The tortoise trainer

Abstract

The author observes a painting of Osman Hamdi Bey about a tortoise trainer, an Ottoman dervish with a bamboo flute. This picture prompts the author for personal reflections about his grand-grandfather, who had to flee in 1918 because of the British invasion in Istanbul. For Rumi the bamboo flute is a symbol of the human being detached from his roots. That feeling of detachment and painful desire for his origin is the main subject of the author. He refers to Walter Benjamin, who described the European flaneurs as searchers without an earthly purpose and compared them with oriental Sufis who search for God. The desire of the author for his roots reveals itself also in his representation of the Ottoman Empire, which is linked to the fortune of his grand-grandfather, who had to give up his life due to the beginning of a new era. Nevertheless, behind all the pain which is caused by every separation, which might be senseless to us, hope, sense and reconciliation arise: “Flaneurs are those sensitive souls exiled by the postmodern who can acquire a sweet taste from all the constituent pain, because they see a universal reality in them.”