Chapter 1Boş Anılar ve Barmen Toprakları
Chapter 1 – Parched Memories and Barren Soil
Old Yusuf Agha’s voice tore through the parched land, a cry as sharp as poison: “The bugs again! Goddamn bugs!”
He covered his face with his palm, its skin wrinkled and calloused. His shoulders slumped forward, not from the weight of any burden he carried, but from the crushing weight of helplessness. Before him lay the ruin of what was once his bean patch, planted with hope and tenderness. The leaves were riddled with holes; the tiny, frail bean sprouts, still trying to grow, had been gnawed away by earth-colored, vile creatures, leaving behind nothing but dreams and despair. They had engulfed everything. They were everywhere, as far as the eye could see. They spared nothing, neither the fresh nor the dry. They were so fused with the soil that it was impossible to tell where the earth ended and they began.
The village was in the relentless grip of drought and water scarcity. Yusuf Agha fixed his eyes beyond the cracked earth, on the horizon. There, in his memory, flowed the streams that once gurgled clearly. Forests, clear and bright as glass, used to cover everything. The trees where he played hide-and-seek as a child, where he met his beloved as a young man… Then that cursed mining company had come. It had swallowed the nature, the streams, the forests, along with his memories, leaving behind only this barren, dusty, arid soil and the bitter story of an extinction. The village’s joy and the sound of children had vanished; the villagers, defeated by poverty, had migrated to the city one by one. Only a few elderly, like Yusuf Agha, chained to their land and their past, remained utterly alone.
And he… A few years ago, on a winter’s night, he had lost his Hatice, his companion, his soulmate. After that day, life had become a struggle waged alone, growing more meaningless by the day.
