Our answer would be the same if I asked you how many perspectives we should look through or how many windows we should open in order to understand some events. As in the Azeri folk song that says, “This world is a window; everyone who comes, looks, and passes by”. Especially now that most of us are saying my window my window on and on… Spin as you can spin, and open as you can open. If I say to you, let’s open this window right now. Some people immediately say, let’s, some people say, oh, you don’t have a job, and some people say, this is your window and laugh. It was one of those times that we opened the windows and saw something tiny outside. Or that’s how I saw it, and I thought it was a good thing. Then this little thing of ours grew and grew and grew, and I no longer knew what to attribute it to. Because when I opened my window, I found myself waiting for it in her window like a sparrow that had landed on it by mistake, tiny and defenseless, instead of flying freely outside to feed myself. And one day, when I lifted my head and looked carefully and noticed that on my window it was written in small letters “seldag” and on her window it was written in big letters “globalization”, I remember asking myself, what the hell could this be? At that moment, someone said to me, Seldag, assume that the world has become a huge village and each of us can easily see each other when we open our windows and send each other kisses. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say, and I still don’t think I do. I told you I thought it was for the best. But I don’t know if I was wrong or if we were deceived. No, no, maybe it was only me who was deceived or if we all deceived ourselves. I just sometimes wonder, gosh, if we should never have opened this window. The view wasn’t bad, actually. As if the borders were being lifted… as if we were going to move freely in this world… as if we were going to hold the hands of beautiful women and open pastries for men who don’t beat women. We would reach what we wanted more easily; we would have more showcases and visions, and they would be colorful. Yes, from this perspective, maybe this was our motto: everything will be easier, more colorful, and more beautiful.
So what happened? While we were enjoying these little happinesses, before we could even say what was going on, we realized that tanks, cannons, and rifles were at our gates. It wasn’t even a century ago when we were experiencing these little happinesses. Someone grudged, someone envied, or we didn’t know whether it was a mystery, but it seems that most of us were experiencing our share of this game called globalization. Yet, with these dangerous piles of iron on the doorstep, we realized that in this game, someone else has taken over the wheat fields, someone else has started to operate the harbors of someone else, the real owners of the corn fields have become workers in their own lands, the shameful prices if you don’t buy are the reason for someone else’s profit, and if you don’t get permission, you can’t plant your own fields and you can’t load in your own harbors. So there was a price to pay for welcoming those beautiful women and making pastries for the men who didn’t beat them.
Well, if I say it’s too late to understand. From my own window, I would say nope. I would say that despite all the costs, we have learned and are learning a lot. We have experienced now that the world, which is a big village, is a beautiful place, that everyone has a prayer in their own language, that we can make warm soups to drink in the cold, that we can make different breads from the same wheat and sit and eat them all together with those soups, that we can knock on our doors with our ginger and cinnamon dessert varieties that smell the neighborhood during our holidays, and that we will cry and laugh at our loves at our tables where we sit together saying let’s eat sweet and talk sweet. What else do you expect? We even learned that tears have no passport and that the ego can override ideologies and religions. Well, what else do you expect? What beautiful things we have learned!
In this writing, I, a learning enthusiast, would like to tell you about Germany, which is my share in globalization, which I had a hard time even saying its name when I first heard about it, and about Helga, who is my share in it. When I told Helga that I love writing and telling little stories, I was a bit surprised when she gave me the love letters she had written and told me to tell you about them, but I was also happy that she gave me this responsibility and trusted me like this. Well, globalization, how can I not love you?
We met in a hospital garden. They had pumped her stomach because she wanted to commit suicide. Listening to her in that beautiful garden, some of us women of Turkish origin thought that this 65-year-old woman was doing this because she was lonely. But she didn’t care what we thought. She quickly told us what happened. In a nutshell, she fell in love with a Hans, but when she couldn’t find a response to her love, she decided that it was pointless to persist in a life without him and wanted to end her life. We were so surprised. There were some among us who said, “Oh, were you also infatuated? There were the ones who patted her on the back and said, “Ayyy, it’s not worth it at this age.” There were the ones who said, “Oyy oyy, it’s not worth it for any man” and ran to get hot chocolate. And so we met in the global world of women’s conversations that knew no boundaries. So you’ve become addicted to this man’s presence and crazy about his absence, so we said, look what she’s doing, and introduced Helga to idiomatic. But we never talked about Müslüm, just in case.
Many years passed after such a meeting, but thank God our relationship did not end. Helga was born in Berlin Kreuzberg in 1942, a child of war. Just like the children in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa right now. Her father, who was captured during the war, was sent to Siberia and returned in 1950. Although they managed to survive, her parents, who were now strangers to each other, were sadly separated. Those were very difficult years, Helga says… And while growing up in these difficulties, she learned tailoring in Germany, one of the best things to do at that time. In the meantime, she married Helmut, who was also a child of war. This marriage lasted 38 years, and the difficult years never ended due to her husband’s alcohol problems and the resulting domestic violence. On top of that, when her husband got cancer, she had to take care of him for years. So you can understand that the pain of these two children of war has never ended. They spent years paying the price of the war, even though they were not responsible for it, but they were born into it.
And after years of hard times, when her husband passed away, poor Helga was left alone in the hobby garden they had built together…What hasn’t passed in my life, she said, and started to linger there. Then one day she met Hans during a meeting with the garden management. In her love letters, she describes that moment as the point where the arrow of love at first sight stabbed her. By the way, let me remind you again that at that time, Helga was 65 years old.
But Hans not only kept arms’ length with our girl; he also showed her a red card. We later found out that Hans, who had recently separated from his wife, had been living as a single man with the slogan “no stable relationships.” And at that time, he was 70 years old. Maybe he was tired after all the suffering and struggles, who knows? After all, wasn’t he also born a child of war?
Helga, who couldn’t bear to be rejected, was unfortunately not accepted even after her suicide attempt. And that’s when we got to know these two.
However, while all this was going on, this lovely duo had such nice communication that you wouldn’t believe it. One day about wounds, the next day about childhood memories. The other day it was politics, the next day it was shirt buttons, and we were so happy to see that they could talk for hours on end. At this very moment, we got the news that our girl had made another move. After all, since we were living different lives, even though we didn’t see each other every day, we were asking each other how we were doing on the phone from time to time. One day, when I picked up the phone again, she spoke to me under her breath. I’m in Spain; I’m walking the pilgrim road; I’ll call you when I come back, she said and hung up. I was stunned, and the phone just stayed in my hand. Then, when I looked on the internet to see what this pilgrimage was, I silently said, no way, Helga.
These roads, which Christians called pilgerweg, consisted of the centers where pilgrims could make pilgrimages and the roads around them. Perhaps the most important one for Christians was the road known as Jakobsweg. This was one of the roads leading to the temple of James the son of Zebedee in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where saints are buried in Galicia, in the north of Spain. As it turned out, our girl decided to walk this way to express her love. Moreover, she wrote a letter to Hans every day. While we were waiting for Helga with our eyes wide open, we realized that we were not the only ones waiting. Hans was waiting too. But he wasn’t waiting in amazement; he was waiting with longing. And it was at this point that we said amongst ourselves, “As long as you come, I’m willing to wait in the rain every day…” and then we added another idiomatic.
And then, even though he didn’t understand us, we said, well Hans, that’s how you settle for the rain every day. Well, there cannot always be interstate agreements. Ours was women’s solidarity on an international stage.
We were laughing at that, but at the same time, we were saying that they were bewildered lovers. Eventually, one day, my phone rang, and it was Helga saying, “Here I am. Also, when she said she didn’t come empty-handed, we thought she had brought a gift from the pilgrimage. The day we met her with impatience, we realized that she had returned with her heart full, not her hands. She said, “I’m sorry. Go and walk, too. I carried the war, my childhood, my marriage, and Hans with me in every step I took. I don’t know who or what you bear. To be honest, we were a bit upset, but we also realized that no one among us was ready to walk this journey yet.
Hans’ situation was different from ours, naturally. He waited for Helga with a longing he didn’t admit and wanted to celebrate her return with wine and conversation.. Just when we were about to say, oh no more chatting, Helga called excitedly and told us that he told me that he loved me, and we popped the champagne in the evening. Well, we women are both each other’s worst enemies and each other’s partners in trouble. This was something like that.
However, our champagne almost went down the drain because, when this lovely couple started to live together in the same house, another truth came to light. And that was that Helga, as a woman, had suffered more and more over the years. Just like Syrian, Ukrainian, and African women are now. She wrote to me, “Seldag, How much pain can and must a person bear?
When our girl’s wounds bled, Hans asked her, ” Who caused you so much pain? She replied that no one had ever asked me that, and no one had ever been so open, so she opened her heart and spilled her savings all over the place. We were actually afraid that this relationship too would end, but it didn’t, and we realized that at the end of all these conversations, they hugged each other tighter and decided to travel the world. Oh my God, I think they went to Kenya ten times. Helga is a Kenya lover. Just like I am a lover of Şırnak. They also came to Turkey. And they almost came to Akçay, but it didn’t happen at the last minute.. And all this happened despite Hans’s distant attitude towards foreigners. Because although Helga was a child of war, at heart she was like a baby who couldn’t make sense of borders. When we talked to her, we felt like we were in a children’s playground. The child Helga was saying how we Germans fill the bucket with sand, while she watched with curiosity how the child Seldanin filled it. Then we two children would play happily in this garden, whichever way was easier for us to fill the bucket. And in time, we realized that Helga had added Hans to this children’s garden just as she had added us. So we were very happy about this. At this age, this kindness, this openness, this honesty, and this love not only for each other but also for human beings impressed us and gave us hope. You see, we were very happy with them. And then one day, after 9 years, we received the news that first Helga and then Hans had cancer. We know that we are not permanent in this world, but when that moment comes, it is not so easy to meet it calmly and say that the game is over, now goodbye. Helga, that lovely child, recovered, and Hans was twirling around her bed like a ballet dancer on stage, trying to make her happy. But Hans’ fate was written differently. Apparently he had no more water to drink in this world, and his contract was over. He left. Helga was left alone again.
As I said, even though Helga and I don’t see each other all the time, when we get together, we always continue our conversations like two old friends. She is a German, and I am an Anatolian woman. She is now 80 years old, and I am over 50. She tells me about Kenya, and I tell her about Şırnak. She puts the Berliner cake on the table, saying that you would like it, and I put the acar in the middle of the wine table, thinking that she would like it. Despite all these differences, when we come together, we laugh a lot and sometimes cry, and we have fun even while crying. And we thank the people, the events, and eventually globalization for bringing us so close. Maybe the plan that globalization made at home did go as planned; who knows?
And one day, upon Helga’s request, we started a fire in Kenya and started to dance the Şırnak halay, with a Berliner cake in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Meanwhile, Helga was trying to catch the rhythm while shouting with enthusiasm. Hoppaaa, let’s see how many people can hug like this in the new world. Then she added in a low voice, as if someone could hear us, Selda. I guess we don’t have a sense of rhythm.
I looked back at this child of war who was struggling with a recurrence of his illness, and I smiled. She was not so wrong, but her heart and what she brought to me were enough. For that reason, I wanted to dedicate this writing to her, but unfortunately, she said goodbye to us while I was preparing it. May your soul be blessed, dear Helga. I love you very much. And I would like to end my writing with an interesting observation you made during our conversations. Without comment.
Seldag said that one day the most beautiful thing is to understand that we are learning even if it is late and to realize that every heart carries a seed of love. Even so, believe me, and you probably won’t believe me, but even those who start wars carry this seed in their hearts. And among them are those who realize this, and those are the lovers….
She whispered and requested that I keep this sentence as a secret. I don’t know the reason for this, but all I know is that I should respect her wish. Being the daughter of a world war, Helga’s only request is for me to hope that what she said is true and that everyone can meet with the seed of love in their own hearts. That’s all…
