Towards The Summit

Closer, But Still Between

The wolves came to the village three months later Sema started teaching at the school. People were talking about wolves appearing at night for almost a week. The wolves came out of the woods next to the school and walked by slowly, without seeing the fifthy eight black, four blue eyeballs following them. They marched through the streets that were covered with the blood of a rooster and were shot by the sheriff when they found the corps right across to the light post.

After the shotgun was heard, Sema remembered the governer’s words and continued teaching present tense to the fifthy eight black and two blue eyes.

Three months ago, she was introduced to her class by the only official teacher and principle of the school. There were only two classrooms and two teachers who were responsible for teaching all courses. The classroom was large enough for thirty kids which was the number of the students in the class. The walls were completely empty except an Atatürk picture, national anthem and national oath which used to be recited after singing the national anthem up until 2013 when singing the national oath was taken out from the Law on Unification of Education. The windows viewed the dark woods full of leafless trees. The most indispensable piece of furniture, a coal burning stove, was placed in the middle of the room.

The kids were wearing similar, old, loose sweaters and rubber shoes. None of them had a coat. Boys, obviously, outnumbered the girls who were sitting together next to the stove.

Nobody talked. In their eyes, Sema could see curiosity fighting against dullness.She smiled at them and they smiled back one by one. But the eyes were still.

“How many of you had have been out of this village before?”

That was the first question she asked in her teaching career. One hand was up.

“How many of you would like to see outside of the village?”

She could count thirty hands. she told them that it was possible to see other places if they worked really hard and gave them regular teacher advice that all of us are given by our teachers and parents since the first day of our school lives and she watched hope being born in them as they were taking educational advices for the first time in their lives. They listened to her with hands on their cheeks, as if her story was a fairytale. Their eyes were changing while she was talking. Curiosity came forward and glistened.

According to Sema, they experienced hope for the first time in their lives and I thought, maybe that’s why these kids listened to Sema more than we tend to listen to people around us. We always had hope, we were born to it, they were definitely not. And someday someone came and carried them out of pure hopelessness to a world where people hoped. They knew both the presence and absence of hope. They chose the presence.

The rest of Sema’s story is a selection of “one day”s, little images she is carrying in her mind for more than twenty-five years.

One day, one single they that seemed like forever, she became terribly sick. She had never been that sick in her life.  Even though her senses were awake, her mind let her down when it came to perceiving what she sensed. Neither injections nor the medicine that her husband gave helped. It was the magical chicken soup that brought her to life. When she finally started processing, she saw her students looking at her in awe. Their mothers came to check her as well. They cooked the last chicken they had and put an infinite amount of prayers in it to make it work. Sema came back to school the next day and she never got sick on a school they ever since.  

One day, she went to rooster racing with her students. “I didn't worry about retaining the authority among my students. Maybe because I was young and unexperienced and I wanted to be involved in the setting where the story took place. I was all in for everything they did in their daily lives.” she said. Rooster chasing was not her speciality but she didn’t felt the hierarchy between experienced and unexperienced kids. “We were a mob and we stuck together even when we switched roles with the roosters They chased us to the well where we started to chase them first. “ The roosters were faster than she expected and much clever. They disappeared around the woods. Then, surrounded the kids who were laughing at their teacher quietly and walked over them. Sean and her students were laughing so hard while running that some of them stumbled and fell. The rest of the kids walked back on roosters to protect their friends lying on the road and they continued running after they stood up. Running away seemed more meaningful than chasing.

Another incident she often remember was a one day in spring of 1984. The snow had just melted. Wildflowers were growing between broken pavement stones. Sema took her students outside. The school garden was going to be their classroom until the next fall. It was a nice opportunity for them to learn about plants and photosynthesis and she didn’t forget to include latin roots in that topic.

After many years, she decided to start a new collection of flowers. She told all the kids to bring her flowers that were indigenous to that village. There would be a reward for the ones who bring the most beautiful flowers. The special rewards were cookies. “And, of course, everybody was given the reward even though I didn’t believe the concept of ‘everybody wins’. I understand that losing can be more devastating for a kid but winning all together is just not how it works in real life. ”