My family is okay, but what about other people?
Hello, I’m writing here for the first time. I’m 16 years old. I’ve grown up captiously on many issues such as religion, respect, manners and morality. I was sent to mosques since the 4th grade to learn how to read the Qur’an. These were both for my family and for God’s approval, with my freewill. I was a student at a normal primary school, but I was taking Qur’an lectures in my elective courses. I learned to read it at a very young age; it’s a very beautiful thing and it gives happiness to me.
When I started 6th grade, I told my mother that I want to wear a headscarf. She said I am too young and for this reason I can’t wear a headscarf. When I started 8th grade and repeated this request, I heard the same reply from my mother. I took the high school entrance exams and enrolled in an Anatolian Imam Hatip high school (a religious high school). I was an unveiled young girl dressing sportive, I was wearing contact lenses because I couldn’t see well. Many people in that high school described me as an ‘anomalous’ according to their high school student type. When I started to 10th grade, I told my parents the same request of mine, and they asked me “Why?” I said, “For God”, because we came to this world for a test and the important thing is not living with our own desires, but with the desires of our creator. They didn’t allow me, they opposed, and they said, “No, you can’t do it.”
During the summer break, before starting 11th grade, it was June, and I wore a headscarf. I was now veiled. My parents said, “You can’t handle it.” Moreover, it was a very wrong decision for them to wear a headscarf at the beginning of the summer, they didn’t want such a thing at all.
Now we are in 2020, it will be almost a year since I started wearing a headscarf. My decision is changing direction, a voice inside of me saying that, “You can’t do this anymore, you’re a girl who wants to dress at a certain level and put your hair up. The headscarf is not for you. You don’t have to lower your voice, you have to sing loudly, you have to shout.” However, it doesn’t work, my family forced me to take off my headscarf when I wore it, and I told them, “If God comes down from the sky, and tells me to unveil then I will do it.” However, now I swallow my words, as if I have a war with myself inside of me. Well, what do people say, what do they think about me? I said to my mother, “Mom, what I fear most in this world is to take off my headscarf,” and she told me not to be afraid. What will my friends, and people around me think and what will I do; I don’t know and I’m scared. I’m afraid of people’s judgements. I’m still a Muslim girl and I’ll confront people with my literacy, but how will those people treat me? Will my friends continue to stay with me? My family is with me, I love them no matter what. However, people sometimes need friends, even if they are fake. I’m saying it again, I’m very scared.
Translator: EsilS.
(Image: Anna Parini)