Agos, 27 March 1998

It may not be this way anymore, but there once was a time when there was no place in Anatolia without its own village idiot. In Anatolian culture, every town, every village, and just about every neighborhood had one. And in Malatya, we had Crazy Gaffar. He was shared between the Çavuşoğlu and Salköprü neighborhoods out along the old railroad tracks. He was a regular diversion for the shopkeepers and a right nightmare for the ladies, but harmless for all that... And when it comes to children - well, let me put it this way: Gaffar was a friend to the good and a monster to the bad. When they threw stones at him, he’d throw stones right back. But when they just wanted to play, he’d become a kid himself.

***

If you were to ask anyone middle-aged or older in Malatya today about Gaffar, I’m sure they would all speak fondly of him. And the first thing they’d tell you would be the way he wore his heart on his sleeve. I said he was a diversion for the shopkeepers, and I meant it. The shopkeepers down at the market, oh they’d go on and on about the fun they had with Gaffar, like it was nothing but a good laugh: “We’d take the poor guy and dress him all up, and he’d look himself up and down and just be tickled pink! But we didn’t just dress him up for no reason. No, what we were really after was what came next. ‘Hey Gaffar, what you’re wearing is a dead guy’s clothes!’ we’d tell him, and then he’d go and tear them all off... and there he’d be, as naked as the day he was born. So we’d dress him up and send him off next door, and they’d have him tear off his as well. Or they’d dress him up and send him over to us and we’d do the same. We’d all have a good laugh. But Crazy Gaffar, oh he was a thick one. His name said it all. He was crazy. There he’d be, stark naked. But he wouldn’t just stand there. No sooner had the last of his clothes come off than he’d start running around the neighborhood showing himself off to the ladies. They’d throw stones at him and run him off, yelling, ‘de kına,[1] you nutter!"

***

You may be asking yourself what this story about Crazy Gaffar has to do with anything. What can I say? Agos just celebrated its second birthday, and I guess it just sort of made me think of Crazy Gaffar. After all, some folks think of Agos as the village idiot of our community. And to tell you the truth, we’ve embraced that title, and we’re doing all we can to live up to it. For two years we’ve been working to play the role of the ‘idiot savant,’ and I think we’ve made a pretty good job of it.

***

I know you’re probably still asking yourself what the connection is between Agos and Crazy Gaffar going nuts and tearing off all his clothes. How well has Agos succeeded in its mission to be ‘the spirited newspaper of a spiritless community’? For our part, we’re pleased with our work so far. But when the community which has brought us to this point seems so torpid that one sometimes wonders whether there remains any trace of life within it, when it brushes off our attempts to critically examine various matters with a ‘Don’t go there, leave it well enough alone,’ when it tries to dress us up in its own dead man’s clothes, what are we to do but act a bit like Gaffar ourselves?

Whenever we attempt to reflect on any aspect of our community with an eye to im- proving it, we find our path blocked. Whether we are examining our community’s educational life, other fields, or the dynamism or lack thereof of our community structures, it is the same story. These obstacles are but more dead men’s clothes. We’ll allow no one to dress us up in them... We’ll rip them right off... And we’ll protect our innocent nakedness right to the end.

***

In the face of the callousness of the community that made us, the community that has seen Agos through its second year, the only possible reaction is to go a bit crazy. We’re comfortable with craziness, at least of the idiot savant kind, and that’s the part we so lovingly play. Just don’t try to dress us up like Gaffar.

[1] In Armenian, de kına means ‘get lost’.