Serkan Sincan displays the objects he finds in the rubble, hoping that their owners will find them “when life returns to normal”.
A funny encounter in a ghost town, deserted by its inhabitants. At the corner of the famous Kurtuls street, now in ruins, a radio cassette player sings loudly. We then discover two armchairs on a sidewalk, old chairs, trinkets, paintings.
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Serkan Sincan acts as a guide: “There, you have the Turkish flag, the Ottoman flag, that comes from the Koran. Atatürk, a good leader, Mona Lisa, my father, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Antioch, Jesus Christ… The 3 religions, all friends. This is an album of old photos I found in the rubble. Maybe, when life returns to normal, his owners will find him and I’ll give them“, details this antique dealer from Antioch, who returned to his city shortly after the earthquake of February 6.
“We tried to create a nice atmosphere to encourage people to come back here”
Since then, he has been running around to help those who are looking for the remains of their lives in the rubble, before exposing his bric-a-brac in the street. His brother, a supporter of the Istanbul football club Besiktas, rushed to help him: “Serkan was alone here. We imagined this project, about ten days ago. How to straighten Antioch? How to give a beautiful energy to people? How to revive this street? So we set up this project. As you know, music feeds the soul. We tried to create a nice atmosphere to encourage people to come back here.i,” he explains.
This millennial city had a very special soul, assure the former inhabitants. A city of mixed cultures and origins: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Armenians… It is this spirit that Serkan dreams of with nostalgia. “I want to tell my neighbours, the shopkeepers on Kurtulus Street, come back! Here, people come from the West, from the East. We can be a mosaic again“, he assures.
“Come back and open your shops, and if you don’t have any more shops, do it on the sidewalk. Live in the mountains, but don’t leave here.”
Serkan, the antiquarian of Antiochat franceinfo
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But there, he must leave us: it’s time for prayer. The imams are gone, the minarets are down. So he goes up to his balcony, and from this hundred-year-old house, which was owned by a Christian family from Antioch, plays the call to prayer.
The pain is there, the deep wounds, but they will have to be healed. “In Islam, you can cry for three days. Afterwards, you have to come back in life to help your family or your friends. And now we have to come back, to help the children first because many of them have lost their mom and dad.“, he assures. The city no longer resounds with the cries of children. But Serkan is sure of it: it will be reborn from the dust.
