I gathered thyme, herbs, and wild figs. The bags were heavy. The paths were difficult. My whole body ached, but I carried everything to the market and sold it with dignity.
Philosophy
Some people bought me because they felt sorry for me.
Later on, they bought because they knew I had earned every penny with my own effort.
Years passed.
People came to hear my story. Mothers brought their daughters to me and said:
—Tell him what you survived.
But I never told my story just to make people cry.
She told the story so that women would understand that cruelty doesn’t begin in a field. It begins much earlier, in the anger that people justify, in the silence that women are forced to swallow, and in the first moment a wife begins to fear the man who should be protecting her.
Mehmet Ali had taken my hands away.
Military history.
But I hadn’t lost my dignity.
It hadn’t taken away my strength.
It hadn’t taken away my desire to live.
And that was the part he never managed to understand.
He wanted to see me defenseless.
Instead, I became proof that a woman can be hurt and still refuse to be defeated.
So tell me honestly… when a woman survives something that was meant to destroy her, should people only remember what was taken from her or the strength she built with what she had left?
