Anıtkabir + Coronavirus

Three months ago, on the first Sunday in January, my family and I visited Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.  I had been there many times over the past nearly 50 years, but not at all recently.   As they say, in your own city you are rarely a tourist.  I was happy to go again.

 How majestic, how dignified it is!

The mausoleum is located on a hilltop in central Ankara, in what was in ancient Phrygian times, appropriately, a burial ground.  The grounds are immaculate; every blade of grass is perfectly trimmed.  Smoking is forbidden.  Attendants keep visitors on the paths and ensure decorous behavior.

Atatürk died in 1938. The mausoleum complex, designed by architects Emin Onat and Ahmet Orhan Arda, was begun in 1944 and completed in 1953.  Also buried here is İsmet İnönü, the second president of the Republic of Turkey, 1938-1950; he died in 1973.  Now there is a vast underground museum below the central court and the buildings that surround it, devoted to the Turkish War of Independence and the foundation of the Republic (1919-1923).

Anıtkabir / Mausoleum of Atatürk: main building

(photo: David Stanley)

How things have changed since that visit!  With the spread of the coronavirus and Covid-19, our students have been sent home.  Teaching is now online.  I sit, instead of stand, and talk intensively at the screen.  My sore eyes already need a vacation!

View from my office 

The campus is quiet and it is beautiful. Spring is arriving, with flowering fruit trees in full splendor. We seniors are confined to the campus, as are the under-20s.  

With lectures, concerts, events of all sorts cancelled and museums closed, there is no reason to go into the city.  The on-campus Meteksan market, where everyone, staff and shoppers alike, now wears a mask, supplies most wants.  

Walks are a pleasure.  Books are especially good friends now.  I’ve just read “Pride and Prejudice,” a pure delight, and will soon finish Mary Beard’s marvelous “SPQR. A History of Ancient Rome.”  Music is missing, but that is easily remedied on the internet. 

This may sound idyllic.  It’s not.  We don’t know what lies ahead.  That’s always true, but usually we can predict and make plans.  Now we can’t.  All we can do is live our lives as best we can in this very moment, one day at a time.  A good lesson to be learned, perhaps?