{"id":127721,"date":"2018-07-20T11:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T15:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=127721"},"modified":"2018-07-23T11:33:02","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T15:33:02","slug":"the-melancholy-of-the-hedgehog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/20\/the-melancholy-of-the-hedgehog\/","title":{"rendered":"The Melancholy of the Hedgehog"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the sweet sadness of Turkish gatherings and Soviet cartoons.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Still from\u00a0Hedgehog in the Fog<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

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When I was eight and my brother nine years old, we moved from Ankara to London where we awaited clearance for our father\u2019s work in Copenhagen. Our parents were both thirty-three, without income, and endlessly creative about our finances. It was a year of free museums, of shuffling through metro gates with a single ticket, of boxes of sweaters sent to us by our grandparents. When we were bored of the few toys we\u2019d brought from Turkey, my brother and I made puppets from newspaper sheets, sticking their limbs together with glue.<\/p>\n

It was a strange year, in our house with a fake fireplace, situated at the edge of a cemetery. Our parents made friends with a group of young Turks\u2014students, doctors, a ticket-booth worker at the cinema\u2014and met up with them for nights of fas\u0131l<\/em>. Someone played the oud, and the others sang along with the help of a small black book called Ah, Those Beautiful Songs<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A fas\u0131l is a gathering to sing classical Turkish music, grouped by maqams<\/em>, or melodic modes. As a social event, the goal of fas\u0131l is a communal purge of grief.<\/p>\n

I complain to no one, I cry at what I\u2019ve become
\nI shiver, like a felon, at my fate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A recurring theme of fas\u0131l songs is lost love and impossible reunion. Their landscapes are the obscure hours of dusk and moonlight, when boatmen row in solitude and lovers wait with diminishing hope.<\/p>\n

Every day I wait, crestfallen at these shores.
\nThe day sets, the birds return …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These songs are also about the scarcity of time, and many are Ottoman poems set to music, especially those of Yahya Kemal Beyatl\u0131, whose shadowy verses perfectly match fas\u0131l\u2019s somber atmosphere: \u201cWe are at the horizon of an evening without return …\u00a0\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

In my childhood, seeing grown-ups suddenly desolate, singing with lowered heads, I would wonder what great misfortunes had befallen them. Fas\u0131l had the ability to open a door\u2014to call forth sadness in everyone. Even my great-uncles, who could sit like marble through the happiest occasions, would sing:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a rose in my heart, withered without blooming
\nAlways, I am wretched, always full of sorrow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Children didn\u2019t partake in the singing, though from time to time we would be humored with a lively song. \u201cOh nightingale, lovely bird, where are you now?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>But these were exceptions and didn\u2019t belong to fas\u0131l, whose purpose was to wade deep into the waters of melancholy.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The word fas\u0131l comes from the Arabic fasl<\/em>, meaning episode, section, break, or interlude. It is a thing set apart, just like the musical gathering which is a contained period\u2014a passageway into emotion otherwise kept in check. As such, it is also an episode of meditation, requiring its participants to be present in the face of rising emotion. Fas\u0131l allows for sadness, not as a sickness or something from which we turn away in discomfort, but as a ritual of intimacy.<\/p>\n

One of the most famous classical Turkish singers, whose songs and interpretations often accompany fas\u0131l gatherings, is Zeki M\u00fcren, lovingly known as Pasha. In his lifetime, M\u00fcren was admired by everyone. His death in 1996, while he was on stage, was a national tragedy. Adults talked about the power of M\u00fcren\u2019s voice, the beauty of his interpretations, his love and respect for his fans. At the end of performances, he would bow low, thank the audience again and again, and wish everyone \u201cthe very best.\u201d In interviews, he spoke shyly, almost with apology. It seemed that he was always asking for pardon, even if he was the country\u2019s greatest celebrity.<\/p>\n

But to children, the most remarkable thing about M\u00fcren was his appearance. He polished his nails, painted his eyelids and plucked his brows. He wore heeled shoes, glittery costumes in purple and gold, large jewels on his neck and hands. We were puzzled by his uniqueness\u2014by the fact that he was allowed to be this way.<\/p>\n

Whenever M\u00fcren\u2019s appearance was discussed, grownups suggested that this was his constitution. \u201cHe was created this way,\u201d my grandmother would say, without defining the specifics. M\u00fcren\u2019s appearance was touched on only vaguely, and with some embarrassment, always teetering on the edge of a taboo. I felt that M\u00fcren was shielded from an otherwise unwelcome topic. We were to let him be, because we felt tenderness for him, perhaps even more so because he embodied things which were shunned. M\u00fcren\u2019s persona was like the interlude of the fas\u0131l, clearing up space for another way of being, albeit nebulous, within the rigid rules of society.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

With time, fas\u0131l became less frequent in my family. Gatherings began to be dictated by the preferences of younger generations, and the old fas\u0131l singers would contend themselves with one or two sad songs. Now, when I meet up with friends in Istanbul, we might go out to taverns around Beyo\u011flu, where the pleasure of comradely singing has become an industry. Clarinet, violin, and darbuka players go from table to table taking tips and requests, and the night escalates to an overflow of emotion. These evenings bear little resemblance to the subtle shades of gloom in the fas\u0131ls of elders. They are closer to cheering at a football game than to the slow and steady heartache and its patient observance of darkness.<\/p>\n

What is foreign to us youth is not necessarily the sadness\u2014we can shout along to lyrics of heartbreak in bustling taverns\u2014but the slowness. In traditional fas\u0131ls, single words are sung over the span of several seconds; a string of three words can take minutes; refrains are repeated over and over. At that speed, they hardly sound like melodies at all, but a long, drawn-out moan. Their shape can only be detected by an attuned sensibility, hard to master in our world of split-second attention spans and saturated colors.<\/p>\n

That year of fas\u0131l gatherings in London was in the nineties. It was also a year of Donald Duck t-shirts and Ace of Base, dorky jokes and quirky haircuts, movies where children in baseball caps and roller skates had litters of dogs\u2014fictional worlds of crisp happiness. But for me, these dazzling images were superimposed on this experience of childhood, which was subdued and tinged with sadness.<\/p>\n

My memory of childhood is a fog, not because I don\u2019t remember it, but because it felt like a twisting and tuneless hum, like light filtering through the curtains in the afternoon, making the dust particles dance. In films and cartoons, this interior fog was snatched away\u2014as if we might be tainted by our own minds\u2014and replaced with a spotless joy.<\/p>\n

But in Soviet cartoons, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm animation studio by artists on a state salary, melancholy is present everywhere. Their lack of commercial concern is apparent in their unresolved narratives and wide spectrum of subtle emotions. In their innocence, wonder, and muted colors, these cartoons are at once a nostalgia for childhood and an expression of childhood itself.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most famous are the adventures of Cheburashka, a droopy eyed mix of bear cub and monkey. Cheburashka sings that he was once a nameless toy at whom no one ever cast a glance. \u201cAt first things weren\u2019t working out for me,\u201d Cheburashka says, \u201cand it would even happen that no one congratulated me on my birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, Cheburashka makes friends with the crocodile Gena and the two go on rides sitting on a blue train. They have the look of orphans, hopeful and forlorn, fearful that their happiness will be taken from them. They, too, sing about the passing of time:<\/p>\n

Slowly the minutes pass far away,
\nDon\u2019t wait to meet with them again.
\nAnd even though we are a bit sorry for the past
\nThe best of course is still ahead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The particular voices that sing and speak in Soviet cartoons are not too different from the voice of Zeki M\u00fcren\u2014gentle and hushed, and with such graceful resignation it may break your heart. The stories they tell do not treat sadness as a villain which must be conquered or pushed away; they bestow it with its own, soulful beauty. Rather than pulling their spectators out of the dim lights of childhood, these cartoons\u2014utterly different from the ones I grew up with\u2014accompany them into the fog.<\/p>\n

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