Being a generation of intertwined collapses from your long history to the present, it’s an unfortunate fate that cannot be displayed. Amidst a pile of wreckage where even the ceiling cannot accommodate mice, I don’t know how to tell you that your desperate cries have been in vain. Today, you are shouting with all your might, wanting to tell something to those around you. Tell me, has anyone who heard your voice and listened to your words emerged so far? Doesn’t the echo of your screams, filling your ears with a sharp turn against the iron cage around you, tell you anything? Your own screams echoing your voice. Send your wish to the imagination, it will be heard. To tell you to yourself… To express your troubles in detail… To prove that you, in great need of mercy, are in the arms of the merciless… Ah! If only I could tell you that what they shoved into your mouth, as you absorbed incessantly, is not even as honorable as a hemorrhoid compared to a mother’s breasts, which are more sacred than the water of life taps.
If your caregivers had not made you pick thorns with your feather-light hands, maybe it would have been possible to tell you something. Yet, the foster mother, whose skirts flamed up, did not even care about your burning.
It can be claimed that the butcher who holds a knife for the animals waiting to be slaughtered in the slaughterhouse is compassionate. However, you, who are deprived even of being laid down while touching the jugular vein, cannot comprehend the executioner’s lack of mercy. Can you avoid getting involved with the boundless ambitions of a gang with bloody hands, covered in blood, and filled with bloody desires, with your disposition, like a lifeless toy? Can you guarantee that you will not be the captive of a new desire in the future? You will not be able to answer, “Yes” to these intertwined questions, because while the mothers and fathers, who scratch your heart and lungs with their nails, which they do not deem proper to scratch the back of an itchy calf, remain in the blindness of not understanding the meaning in your lament, and in the ineptitude of not penetrating the burning wood under the candle of hope, during the period when you are in agony, your portion of existence resembles a chandelier swaying gently within the palace of dreams. Who knows how much longer you will search for someone, who have a sincere smile, among these masked ones, who have no share from reflecting the authenticity of existence and original disposition. From your early years, when you were treated as a plaything, through your youthful years, when emotions held you captive, you grew distant from your core vitality. As you enter old age, a time marked by the rebellion of limbs against each other, the prospect of finding what you seek becomes utterly elusive. Thus, you will never be able to surpass the limits that you are obliged to overcome.
You are miserable, but only those who are aware of this fact knows this. The value of the gem is not known to those who are not jewelers.
We embarked on a striving, however we’re just singing your song of agony. Yes, that’s all we’re doing. Will time register someone who understands your language? I don’t know, but we are blind and deaf on this path.
If one day we confront you burdened with accumulated sins on our shoulders, do not blame us for what we have deemed appropriate for you. I am begging for mercy from you for all the culprits: “Forgive us, dear, we couldn’t understand you.”
Note: This text is a translation of the author’s original essay titled “Seni Anlayamadık,” which was published in the Gurbet magazine on October 1, 1966.
