Can musical notes strike bombs?

In a forest in Warsaw, under a white tent in front of the Chopin monument, at a piano right by the pond. Fingers from this world are touching Chopin, his nocturnes...

Children are lying on the grass, even the sun has emerged from yesterday's heavy clouds. One should write down the names of everyone, everyone listening to Chopin in this park this Sunday.

“What does it matter, the same ritual is repeated every Sunday,” says a voice in the void; “every Sunday is different,” I say, every person is different. 

In this massive park, the green is also different. I say “forest,” I miss a different kind of green; the void of the green I want to see in the capital of my country, in the middle of the city, fills me up. I miss that forest that has a name but no existence within the city I live in; today in Warsaw, I am listening to Ankara...

With my eyes closed, today in Warsaw, above the green and under the blue, I am listening to Chopin. Chopin is my colleague; the one I listen to most while reading and writing, the one who does not stop me while I pour my mind onto paper, the one who flows. Keeping me on my path like clear water. Like speaking with different voices at the same time and never interrupting each other, a simultaneous flow...

I have neither paper nor pen with me; it is just a time to listen and postpone writing, to listen to him in the lands where he was born, among the centuries-old trees. To listen together with everyone who wants to hear him, whether local or foreign.

That day, I just listened. It was so self-contained, so spontaneous, that the music felt as if it had never been touched by human hands. Neither when it was composed, nor now, in the fingers of a contemporary performer. At my desk, I realized once again why my hand reaches out to him without hesitation every time. A world that turns as if it will never stop, both serene and talkative...

Now the pen touches the paper, just like in the old days. Music lessons come to mind, where we listened to classical music from Bach to Tchaikovsky and wrote down what passed through our minds as the notes flowed. I don't know why, but I mostly wrote about cavalrymen rushing to war. It seems the rhythm of the music and history lessons were intertwined...

When it comes to history, the rhythm of the music touching my ears grew heavy, then suddenly stopped. My mind went to the day before the concert, to Schindler’s lists... In Krakow, the weather is overcast, heavy, it is about to rain; I am at the gate of an old enamel factory. A long queue at Schindler’s Factory. One wants to trace the footsteps of time. To understand history. To remember. To commemorate. All of it.

Names change repeatedly on Schindler’s lists of life and death. The moment each name is crossed out, the music stops. Between the chance to live and dying: Writing and erasing. Writing one more name, then erasing it to save someone else in their place. Knowing: Knowing that those not on the list will die. 

We hear the bloody scent of history today in concentration camps where tickets are sold out. We wait in long queues in front of monuments and museums, weep for the names that could not fit on the lists, and then return under the same sky, to a similar world. A world we cannot fit into.

Humanity wages war, massacres, and then commemorates; I wonder: with which monuments and when will those massacred today be commemorated? When and who will place flowers on a monument to be built for Palestine? Who will buy expensive tickets to enter which massacre museums? How much longer will the war and massacre industry grow? 

I wonder: When will humanity learn from history? 

It was this time last year when I visited the massive “Monument to the Battle of the Nations” in Leipzig, and I thought the same things. The monument was opened on October 18, 1913, on the centenary of the battle. Exactly nine months later, ironically, the First World War broke out. It was as if a new war had begun to take the title of “Europe’s bloodiest war” away from Leipzig. 

Monuments have long since turned into representations of power displays rather than pain. Humans, however, are born into wars and die without even seeing the monument that will be dedicated to the war they were born into. Chopin was three years old when the “Battle of the Nations” began. In the Second World War, the Nazis banned the music of Chopin, who had lived a century earlier, and blew up his monument with dynamite. His heart, which he had willed to be taken to his country, changed places many times to be protected first from the Russians and then from the Nazis. 

 I was no longer questioning why cavalrymen were running in my mind or why swords were being drawn while listening to the “Golden Age of Classical Music.” Suddenly, someone would stop and celebrate a victory, while another’s voice would fade as they carried their losses, and the stage would fall into silence. 

This is a stage, a world stage in Poland; on one side life, on the other death. I saw young people walking with blood-red bouquets yesterday; the flowers were not for a lover. I understood when they bowed in front of a monument.

History progresses at its own rhythm in every country, whether one wants to forget or insists on remembering. History progresses at its own rhythm, but it is always in human hands. A person destroys cities and a city is rebuilt; sometimes history resembles Warsaw, standing before you as if it had never been destroyed.

The people decided to restore Warsaw, which Hitler wanted to erase from the map, by remaining faithful to its original state. The city, established at the end of a reconstruction process spanning over thirty years based on Bellotto’s paintings, became the only modern-era structure to enter the UNESCO World Heritage List. Suddenly, a popular victory won without cannons or rifles comes to my mind; today is August 30. On the other hand, the concrete silhouette of the ancient city of Hatay after the earthquake...

The concert ends, the applause sends the pigeons by the lake flying. It is not a concert hall, but a huge park that slowly disperses. I applaud not only the pianist but also the people of Warsaw, who mobilized to rebuild their cities and carried Chopin’s heart home. They say rising from the ashes; we say “Phoenix” (Anka). I see a forest like a dream in the center of Anka-ra. I wait to see if it will rise from its ashes; its name is the Atatürk Forest Farm.

In this forest-like park, Lazienki Park, I open my eyes and ask, “Is this the same world?” “The same world,” says Chopin, “I wrote the Revolutionary Etude for my homeland, Poland, to which I could never return, during the November Uprising.”

“I, too, thought war remained on the thin pages of thick history books,” I say, and add, “That is why I saw cavalrymen while listening; the compositions that witnessed war were born in cities burned and destroyed by horsemen.”

Humanity’s longing for peace has never ceased; war and massacre continue, only a cure was found for the tuberculosis that tore you away from the world. People no longer die of tuberculosis; they die of war, hunger, poverty, and sometimes from the pain and misery of this world. 

There is listening to Chopin on the grass, walking in a ghetto, crying in a factory, and hiding on a list. And reading about how his heart changed places many times according to his will...

There is not one, but two worlds under the sky: our body is in one, our heart in the other.