Tsavt Tanem
(1976) I was only 4 when, for the first time, I saw a dead man. Next to our home, there was a funeral and my grandmother naiv e ly assumed that it would be ok for a child to be there... So she took me with her. To make it even worst, in front of the coffin, she lifted me by holding me under my armpits so I can kiss, as everyone did, the goldish, orthodox image of Mary and baby Jesus that the dead man was holding in front of his lifeless chest… His black, shinny, open coffin was standing in the middle of the living room. Around it, seated in a full circle, plenty of quiet fat, black dressed women, with black scarves on their heads, were crying out and murmuring words of a Greek Turkish dialect that I could hardly understand. At the level of my eyes, their black bellies and their black breasts were coming in full contrast with the skinny man in the coffin. Between their lifted black skirts and their black ted socks, I could see a small p...