From the Backyard of My Childhood

Time flies so quickly, isn't it? Weren't we all just children playing in the backyard of our house yesterday? When did we grow up like this and get married?

It was an ordinary day with nothing special. I don't have a job on the other side of the city very often, it's not a road I come and go often. But yesterday, it was as if my distraction had a surprise for me. A road junction I skipped and my efforts to get rid of the density of traffic brought me to this house. To the house of my quickness. I guess it would be a lie if I said that when I saw this house where I lived until I was 10 years old, I didn't feel a ache deep inside me. It's not bad memories, contrary to what you might think, this is the house where I spent the most fun times of my life. Maybe that's why I'm sad. How quickly did we grow up?

We had a beautiful but neglected garden... As a matter of fact, it was the common garden of two apartments that stood back to back, supported by each other, and rose 4 floors, like two old people who did not suffer from old age. You don't know what I've suffered from the nettles crowding the walls and that old apple tree that makes its delicious apples inviolable on its high branches. Every time I wanted to taste his fruit, it was as if he was setting traps for me.

I used to find long sticks, trying to drop 2 more apples until my arms couldn't lift from the pain. But the real adventure began after the fruits of the lower branches were finished. God knows how many times my head was the target instead of the apple on the branch under the stone I threw myself.

All aside, I had the most unforgettable memories of my childhood with him. With my age stone and my friend in the building next to our apartment.

In the middle of our garden, for some reason, we had furnished the ornamental pool, which I had never seen filled with water, as if it were our home. Yes, we did indeed decorate it. Since the inside of the pool has never been used, it is so runny that I remember that we struggled for days just to clean it. That's why we used to enter our playhouse by leaving our shoes on the wall of the pool, which is only 50 cm high, maybe 60 cm at the most. We made a kind of cedar with brushwood. We stole the mat in front of our door without my mother's knowledge and made a cover for our cedar, and we made a pillow for our cedar by stealing the wool that the neighbor aunts washed and dried in the garden in those days. We had a table made of a square piece of chipboard with some broken edges. Bricks became our chairs. That was my favorite game: housekeeping .

My mother used to take me home during my little brother's nap time. First, he would feed both of us - even if by force - and then he would make us lie down on two sofas opposite each other. Okay, he was only 4 years old and aged for some silly invention like a nap, but what about me? In fact, I knew it was not my mother's concern to put me to sleep, otherwise my brother would not have ignored my efforts to fly to the street door as soon as my brother dived in. The little boy had a habit of torturing me. If I was not at home, he would not sleep, and when it was time to sleep, he would chase me to play on the street with me. Being a big sister was very difficult (and still not easy). As you can see, my brother was like my tail. Sometimes we would add him to our house game and give him the role of the baby of the house. Although, he couldn't be said to have participated in the game, it was more his job to pillage. I guess I'm not exaggerating if I say a harmful extra.

In our first fight with my favorite playmate, my brother was with us, and he was busy pinching the mud cake I made. I served my cake, which I prepared meticulously and worked hard to shape, on a piece of cardboard to my friend, who played the role of the master of the house. He wasn't eating, and our fight started from here. I may be an 8 year old but do I look like an idiot? Of course, I knew then that mud was inedible. But he had to pretend he was eating and praising them like "mmmm good health". When my mother prepared something special, my father would smile at my mother and say "good luck" but… So what did he do? When I insisted on her eating (pretending to eat), she threw the cake I made on the ground and walked away shouting, "I don't want to eat mud, I don't want to play house with you again". This boy wasn't really kind at all.

I knew she'd been watching me from the window of their house for a few days as I chased kittens in the garden, hunted for apples in tree branches, or tried to console my crying brother who had fallen facedown on the nettles and was crying. And I was laughing inside. He didn't have any other friends, he'd have to make up with me eventually anyway.

I was right... On the first day of Eid-al-Adha, I called out to him from our backyard, where my father, uncles neighbors and sheep were to be slaughtered. He was already at the window as usual, it didn't take long for him to hear me, and he ran down to the garden. Sacrifices would begin to be sacrificed soon, and this seemed like an inescapable adventure for my children's world. But in order to live this adventure, I had to overcome the "mother" barrier first. She was screaming at me and my father from the balcony. “Girl, come home, is this something to watch? Look, you'll be afraid later," his voice got louder as I shrugged, and when he finally lost hope in me, he started to get angry with my father. “Hey, send the kid home! Look, they're going to lose sleep, I'll ask you both then!” My father was grinning under his mustache. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and asked; "You're not afraid, are you?" I put on my most confident tone and raised my chin and answered without waiting. “I am not a coward!” An exuberant laugh burst out of my father's mouth. He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me towards him like a hug. “Well done my brave girl” still wore a proud smile on her lips. My father was the hero of my life. Of course, after the next few minutes, my favorite childhood friend would take on the role of the hero of my life.

First, our gigantic sheep was to be sacrificed in this -childish-eye-exotic ritual. I immediately found a corner with an excellent field of view to watch the animal lying on the ground. I brought my friend with me. I sat crouching on the ground, almost 1.5 meters back from where our sacrifice was to be slaughtered. He was standing next to me with a long piece of twig in his hand, digging the ground. I was startled with a strange sense of compassion as I watched how they tied the three legs of the sheep, with my elbows on my knees, my face in my palms. So this poor animal was going to be food for us soon? Didn't I just feed it with the meadow grass that I had plucked from the corner of the garden a few hours ago? I'm sorry... this strange ritual had already started while I was dealing with my own internal accounting. A man with a machete mustache and dark cuts on his hands was holding the knife to the throat of the sheep on the ground. I raised my head and looked at my friend out of the corner of my eye. Uncertain expressions crossed his face. He was watching the scene with interest, half astonished, just like me. The moment I turned my face back to the sheep lying on the ground with its three legs tied, was the moment when I was terrified. The animal with blood gushing from its throat was struggling, trembling, struggling to escape from the hands of so many people with its head almost separated from its body. All of a sudden, I felt fear gripping my whole body, numbing my bones. It was as if his eyes were looking at me. It was like he was going to get up and eat me. What? Would he eat me? Without confirming from my crouch, I threw myself back. I crashed to the ground in pain, on my butt. My friend held the stick in his hand to the animal that was dying on the ground and took me behind him and was breathing fast. Was he trying to protect me? Like the brave warrior protecting a princess? Here is my new hero!

From now on, we would have better games to play with him instead of house. I'm Rapunzel and he's the prince who saved me from the tall towers... My hair wasn't that long back then, I admit. But I could stretch it, right?

It was maybe a week before the schools started. From early morning until noon, I watched a few burly men stack things in the truck by the window. When all the work was done, he and his mother were trying to get into the car that his father was going to drive, with a few knick-knacks in their hands. I remember standing in the car door looking up. And the way you wave and smile at me.

And the sadness and sorrow that spread in my heart. How I swallowed so that the drops that accumulated in my eyes would not flow...

I remember that we started playing our new house games in the same garden and even in the same pool with the daughter of our new neighbors who moved to the same flat just a few days later. a girl could definitely play more fun games with another girl. I also remember how this great discovery made me happy. It took me 2 days to grieve over my old friend's departure, and only 1 hour to get used to my new friend's presence. Being a child is truly an amazing thing…

***

I cannot help but mention how terrified my mother was at the prospect of studying in a distant city after the university entrance exam. But as always my permanent ally at home; My father had the last word on this matter, and my mother had to accept the situation quietly. If you are studying far from your hometown, you know, fellow countrymen can always find each other easily in a foreign city. Spending time with people from your home country maybe because it makes you feel at home, who knows…

Engin was my friend and fellow countryman from an upper class. He and his girlfriend, my dorm roommate, Engin's roommate, we spent our time outside of school together. Though, his roommate was usually the cheesy type who leaned back on his seat, crossed his arms over his chest, and joined our conversations only to oppose.

That day, we were sitting in the school canteen and chatting. While I was talking enthusiastically about a book I was reading, the others were listening with interest. “It's a beautiful piece of science-fiction, I think it's literally a 'masterpiece'... “children's book,” he said weakly through his lips as he fidgeted. When I turned my head and looked at his face, I saw that he was grinning on the tip of his lip, putting on that familiar knowing look. I was looking at him with questioning eyes, as he felt the need to answer. “Children's book,” he said again. “I think it's a book written in a simple language that doesn't add any value to people. I straightened my back in my seat and turned my chair towards him. “If it was a children's book, why did you waste time reading it?” I felt my anger redden my eyes. How comfortable he looked. "I wouldn't have known until I read it, right? It's a useless book," his smile spread over his face as if he had triumphed. I was getting on my nerves. "You think you know everything, don't you?"

The voice of my roommate Neslihan intervened. “Do you have to bicker at every opportunity? But of course, great loves start with a fight, I can visualize your future self...” I gave Neslihan such a look that she realized from my own eyes that I was saying "I will strangle you when we return home". He fell silent immediately, slumped in his seat. Before I could get over the shock of Neslihan's sentence, she smugly took the instrument in her hand, with laughter, “This girl was so angry and irritable when she was a child, it didn't hurt me less.

He used to make mud cakes and try to force them to eat them. He nearly beat me once because I didn't eat it." Laughter engulfed the whole table like a contagious virus. Everyone was laughing but me, and I was still trying to grasp what was going on. I was startled by Engin's voice. “You know our Mehmet, actually, think about it.” to think?

How could I know? More importantly, how did he know me? He probably couldn't have heard of my mud cakes. Trying to force feed or something... Ah it's ridiculous, I force something to anyone... Of course...

I hastily muted my thoughts, looking into his eyes, not knowing how to finish my sentence “or you, Mehmet, you…”. “Yes,” he said. “I am from the backyard of his childhood. Mehmet!"

I would find out later that he kept saying to Engin, "I feel like I know this girl from somewhere" from the first time he met me, that he asked my parents' name, whether he was my brother, that he confessed his interest in me to Engin and that we were childhood friends, not to tell him until I remember. that he preached. Now the ice between us had completely melted, and no matter how crowded it was, we were just talking and listening to each other. The games we played, the streets we ran, the scars on our knees, that giant apple tree and our fight with the nettles in the garden... We were only talking about our childhood now.

I felt so close to myself that it was as if he had suddenly become my best friend. It smelled like home to me. If I hugged him when I missed my family, it was as if my longing would go away. It's been 3 months since I ate my mother's food and played backgammon with my father. In short, I had an emotional day. I guess that was the reason for my stillness and silence: I missed my home so much. I don't know how long he's been watching me. The moment our eyes met, he leaned towards my ear. “If I promise to eat your mud cakes, will you play house with me again?” I think she had made her -unofficially- her first marriage proposal that day.

Today is the 73rd day of my marriage. It's not an ordinary day with nothing special. The day coincidences brought me to the place where I knew him. What do you think, do you think there really is such a thing as destiny? Fate, if any; A synonym has been created for him.