Media Story

Story of a warrior woman

A person grows up in just a few days in their life, or, if they’re lucky, in a single day. I wasn’t so lucky; it took me four days to grow. The first and second days were very close together in time, perhaps because I don’t remember the days in between very well. As time went by, I began to stop seeing the pain as a bad memory. Was this growing up? I asked myself, or was it running away? At first, it was more about running away from growing up. The places I ran, the paths I ran to, were sharp, and I quickly caught up with the reality of fate, surrendering to growth.

The first day started off very ordinary: we were playing at my friends’ house in the neighborhood next to the almost abandoned church. I say almost because the priest would come every few months to check it out, and we had grown accustomed to the presence of a church in our Muslim village. We didn’t notice, we weren’t bothered, we weren’t interested, we pretended it didn’t exist… The story of the church goes back a long way, but no one knows its true story. This state, ruled by our enemies, claimed it belonged to them, while we were certain it belonged to our ancestors. Our village church was a matter of identity, a symbol of who owned this land, if they dared to submit to honesty and tell the truth. Although, it had been a long time since we’d stopped telling the truth, so we kept bickering about the church’s identity. Officialdom was on the state’s side, but just as there was no trust in books published during the communist era, there was no trust in other documents either. Time would reveal the truth, but time had already made us forget the truth. When it came to concealing oneself, there’s no master above the truth.

That day, I was playing next to the church, the volleyball in my hand, preparing to pass it. Suddenly, I heard the harshest words I’d ever heard.

“They arrested your father.”

My brain stopped, I couldn’t grasp the situation. I stared blankly around like someone just waking from a coma. I was eight years old. How could my ears hear this? Where did they find the strength and the capacity to hear this? Was this world real? Or could these things even happen in my world? Why do I exist? Or, more accurately, do I exist right now? Am I dreaming? Perhaps I’d asked myself these questions for the first time… Some human parts deteriorate so quickly, don’t they? Like eyes and ears. Even if they’re hard to grasp, the image and sound are there, they last a lifetime, accompanying a person even in their happiest days, strengthening them at the same time. My resistance had ended when my father was imprisoned. I didn’t actually know I was resisting anything, but that’s how I felt. Like an old man whose walking stick has been lost, I could barely stand, I was struggling to stand. I needed support, a wall to lean against. At that moment, my friend who had told me the news grabbed my arm. He came to my rescue. He was a year older than me, but He was physically more developed than me. I woke up when the volleyball I was holding hit the ground. As the ball bounced, my friend said,

“Come on, let’s go home.” “What will the game be…”

We were a generation that spent both the bitter and the sweet by playing games; at least I was lucky in that regard. Looking back now, our resistance was the same. But the reason at that moment wasn’t the resistance; I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t want to go to a house without my father. I couldn’t be sure if it was my father’s imprisonment that hurt me, or the existence of the enemy who imprisoned him. But until that day, that was my only serious sadness: they took him away without seeing him one last time, without hugging him one last time, without admiring him…

When I returned home, I cried by the greenhouse, not wanting anyone in the house to see. I stood motionless for hours, intending to stay for hours. I examined the tomatoes and peppers in the garden. I memorized which ones were prettier and which ones were rotten. I started counting without realizing it; I had counted one hundred and thirty-six tomatoes before I realized I was hungry. There was no smell of food coming from the house; normally, I could tell by the garden which dish my mother was cooking. Suddenly, I was in front of my mother. It occurred to me that I should be, and I ran into the house. My mother was lying down, a wet rag on her forehead, a spoon on her cheeks. It suddenly seemed funny, painfully funny.

“Come on, sister, my mother put horns on me,” my little brother said, laughing.

My mother suddenly stood up and hugged me tightly. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and I smelled my mother’s scent, and I forgot everything, even if it was just for a few seconds. I always jumped into my father’s arms when he was around; I was so unfair to my mother, and to myself too. That little scent spoke to me, shared my troubles, listened silently, and reminded me of unconditional kindness. Then my mother left to cook, and I wanted to help. We made Albanian liver, my father’s favorite dish. He loved the broth of his liver, dipping it in his bread, and I loved it because my father loved it. As I spread the bread in the broth, I realized I had designed everything around my father. I had almost forgotten that my mother existed, and yet my mother was tearing herself up just to make sure we were okay. My father’s arrest brought this realization to my mind. Those long nights made time for each other, the scary nights encouraged us, the cold nights brought us closer, the dark nights brought us together. We began to appreciate each other more deeply. We were locked in each other’s embrace.