TDH: Özlem’s speech at the Aesklepion

Özlem begins the speech that will change her, her mother’s, and her children’s lives.

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Özlem Boroğlu takes a breath before delivering the conclusion of her speech. Standing behind the podium, she looks out from the stage at her audience in the Aesklepion’s ancient theater. The psychiatrists and psychologists gathered from all over Turkey and the Aegean islands have filled the stone seats rising toward the crest of the hill. Her friend Recep Ateş is seated in the front box with Bergama’s mayor, a tall, heavy man who still looks small next to Ateş. The early evening light paints the trees gold; the wind has fallen, and a thick heat is settling in the theater’s bowl.

“We are meeting here today on what people through the ages have believed is holy ground,” she says, her voice rising. She turns slightly to her right and waves her hand. “This spring has been providing healing water for more than twenty-five hundred years. Galen, the father of both pharmacology and psychiatry, practiced here. In fact, he grew up here.…”