Slowly I go back upstairs. Stepping into my room, I notice mom inside, gathering up my scattered class notes covered in scribbles and medicine formulae, breathing them in and kissing them as she mutters prayers. Holding back my surprise, I watch her for a while. After kissing and breathing in my notes in the same way she does for the pages of our Koran, she sets them aside. In that moment I understood: I have to pass this test and finish school even if it kills me.

*

I am in Istanbul. Watching the gathering of the Saturday Mothers. Once again it’s Saturday and I have Poyraz on my shoulders as I listen to a mother making a speech. Hüseyin Morsümbül’s mother is talking about her daughter Fatma. Hüseyin was still in High School when his house in Bingöl was raided by police and soldiers, and he was taken into custody.

For 30 years his family has struggled to learn what happened to their son. Appeals written by his mother Fatma over the course of 31 years were never filed and then destroyed.

Hüseyin’s mother always said:

“If I could only find the bones of my son I would carry them on my shoulders. How I miss his smell.”

I feel ashamed of myself and I slowly take Poyraz down off my shoulders …

Not so long ago staff sergeant Mehmet Ciftçi was killed when a military vehicle hit a roadside mine during transport in Hakkari. His body was never found and his family announced that they wanted to be personally involved in the search. The mother of the lost soldier, Döndü Ciftçi, who was on dialysis for the last 30 years, said the following:

“Take me to my boy. I’ll find him, I can sniff him out. Put me on a plane and I’ll go. I beg you. I will look in all the cracks along the road, I can track down the scent of my lamb.”

*

Sometimes I call mom out of the blue. Pressing the receiver to her ear, she says:

“Ercan, my lamb.”

“Oh mom, how did you know it was me? Maybe someone else was calling, and that would be rude,” I say. Mom:

“How could that be, my son. How could I not know? Your smell comes down the telephone line. The smell of Ercan …”

Mothers are such fascinating people? So strange. Unlike anyone else. But I’m sure they can recognize each other and they must have a common language we don’t know and which they alone can speak and understand. Maybe they meet in secret and give each other news. Who knows?

Now what to say? And to whom?

Cruel monsters, fearsome merchants, proud statues, people with no conscience, oppressors!

Leave way for the lambs. Let them pass to the other side of the river.

Their mothers can smell them out. Oh yes they can.

Let these mothers embrace them …