OĞULCAN ARSLAN

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       Unsafe is the story of the unwanted people around us; a large part of people doesn’t look at their faces as they walk down the street, they don’t bother engaging in the slightest communication even though they see them... They live in tough conditions in neighborhoods that we don’t happen to pass by and where the electricity is illegally used; where the walls are filled with writings that make you feel as if you’re in Afghanistan, where people make scrambled eggs with tomatoes and pepper that they’ve got from bazaars or markets, thrown away because they’ve gone bad and they dip stone-hard, week-old bread in it; where water is pumped and drunk from glasses filled with cigarette butts; and yet, none of these pose a problem. Aside from all such difficulties, their biggest concern now is that the makeshift sheds which they live in, are going to be taken away from them.
As it’s getting difficult every day for them to stay patient, they can’t even tolerate each other. Frequent quarrels fuel their psychological storms. Efforts to search for a safe haven are getting worse every day. Even though their hopes are diminishing because of their poverty, they say they will not give up. They prefer living there illegally, rather than returning to their country empty-handed and going through the same difficulties. Some of them are helping their families by sending money through intermediaries, who make money transfers between Afghanistan and Turkey. The rest of them save their money either for their way back home or to pay for the ticket that the smugglers will arrange for them in order to enter Europe illegally. For them, the road has not yet come to an end, and it does not seem that it will soon...
      They live in a country where they do not know the language, away from their home and are trying to earn their living from garbage containers. It is exceedingly difficult to forget the pain of family members sacrificed during the war and to stay alive in these conditions. But life, despite all the pain, is shaped around hope and the struggle to survive.
      Unsafe reveals the lifeline between reality and dreams in the eyes of a small part of Afghan refugees in the Vefa district of Istanbul, with their intense downfalls and rare lifts.
 

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