Salkim Street No:3

Those were happy years when we laughed at everything. We were children and our parents were young. We thought that others would grow old and others would decline. Not us, but others… Salkım Street and “ours” are like a photograph that would come to life if I touched it…
That street was like a world of wonders hidden in Izmir, where crowded immigrant families lived together, where the most abundant tables in the world fit into tiny houses; where spotless, hopeful, early risers shared their troubles and bread with each other. This world, founded on the belief of people who turned the places they came from into homes with its unfading colors, flowers, enthusiasm, contagious joy, Bosnian halays, Izmir zeybeks, Rumelian folk songs, and festive celebrations, raised us.
Those who left, those who stayed, the experiences, the memories were all included in the story of this street that hid all the pieces of my missing puzzle and was a harbor for our adulthood, and all of them had to be told… Because I am a neighborhood kid, I believe in the strength of the wrist and the heart and that heroes live in “long” times, not “past” times.