Inferno

Tags

amreading, amwriting, arson, blog post, ecosystem, fire, flora and fauna, Forest fire, heinous motives, inferno, livelihood, loss, Marmaris, Memoir, memories, Muğla, pine forests, True Story, Turkey, writers' community

Marmaris, Muğla ,Turkey 29 July, 2021

One never knows when one is safe in life. I’m sitting in my lounge, with the aircon on, while an inferno builds around me. Outside the temperature is 42+ C, inside, a comfortable 26C. But then it all depends on the electric company, doesn’t it? Once they decide it’s safer to cut my power, I’ll be immersed into the heat. Once the wind turns, from the east to the west, I’ll sit in the middle of the flames burning the pine tree covered hills around me.

Where would I go? Into the pool, I’m thinking, but would I have to stay underwater while the inferno takes me hostage? For how long? Will I survive? Who knows?

This is the fourth day of the fire. No, it’s not a bush fire. I know this for certain. I’ve lived here for the last 11 years, and never seen anything like this. Usually, the fires are local, and firefighters put them out in a few hours. This is different, deliberate, mean and calculated. Set ablaze in various spots. Mankind is the cruellest creature on the planet.

The villages are left on their own. Their livestock, greenhouses, homes, and fields at the mercy of the flames. There is no state, authority to protect them. The president visits the disaster sites in a convoy of hundreds of cars and throws tea bags out of the window. Not flowers, not water, but teabags…

Have I come here to die in an Inferno? I do not know. I miss my hometown, but I also got accustomed to this place which has given me hope. A fake hope, perhaps. Hope is a wish that keeps us going.

At dusk, the scenery resembles an apocalypse, a blood red sky, smell of burning, and the death of the forest. Hot winds blow ash and burnt pine needles everywhere.

In daytime, driving through the once thick woodland, the ghosts of pine trees lament their lost glory. No more the rich green against the azure sky. Only carcasses in brown, dead and dying, weeping. I weep for them, and all the creatures who have lost their homes and perished. It seems it takes 50-60 years for a forest to recover its ecosystem. The flora and the fauna that provide livelihood to the locals. I won’t be around then, but I have seen the best. No one can burn my memories.

So, I wait for fate to turn its wheels. As far as my view and binoculars allow, I watch the forest day and night, to spot intruders with heinous motives. Will the wind change, the power cut, or will I be saved, redeemed, and perhaps understand what I’ve come to learn in this life.

Marmaris, Muğla, Turkey 29 July, 2021

Muğla, Marmaris, İçmeler, then and now, before and after 29 July, 2021

Muğla, Marmaris, villages, forest fire, despair…

Advertisement

Rainbow of Life

Tags

air, ambiguity, awareness, bliss, colourless, colours, dreams, earth, elements, feelings, fire, Gaia, heart, life, love, melancholia, moods, mystery, nature, passion, rainbow, shades, sorrow, water

Dream or Reality?

Tags

air, blue planet, children, civilization, dreams, earth, fire, innocence, reality, the elements, the universe, water

 

 

A dark indigo sky, inhabited by granite clouds, blown by gusting winds and torrential rain. The water cascades down the hills, together with my tears of sorrow and joy. The valley is flooded, the forces of the elements wash everything down to the sea.

 

Stuck behind a tree trunk, I open my eyes and look around. An eerie silence. Behind me, the pine tree covered hills. Before me, the beach and the sea. Everything seems familiar, yet unfamiliar. Nothing manmade is left in sight. Only nature, as it was created. The vast waters resemble a lake, not a single ripple disturbing its surface. As though time has stopped.

 

The clouds have disappeared and a golden ball of light dominates the azure sky. Sunrays touch my skin. I am naked, the way I was born. Vulnerable and lonely. Do I remember that moment? My memories of that instant are not clear, but I feel the solitude and the despair deep down in my heart. The pain of that first breath, a cry in the void. I am frightened in these alien surroundings.

 

I have no belongings now. The memories, the only baggage I am allowed to take with me.

 

Am I the last person on the Blue Planet or the first one in a new world?

 

What about civilization, everything we have built and done? Have they all been washed to the sea? The heritage we wanted to leave behind, the traces of our existence, to make a difference, to be remembered by and recognized. The untamed part of the human ego. As if the universe cares whether we make a difference or not.

 

Progress, heaven and hell at the same time. Creation and destruction. Yet, nothing manmade is more powerful than the forces of nature, orchestrating life and death simultaneously, and recreating life from death, through the eternal cycle.

 

I hear the lullaby of waves. The water starts to move. A warm breeze sweeps across my face. A flock of birds appears in the sky and flies towards the horizon in a perfect V. The perpetual motion begins. The earth beneath me stirs, then rocks and continues, vibrating in sporadic tremors. The breeze turns into a wind, then an angry storm. The branches of trees bend and bow to the ground at the whim of the great force. Lava gushes out from the centre of Gaia, red-hot. It flows like a river down the mountains and across the plains, melting everything on its path, destroying and creating at the same time. I try to hold onto the tree, with all my might, but I’m weak. My fingers give in, and I go with the flow.

 

 

 

******

 

 

Faint voices in the background travel through the air. Then the most delightful sound in the universe. Children’s laughter. I open my eyes and scan my surroundings. I’m stretched out on a deckchair, under a parasol on the golden sand of the beach. My half-read book, lying on my chest.

 

A little boy and a girl are playing at the edge of the sea. They fill their tin buckets with water and empty them, giving each other generous showers. They giggle and yell, the wonder of life vibrant on their faces. No illusions or disillusionments. They have not yet been injected with fear and doubt. I pray for them to hold onto that childhood curiosity forever.

 

Then I remember my dream, that moment stolen from time. Was it a dream or reality? Life, as it seems, is painted before me, reflected in its three dimensional ingredients. Sound, light and depth. Is this an illusion I have created?

 

I pick up my belongings and head towards home. The laughter of children still in my ears.

 

I have no answers.