Homeless Man I Saw In The Street Before The Quarantine Starts
Tags: Quarantine, Covid 19, Homeless, Coronavirus, Lockdown

The two-day curfew started as of 21:00 on Friday. I started walking on Istiklal Street from 20:00. “Coincidentally Alive” (Brek) was playing in my ear.

Although it was eight o’clock, the street was overcrowded. But still, the feeling of the crowd is a little anxious and a bit hectic as well, with the feeling that they should be at home in an hour. The police have blocked every street leading to Istiklal Street with iron barriers, but they allow people to pass. Many police officers with motorcycles roam the street with the flashes of their motorcycles.

Tourists have a lot of takeaway bags in their hands. They, too, will return to their hotels by lingering with the showcases, the shows made by the maraş ice cream shop and the chestnuts. Street music has not been around for a long time, so there is no street musician accompanying this whole scene.

The shopkeepers pretend they are too busy inside to close their shop later, which is supposed to close at eight o’clock but have no time to close it. The lighting of the street was very nice. This year everywhere is sparkling with Christmas decorations that none of us can possibly celebrate.

Everything and everyone is in motion. Then I saw a man sitting at the entrance of a store across the street. It was looking towards the Tunnel direction, not Taksim. His gaze stretched so deep that for a moment I felt that the place he was looking at was really a tunnel that led him far. The dullness in his gaze seemed to indicate just how far he was.

A man in his sixties, with his hair mixed in the wind, his beard unkempt, and wearing a jacket that could be considered stylish despite everything.

Looking more carefully, he conveys that his left palm is directed towards people and demands that they help him, and this request is now conveyed to people with a symbol that has now become a universal symbol. It is wordless, so it is internationally wide.

His hand turned to people to collect money seemed tired of hovering. It was as if his airborne hand rather than himself needed help to keep hovering. The crowd coming from the left was his target group, so he was facing them, that is, towards the Tunnel.

The street was getting deserted as there was little time left for the curfew to begin. As the people decreased, the old man became more visible on the street. After a while, he was the most prominent character of the street for me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

What would this man do when the curfew started in half an hour? Since no one is left on the street, there will be no one who leaves money in their hands. So he had to go home like everyone else. What I call home is a sidewalk corner in the side street just ahead. I started seeing other people in the same street, even the children living on the street.

We, those who have a home, have been preparing for days to stay home for 56 hours. Movies to watch are ready. If the plan has changed at the last minute, new plans are ready. As long as we stay at home, the homeless will wander the streets alone. The place we call outside is perhaps inside for them. It is forbidden to go out, but living on the street is not.

While we in our homes are busy with skills to improve ourselves during bans, the homeless develop their survival skills.

While we are confident and comfortable to stay at home and comply with the ban, the homeless always live this period illegally. There is a sense of anxiety brought on by illegality.

The world will look better when we learn to stop looking where we are and be where we look.