Remembering Anne Frank
It was finally over. The fire that wiped out most of the forests in Gulnar, Mersin was extinguished a few days ago. Another one started, this time in Bodrum. And yet another will start in the days to come. And another one…
While the we’re-on-top-of-the-food-chain crowd congregates in the Dumbs Club in Ankara, just like their predecessors did, only these are closer to their deity or so they claim and/or believe, 14,000 km2 of forests disappeared in the last 50 years. Gone!
But they worked hard, really they did. They deserved their long sought vacation. Was it not they who had passed law after law each time the courts canceled their greed? Was it not they who claimed “by selling the lands that lost their value as a forest, moneys would pour into their pockets, sorry the Treasury?” How does a forest un-become a forest?
It’s easy. Actually it’s easier than the make-money-on-line scams floating on the surface of the internet seas. Let me share it with you:
1- Wait for a dry weather in summer,
2- Take your car for a visit to countryside,
3- In order to avoid dehydration, do not forget to take mineral water with you, bottled ones, no plastic please (this is important),
4- Drink them, do not litter,
5- Pick your favorite forest,
6- Break the bottles and throw them away, towards the trees,
7- Make sure you have a deal with local officials beforehand so that the land that has now lost its value as a forest will be sold to you,
8- Rinse and repeat.
And I reread what Anne Frank noted in her diary, on the day of May 13th, 1944. How she cared for that one tree, how she took comfort watching it while she was hiding from the Nazis, how people of Amsterdam tried to save that chestnut tree later. And I looked at those …s in Ankara. I looked again. And again…
