— Yücel GünayI was attending primary school in Armutalan. It was a typical village school. You know how the song goes: “There is a village far away; even if we don’t go or see it, that village is our village.” It was just such a village. We were in a multigrade classroom with my father as our teacher at the head of the class. Sometimes unit magazines would arrive at the school. The year was 1985 and earlier. That was when I learned we had an older sister in Ankara. And she was a journalist too! (We didn’t even know what a newspaper was back then.) She was the one sending those magazines to us.
Then we took the university entrance exam. The results were announced. In those days there was no internet and no smartphones. (ÖSYM and YÖK existed, though.) Sister Havva called from Ankara, asked for my exam ID number, and gave us the news of my result early. So in short, I knew that even if we weren’t close or didn’t see each other, sister Havva was somewhere out there watching over us and looking out for us.
And much later I realized that they were the ones who prepared us for this life full of hardships and ugliness. They taught us how to stay pure by leaning on one another in such a life. They ensured that these values were passed down through generations like a relay race. And my sister was the first runner in this relay race.