The Girl in the Tree

by Şebnem İşigüzel

People are nothing more than the accumulated stories of others. In particular, the stories of their mothers and fathers. I’m not talking about genetics—this is purely a matter of the spirit. Try with all your might to resist, but in the end, you turn out to be no different from them, in your very essence and being. While

Lying under the tree, my red canvas shoes looked like two drops of blood that had started seeping into the ground. A stain.

Why are people born into the world? That’s easy. So they’ll have a story to tell. Some of us die before the story ends, some of us die long after the story has ended, and some of us die right at the very start.

My aunt pursed her lips—I even heard that. I think those were the days when I started being able to see things I couldn’t see and hear things I couldn’t hear.

The characters don’t have to be anything like yourself as the writer. And as for the story, it doesn’t really have to be based on anything you yourself have experienced. What the characters really do is give voice to our emotions, to the things that have had a profound impact on us. Writing is like looking in a mirror, but the face we see there isn’t our own. What we write doesn’t actually belong to us as the author. Rather, it comes from the depths of our being.”

Humans were the frailest of all, but strangely, it was they who brought the most harm to nature. Because the weak tyrannize others. They are cowards. “Tyrants are afraid.”

As a matter of fact, I was fairly good at all the games that children play. I just failed at life.

Male violence is like smoke—it seeps in everywhere. And society and the state make it possible for that violence to sink its roots into every home, slowly poisoning women to the point that they are reduced to little more than walking corpses.

She had experienced in all their profundity the two feelings that are the foundation of life: love and humiliation. The source of that shame was a story far bigger than the one about love. We discover who we really are through others, which is why we are better at understanding other people than ourselves. It’s just like being a doctor; no one can peer into themselves to diagnose their own illnesses, so we must leave that to someone else. And that is precisely why I said that we are all, in fact, other people’s stories. Yet, while no one can tell their own story, if another tells it, it will be lacking in some way. So everyone must tell their own stories, staring into the mirror and talking to themselves if need be.

“You don’t have to be leading a crowd of protesters to be a hero. When there’s a bloodbath going on in your country, the greatest form of heroism and rebellion is to sit down at your desk every morning and write.” I didn’t have a ready answer for him. Little by little I was losing all that was dear to me. Rather, all those people and things were being taken from me. In light of that, I couldn’t help but think: Is giving up on writing really such a big deal?

The struggle to get through life must have left her deeply wounded, because the people who have been hurt the most are the best at hurting others.

“You’re wrong. It’s a failed attempt at writing about the past through other people’s lives. The story of a girl who talks about everyone but herself.” “Maybe by talking about others, she’s actually talking about herself?”

When a child treats its mother cruelly or a mother treats her child with wicked intent, it’s all over. Life is over.