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March 2016

The Earth

CHAPTER 1

“Hey! Can you see the stars in the sea?” asked Seren excitedly standing in the balcony of the Smyrna Pier on a horny June day, staring at the Aegean Sea with admiration.

“That’s called light refraction!” replied Emel feeling tired of Seren’s overactive imagination already.

“I know but that is so dry! I want to see… and I see them as stars!” replied Seren feeling surprised how she managed to remain friend with Emel for four college years. “I guess I had to!” she told bright and yellow stars falling from the Sun onto the Aegean sea.

“Sometimes I wonder why you ever chose to study science and math instead of art…I mean how the hell did you manage?” asked  Emel while Seren was taking picture of the countless shining stars.

“Guess what! People in art classes looked so lazy and hedonistic and I did not want to be like them! I wanted to help people!” said Seren and put her long light brown hair behind her ear.

“Oh come on girls! I waited for this movie for ages, I don’t want to miss it!” shouted Ezgi standing by the entry door of the shopping mall on the second floor of the pier.

“Stop panicking, we won’t miss it! Come and see the stars!”, suggested Seren, knowing how easily Ezgi would panic due to living with her oppressive, self- righteous, leftist Kurdish  father in entire 20 years of her life.

Emel walked towards Ezgi, they smiled at each other in a friendly playful way.

“She is such a dreamer!”whispered Ezgi to Emel with a sweet frustration.

“You are such a dreamer, aren’t you Seren?” asked Emel with a smile.

“And you two must be the premature babies of 80s!” she replied and walked up to them.

They walked into the shopping mall to see a movie for the last time before graduation which meant freedom but also separation to them. The movie had been forbidden for years in the country. It was released in France where the director was exiled to. It was about people of this country and how their rights were taken away from them by the invasion of their minds. The very same people were not allowed to see the movie until all the values in it were mocked for years and reduced next to nothing in every single mind under the sky that painted Aegean Sea to bright blue every morning. They were not yet able to see and define it articulately but they knew deep inside that humans mattered least and last under this sky.

Three friends left the cinema with saddened heart;none was able to say a word. They were in the small shopping mall of the pier, looking at books, CDs while trying to digest the movie together by a secretive conversation in a their girly  whispering tone.

“Did you realize—“

“Well in this case we can never arrive at realization of any truth, can we?”  interrupted Ezgi filled with frustration again.

“True! Our lives have been built on and filled with distorted truths in other words lies… And our minds!”, replied Seren painfully, feeling betrayed.

“Forget that! The prescription of our lives were written and given to our parents even before we had fallen in their minds.” said Ezgi and felt estranged to her own life.

“How do you know what we saw in the movie was the truth?” asked Emel and added: “Why would they ever allow it if it was truthful?”

“Well, if it was not so, the director would have never been exiled to France…I mean… he died there…imagine that!” answered Ezgi.

“And because he died and because all the other countries loved his work except for his own, they had to allow it in the end.” replied Seren.

“Do you mean whatever France approves is the absolute truth?” Emel asked Ezgi.

“Not exactly but if you take into account human freedom, freedom of thought and expression, human rights in France, country’s achievements in philosophy, art and science you can see France is closer to the truth.” answered Seren passionately. “And don’t forget that we had borrowed secularism from France,too…I mean Ataturk did.” she added.

“Ataturk! The only leader on earth! Luckily he did, otherwise we could have been wearing headscarf now!” replied Emel with an invincible pride.

Ezgi who was Kurdish Marxist looked at Emel with pity and then at Seren with curiosity. She hardly stopped herself from interrupting the conversation but she was also curious about Seren’s unuttered response. Because Seren neither believed in any religion nor was she involved in any political ideology. She was not fond of any leader either. In fact she felt oppressed when she was taught to worship Ataturk at school.

“Is this what you understand from secularism?”  asked Ezgi immaturely imitating her father who was a proud mathematics teacher, always in teaching mode even in public toilets.

“That’s what affects my life, I don’t care about the rest…I mean I cannot…and maybe I should not.” replied Emel combing her short red hair with her long thin fingers.

“That’s because everything is easy to exercise on us, women, including secularism.” replied Seren with a freshly fired up anger in her small pretty body and her green eyes.

“And since we cannot do anything about it? Since there is no any other leader like Ataturk to show how secularism should take effect in our lives…there just isn’t!” said Emel trying to feel, sound and look superior to her friends by her strong love of Ataturk.

“God! You are obsessed with Ataturk! Isn’t there anyone on this part of the earth who can think and find the best way of living and leading?” asked Seren with frustration.

“No, don’t you know you know thinking is secretly forbidden on this part of the earth?” exploded Marxist Kurdish Ezgi.

“Do you somehow dislike Ataturk?”, asked Emel accusatively with the strength of majority’s approval in the back of her mind.

“How dare we?” asked Seren with a soft sarcasm in the corner of her eyes.

“Come on girls, walk!  It feels like we are stuck here.” exclaimed Ezgi pushing her friends away from the colourful CDs shelf.

“OKAY!OKAY! Stop pushing!” yelled Emel and walked towards the book section.

Seren smiled, Ezgi remained quiet.

“And let me tell you one more thing, worshipping a great leader in a way you do supresses your greater leading potential; it does not  satisfy your inferiority complex but it grows it before you even realise… it does not make you great at all…” said Seren thoughtfully.

“Stop lecturing me, I know I have no complex” said Emel feeling annoyed.

“Do I love Karl Marx, because of my inferiority complex?” Ezgi thought to herself.

“Who do you like to satisfy your inferiority complex?” asked Emel.

“No one, I just want to be myself, do great things in my own way.” replied Seren but that did not sound believable to them.

Bondage of their friendship weakened in a few minutes of silence despite the four years they had spent at college.

Their longings, frustrations, desire to have a more dignified life in their homeland which needed to be better democratised and transparent, filled the silence.

“Anyway, that was not what I was initially going to ask if you two did not interrupt me” said Seren and continued:

“What I was going to say was that since our believes govern our lives, since the worst violation of human especially woman rights occur in muslim countries, don’t you think something must be fundamentally wrong with Islam?” asked Seren and looked at her friends.They seemed to be thinking about their answer.

“I am not a strict believer of Islam” replied Emel.                         “ You are not allowed to ask such

questions according to Islam,

you know that?” asked Ezgi.

“Yes, I know I have become kafir just now, haven’t I?” said Seren with a sarcastic smile. Ezgi smiled,too.

“But I mean…look how backward,how ignorant they are despite their incredible amount of oil and all the other natural sources…Surely that is not what Allah wants to see, wants them to be…” said Seren painfully.

Seren turned to Emel to say:

“Believe it or not! Doesn’t your id card state that you are muslim? Did anyone ask you to choose your religion? It was written there before you saw your mum, don’t you listen to Imam even before you open your eyes every morning?” asked Seren sounding like a rapper.

“Yes, I do” almost whispered Emel and looked down.

“Not only that, you listen to him without understanding because he chants in another language” added Ezgi and they laughed again.

“Language, yes language” murmured Seren to herself.

“How do 75 million people believe in something which they don’t even understand?”asked Emel.

“Maybe, maybe— “

“Maybe it is not what they believe but it is their understanding of it is what is wrong…” thought out loud Seren again. She was riddled,she was lost in her own thoughts. She remembered what Orwell once said.If thoughts corrupt language, language can corrupt thoughts. She began connecting the dots: If my thoughts are not corrupt then it must the language I speak corrupting my…no no no…once the language is corrupted no thought remained pure…yes, that must be it, she thought.

They walked in silence for a few minutes between colourful shelves.

“That brings back us to the point the dead director made in his movie…”thought out loud Ezgi with Seren.

“So that means we are all… Are we?… Are we really all trapped?” asked Emel.

“Trapped in language!” exclaimed Seren quietly , looking at Ezgi in an epiphanic mood. They all looked around to see they were not heard or monitored.

“Fuck the Big Brother!” Ezgi whispered with a smile and said:

“Trapped in politics!” And she looked at Emel to let her continue.

“Trapped in religion!” Emel whispered to Ezgi and Seren.

“Trapped in the flock!!!”, they shouted cautiously and they laughed but that did not free them from the pain of the truth the dead director had just showed to them. He made them ache to their marrows.

Ezgi began walking like a soldier saying: “Trapped!Trapped!Trapped!” She stopped in the end of the long and narrow way between shelves.

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