Читать книгу Post-War Identification - Torsten Kolind - Страница 30

Nusret is a sculptor, that is, he was a sculptor; he is not able to make art any more. Instead he makes tombstones – such is the irony of fate. Once he showed me some of the creations he had made at the academy before the war, and he was especially proud of a small, beautiful Virgin Mary sculpture. The first time I met him he was standing outside his house working. I started talking about my research, but he interrupted me before long. This is how I remembered part of the conversation afterwards:

Nusret: This country is not normal, nobody here is normal, but when nobody is normal you feel normal! People are crazy, insane. […]

TK: Do you make sculptures now?

Nusret: No! How could I? I can’t any more. Everything seems so unreal. It’s abnormal, as I’m living in a fake world. I’m standing here watching the huge pile of garbage [a pile of rubble and garbage approximately two metres high and thirty metres long running along the road] and I don’t care. It’s as if it’s not my concern, or as if it’s completely normal, but it isn’t. The destroyed, mined and burned-out houses, everything seems unreal or normal at the same time.

The first time I saw a dead man it was terrible, it made me feel sick, but later I could see ten dead people, it didn’t affect me, I didn’t care. When you have seen dead women and children and experienced all this madness, how can you make sculptures? I cannot. Nothing matters. How can I laugh? Well I can laugh, a lot, but it is not I who do it…it feels unreal. I’m destroyed inside. It’s as though there’s a distance between me and the world, it’s as if it’s not I who stand here talking or laughing.