That poetic suitcase that travels from Skopje to Istanbul and back is heavy. With each arrival, it brings new baggage of words, thoughts, and feelings, a part of the soul of the author who carefully arranges what is written in the empty compartments. With each return, it becomes, even more, heavier, because it also carries a part of me who as a reader becomes one with what I read. According to Ivo Andrić, “every good deed represents taking away a part of life, mine and yours”. So, Tufan’s “Suitcase” gives and takes away just as much as is necessary for the reader to become one with the journey.
Somewhere before the end of that trip, the emails became more frequent, the “Suitcase” at an intense pace gathering its last pieces to be wrapped up in one story so that a new one could begin. But just as it is inherent in a specific suitcase, so in this metaphorical and symbolic companion of every traveler, the pieces do not have their own chronological order, they are a life collage made up of memories and experiences of the past that have gradually shaped us into who we are now. They are distant echoes of some “suitcases full of books” that unknowingly changed someone’s life. A powerful memory of a “punctured suitcase” testifies to how fragile and illusory human strength is, the one that comes from the current social position, in contrast to the strength of humility and forgiveness. The “strange suitcase” that for a long time stays remembered, because it shows us that a seemingly naive memory of someone who was a neighbor, a casual acquaintance, just a passenger passing through our life, can affect our existence.
In the end, as befits this “Suitcase”, where poetic worlds came together, as the first month of the new year ended, the beginning of many beginnings, Tufan’s “Suitcase” ended its momentary journey and seemingly settled down in the blueness of the Bosporus. But that’s only Illusory, because on all continents, in all parts of the world, the suitcase is a metaphor for constant travel, searching for the new and the unknown, not reconciling with any rootedness, anchoring in one place… In a sociological sense, the suitcase is a willingness to leave everything behind and leave. In a deeper, philosophical sense, the suitcase is our deepest Self, our self, because, just as we always carry everything, we need to continue our life wherever we are in a particular suitcase, so in our inner, symbolic suitcase, we always carry our true Self, so that we can be who we are everywhere.
Silvana Dimitrievska