The Visit
Newspapers from the period reported that Murtaza Elgin’s grave was in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery. Nevertheless, the location of Elgin’s grave was not available online, as the state cemetery archives had only been digitized from 1996 onward. Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu went to Zincirlikuyu Cemetery and obtained the location from the archive department: 28th island, grave 479. Finding the 28th island filled with family graves, and thinking that Elgin would not have been buried among families, Darıcıoğlu initially searched its secluded corners. With the help of cemetery workers, the artist searched extensively but could not find the grave. They called the archive department again and, with the help of a map sent by an officer, eventually found Murtaza’s grave among the family graves. What they encountered was a grave covered with weeds, its gravestone broken and fallen—a grave that had become a kind of “no-grave.”
The next step was to re-establish the grave and leave white lilies and a little sound on its chest.
Murtaza Elgin was the first well-known person diagnosed with HIV in Turkey, in 1985. The doctor who diagnosed him exposed his identity to the newspapers in order to gain fame through it. Elgin was one of the backing vocalists of the famous Turkish singer İbrahim Tatlıses. After newspapers published the story with his name and photograph, he was abandoned by people in the popular music scene who had been his friends until then. He lived with HIV for seven years. His life remained a public matter until his death in 1992. Only two people attended his funeral. The imams who washed his body wrapped it in nylon; he was placed in a zinc coffin and buried in a 2.5-metre-deep grave covered with limestone powder.
