Today was one of the more special ones. Because we devoted our time to Kahlo and Trotsky.

The first thing we did in the morning was to visit the famous Blue House. It’s the place where Frida Kahlo grew up, where Trotsky stayed when he first came to Mexico, where Kahlo and Diego Riviera lived in for years, fought each other. With memories in every corner, it’s one of the most famous houses in the world.

Frida Kahlo was an artist who continuously painted her self portraits, a communist, a lover. Her popularity spread out when the movie Frida, with Banderas, Salma Hayek, and a lot of Lila Downs came out. For me, she is one of the corners of Frida/Gala/Kollontai triangle. One day, I hope to see the houses of the other two. All three of them were women who made the intellectuals around fall in love with them, and became a part of the history not only with their affairs but with their creations and intelligence. But Frida Kahlo’s story is the saddest of them all.

Leon Trotsky, the second name in command during the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the Red Army, and world famous artist Diego Riviera were the most famous ones among Frida’s lovers. There were more of course. You can find the list on the Internet

Born in 1907, Frida was in a traffic accident at the age 19, and had most of the bones in her body broken, and an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and uterus. The following months were monotonous and she was immobile. Her mother placed mirrors around in her room and made a special easel for her to draw in bed. That was why she started drawing herself. Even Picasso admitted once that no one could draw a human face better than her.

Oh, she made paintings of water melons and a bunch of other stuff, too. I am sure they have a deep meaning in the world of art but they were just melons for me. I made an inquiry, and found out that Fikret thought so, as well.

After the accident, she married Diego Riviera, one of the most famous painters in the world. Then she broke up with him, saying he was one the two major accidents she had in her life. She was too much in love with him. Too much. So was Diego. But that didn’t keep them from being with other people. It was a stormy affair. They got divorced and then married each other again in no time.

When Trotsky came to Mexico with a special authorization, he stayed in this house at the beginning of his visit. He had a secret affair with Frida, which ended when his wife found out.

La Casa Azul, The Blue House, is really an impressive and gloomy place. Every corner is filled with Frida’s sorrow. And with her unfinished paintings… And there is a magnificent photo exhibition full of Frida.

It wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside the house, unfortunately. There were a lot of paintings, unfinished paintings, paintings of Diego, paintings of other artists, and the photos of the time she had to spend in bed. The saddest of them all was the bedroom with the mirror hanged on the ceiling.

The house wasn’t preserved the same way as the times it was used, of course. Every room became a gallery. I wished they had preserved the house as a house, or at least in a closer condition, and had found another place for the galleries. At least they could have let us take photos.

Thank God, it was allowed to take photos in the garden.

After we left The Blue House, we went directly to Trotsky’s house, a few blocks away – and we noticed visiting the American continents made us call everything “blocks.”

Trotsky, you know, was a famous communist who was at the top when 1917 Bolshevik Revolution occurred, and he then served in many important offices, including the foundation of the Red Army, and then went in exile when Lenin died in 1924 and the reign of Stalin began. “What if Trotsky had stayed and Stalin had left” has been a never ending argument topic. For me, the project was doomed and nothing would have happened. But when a serial killer like Stalin started to destroy people in the name of socialism, it made everything even worse, that’s for sure. Yet – this may not be a positive evidence – once I visited a Stalin museum in Georgia, too. The guide was saying things like “Okay, he made a lot of mistakes but he was a great man.” And there weren’t many people visiting. But in here, all the way in Mexico, there were tens of people visiting the Trotsky museum with admiration.

He could speak a bunch of languages, read everything printed including maths books, and he was a real intellectual Marxist who stood up against Stalinist and Maoist ideas. In his life in exile, which started because of Stalin, he lived in many places, including the Princes’ Islands in İstanbul.

And in the end, his house was raided by a gang of Stalinists, and after many gun fires, he lost his battle in his study room and was killed with an ice pick. Well, we saw the thing and it was more of an ice digger.

Fikret and I, never Trotskyites, have always followed his life and intellectual output with admiration.

Trotsky’s house was very impressive. Until I saw this place, I had never seen a museum house where even the toothpaste was original. Trotsky moved in here right after he left Frida’s Blue House.

A modest, magnificent house… He lived in here with his guards and secretaries. He used to work for ten hours regularly everyday. He was killed and buried in here.

His typewriter, table, chair, toothpaste, all were original. From the answers I got, I understood that only his bed had been replaced. And that was because there were about twenty bullets stuck in it…

There were bullet holes on the walls, by the way. We wandered inside the house, took photos, and asked questions and argued, but besides all, this happened: Fikret went inside to try another lens and I was sitting on a bench in the garden, smoking. And he came back smiling and said, “Metin, I dropped my hat in Trotsky’s bathroom, man!” It fell behind the barriers they put to prevent people from touching the stuff. No more explanations needed… We didn’t inform them. We left the Yeni Rakı hat in Trotsky’s bathroom. An unintentional, seemly gift…

We spent hours in the house. We felt so like at home that we tried to communicate in Tarzan and Jane language and tried to get permission to drink rakı in a corner. I think we made our point well, because they smiled with the usual Mexican gentleness and let us drink. And so we did…

We came out surprised. Because, neither of us expected such a good Trotsky museum, especially eighteen thousand kilometres away from Russia …

We were surprised a little more while walking in the streets of this cool neighbourhood. We said to each other, “Wow, what a large city is DF.” Of course it should be. Twenty million people live in here. But this decent neighbourhood we found was particularly beautiful. I will say it reminded me of Ankara and will make the people in İstanbul angry.

Coyoacan was a rich neighbourhood, but it didn’t seem like people who lived here were obsessed with hygiene. It was lively.

Then we headed to Frida Kahlo Park… To drink our second ‘doubles’ and calm down…

Park was a place for bon vivants. It was calm, and made us lie around. And so we did… But we lied for too long, it seems, because when we wanted to get out of the place we found ourselves in a labyrinth and lost our way.

After we finished our rakıs, we headed back to the city centre. We wandered around for a while, got surprised with the colourful atmosphere on a Friday night, we ate, drank, enjoyed and went back to our hotel.

Tomorrow’s our last day.