{"id":77,"date":"2019-04-15T17:46:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T21:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2019-07-08T22:52:40","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T02:52:40","slug":"upside-down","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/podcasts\/upside-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Upside Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The story of a preschool teacher who was once acknowledged with many awards\u00a0but labeled a terrorist later: a mother who had to give birth all alone, a wife who had to afford her family&#8217;s life by painting stones, surely a\u00a0warrior who had to leave everything she built behind.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/607600119&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was born in 1988 into a family of teachers. My biggest dream was to become a preschool teacher. Years later, my mom showed me my notebook which I wrote in 3rd grade. There was a question in this notebook: \u201cWhat do you want to become when you grow up?\u201d \u00a0And the answer was: \u201cI want to be a preschool teacher.\u201d It was a very sacred role for me. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I taught preschool for eight years. \u00a0During all these years, I always taught my students to be honest, just and good people, to love, to be conscientious, to be fair, and to not lie no matter what. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I got married to a math teacher, and we have a son. When our son was five and a half and I was expecting a new baby at any moment, all good things in Turkey started to turn upside down.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was Friday, July 15th. While my husband and I were watching TV, having tea and sunflower seeds, Our son and my nephew were playing upstairs. Suddenly, there was news on TV that a coup happened in Turkey. We were shocked at what was going on. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My school principal called me to school on July 22nd. He gave me a document suspending me, and just four days later we learned that my husband was also suspended from his position at the university. With one small child and another on the way,we didn&#8217;t have a basic salary, or health insurance, we had nothing. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At this time there was an order to arrest my husband. \u00a0Anyone can face imprisonment at any time due to the judicial system in Turkey. When my husband learned about his situation, he went to one of his friends\u2019 house, leaving me alone with my son. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One morning, I woke up in a house where I was alone. I didn&#8217;t have anyone but Allah. I woke up early in the morning. I did my daily prayer. I went to hospital alone to give birth, praying as I drive the car. Everyone has their husbands, relatives, or mothers with them, but I was the only one by myself in the hospital . <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then my daughter was born. She was premature, and needed to stay in an incubator, but I was afraid of what would happen to me. I took the child, and I got out of the hospital. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a while, my son started wetting his bed. He couldn\u2019t stand being without his dad. He was waking up from his dream every night screaming &#8220;father.&#8221; He lost his appetite. He was saying that \u201cmom, even if I grow up, who cares when my father is not with me.\u201d My child was suffering. While he was suffering, I was always crying.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On July 15th when we were having tea and sunflower seeds, all of a sudden, they have declared us traitors. Until this time my husband and I had many awards and recognitions from the Ministry of National Education. I had prominent awards in my profession. But in just a single day I was declared <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">uneducated. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since I am \u00a0a preschool teacher, I started to have activities with my son. I took my son to the beach for a little change so that he could relax. We were interested in nautical rocks at the beach. We started to paint the rocks. While I was painting the rocks, my son was polishing them. \u00a0The next day we were going to the farmer\u2019s market to sell these painted rocks with my son. My son was shouting: 1 lira, 1 lira. We made some money from this business with my son. I mean, it was not too much, but at least I could buy a small toy for my son to take home. I could buy bread for us. I was smiling as my son laughed.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After that, the circle was tightening for us. We couldn&#8217;t take our kids to the hospital. I couldn&#8217;t take my daughter for vaccinations. She had health issues from being born prematurely and not staying in the incubator. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We decided to flee abroad because we didn&#8217;t know what would happen to us if we stayed in Turkey. We were being hunted all around. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A week later my mom called me and said that they arrested my dad. And I asked my mom, &#8220;How did that happen?&#8221; The police officers came home, and they couldn&#8217;t find us, and they arrested my father instead. Then we learned that they sent my dad to prison. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Later on, my father was released, but he is still taking heavy anti-psychotic drugs, and he was never himself again. \u00a0He felt terrible, had crying fits, unable to believe what he had experienced. During the investigation, they told my dad how they would torture me and my husband. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had already decided to flee abroad. Then we learned about human smugglers. We had never done anything illegal in our lives. The smugglers demanded a large amount of money. We had to take this risk. They boarded us with three families on a tourist boat. In the middle of the sea, we transferred to a yacht. After a while traveling with this yacht, the captain said that he didn&#8217;t want to go further. \u00a0He said, \u201cI am afraid to be caught by Greek police officers.&#8221; He told us to get out of the yacht and swim. We begged him: \u201cPlease do not do this, we have little kids and a newborn baby.\u201d <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then, he inflated one white boat. I never forget that boat. He said that he could get only women, men must stay. I mean you can&#8217;t ask any questions under this conditions. So you have to do everything that he was saying. If you go back to Turkey, there will be worse than this, there will be torture and being separated from your kids. The boat was moving forward, and we were continuously praying. Oh Allah, please help us. And it was September, it was such a cold day. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While we were moving forward, the boat ruptured. The captain was very worried. He started to drive faster. The boat was filling up with more water. \u00a0Initially, water reached up to my ankles. The w<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ater level was gradually increasing in the boat<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. While we were getting closer to the coast, the water level reached my knees, and then my son&#8217;s waist. I lifted up my daughter, and I started praying: \u201cOh Allah for these children\u2019s sake, please help us. They are innocent. Maybe I am not but they are. They must live even if we die.\u201d I lifted up my daughter and kept praying. I didn&#8217;t know what I was doing. I felt very helpless.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank God, we got off the boat. I was in a country where even the alphabet was different from mine. I fled from my homeland, which I loved so much, in tears. I was still looking at the breaking news when I was fleeing my country, just hoping for a change, and that the people would realize that they were wrong. It was as if mountains and rocks told us to go away. Go and be free.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I started waiting for my husband in the Greek Island. An hour passed and my husband didn&#8217;t show up. I thought that something happened to him, they might have killed him. Because if they kill fleeing people then they will be given a reward in Turkey. One and half hours passed but my husband didn&#8217;t show up. In the meantime, my son grew bored of playing games. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently my son did not speak much. He just pointed to the sea and asked, &#8220;Mom, isn&#8217;t my dad over there now? &#8221; I started to crying as he was also crying. He asked me: \u201cMom, what are we going to do now? I know that you are good people. Why did they do this evil to us, why didn&#8217;t they let me play with my toys? I missed my room, Mom. Aren&#8217;t you going to miss Turkey? Aren\u2019t our grandparents there? Why are you doing this to me? Why do you keep me away from everything I love? \u00a0They also took my dad away from me.&#8221;<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, we were both crying \u00a0while looking at the sea. Then someone touched my back. I looked back, and it was my husband. I was over the moon. I couldn&#8217;t believe my eyes, because I had given up hope. My son jumped with joy, screaming \u201cDad!\u201d So everyone was looking at us. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our past, our minds, our hearts were all in Turkey. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can run away, but it doesn&#8217;t matter.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You even feel a weird remorse. You question whether you left everyone just to save yourself. But you have kids, so you have to do it. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our biggest dream was to come to Germany since we know that education, safety, democracy, civil rights are better in Germany. We got our plane tickets to Germany. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We got on the plane, and the plane took off. Even though the plane took off, we couldn&#8217;t believe it, and our minds stayed put. \u00a0We thought that someone would come, detain and kill us. We landed in Munich. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While we were on the way to the baggage claim area to get our luggage, two police officers stopped us. They took us to the airport police office. They took my husband and me in separate rooms. When the police officer saw that my baby was crying, he brought milk for my daughter. I was so surprised. While you needed a lot of help, you couldn\u2019t get any in Turkey, but it was surprising for us to see such goodness in a foreign country. \u00a0I was so happy. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They told us that we have to take off our clothes due to state laws of asylum. I still can&#8217;t forget that. They took my clothes off, and I was having my period. I was crying from embarrassment the whole time &#8211; I don\u2019t even undress in front of my mother. I felt like I had lost everything. It was tough for me. My husband and I could not look at each other&#8217;s faces after leaving separate rooms. I was feeling like a living death.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then they sent us to a refugee camp in Munich. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;t bad for me, because I had been homeless for a long time. I was so much in love with home in the camp, I felt like wiping and kissing the walls of my home. My son had his own bed. It really meant a lot to me. I cried my heart out when I left this place.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span><i>We had a court date, at which we told everything that we had lived through. We have all of our documents with us, including diplomas, certificates of achievement, and awards from the Turkish Ministry of National Education. The judge was surprised. He said, &#8220;How\u00a0are\u00a0they sending out such educated people from your country?&#8221;<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The judge asked me, what am I thinking about Germany? \u00a0I said that I love Germany. They give 90 euros per month per person to refugees in Germany, and I said: \u201cI am recording all the money that you have provided us. When my status improves, and I find a job, I want to pay back all this money to your country. I&#8217;m all grateful to the German nation.\u201d The judge was very touched. He said \u201cYou don&#8217;t need to do that. We didn&#8217;t lend you that money. You can record that. You are doing right, you can save that money, and you can give to your friends who came after you.\u201d It was such an act of kindness from him.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right now we are in our home. It is as small as a box but it is very lovely. When we came home the first time, we didn&#8217;t have anything. But at the end of the week, we invited our friends from the camp to our house. \u00a0They slept on the floor while we also were sleeping on the floor, because we didn&#8217;t even have a bed. Since then, we have furnished our home.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank goodness for our situation now. We never thought that we had done something wrong. All this will pass. I hope better days will come. I wish for the sun to rise in our country.&#8221;<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The story of a preschool teacher who was once acknowledged with many awards\u00a0but labeled a terrorist later: a mother who had to give birth all alone, a wife who had to afford her family&#8217;s life by painting stones, surely a\u00a0warrior who had to leave everything she built behind. Transcript: &#8220;I was born in 1988 into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6241,"featured_media":0,"parent":75,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77\/revisions\/251"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/storiesofwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}