TURKEY

I come from Türkiye and I was raised as the only daughter of divorced parents. I was very lucky growing up. I had a mother, my mother didn’t have and I always felt sorry for her. When she wanted to leave my father, there were many people who said ”what are you going to do on your own, alone”. There was no one who said, “My dear girl, believe in yourself,you are not alone, just trust in yourself and what you can do”. As I grew up, I started to understand the women around me more. Maybe it is because we became partners in more trouble with them. The first important female figure who passed away from my life was my father’s mother, my granny. She was the one who raised me. When they asked me who do you love more, your father or your mother I was always saying my granny. I saw the difficulties of being a woman not only from my mother but also from her many times. Her husband had died years ago, and being a widow with 3 children was everyone’s word of mouth.

When I was little I used to wonder why she never thought of getting married again, I thought I would understand her until this age, I still don’t understand. I don’t understand because I don’t know what scared her. Maybe she didn’t want another husband who beat her, maybe her 3 boys said we don’t want another man in the house. Maybe people would say that she wants to get married again after this age, look how curious she is. I don’t know what the real reason was behind it, but there was not only one story.

Her friends were just like her. In fact, maybe she found the peace she couldn’t find at home while going around, hanging out or talking with them. When I was 5 years old, she would take me by the hand and take me to meetings/dates with her friends, which were always held at someone else’s house. I remember they were all so pretty, they would dress up, cook enough food for an army, eat, drink and commiserate together during these events.

Yes, I also don’t understand what the reasons of these regular meetings was. Yet I know there was more than one. Maybe it was nice to feel the togetherness, to dress up or not dress up for themselves for once. Instead of feeding the men who didn’t know how to open a can, they were coming together to feed their own souls. To cheer up, to drown in laughter, to sit cross-legged on the floor for once despite those who say that a woman sits decently, does not do this or that. When she would sweat, she would take off her undershirt and put it aside, and she would want to live with her friends in that small living room where she would not be judged for any of these actions, perhaps for the rest of her life.

My grandmother and I would leave the house where 20 women gathered, smelling of perfume, and although they didn’t run out of things to talk about, they ran out of time because their duties were waiting for them in their own homes. When we returned to my grandmother’s house, I would wait outside the window for it to get dark, for it to get dark so that my mother could come home from work. I wanted her to pick me up so we could go home. Before my father and mother separated, my parents would meet and pick me up, and when I got older, I stopped staying at my grandmother’s house and I would stay home alone. While waiting for my mother to come home from work, I was old enough to count the red cars through the window. I would nervously wait for the bell to ring. My mother would always come running home because she had missed me all day.

But again, I wonder if I understood everything correctly, maybe she would try to get home quickly out of hurry and fear.  I have grown up, there are no more old aunties filling my living room to tell me to take care of myself, no more grandmothers to fill the whole house with the smell of cooking. My mother is also far away but one thing is still in my mind, how beautifully all those women laughed when they were together. The laughter of those women who are not at home or on the street will always echo in my ears whenever I sit next to a girlfriend. This is what the things I don’t understand have taught me not to forget.