A few days went by before I got the meaning of ‘Welcome here. Welcome home’. I was hoping to have a home in this city, but in the end isn`t it what all immigrants hope for? Because yes, this is what I am, an immigrant. If I were some famous writer or misunderstood artist, it would have been called ‘an exile’. So I must settle for the immigrant tag for the moment. Isn`t it funny how many tags we got stuck on ourselves during our miserable existences? Thank God they are not actual paper or carton tags, like the price ones, otherwise we`d all look pretty funny but also more interesting. No one would get bored during a long bus ride: we`d read our neighbors tags, thinking ‘wow, that old nice man was once called a pervert or a bullheaded moron, or maybe… Let`s ask him to raise his arm! Oh yes, on his elbow there is a ‘heartbreaker’ tag.
You can now understand why I am looking forward to getting old. Sins are forgotten, people are nice to you, try to be helpful and never think in their innocence that you might have been a jerk in your good old days. You can scream from your lungs: No! I do not deserve this consideration! Age is just an accident, I am the most despicable person ever existed! People would still smile with deference and say: I know growing old is hard to bear, but we all are sooner or later, so let us help you and care for you, grandpa. And so you end up being cared for and loved or at least have the chance of some clean diapers in an old mens home-that, if you are living your last days in a civilized country. That`s another reason I moved to Sweden. I think I know myself all too well and I do know that witches are not loved anywhere for what they are, except when they grow old enough to be called grandma.
Well boys and girls, it looked like I found my home in this city- in theory at least. And I also moved to my actual ‘new home’ after those days at the hotel I told you about. The apartment was nice and cozy and the previous tenants left some things behind. And a note: ‘Everything in the apartment is yours’. Good, so all of a sudden I had some more things apart from what I brought from my home country. It was a peaceful Saturday afternoon and the city was quiet. I was doing tours around the house, trying to get used to the new space. Imagine a cloudy day, an almost empty apartment and a thick silence covering your ears like a warm hat. So it was. And I opened a kitchen cabinet. They were there. Both of them: the Turkish coffee pot and a brand new-still-sealed Turkish coffee jar Mehmet Efendi brand. I froze.
I went to Turkey many times and never bought a coffee pot for myself. I bought some as souvenirs for almost every friend or family member, but for myself, although I love Turkish coffee. No wonder, since the part of the world I`m coming from is a melting pot of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Mongolians and God knows what other ‘ns’. Occasionally, they pop up from our now Romanian-called DNA taking the form of strange preferences. We find ourselves enjoying the spicy food of the Hungarians, the unbearable sweet ‘baklava” of the Turks and the long chats on lazy Sunday afternoons of the above mentioned.
I always got the things I longed for. So what`s so strange in getting the Turkish coffee pot I wanted? In Sweden, from a portughese-romanian family. Nothing strange at all.
The pot was nice, but the coffee jar was scary. About a year ago, I was chatting with my good friend and, after a few hours of complaining about men, life and human fate, we started to discuss our funerals. Yes, our own funerals. She wants to live forever and never grow old. So she opted for a mausoleum-style crypt and maybe a long-lasting-Stalin-style embalming. I am not scared of death, so I was oscillating between a Jewish funeral and a cremation. Ultimately, I chose the cremation and I decided that my funerary urn should be a Mehmet Efendi coffee jar. I really hope someone would remember this and please, play Ishamel Lo`s ‘Tajabone’ when you flush my ashes down the toilet. I have a taste for grandeur, you know…
So there it was, my urn in my new home from Sweden. For those who are still wondering: yes, I`m planning to die here someday. And then I understood: the “Welcome here” sign was not just a simple courtesy of the Uppsala Kommun, but my Tarot Tower.
‘No card scares a Tarot reader like the Tower - or the person they're reading for if that person knows anything about Tarot cards. It is however one of the clearest cards when it comes to meaning. False structures, false institutions, false beliefs are going to come tumbling down, suddenly, violently and all at once. Seeing the Tower again, the Fool feels as if lightning has just flashed across his mind; he thought he'd left that old self behind when he started on this spiritual journey.’ (excerpt from ‘Tarot Meanings’)
