🎲 Games · Game 4 · based on a folk narrative
Lokman's Papers
According to the story, Lokman Hekim had found a cure for death. On the Kunç Bridge more than half of the papers in his hands spill out; according to the compiler's summary, those papers, on which the secret of death was written, go into the Yeşilırmak.
In this game every paper carries a photograph of old Amasya. How many can you catch before they touch the water?
The papers are falling
Move your hands by dragging with your finger or with the arrow keys. Catch the papers before they touch the water. You have thirty seconds. Every paper carries a photograph of old Amasya.
This is a game for fun, not a document. The narrative itself is recorded in Tuğrul Balaban's collection, and the people who told it are known. No religious figure is depicted in the game — only falling papers appear on the screen. The full narrative, as it was told and with its source, is on the Kunç Bridge page. The old photographs on the papers come from the “Eski Amasya” (Old Amasya) collection of the Sıtkı Karadağ Archive; their places and dates rest on the archive's records and have not been verified separately.
The guest of the celebration
The hoopoe: the girl who flew away with her comb
According to a legend told in Kapıkaya, a girl and a boy love each other, but her mother wants to marry her to an old man. Before putting on her wedding dress, the girl combs her hair in front of the mirror and says: “O God, turn me into a stone or a bird.” The comb stays on her head; she becomes a bird and flies away. Save 70 per cent of the sheets and the hoopoe will open its crest for you.
- The nameIn the collection this tale is called “İbibik Kuşu (Taraklı Kuş)”, the Hoopoe, the Bird with a Comb: the crest on the bird's head is the girl's comb.
- Who told it?Hanife Çağlayan (b. 1958), who heard it from her elders.
- Another versionIn a version told in Kayabaşı, a bride seen by her father-in-law while combing her hair says the same prayer and turns into a bird together with her comb.
This is a folk tale, not a document. The girl is not shown; only the bird. The hoopoe is an illustration made with AI (Google Gemini). Source: Tuğrul Balaban, Amasya Efsane, Menkabe ve Memoratları (Amasya: Amasya Valiliği, 2014), 533-534.
What does the narrative say?
Lokman Hekim is a physician the eye of whose heart was opened through knowledge he received from Şahmeran; wherever he went, the flowers would speak and tell him which ailment they cured. In the end he found the medicine against death.
According to the collection, the encounter takes place on the bridge. More than half of the papers in his hands spill out, and only one sheet is left.
The collection records two variants; in both, the encounter takes place on the Kunç Bridge and the secret of immortality falls into the Yeşilırmak. The informant for the first variant, told above, is Hamdi Keklikçi (b. 1946, Amasya); for the second, Varol Bulut (b. 1990, Amasya city centre).