What is the thing to vanish along with these faded photographs which will be thrown away by someone else after my death one day?
Not only “life”, but also, sometimes-how to put it? - love.
Perhaps may be, this photo album will find a new owner.
Mr. Koper is about 65 years old. He has a wrinkly face filled with the deep expression lines. He lives a calm life, unaware of that everything he feels immediately reflects in his face and every line on his face reflects every feeling inside him as a map. In general, there is a wisdom and delicacy mixed with the blues on his face.
His gold tooth he had although the people around objected and it had been deemed out of fashion blinds the eyes of people he shares his laugh during a smile surrounding his face from time to time.
He is stoop. He hangs the big iron key of his little antique shop on his neck. It seems as if the weights of that key and door it unlocks make him such stoop. A little more key hidden in the shadow of big key rocking on the edge of necklace is also hung. It is the key of folding secretary table in which he hides his world.
Koper who dresses himself gauzy has a distinctive but refined dressing style. He is carefully prepared every morning as if he will meet the woman he loves. His stick, shiny patent leather shoes, pastel colored or white shirts…
He is essentially a gold jeweller. His father was also a jeweller in time. He learned his profession from his father. He watched the details of craft from the hands of his father, on the other hand. Mr. Koper is also suffering from the occupational disease as every jeweller but he is unaware of it. A dry cough that always interrupts him has left a mark in his body. Mr. Koper always seeks the reason of his cough in the common cold or spring allergies. He consistently takes vitamin C or drinks milk with honey, and he has always cough drops in his pocket but, never seeks the reason of his cough in his profession inherited from his father. However, the real reason of his cough is that he breathed the particles of various acids used by him in order to abstract the other substances from gold for the purpose of obtaining pure gold for years. While he seeks for the pure gold, he lives together with the posion settled in his lungs and the concomitant cough. As he cannot remove this posion from his lungs, he cannot erase the blues settled on his face. These both marks that became a part of his lungs and face are two characteristic sides of Mr. Koper that reflect his soul for those who can read, although he does not notice.
The childhood years of Mr. Koper past in a big old house with plenty of rooms and a rose garden at the seaside in Istanbul together with his large family (his mother, father, elder sister, aunt, grandmother and granny).
In a home in which the rituals, habits, rhythm of women, womanish strange beliefs dominate, Koper grows up as one of the rare men who can keep up with this world together with all these women he loves. Although he is that much closed to the womankind and witnesses the details of this kind which is different from him since his childhood, he unfortunately never meets or understands or forgets his first love.
The explorer soul of Mr. Koper Bey pushed him to explore the jewel cultures in the ancient civilizations while he was in the jewellery business and herewith, his passion for old jewellery and old started. Firstly, he started to collect in order to make a model from the old jewels. Then, this interest of him changed into every old object that is elegant, elaborated, delicate and scarce, unique. The gold bracelets hung on his window in rows disappear among the ancient objects laying siege to the shop, as the days goes on. Jeweller Koper found himself surrounded by the rare and delicate objects collected and traded by him. This silent change from the jewellery into the antique dealership finalizes one day upon the blaze of gold hands over its place to the blaze of dust cloud covering such objects. It seems as if everyone always knew Mr. Koper Koper as an antique dealer and considered this change as never experienced. The only witness to this quiet and retiring change is the dilapidated shop plate that Mr. Koper never attempted to replace. According to Mr. Koper Bey and old plate, he always remained as ‘Broken Wing Jeweller Koper’. For last 20 years, he has a little shop not known by everyone and in the background, in a secret corner on the back streets of Beyoğlu, found by the collectors who engage in this job after asking so much and frequently visited by them once they find it. Mr. Koper has frequenters. They are less is more and special people. Even Mr. Koper does not know, his customers declare him as their closest friend after a while and open to him most delicate and fragile parts of their souls. They stop by Mr. Koper’s shop in order to spend time with him, give ear to him and for peace that they cannot solve why it is in that complex shop rather than buy someting. Mr. Koper treats these people in a sensitive manner as he treats to every object of them. Exactly like, he listens to objects residing in his shop, he listens to what the people who come to his shop share without commenting, without finding out and with patience. Understanding the past of a cigarette case with niello work or enamelled is possible with browsing the marks on it and laying hands on it. Firstly, he follows the apparent marks. The diverse stamps, seals, signs, paraphs, numbers and emblems on the object provide information that can be explained, only if one has a specific knowledge… But, Mr. Koper does not consider himself acquainted with a cigarette case, before taking that object in hand and touching its surface. While he lays his hands on the cigarette case, he feels the invisible impact marks, scars, dents, burrs or abrasions in his hands. Past of that object is animated in his mind behind his eyes that he closes while he touchs. Mr. Koper also treats to people he meets as he treats to his unique objects. Probably, this attitude of him results from his behaviours against the objects he collects as they are his silent friends. He listens to what the people do not say rather than what they say and sees what they want to hide rather than what they show. So to say, he touches the souls of people via their bodies according as he does with the objects. Scars, palenesses, chasms, light fissures, tears accumulated along their eyes but not dropping, birthmarks, allergies, scabby wounds, pockets under the eyes, scars from years age, seem marks, black-and-blue marks, hairs, pimples, wrinkles of old-age, spilomas… Every spot on the skin that draws the line between the body and external world, lighted on, simply expresses the secrets of that person to him.
Mr. Koper’s shop is chock-a-block full with hundreds of objects belonging to very different times, places and worlds. There is consistently a thickly dust coat on some of them. When you take an object in hand to zoom in, as soon as you move it, a dust cloud surrounds you. The dust cloud seems like a blaze because of the light filling the space, for anyone coming to the shop. When this glaze-like dust is involved in the antiquity of object, its magic doubled and doubled, even it is unintentional. When the individual gets rid of this glaze tornado wrapping him and the object up, this time, the space is surrounded by what Mr. Koper tells about the past of that object. Which period of time is related to the object, what kind of culture’s pieces are carried by the object, how Mr. Koper took the possession of it, what kind of possible sorrows and joy are hosted by the object become a tale interrupted occasionally by cough and fill the space.
There is a corner in a place that is not coming to attention and constituted by furnitures and goods that carrie the traces of his past and worn out and became smooth in his hands, in which the timbre of family conversations echos, absorbed the scent of manor house he eas in during his childhood as well as the magnificent and colourful objects from different worlds and pasts in Mr. Koper’s shop. In this corner, there is a brass-inlaid, dark colour, typically French, small secretary with thin legs. The drawers completing the legs of secretary are filled with personal effects of Mr. Koper few and far between. When you turn the elegant key greeting the eye among the ivy pattern brass handiworks, the secretary opens and turns into a table. When he was young, Mr. Koper imagined at this folding table and spent hours writing letters to the girls he loves. Inside of the folding table part was again filled with the smaller drawers this time. And, the personal effects left a mark on Mr. Koper’s heart were hidden in each little drawer. A comb buckle with a flower at the end, that his first lover dropped from her hair and Koper could not dare and give it to the girl, 2-3 books of him kept always readily available, read by him again and again in an unyielding manner, his pens in various colors and sizes suitable for every emotional state of him used by him to write his notebook he always carries… Some of pens are pencils that are red or blue, with a thickness of 2HB, that you can find in every stationery shop and ganwed away from the edge and the other edge is sharpened, one of them is a valuable fountain pen used by him since time immemorial and took the form of his fingers and grasping, many gas pencils in different colors, a goose feather pencil and its red ink, a wooden carved pencil and ordinary felt pens writing blue… On his table, there are one music box, relic of his mother, led him to the sweet dreams when he could not sleep when he was a child, his kaleidoscope, his game in which you can see geometric shapes, stars and flowers when you insert the edge of a pencil to the hole on it and turn and that he even play nowadays without boring, a pendant of his mother that she never removed from her neck with the pictures of her and her spouse on one each side, his compass that he won in a game of chance in a journey and he believes that it shows the direction of life rather than the spatial direction, his pyramid consisting of colored and wooden cubes, letter papers and envelopes consisting of transparent papers, his seal and stamp… Every morning, Mr. Koper, before sharing its shop with the customers visiting him, goes to his corner, opens his secretary and stays alone together with his world for a while. He take notes from the books read by him by underscoring, reads a poem, adds a line to the poem he writes, closes his eyes and listens to that day and himself. After closing the cover of secretary, he is ready to open the door of his shop.
Only the shadow of a love survived the moment of hurts and fractures.
The shadow defines itself with light. Was there anyone who heard my whispers?
There I was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these photographs of my love, one by one. I am looking for the real of the face I desperately fall in love with…
The most important moment in the life of Mr. Koper is the moment of death of his lover, Süheyla. While Süheyla was at death’s door, she asked Koper not to let his soul escape and Koper thought what to do for days. At last, based on the beliefs of natives who are afraid of having their photos taken, he decides to take photos of Süheyla. Some ancient civilizations believed that an image reflecting in the water or mirror is the shadow of soul; and that the photos can catch the soul. Therewith, Koper takes a single photo of Süheyla. When he lowers the camera from his eyes, he recognizes that Süheyla is dead. He took the photo of death moment of Süheyla. This experienced caused Mr. Koper to blame himself at all times and believe that the photo taken caught Süheyla’s soul.
