THEY DON’T KNOW 

“Mom, look up! It’s like hundreds of shooting stars…”
The sky was so full of sparkle. All the stars seemed to be racing to reach the ground.
With a big smile on my face, I was looking up. How could I have known something like this would happen? How could I have guessed—it’s not like I’d ever seen it before. They hadn’t taught us this in school either. Besides, I had only turned eight two months ago. I was Grandpa’s little butterfly, and Grandma’s little cotton ball.

I knew my parents had been tense for a few days.
“Where are we going, Seher? Where are we going to leave our home, our work, our family for? How will we leave? Who will we go to?”
I didn’t understand why my mother wanted to go. I didn’t understand why my father’s voice sounded so sad. But now… now I knew.

The moment I called out to my mom, she ran to me.
“Get down, Necla!” she shouted, fear in her eyes.
Do grown-ups get scared just like we do? Last summer, we had picked out that purple dress together—the one with yellow flowers—my favorite, the one I’d run my hands over for hours, saying, “When I grow up, I’ll wear this.” She lay over me in that dress. I could feel her weight on me, but I still didn’t understand… not until my ears went deaf.

It wasn’t just an explosion—it felt like my head, my body, the whole world was being torn apart. Like my arms, legs, ears were being ripped away. Like all the lights, all the colors, all the sounds—even the birdsong—were being erased. The weight on me was getting heavier, my breath shorter. I was trapped between my mother and the ground. Why was she getting heavier? I wanted to call out, but my mouth and nose were filled with dirt and dust. I had to breathe. I had to.

“Mom?”
I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could feel her hair on my face.
“Mom, I’m scared.”
She didn’t answer, but her presence calmed me.
“Mom, what happened? Let’s go to Dad right now.”
After all that noise, everything was so quiet now. It was as if the whole world was gone—only my mom and I remained. She was with me, and I felt so tired. My eyelids grew heavy, and I fell asleep one last time in her arms.

“There’s someone here! Come, there’s a woman and a girl here!”

Voices came from far away. Someone was shouting. I could hear ambulance sirens. Had something happened to someone? Why were people shouting so much? Why were they crying?

“Yes, yes, I see them—a woman and a little girl. The woman is dead. She’s dead. The girl is moving—let’s get her out from underneath.”

The weight on me lightened; as they pulled my mom off, her hair brushed my face. For a moment, our eyes met. That was the last time I saw her hazel eyes, my last look at her. Then strangers took her away from me.

I no longer had a school. Fatma, my friend from downstairs, was gone. My grandparents were gone. My home was gone. And my mom… the black hair I used to wrap my fingers around was gone. Her sweet-smelling hands were gone. My childhood was gone.

It was called “war,” they said. That’s the name grown-ups gave to all this noise. The name for taking mothers away, for burying children under the ground. The name for painting the sky gray, for tearing flowers from the earth.
And the reason? Apparently, other people wanted the park where I played on the swings, the garden of my school, my home. And for that, they buried mothers underground, stole, burned trees.

I don’t know. Like I said, I’m still little—only just turned eight. I’m my father’s brave girl, my aunt’s hope. I’m small, but I can tell you what I’ve seen.
They try to paint our home in grays with the colors they hold, and we follow behind them, painting everything in yellows, reds, and greens. They try to darken the sky, but the sun floods the dome with blue again. They tear up the flowers from the soil, but the flowers sprout again from between the rubble.

What do they know of the yellow of a smile, the orange of the morning, the pink of an embrace, the blue of the night…

The Experiential Design Teaching says: “If you want tomaster something, you must know its truth.”
They don’t know.

They think they’ve buried us underground, but they don’t know we are seeds…

 Experiential Design Teaching is a knowledge community that produces strategies for designing our future based on past experiences.

The "Who is Who", "Mastery in Relationships" and "Success Psychology" Seminar Programs offer the needed methods for those who want to be happy and successful in life by solving their problems and achieving their goals.

"There is only one thing in life that never can be discovered; The better one..."

Yahya Hamurcu