On the Rumi calendar today is 28 February. For us it is the anniversary of oppression and the start of rising from our ashes. Eighteen years since my mother, my sister, and people like us were shut out and harmed for how they dressed, how they looked, which associations they joined, which papers they read, organized by deep powers inside the state.
As far as my mind reaches, a sketch of those days and after:
Our neighbor’s daughter, a sister we valued, scored high on the university exam but as an Imam Hatip graduate could not enter where she wanted. At the university she reached, she was barred from class for covering and pressured to uncover.
I went with my mother to a campus gate where people excluded for faith and dress had chained themselves to the school, and worst of all the police batons were in the air again on someone’s order…
Some of my brother’s friends were discharged from military service because they kept a Qur’an at home…
Police searched our houses and oppressed us without shame…
On TV people said we want everyone’s freedom but you cannot enter university like that. With a child’s mind I started wondering whether we were not human.
Some said we would topple the state. On the contrary we voted for it, paid taxes, did everything citizenship asks.
From TV I watched that Great Man on the podium; I barely understood most of the words but clapped my small hands raw for the tone and the mercy in his eyes. He was in trouble too…
When my father sank into a Necip Fazil book I prayed he would not be arrested, because a mayor had been jailed for reading a poem.
I felt neighbors’ eyes change. People who visited weekly stopped coming, maybe afraid of being charged with tearing down the state like us.
When I invited some friends, their mothers said no… Toys and games alone no longer tasted the same.
I felt myself growing up. What we lived was large for a child. It was large for every child then.
Some did immorality under the name of sheikhhood. Others raided them on camera and we watched on TV. That day I asked my father if sheikhs were bad… He said no, told me many sheikhs’ lives, then that unforgettable line: Those are not sheikhs, they are satans…
When a visiting neighbor aunt said “they are terrorists,” I saw my mother furious for the first time. We are not terrorists, she said…
Thinking of this again filled my eyes. I will not lie: a few tears fell and found their place. We do not oppress those who made us live that. We do not shut the door on neighbors who stopped coming. We do not throw out those who barred us from university. We do not want to kill those who wanted us hanged without regard for age. Because we are not terrorists!
