Our journey through Kayseri on the way to Malatya took us not only to a city but also to deep and sad layers of history. As we drove through Kayseri, I was struck by the huge stone structures rising on the right side of the road. These structures, which at the time seemed like an architectural beauty, took on a completely different meaning thanks to a book I came across at a book fair months later.
As I wandered among the stalls at the book fair, a title caught my eye: “Maybe One Day I Will Return.” When I read the back cover of the book, I realized that the stone buildings and abandoned streets I saw in Kayseri were actually silent witnesses to a great human story.
Kostas Emilios Tsolakidis, the author of the book, was one of the victims of the population exchange after the Treaty of Lausanne. He was uprooted from the village of Germir in Kayseri - today Zincidere - and forced to leave the land of his birth with his mother, a teacher, and his grandmother.
He was just one of the thousands of people sent to Greece, whose name was familiar, but whose language and geography were foreign to him.
Kostas Tsolakidis left behind his childhood, his memories, the people he loved and the village where he was born.
Tsolakidis lived his whole life with the pain of this separation growing inside him; he grew old and passed away.
At the end of his life, he wrote down his experiences and turned them into a memory. His book “Maybe One Day I Will Return” is not only a personal memoir; it is a literary expression of the common pain of people who were forcibly separated from their homeland.
Germir is also the village of Elia Kazan, the world-famous Kayseri-based filmmaker. Once known for its lively streets, rich commercial life and cultural diversity, today the settlement has largely fallen silent.
As one wanders through the streets of the village, one passes mansions built with fine stonework, and encounters the majestic yet sad silhouettes of the churches of Aya Todori, Surb Stephanos and Panaya.
Today, Germir's dilapidated state is like an open-air memory, a reminder of the prosperity and coexistence of the past. Ruined walls, abandoned gates and silent courtyards tell us not only an architectural legacy, but also the story of a forcibly displaced people.
For this reason, “Maybe One Day I Will Return” is not only a book to be read, but also a call to conscience. To see Germir is to witness the traces left by history. Because understanding the pain of the past is perhaps the truest way to light the light of peace in the future.