A Review by Leyla Welkin

Muhabir - Reporter
A Review

Övül Avkıran and Mustafa Avkıran [10+]'s production of Muhabir / Reporter is affecting. Despite the fact that I am an American who has lived in Turkey very few of the last fifty years, these stories, these scenes, Memet Ali’s open hearted, personal descriptions of his life experiences growing up in Turkey touch deep. Above all, Reporter is an opportunity for shared humanity, for empathy.

The play opens with an invitation. Joyfully, playfully Memet Ali invites us in with dance and a song: I am you, I am you, I am you. If you are willing to take the cup of wine offered, if you are ready to join the dance, a treat is in store for you.

Memet Ali takes us on a journey through his childhood in a family of actors, living among and influenced by people who tell stories and show life experiences for a living. The warmth and wonder he felt for these people is evident. Then he tells us of his experience as a reporter, a very young reporter in Israel/ Palestine. How does a young person, how does any young person make sense of the strange and painful conflict blazing in that land? Memet Ali has his own take on it and invites us inside.

He takes us to scenes from the Cannes Film Festival where the main attraction for a young man has very little to do with films. Given a choice between topless beaches and dark movie theatres where would a vigorous young man choose to go? He takes us to the scenes of murders, terrible crimes, political events, and he asks us to look at them through his eyes. He opens up his thoughtfulness, his tenderness, taking us closer and closer in.

Apparently there are some who have felt that the stories are too personal. There seem to be people who are not comfortable or ready to go into this emotionally alive, interior world. Some have said- Why should I listen to your stories? Why should I care about these things? Though most people may be too polite to put it this way, the question could be posed as- Why should I care about you?

Why indeed? What is the benefit of empathy? Why would a person wish to consider, to experience, to dance with the reality that I am you, I am you. Perhaps you too are me, I am you and we are all one another.

We live in an age when it has become fashionable to be like no one else. The greatest accomplishment is to be unique, unprecedented, unlike anyone else. Or is it? Of course all our experiences are unique. As an American I am all too well steeped in the philosophy of the precious benefits of being one’s own separate self, the aspiration to be a self made man. I’m not suggesting that everyone should give that up. But perhaps there is a way, at one and the same time, to be a self and stay connected, stay involved, stay open hearted and ready for empathy.

Of course open heartedness means vulnerability. To be ready to recognize that I am you requires that I allow myself to be touched by you, to be affected by you. Turkish veterans of mahale baskisi are right to remember that being affected by others is not always a positive experience. A repressive government, a scornful neighbor, a destructive colleague or schoolmate is never a person one wants to seek out. That will not change.

But at the same time it is in our shared humanity that we have the opportunity to come most fully to life. It is in our open heartedness, even our broken heartedness, that we are most whole, most alive. Sharing stories, offering up memories is a way to invite one another into our lives, into our selves. I am the story that I tell- to me and to you- about who I am. I become wider, deeper, larger by participating in the process of being human, by being in empathetic connection with you.

There is a saying among the Sufis that love is a gift from God to the one who gives love. When I allow myself to love, when I open myself up to loving another, I am receiving God’s Gift of that Love. Reporter gave me the chance to receive that gift. And like all gifts and all things, that gift comes from God. I am enriched, enlivened by that gift. You too are invited.

Leyla Welkin
psychologist