https://vimeo.com/ondemand/twiceastranger

Simple but profound poem by Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç called "Twice a Stranger" - "İki Kere Yabancı", about the tragedy and truth behind the League of Nations-commissioned population exchange in 1923 between #‎Greece and #‎Turkey, that sought to leave more or less ethnically homogenous states on both sides of the Aegean by forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands in both directions. 

Her family members were removed from their homes in Crete in modern-day Greece and taken to Turkey.

"Geç kaldık anıları kaybetmeye
o ilk malzeme yitti gitti
ilk mübadiller götürdüler anılarını
oysa onlar hemen kaydedilmeliydi
üzerinden seksen yıl geçtikten sonra
ani savaşları
her türlü manipulasyona açık
Mübadeleyle ilgili her metnin özü aynı:
“Yerinde doğup yabanda kocamak”
iki yerde de yabancı olmak."

***

"It's too late for us to be preserving our recollections;
The essence of them, the first essence, has vanished already.
Those first migrants took away their memories;
The memories that ought to have been
recorded without delay.
Eighty years have passed,
The memories are warring with one another,
ripe for distortion.
But the core of every migrant's statement
remains the same.
Birth in one place,
growing old in another place.
And feeling a stranger in two places."