"A tumult has covered the whole realm
Neither rose, nor the nightingale’s tongue has remained."
Some memories cannot be forgotten in one’s life. If these memories are good, they will make you smile when you remember them. I have such memories of my hometown, Halfeti. I wanted to write this memoir while mentioning my music life.
I have made a composition named "Siyahgül" ("Black Rose") with my brother Selahattin Anar. Halfeti, where I was born and raised – also called “Hidden Paradise” – is the only place in the world where black roses grow. The black rose always blooms red wherever it is planted; it turns black only in Halfeti territory. Halfeti’s soil has a special feature and secret. When the dam flooded some of this land in 2000, I was just a 12-year-old boy living in Argıl village of Halfeti. At that time, we were telling our friends that the waters would reach our village and we were afraid because we didn't know how to swim. Halfeti was 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) away from us, but we heard from our elders in the cafe of our village that some other villages would also be flooded. Nobody told us that only Halfeti and the villages on the banks of the Euphrates would be flooded.
I heard from my paternal uncle that a man playing the guitar would come to Halfeti the day before the dam gates were opened. My uncle was working in the municipality at that time. The municipality was going to bring this guitarist as part of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) project. The man was world famous. He was the pride of Halfeti. He traveled all over the world. My uncle watched it when he was on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT).
I was curious and thinking. I had never seen a real guitar in my life. I had seen it only on TV. I was playing the cura, a plucked string folk instrument, at that time. I learned to play it by myself. When I was a child, I saw some men playing the saz and singing folk songs on a local TV channel and cried, “I want a saz too!” My mother felt sorry for me and when she went to the hospital in Adana a year later, she bought a cura for me without telling my father about it. She also made a cover for it from the fabrics she did not use. I would go to graze animals with the cura on my back. Then, it would be possible for me to see a real guitar. I kept begging my uncle, “Take me to Halfeti to the concert.” In the evening, there was only one seat in the municipality vehicle; therefore, I sat on my uncle’s lap and we set off for Halfeti. In the vehicle, my uncle asked, “What is this guy going to play? Is he going to play Aşık Mahzuni folk songs like our Sedat?” His friends said, “We wish he would sing a barah or an unmetered folk song.”
We arrived in Halfeti. We went to the yard of a very old and very beautiful mansion. It was the Kanneci Mansion built by Armenian stonemasons. It was a mansion in need of care. All the people of Halfeti were in that mansion. There were also journalists. We hardly found a place to sit. Everyone who came to the concert seemed ready to leave their memories under the dam water. They were looking at the Euphrates River from the yard of the mansion and sighing with longing and sadness.
Then, a slightly bald man in a suit appeared on the stage. He made an announcement: “Dear people of Halfeti! You know, the gates of the dam are opening next week and Halfeti and many villages will be underwater. Our state built a new Halfeti next to Karaotlak Village and built houses. You will move there. Before the waters rise, our world-famous artist and fellow citizen, Ahmet Kanneci, will give us a guitar concert at his grandfather’s mansion. He will be accompanied by his friend Ekrem Öztan with the clarinet.”
Everyone fell silent when Ahmet Kanneci started playing the guitar. The clarinet began to accompany it. I was listening to the guitar and clarinet live for the first time in my life. They were playing classical music. I was pretty sure that 99% of the people there listened to classical music for the first time in their lives, accompanied by the guitar and the clarinet. The people of Halfeti were thinking about their memories, houses, gardens and graves, which would be flooded in the silence of Halfeti, accompanied by the sounds of guitar and clarinet. Applause broke out when the first song finished. The next piece was an Azeri folk song called "Aygız."
When the next piece was the folk song "Urfa’nın Etrafı," an old lady from the front seats began to sing along with the song played instrumentally. Then, everyone started to sing in unison. When the song finished, many people in the audience sang a song in turn. Everyone was sad. Some were crying. When my uncle said, “Let my nephew sing too,” I sang Mahzuni Şerif’s folk song, "Ağlasam mı?" which I frequently sang then. Ahmet Kanneci and his friend sometimes listened and sometimes tried to accompany the singers. That night was a night I would never forget for the rest of my life. On the way home, my uncle and the people in the vehicle did not speak at all. Everyone was silent when they thought that the water would flood the houses. The voices were mourning inside the people with broken hearts. The next week, the dam gates were opened and Halfeti was flooded. Sorrow descended on Halfeti.
A year passed. My brother called. I told him, “I would be very happy if you could bring me a guitar this summer.” He said, “Of course, I will,” and he really kept his promise that summer. I learned how to tune on my own and started playing.
Twenty years I was passed. I became a musician. I found Ahmet Kanneci through my close friend Erol Göka and visited him at his house in Ankara. I went to his house to interview him. I didn’t tell him that I had met him before, as I was afraid that my tears would come down if I did. I did hours of audio recording. One part of our conversation was music. I took out my santur and he took out his guitar. Since we were both from Halfeti, we decided to play an Urfa folk song and played the song "Urfa’nın Etrafı." So, I went back to that night 20 years ago: that night a week before Halfeti was flooded.
But this time, it was different for me because, for the first time in my life, I was not only watching and listening to a guitar player but also accompanying him with my santur.
I looked at Halfeti
With the helpless eyes of a mute person
It stored up what it wanted to say
In fact, it wanted to say so much
It went down deep in the water
And the symphony of silence started to play
With no intention of ceasing...
