Empty streets and a thousand questions on my mind

WHEN I came to Lefkoşa from Girne at around 3pm on Monday, I had a thousand questions in my mind. While I was trying to make sense of what we went through and thinking about what kind of society we were going to become, that question popped into my mind: “Why do we suffer the same?” Seneca, a Roman thinker, warns his dear friend Lucilius in a letter to: “I advise you one thing: don’t be unhappy ahead of time! The disasters that you think you are walking around and fear will probably never happen to you, at least it has definitely not happened until now. So some of our fears hurt us more than necessary, others even though they are not needed at all! We either magnify our pain, or suffer prematurely, or create the pain ourselves ...” Just as I write this, I shiver when I hear the painful noise of the ambulance from outside, just like when I feel a slight pain in my throat. Is it really like Seneca said? Do our fears magnify our pain? Or do I want to raise my fears when I remember the 8,000 closed workplaces and thousands of unemployed people mentioned in the Kıbrıs newspaper column of Ödül Muhtaroğlu?

These questions come to my mind at this very hour when all the hotels are announcing that they will be closed one by one. Well, haven’t we taken so many measures, expansions, decisions, so that our hotels do business and tourism can revive? When I listen to the statements of politicians and ministers, my fear grows, I feel like a child who has seen a man in a mask. In fact, you know, kids are not only afraid of the adults behind the mask because it’s not just the grim look of the mask. This is their fear of the unknown in the face of unusual or unexpected situations. Yet we didn’t know that these would happen? Are we not surprised when a positive coronavirus case occurs in the Ministry of Finance? Or, did we not take the over 450 patients seriously because they were not civil servants until this case came out? Just as we do not take the warnings of doctors after quarantine seriously. Have we attributed such great meanings to being a civil servant in our country? Is it because everyone is trying to be a civil servant or is it because they see that they cannot get the most basic rights of employees in other sectors? They are not considered unfair either. Look at the news, when there was one case in the Ministry of Finance, almost all government offices were emptied, everyone already got their doctors’ reports. Didn’t our dear minister immediately explain that they would not bring everyone to work at the same time? So, have you heard of such an event in local cases that were sick before? After all, the employees of the hotels, in which cases occurred, were not civil servants. Leave the hotel to quarantine, didn’t we deliberately carry the passengers who came sick to these hotels? What happened to these private jet hadiths? Those who did resign and continue to receive their parliamentary salaries are at home, and those who are sick are now unemployed. So let’s not think about it now and tire ourselves. Then let nothing happen to our immunity. Let’s continue to share our Instagram pictures. In the meantime, let’s take care of the deductions of our officers, while the instant money comes from the homeland. When I read that the hospitals are full and the troubles people suffer in quarantine as if they were in concentration camps, I say to myself that I am actually being unfair. I think our people are exaggerating too. If they weren’t sick too. I think there is a reason why about 24 million patients in the world are sick. For this reason, we are right to exclude these people, not to post them, and not to make them comfortable in quarantine. After all, we haven’t seen Covid yet. Nothing will happen to us anyway. What we were going to do, no matter what political party came in, would we now receive taxes from people we had already condoned for years not to make their taxes and investments? Do not be so afraid of this Covid. Use mouthwash, drink plenty of water, and do you keep that distance or put on the mask? Do you think the job that will take place on the eve of the presidential election, making legal arrangements to increase our tax revenues, collecting taxes and building a hospital? How many labourers are there in the country who work for the minimum wage and drive a Jeep, right? Now you will determine them from the insurance records. Trust me, you cannot leave the apartment without control. You best keep taxing 30,000 TL to our barber, Yusuf. Let him take a loan to pay this and our financial system will strengthen. Let Yusuf work harder. Isn’t working a virtue anyway? In the meantime, they say that after the quarantine, luxury car sales have increased. Isn’t that strange? Yusuf; keep on cycling … your interest rates have risen, after all. The wise mother of philosophy, Prof Dr Ionna Kuçuradi, answered the question of “why are we suffering?” With answers “from the consequences of ignorance and ignorance”. This definition came exactly right, I say, while listening to the statements of our Minister of Health in a live broadcast. I wonder if I’m in a dream for a moment, I say, as I hear the answers. I am immediately startled, my fear is getting bigger, I’m not sleeping. Hadn’t we opened our schools the night before and continued our flights? Or were we not making these decisions based on the data we already have and the studies in the world? Nietzsche says it is an expression of resentment towards another, more valuable world, that causes one’s suffering. These definitions just describe the emotions we all experience these days, right? In my home, where I came through the empty street of Dereboyu in the evening, I think about how my 11year-old daughter cannot do online lessons again today and the internet is constantly disconnected, and I try to understand what kind of life awaits this generation and what kind of world they long for. I cannot understand, I am afraid . . . I said, you, I mean, we all are responsible for our coming to this point and what happened. Of course, we are not. I better gargle and I’ll be prepared for surprises tomorrow. In the meantime, do not use the water too much, we could not fix the pipeline yet, let me remind you . . . stay healthy.