Meaningful_Travelling

‘Izmir’. An exotic, strange sounding word, isn’t it? To us, Greeks, it is only strange. To us, the now Turkish city will always be ‘Smyrna’. The place from where our ancestors were brutally uprooted in 1922. The word my grandsire’s lips were always pronouncing in nostalgia. His only dream, to go back home, one last time. I’ve been here before, 10 years ago. And now, here I am again.
Everything seemed the same. The excruciating humidity is nailing my melting body and the sharp eastern scents are making me dizzy. I am walking ‘Alsancak’, the once Greek neighborhood. As a kid, I was walking the narrow alleys hooked by my mother, dreaming of Paris and New York, craving for some cold water and fried chicken. Wondering why my grandsire, an always tired 92 years old man, was now so alive and eager, tearful, rushing, touching the walls and murmuring Greek and foreign words.
I now understand. I’ve read history, I’ve asked about the stories. And now, I know. I am hearing the screams of the raped girls. I am smelling the once shed blood. I am feeling the vibe of hatred. Cognition filters my senses and makes the past come alive in front of me. I am standing before the specific spice shop my grandsire stopped back then.
Childhood memories are strange. Long periods of time, from which you can’t recall anything. And images, sounds, moments, which you can play like a video inside your mind. That scene is one of these memories for me.
At first, he stood still and dead silent. I now can tell, he was trying to realize that this shop was once his home. Then he awed us. He laid down on the cobblestone street, sticking his cheek firmly against the ground. He was crying out loud, in unspeakable pain.
Suddenly, he stood up. And I still can see him skewed by anger, flipping a skep of nutmeg and spilling the spice all over the floor. I can still listen him yelling and swearing at the Turkish assistant, almost exhaling his wrath. A wrath being fed and piling over nearly eighty years inside him.
I bought a kilo of nutmeg and now, I am cramming my nose inside its paper bag sucking the scent. Visioning the homes of my ancestors being seared to the ground.
I know my story could sound brutal and not a typical travel story. But travelling should mean something different for each one of us. For my grandsire, his greatest travel, was travelling back home. For me, my greatest travel, was travelling back into history. Back into my own memories. Back into a new place, where I’ve been before.