The walls are made of mud brick,
the room is whitewashed,
The best years of my childhood were spent in a house smelling of soil.
There were no sparkling chandeliers swinging on their ceilings. In the dim light of smoky gas lamps; I would sleep, on the cushions.
It was not the nightmares seen on feather pillows.
In my dreams, I dug mud wells in front of the houses I made of stones and organized trips to the most beautiful streams of the village with the paper ships I released into them.
Until, with an armful of dung in my mother's hands, we would open our eyes to the creaking wooden sliding door, the sound of pushing with her feet.
On the days when I was soothed by the name of waterfall in the square of the village with the tires I put on my feet, faces were washed with the spring water gushing out of the ground. I wouldn't mind, my socks were torn, my rubber shoes with holes in the heel were filled with water; you are done. I thought the embers of the dung that my mother burned with her callused hands will never go out in our stove.
The teapot on the stove and the scent of the brown bread on the right and left would make our stomachs. Especially the delicacy of the curd we put in the bread and eat it.
Was it ever known; Gemlik olives, Edirne cheese, salami, sausage. The name of those times was poverty. Even if you were the most magnificent of the tables, the meals were not eaten on the tables and accompanied by the symphony on the decorated plates. They would start on the most beautiful cushions lined up around the sini, with the buttermilk in the copper bowl and the dwarf of the onion broken in a fist.
Would the spoons not be thrown with the sound of the horn of the dolmus that was blowing up the dust at the top of the village. After all, it was a city bus; Wouldn't we be crowding around you?
We were hiding our wounded bruised hands with the scent-smelling city dwellers looking down from the car.
I was losing the scent of the essence I had absorbed, next to the spotted calf in the barn that I entered after my mother.
Of course, we also had essences in our wardrobes, guest colognes awaiting the feast.
Of course it would come to us too, holidays whose sugar was postponed to the next year.
What have we experienced, what have we seen.
We; We divided our bite with five spoons plunging into a plate in the copper bowl.
Maybe not mercedes, but we; we boasted the new fruition of the black donkey that remained loyal to us. We braided our hair with a wooden comb, which we exchanged for a kilo of wheat from Mehmet, the saddle bag full of his horse.
Ha! I also had a pocket fist that my mother ironed under the pillow, smelling of the city, and I couldn't resist wearing it for the feast.
Would sleep come now, thinking about whether my pocket would be filled with sugar tomorrow.
We kissed on the first morning of the holiday, first of all the poverty of my father. Actually, my father's restlessness started from the eve. He was right, did the boy know that this is a hole in your pocket. I said, the boy could not see this unhappiness that the father hid, but as he kissed my cheek, I could understand a little, the despair in his eyes.
A few words would mingle with the sound of the wind humming through our broken window. His eyes were full, he could not speak. A few syllables would fall between his lips. The snow accumulated on the roof would melt and seep through the wooden ceiling onto the cushions, and we wonder if this is what we think; we wouldn't know
Whereas; It was always sad, my father's night and day.
And a few words that I remember from my childhood.
... your face always smile baby, don't let your smiling face fade
... You protect your heart, nobody should touch it
... don't look sad baby, the one who sees doesn't think it is unhappy
... Protect your sweet soul, nobody will hurt you
... be on the side of good baby, don't be unfair
... stay away from the wicked, don't get hurt
... Keep it clean inside, baby, let the wicked be with God.
As I think of all this, I get red and blushed. Then I feel a relief.
I am not talking about myself, a child I have seen over time, which I told you. Secretly saddened.
It was the expression of a childhood that could not be lived in a house with mud brick walls, a lime-whitewashed room and a smell of soil.
... Ah ah!
... my soil-scented memories slipping through my palms
and my childhood that does not come out of my memories.
... Farewell to all of you.
... Farewell my childhood.