When my mother left our home, my father, and us, I was six and my brother was eight. Even at that age I understood why she left my father, but I could not understand why she left us. Would a mother abandon her children?
My father used to beat my mother. He beat me and my brother too. I came to believe that all men beat their wives and children…
After my mother left, home became four walls. In the mornings, no one said, "Wash your hands and faces and come; breakfast is ready." No one even asked whether we were hungry, though we might go days without food. The hardest lesson was this: without a mother’s scent, children grow up in an instant, however old they are. I grew up at six.
About ten days after my mother left, the police came to our house. They said she had taken her own life. In her hand she had been clutching an envelope. On it was written: “To be given to my daughter and my son.”
I could not read then — how was I supposed to read it? My brother read it. I cried as I listened. My brother cried too.
My mother had gone to her father’s house, but he flew into a rage. In his eyes, a woman had to stay with her husband. Even with a mouth full of blood, she was expected to say, “I’ve been drinking red sherbet.” My mother begged him: “Let me stay for a month. Then I’ll find a way to take my children and start again.”
But a woman living alone? To my grandfather, that would make his honor worth five kopecks. He would never be able to hold his head up again; he said he would rather see his daughter dead. That evening, my mother hanged herself. My grandmother told me this years later, on her deathbed, when I was nineteen.
When my father heard of my mother’s death, he was not upset at all. He said he would put us in an orphanage. From then on we would live there; that would be our home. Brother and sister might be parted, forget each other, and years later fail to know each other — so we were both to keep Mother’s letter.
But before I could ask how the two of us would keep one letter, my brother cut it in half with scissors. He gave me the beginnings of the sentences. Since I had the openings, once I learned to read I would have to guess the rest. My brother had already memorized the letter anyway.
When my aunt heard we were to be sent to an orphanage, she came. She told my father: “A girl is not given to an orphanage. I will take Hayat and raise her myself.” Living with my aunt, I understood why: a girl meant an unpaid servant ordered about the house. Not once did my aunt call me by my name. My name became “Come-here”: “Come-here, fetch water… Come-here, wash these dishes…”
Once a month my brother visited me at my aunt’s. He said he was fine in the orphanage. I said I was fine too — I did not want to upset him. Did he also say “I’m fine” so I would not worry? I never dared ask.
I had started school. I was the first in the class to learn to read. How could I not — I was going to read my mother’s letter. The part I still had began: “Hayat, my beautiful daughter, I you…” Every night in bed I tried to finish that sentence:
“Hayat, my beautiful daughter, I love you so much.”
“Hayat, my beautiful daughter, I miss you terribly.”
“Hayat, my beautiful daughter, I am waiting for you.”
I built a different dream around each ending. In those dreams, I was happy. Who chooses to dream of sorrow?
I finished middle school. My aunt said I would not go to school anymore. But I wanted to study — to stand on my own feet and live under one roof with my brother.
That summer the wife of Uncle Hasan, the neighbourhood grocer with three children, died of cancer. I was heartbroken. What would the three children do — how would they find a mother’s scent? Why did mothers die? Would those three forget their names as I had, and become “Come-here” too?
While I was grieving for Uncle Hasan’s children, it came out that I was betrothed to him. It turned out I had been sold for eight bracelets and three thousand liras. Because I was too young for a civil marriage, forty days later our religious marriage was performed.
I was fifteen. I was Uncle Hasan’s wife. I had three children, aged two, five, and six. And my aunt insisted we must have a child of our own… I was supposed to have a child so my place would be secure and Uncle Hasan would not look at other women.
The first slap from Uncle Hasan came because I called him “Uncle Hasan.” Does a woman call her husband “uncle”? When I lost my mother at six, I learned to keep silent. So I did not ask, “Does a man call a fifteen-year-old girl his wife?” — I stayed quiet.
When Uncle Hasan hit me, all three children clung to their father’s legs: “Don’t hit Sister Hayat — she plays with us, she tells us stories,” they begged. I was those children’s older sister. What I called stories were my dreams.
When Uncle Hasan went out, I practiced saying “Hasan” in front of the mirror. But every time I said it, I pictured his thinning hair, his glasses slipping down his nose, and his large belly. It was as if I had sinned; I was ashamed, and I could not bring his name to my tongue. While I was practicing in front of the mirror, his six-year-old son came up to me. “Sister Hayat, Mother used to call him ‘Bey,’” he said. “You could call him that too.”
“Bey” — of course, “Bey” would be better. I bent and kissed dark-eyed Sami, who listened to my dreams as if they were fairy tales. I called five-year-old Elif and two-year-old Zahra and began to tell them a story. That day I began: “Once upon a time there was a six-year-old girl named Nagil. Nagil had lost her mother. She searched everywhere; when she could not find her, she went to the land of dreams. There Nagil was so happy that she never returned to the real world.”
In my tale Nagil was always happy, always smiling. Every day I told the children that story. We were very happy.
Uncle Hasan was good too. I now called him “Bey.” From time to time he grew angry, but I understood why: he had thought he was buying a wife for eight bracelets and three thousand liras, but he had brought home a sister who told the children stories.
My brother came to visit. Each time he wanted to give me his half of Mother’s letter. I would not take it. I was afraid that if I read the other half, I would fall from the land of dreams into a cruel real world and be unhappy. All my dreams were built on that other half.
By the time I was forty, the children who had listened to my stories were grown. Sami had become a doctor and, on assignment, moved to another city. Whenever he felt low, he called and said, “Sister Hayat, tell me a story.”
Elif had become a teacher and married. I had a granddaughter. They badly wanted to name her Hayat; I would not allow it. Elif said, “Then let her name be Nagil.” So my granddaughter’s name was Nagil.
My youngest, Zahra, became a veterinarian. “Sister Hayat, whenever an animal is restless I tell it a story, and it calms down,” she would say. Zahra married too, and I had a grandson.
When I was forty-five, Uncle Hasan—my Bey—died. I grieved for him. His last words were a plea for forgiveness, and I forgave him with all my heart. He was a good person.
But there are others I cannot forgive:
those who see no wrong in marrying off fifteen-year-old girls, and those who support them;
those who call it a disgrace when their daughters, whom they know suffer violence every day, seek a divorce, and those who justify that way of thinking;
those who show no mercy to their own children left helpless and hopeless like wounded birds, and those who support them —
These people I cannot forgive.
Moral: Blind custom and a false idea of “honor” can destroy a woman’s life, a child’s life. Those who look away from early marriage, violence, and neglect are partners in that oppression.
Stories are taken from open Internet sources; illustrations were created with AI.
