cemil, Cemil, Cemil, Cemil” Arkadas filmindeki sahne; sen kendini burda mu unuttun ki burda ariyorsun Cemil?..”