Tonight, I salute all the walls. All the walls that are still standing or have fallen down. The walls of the Kaaba, Masjid al-Nabawi, Masjid al-Aqsa… The Wailing Wall, the wall of shame that makes Palestine bleed in sorrow, the Berlin Wall…
The Great Wall of Zulkarnayn, the Great Wall of China…
The walls of all masjids, all houses, all gardens; inns, baths, hospitals, madrasas, caravansaries…
To all the walls I look at, listen to, talk to, kiss, caress, lean my back or rest my forehead against… Salute…
Walls protect us. They listen to the moans in silence. They hear the most intimate secrets, but do not reveal them to anyone. They are the most loyal friends to the lonely and isolated. That’s why people wish four walls or a hole-in-the-wall. It is a shelter for man. We trivialize them by calling them cold walls, but they never complain.
Some walls are hated, others are adored… Some are kissed, caressed, and bowed to. Some walls are kicked and smashed to the ground with sledgehammers. Some are called “Damn you!”. Blood splatters on some walls… Guilty or innocent people are shot in front of them. Some walls separate friends, relatives, clans. Some walls rise in defiance of the Owner of the Heavens. Some walls are torture for the oppressed. Some are battlefields, firing the most striking slogans. Some of them are declarations of love. What cannot be said to the lover’s face is revealed on the walls. All kinds of metaphors, allegories, aphorisms, insults, unspeakable curses are poured on the walls. Every sentence is a short story on the walls.
Beyond some of them are pavilions and mansions; colorful, happy lives… Beyond others are rambling slums; faded, dulllives… Some bestow life beyond them, others put an end to it. Some have a fig tree in front of them; some are sweeter than honey, some bitter than poison… Beyond some is the land of freedom, beyond others is the claw of slavery. Once those claws take hold of you, what lies beyond is a land of waiting, exhaustion, sighs… In this land, walls are both friend and foe. They are punched and kicked from time to time; pictures are drawn, poems are written now and then. Many writers and poets are born, many others spend their lives and die within those walls. Sometimes a few words written in blood on those walls tell of a life stolen treacherously. Don’t utter unwary words that you have no business in that country. Even a Husn-i Yusuf passed through that country.
Let us also make mention of the walls of Taceddin Dervish Lodge where Mehmet Akif wrote the first drafts of our National Anthem and also Fazıl Husnu’s Walls of Inn… Vesselam.
Let’s talk about me. In my life, walls mostly evoked and reminded me of negative things, until what I witnessed in Umrah. The first stop of our Umrah journey was Medina. People were competing to touch, caress and kiss the walls of Ravza Mutahhara in Masjid al-Nabawi. The same scene took place at the Kaaba. “It turns out that people were leaning their backs against the walls and kissing and caressing them,” I told to myself at the time. Again and again I looked back at those holy places as I was leaving. As if I wished to caress and kiss the walls of Kaaba with my eyes for the last time. Then, when we decided to give our old house to the contractor, I caressed and kissed its walls in tears on the last day I left. I asked for their blessing and said goodbye to the walls. I stared at the walls. I sometimes leaned my back, sometimes my forehead against the walls and cried. On the walls where I hung pictures, calendars and pounded nails. The walls where I played with my shadow by candlelight when the power went out. I looked. I looked back and cried. I realized how many memories I shared. Now new walls are appearing in place of those walls. They are waiting for the times when we will be together.
That’s life. Time flows from this wall to that wall. The walls continue to be our shelter, our refuge, our confidant. Do the walls still feel cold to you? I bid farewell to the walls of our house, one day the walls anywhere will bid farewell to me silently…
