After Sarah Everard
The British newspapers closely follow what happened to the lost woman, Sarah Everard, and we heard the worst of the news. The country is mourning, and I realise how valuable to mourn together. I had to go through the mourning alone, most of my life, with only family and a few close friends support, but not society.
Every time I read womancide news, the places in my body that were beaten hurts. I remember I could have died. It could have been that, I could have been hit by a bus or truck or a car on the highway he left me after physical and verbal violence: a highway built by Hitler in Northern Germany. Or it could have been that, I could not recover from hours of dizziness after I hit my head to that table.
Even after almost twenty years, even if I forgot what domestic abuse was like, my body still remembers. What I remember and what hurts the most is, however, the emotional abuse from the woman against the woman.
With some external support, I achieved to escape from that ostensibly educated, highly destabilised, covert narcissist man and his nefarious family quite fast; yet, my ordeal was far from complete. Even very highly educated people at home in Istanbul asked what I did to deserve to be beaten. Downplaying and dismissing one’s experience with violence is the biggest violence of all. This is communal violence and creates a culture of violence. It tells women to shut up, silence their voice because the truth is uncomfortable.
Men and women like them makes Europe develop Islamaphobia. Their Islam, is nothing to do with mine. The God they believe, or rather not believe, is not omnipresent or the one who has a hereafter. Islam for them is a marketing tool. A practical access to a market where they sell their name, products, and market their egos. They are humans who could be humans, who do not value humans for being human, thus, Islam cannot add value to their lives. But it may make them a better version of themselves. It is not enough human, yes, but maybe in a thousand years, they might be.
Sadly, the violence continues and is mounting across the world and in Turkey, especially since the last fifteen years. I do not even talk about how men only believe in men and does not want to hear the women, with only a few exceptions.
We still think we ‘are’ the modern ones; we are ‘the’ followers of the greatest faith, etc. The truth is all participants in any type of violence are very sick people. In my experience, they were the top engineers, doctors, teachers, and parents; maybe they have been some of your neighbours. But what they need is to be institutionalised.
We have a lot of unhealthy egos, people who prefer their comfort zones, hearing only the power holders, generational traumas of immigration, women who prove themselves only if they can torture the women in the life of their sons, and as in the case of Sarah, an unfortunate reality of all cultures and societies where women is not a human…
I stop counting the number of women killed in Turkey. It is so heart-breaking. Who attends the women’s funerals in Turkey? Do they have a funeral? I do not know. The other side of the violence against women continues in prisons. Four years ago, when I was very naïve and thinking things could not worsen, there were still 17 thousand women in the prisons. There is more: 3000 children, 700 of whom are babies, are still in prison. I have no heart to follow the numbers, as it feels like double injustice: women are human, not numbers. But, again, do we have access to know the exact numbers? One wonders.
Society in Turkey did not change much since I left to protest the toxic environment against women in 2006. In 2003, the women asked what I did to deserve violent treatment; now, the same society asks what else the thousands of intellectuals do to deserve being imprisoned. Then I realise I never had a home, a society, where there was equality for women, especially among women.
I wonder how I can still carry this heavy heart in my chest. It is a miracle that I survived the last couple of years. Then I remember: my College, my safe Haven, St. Catherine’s at Oxford. She became my hope, my home, my long lost future.
I have a candle of love to share with you all now. It is my time to lit up the fire that you have inside but forgot. This is for the survivals of domestic abuse, and it’s more traumatic after effects, the emotional abuse. If that is you, you are not alone. If you are where I was once, a woman who felt lost, not welcomed, and do not belong, and if you have taken the long route to discover yourself again, you are not alone. It might be a long and arduous journey, but it is worth it.
You are not lost; society failed you. Now, we have to make up our very own society.
For moms who never failed their daughters, this is for moms, giving them a safe home, a voice, a refuge, confidence a man can never break. This is for grandmothers, who were labelled as crazy because they were speaking their minds. This is for you, who thinks she needs to hide to feel safe: you do not anymore.
You are safe and belong with us. It is sometimes a College, a monastery in history, a historical figure like Fatima, Khadija and Mary. If your people fail you, acknowledge and let it go. There is always a better world for you. For you, I leave my candle here, lit during all your darkest times and moments when you feel alone. Because you are not!
This is also for Sarah Everard and her beautiful family. Nothing can subside your pain now, I know, but even the darkest nights open their hearts to the light: one star at a time, then, the sun, and the dawn. One hopes…
