Adel Gece Demir
@adelgece
Ateizmin şehitlere ihtiyacı olduğunda bana söylesin yeter, kanım her şeye hazır.
0-30p: Kontrollü okuyucu 📖
40-70p: Hafif bağımlı 👀
80p+: Geçmiş olsun, kitaplar seni ele geçirmiş 😅
A couple of days before the official school closing, my father was going to Peshawar to meet two video journalists from the New York Times, and I went with him. They had invited my father to ask if they could follow him on the last day of school, but at the end of the meeting, one of them turned to me and asked, “What would you do if there comes a day when you can’t go back to your valley and school?” Because I was both stubborn and full of hope, I replied, “That will not happen.” He insisted it might, and I started to weep.
At home in the evenings I wondered what I would do with my life if I couldn’t go to school. One of the girls at school had gotten married off before Fazlullah’s edict. She was twelve. I knew my parents wouldn’t do that to me, but I wondered, what would I do? Spend the rest of my life indoors, out of sight, with no TV to watch and no books to read? How would I complete my studies and become a doctor, which was my greatest hope at the time? I played with my shoebox dolls and thought: The Taliban want to turn the girls of Pakistan into identical, lifeless dolls.
Terrorism is different from war—where soldiers face one another in battle. Terrorism is fear all around you. It is going to sleep at night and not knowing what horrors the next day will bring. It is huddling with your family in the center-most room in your home because you’ve all decided it’s the safest place to be. It is walking down your own street and not knowing whom you can trust. Terrorism is the fear that when your father walks out the door in the morning, he won’t come back at night.
...when our teachers, like Miss Ulfat in primary school, said “Excellent!” or “Well done!” our hearts would fly. Because when a teacher appreciates you, you think, I am something! In a society where people believe girls are weak and not capable of anything except cooking and cleaning, you think, I have a talent. When a teacher tells you that all great leaders and scientists were once children, too, you think, Maybe we can be the great ones tomorrow. In a country where so many people consider it a waste to send girls to school, it is a teacher who helps you believe in your dreams.