Water seeks the soil, the city seeks the waters it lost

It is the time of redbuds, lilacs, and hyacinths... A spring hanging in the air, a sudden downpour in Ankara, and those swept away by the flood under the rain.

We are in May, the very middle of spring. The sky is indecisive in Ankara; one side is sunny, the other is cloudy. 

I want to reach for the cloud first. Let it rain a little. Let the earth smell. Let the weary air that settles over the city dissipate. Then let the sun come out; shall we look at the sky to see if a rainbow appears?

Let us look... If the rain hasn't turned into a flood.

Rain was another name for prayer in Anatolia. First to the soil, and from the soil to abundance... There seemed to be an invisible agreement between humans and nature in the sky in the past. Humans built great cities, first by the sides of waters and rivers. Then, they poured asphalt over them, like in Ankara.

We no longer wait for the rain with a rainbow, but with a flood, while looking at the cloud on our phone screens, and at the same time, we are afraid in this city we call home:

“Will the underpass flood?”

“Will the old woman on the sidewalk be swept away by the flood?”

Will we make it out of this water alive?

September 11, 1957, comes to mind—the flood disaster in Ankara that claimed lives and imprisoned Ankara's streams beneath the soil. 

“Should we try to drown the water before it drowns us?” the leaders of the time must have said(!) 

Interestingly, the day of the disaster coincided with an early election decision, and then the streams were covered up. 

Can one play games with water? Can one defy nature?

What is the rain to do? 

For 69 years, water and soil have been paved over with asphalt in Ankara.

Yet, we too would have liked to see the freely flowing leaden streams and say “Hello” to the İncesu, like Ahmet Arif...

We have now become residents of Ankara who are thirsty for water, while living above the waters. 

Last week, in the middle of May, it is raining in Istanbul... We are talking about Ankara's streams while facing the Bosphorus. 

The days of Ankara reach back to the 1950s: Two artists from Ankara wander through their minds as if walking on a geographical map, and Ankara's streams flow one after another...

I join them. I find myself in a time I do not know, starting from Hatip Creek and wandering into İncesu. Kavaklıdere, Hoşdere... When “Bülbül Creek” is mentioned, birds suddenly take flight in the city. 

Yet each one is just an address, a neighborhood name for me and for those like me who have not seen those waters.

Can one play games with water? 

We play like this, as if rebuilding the city on top of its own waters.

Isn't that the whole point anyway? To think that we have tamed the streams and put the water to sleep; to escape a little from memory, a little from the water. To forget that water is alive.

All waters are romantic from a distance. Rain is just rain until it meets concrete.

We are close to it now, in the midst of the great rains of great cities.

Today in Ankara, people were dragged along in the flood. In Hatay, bridges collapsed, at least three citizens were swept away by the flood and lost their lives, in Tokat, cars were tied to trees, and 15 thousand people were evacuated. 

Like a familiar headline: “The entire country is surrendered to the flood.”

We are at a point where natural disasters have lost their naturalness. We are meticulously crafting nature with our own hands, so that when the day comes, it can take us in. We knowingly defy the water, the stone, and the soil. 

And every time, the same astonishment: “How can this be?”

“How could it not be?”

The flood flowing before my eyes, cars wandering in the rain; it is as if the city suddenly remembers the waters it forgot when it rains in Ankara. The waters are seeking their freedom. It is a scream beyond the rain overflowing from the underpasses. In defiance of those who say “Ankara is a graveyard of streams,” the water is coming to life.

For the umpteenth time, humanity is being warned: THERE IS TOO MUCH CONCRETE, THE WATERS ARE OVERFLOWING...

The streams are in our minds, the waters have not forgotten their path. The rain is defying the concrete and the games of humans. 

Just like the scent of soil we look for by cracking open a window after the rain;

Water seeks the soil, the city seeks the waters it lost today on the asphalt of Ankara.