My name is Selman Encü
My name is Selman Encü
My name is Selman Encü.
The last one of six siblings, someone who was left an orphan before birth and made an unfortunate beginning into the world…
I have felt the absence of my father at the depth of my heart since I opened my eyes to the world in the depth of the winter of the year seventy seven. I don’t know in how many shapes being fatherlessness can seem to a person but I think I have lived all of them one by one, that’s why I have never loved the season of winter…
The Indian saying “life is difficult, which I kept harping on, is the compendium of my thirty eight year old life…
It was very very difficult to be a child in 80’s, especially being fatherless, and especially being a fatherless child in Roboski. It was not possible to go to school among all these difficulties…
The memories I put aside in my childhood were all made up of sorrow and grief…
Living in 90’s was only possible with either migrating or staying in Roboski as a village guard. Migration is a journey of misery with great many troubles coming one after the other. It is especially difficult for a fatherless family; we couldn’t go. We stayed in Roboski as village guards…
When I got married, I had a house and a wife with whose heart I devoted mine. Our joy for the birth of our first child gave way to the patience for a severe probation that crackles shoulders; our Esra came into the world as mentally disordered…
In the meantime, my wife suffers from a problem in her legs, she can hardly walk…
Three years later, with fear and hope, we had our second child Ersin who was fortunately healthy…
We had one more son after Ersin and he shared the same fate with his sister…My forth child was left an orphan yet in mother's womb, he shared the same fate with his father…
I got into debts while building a house for my family. Time to go “smuggling” comes when debts or the struggle to make a living arise in this territory, it was time for me as well…
I used to go smuggling between whiles. “My whistle used to dissolve in the darkness and scared it…” When I returned home safe and sound, I used to feel joyful as if I had returned from a victory…
That day was the dead of winter, just like the day I was born fatherless. A blood freezing cold and a sheet of snow laid under the night in utter darkness… It was when I died that I understood I was “one of the thirty four”, how would I ever know that I was in a caravan of death…
On the way back home, I saw vultures moving above us, iron vultures …
When the execution warrant for us reached the pilots, they painted white mountains, the sleeps of people waiting in half awake half asleep state and the utter darkness with blood… Just like what someone said; “Each hand joins something in the happiness or misery of the humanity”, the hand of the pilot who pushed the button turned our misery to a disaster…
Sorrow and grief captured the heart of everyone in Roboski after that day, the heart of my family at the very most…
Behind me stayed a disabled mother, a baby in her womb, two mentally disordered children and an eleven year-old Ersin …
Ersin was at the fourth class yet. He has often escaped from the school and came home since the event… Would I have ever meant to do so?
My name is Selman Encü, the one who was written down as Selim on civil registry…
I am a fatherless child who lost his father yet in the mother womb and left his child fatherless in the mother womb… “Life is difficult”, say Indians; this death made me understood that it is more difficult when you die this way…
I was going to turn 40 with four children. I wouldn’t want my body to fall apart to pieces on the snow. The cigarette I smoked up to my
lungs remained under a rock together with my lung…
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
The last one of six siblings, someone who was left an orphan before birth and made an unfortunate beginning into the world…
I have felt the absence of my father at the depth of my heart since I opened my eyes to the world in the depth of the winter of the year seventy seven. I don’t know in how many shapes being fatherlessness can seem to a person but I think I have lived all of them one by one, that’s why I have never loved the season of winter…
The Indian saying “life is difficult, which I kept harping on, is the compendium of my thirty eight year old life…
It was very very difficult to be a child in 80’s, especially being fatherless, and especially being a fatherless child in Roboski. It was not possible to go to school among all these difficulties…
The memories I put aside in my childhood were all made up of sorrow and grief…
Living in 90’s was only possible with either migrating or staying in Roboski as a village guard. Migration is a journey of misery with great many troubles coming one after the other. It is especially difficult for a fatherless family; we couldn’t go. We stayed in Roboski as village guards…
When I got married, I had a house and a wife with whose heart I devoted mine. Our joy for the birth of our first child gave way to the patience for a severe probation that crackles shoulders; our Esra came into the world as mentally disordered…
In the meantime, my wife suffers from a problem in her legs, she can hardly walk…
Three years later, with fear and hope, we had our second child Ersin who was fortunately healthy…
We had one more son after Ersin and he shared the same fate with his sister…My forth child was left an orphan yet in mother's womb, he shared the same fate with his father…
I got into debts while building a house for my family. Time to go “smuggling” comes when debts or the struggle to make a living arise in this territory, it was time for me as well…
I used to go smuggling between whiles. “My whistle used to dissolve in the darkness and scared it…” When I returned home safe and sound, I used to feel joyful as if I had returned from a victory…
That day was the dead of winter, just like the day I was born fatherless. A blood freezing cold and a sheet of snow laid under the night in utter darkness… It was when I died that I understood I was “one of the thirty four”, how would I ever know that I was in a caravan of death…
On the way back home, I saw vultures moving above us, iron vultures …
When the execution warrant for us reached the pilots, they painted white mountains, the sleeps of people waiting in half awake half asleep state and the utter darkness with blood… Just like what someone said; “Each hand joins something in the happiness or misery of the humanity”, the hand of the pilot who pushed the button turned our misery to a disaster…
Sorrow and grief captured the heart of everyone in Roboski after that day, the heart of my family at the very most…
Behind me stayed a disabled mother, a baby in her womb, two mentally disordered children and an eleven year-old Ersin …
Ersin was at the fourth class yet. He has often escaped from the school and came home since the event… Would I have ever meant to do so?
My name is Selman Encü, the one who was written down as Selim on civil registry…
I am a fatherless child who lost his father yet in the mother womb and left his child fatherless in the mother womb… “Life is difficult”, say Indians; this death made me understood that it is more difficult when you die this way…
I was going to turn 40 with four children. I wouldn’t want my body to fall apart to pieces on the snow. The cigarette I smoked up to my
lungs remained under a rock together with my lung…
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
