BANG! A gun blast— a spray of brain matter mere hours away rose emotions with the hot air balloons rising over Cappadocia’s suddenly stained sky. This just in! Kurdish teen— The brains she blew out through the back of her skull to avoid capture in Kobani, one country south of us in a Syrian civil war. Bang! Heroism formed in a 25-year-old mind while Southbound train whistles screeched in our ears— or a sole rifle shot. I begged, tried to convince— Tommaso, wasn’t in. Visualized glory onboard an Istanbul-bound bus— my unwritten myth was as dead and distant as Ceylan Ozalp— Her courage, the shattered dream of my own both pierced upon Cappadocia’s spiraling spires. bang!

The credits rolled on a predictable “happily ever after” note. Bambi, triumphant, stood with his dad, seven dwarfs chased the Evil Queen off the mountain’s ledge and a generation of kids were tucked into a million little racecar beds. A generation adrift in dreams, snoozed through their fairytales flattened by the collapsed walls of a caved-in 20th century, AWOKE to mounting debts. AWOKE on sidewalks. AWOKE to the reality that this movie was never Disney, but just a handful of happy little scenes in a bizarre film by Fellini. ACTION! Caught in a rifle’s scope, Bambi and Faline are butchered in a human home. A divorced drunk, sleeping Snow White is sneakily felt up by the dwarfs she so dearly trusts. And the film— rolls— on.