Taşdelen Memba Suyu | First Story

Water, Empire, Gold, Primitive Stage by Jean Baudrillard[1]

It is always difficult to talk about a city. If you were born there, it is very close to you. You share its vice, commonplaces, stupidity and language. If you came from somewhere else, it always preserves its character of an object not completely understood in your eyes. Especially if it emerges from the depths of time like İstanbul... Read full text

Baudrillard article does not touch on the subject of source waters.This is where I want to continue with some stories about one of them. The beloved Taşdelen Memba Suyu. "Burrowing stone source water" that points to its remedial quality and cure for kidney stones.

Mavi Boncuk |
First Taşdelen Story
An Ottoman Pasha exiled to Eastern parts of Turkey mentioned in longing the irreplacable quality of Taşdelen. The locals offered a variety of source waters of the region and he found all to be inferior. Assuming that this was some kind of snobbery on his part they manage to get some Taşdelen from Istanbul and offered it as Kackar water to test him.
He enjoys it and says: "Wonderful source water. I was not aware that an arm of the Taşdelen source reached all the way to the Kackar mountains."

[1] Jean Baudrillard (27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism. "Water, Empire, Gold, Primitive Stage" was published by Atlas, a Turkish magazine(looks like National Geographic), in 1999. Baudrillard was in Istanbul then by the invitation of the magazine and he wrote the article.