I was madly in love with her. I had my
beloved tattooed on my back. I wanted her
to cover the largest space. She died in Syria.
My wife stayed back in the mined territory.
The one with me now is the mother of my six
months old baby. She is jealous of my past.
She is right. How can that love be forgotten?
Both of our sons tried very hard to succeed in the university exams. One
would be a mechanical engineer, the other would be an aircraft engineer.
They left their schools because of the war. Now they are working in a mall
in the daytime. In the evening they are in the university. Not for education.
They are cleaning workers.
We could rent only this room which is still
being built and which lacks even walls. Now
I am turning this place into a home with the
bricks I collect from the neighborhood. My
mother does the laundry of others.
We want to become doctors. In order to cure our mother.
She never smiles since she was wounded in the war. We
only wish…we only wish her to be able to see us again.
We escaped from Isis. We took asylum in Turkey. Like many
Êzidî families. Our shelter is this single room. On the wall there
is the word God written in Arabic and a photograph of a mosque.
My wife who was pregnant with our thirteenth child lost
her life before crossing the border. Before I was only a
father. Now I am both a father and a mother.
Our neighbors approach me
and my daughters with the
same anger. They say, “Our
children went to Kobanê to
fight for you. You are rejoicing
life here.” When fleeing
war and death became to be
considered as joy? Is this
called life?
I attended the
university before the
war. I had dreams.
Now I have nothing
left. My father is in
Syria. My mother has
lost her arm and leg.
The men are dying,
are being killed, the
whole burden of life
is over the shoulders
of us, of women.
I was studying
French literature in
Hama. I used to write
poems in French.
Now the only
French I ever see is
on the packages of
smuggled cigarettes
that I am selling. I
can neither go back
nor forward.
We all live in the same room of
a single-room house. My son
is newly-wed. We could not
organize a wedding for them.
We divided the room with a
curtain so that the bride and
groom would have a private
place.
I crossed the border to find
her. And at the same time she
had come to Turkey to find
me… Who cannot reunion
with his beloved for a whole
year? I prepared our home, a
red quilt, a warm bed. Thank
God we made it in the end.
Thank God we found each
other!
