Media Story

Story of a warrior woman

Saying goodbye to my father’s uncles was a one-sidedly difficult experience; they were sad, while we were happy. Of course, this was due to returning to our struggling homeland after so long. Otherwise, we would have missed them, of course, they were the only people we would be grateful for our entire lives. My father’s uncle, in particular, reminded us of the grandfather-grandson relationship I had so rarely experienced with my grandfather. Sometimes he brought us moments of déjà vu, sometimes feelings of nostalgia, and sometimes new, beautiful moments.

They weren’t the only ones who weren’t happy about our return. Savaş was dressed as solemnly as his jet-black suit, his face taking the smile that made his eyes sparkle. He was thin, hadn’t eaten properly in months, and was forcing himself to smile like a construction worker while fasting. He gave me a cold embrace that I wished he hadn’t hugged me, and ice wrapped around the fiery excitement within me. He didn’t say a word the whole way home. Everyone but him was talking, even my second brother, whom I’d never heard say more than two or three sentences, suddenly became talkative. I hadn’t known her well before, and I’ve only just learned what she likes and dislikes. My uncle’s house had an old threshing machine, which stood in front of the house. We all used to play on it, but my brother took the game to a whole new level. My uncle’s neighbors had a fourth-grade daughter, and my brother, who couldn’t read or write yet, would secretly meet her at the threshing machine. So he’d tell my father to buy a threshing machine, hoping he’d come over. That was his last sentence, as if he’d just realized he’d never see her again. Then he returned to the quietness we call his essence, leaning his head against the window and staring outside, just staring at the outside until he reached home.

Unlike the trip to my uncle’s, the return trip was short. The house was pulling, the river was pulling, the mountains and rocks were pulling, the playground in front of the church was pulling fiercely. Our village had changed dramatically, and by the time we reached the bridge, it had the feeling of a depleted existence. But it still looked very cool, even though the smell of gunpowder was wafting from everywhere. There were bullet holes in the houses, the windows were broken, and many had dug bunkers in their gardens. I saw them from afar. I remember our street; it felt abandoned, as if no one had walked past for years. I remember the entrance door and wall of our massive house. And for some reason, the lamppost on the street stuck with me. I don’t have a good visual memory, but my nearly broken camera has etched this image into my memory forever, and I look at it every day.

There was no fighting when we arrived, and the first thing I did was play a game at the church. We’d started our childhood resistance since the first day we returned. Most of my friends were there; it was quite remarkable to see all of us reunited. If returning to the same world after being resurrected was possible, we had experienced it while we were still here. We played the game between two fires. The adrenaline rush from the game’s rapid developments peaked, obscuring the passing of the clock. While we were out of breath, the sounds of fighting suddenly began. After the last shot, we couldn’t retrieve the ball that had flown far away, so we hid behind the wall. We tried to return home, carefully walking around the corners of the wall. Adrenaline was running high, and I managed to return home through the back door of our house. My father had made the basement windows of our house thick wood to keep bullets out, but we still spent most of our nights in my neighbor’s large basement with all the neighborhood women and children. I began to recognize all the neighborhood children and women, even by their pajamas. There wasn’t much we could call personal anymore, and this allowed us to bond more intimately during difficult moments during the fighting. As the days passed, I could draw closer to all the neighborhood women, especially my aunt, as I would to my mother. She was as motherly to us as my own mother.

We were constantly hearing stories. Our three heroes would sneak into enemy territory at night, through the fields, the river, and around the corners of the walls, eavesdropping on their conversations, thus gathering information. They would learn their moves from the information they received and move the chess pieces accordingly. One night, they crawled across the fields like reptiles and infiltrated the enemy position near the school. It was one of the biggest positions. They turned the school into a central source of oppression, and this time, it wasn’t just propaganda books written during the communist era, but a brutal point that posed a literal threat of death. To approach it, the part of the mind responsible for logic would have to be malfunctioning. Thanks to this foolishness, they learned the next day’s departure times. New weapons and ammunition would arrive at that location early in the morning. This time, our soldiers would have to attack the stones more directly, or those weapons would significantly strengthen the enemy. To carry out their plan, they decided to use explosive mines. In this situation, which required both haste and caution, one soldier, fighting with his own breath, set off to retrieve explosive mines.