'I' Within Me

​In that era, the capital did not know the meaning of stillness. The symphony of war was the only audible sound; the shelling was not merely explosions, but a monster devouring the corners of the walls, shaking the foundations of houses until the glass shattered, and the dust of rubble seeped into the lungs of the besieged city.

​And in the heart of this chaos, while the sky resonated with the lightning of explosions, I was born.

​My first cry was not a cry of fear like other newborns, but a declaration of existence, a cry that pierced the deathly silence of the delivery room. Yet, the miracle was not in the sound, but in that detail that froze the blood in the veins of the nurses and doctors. While every child would enter this world with small fists tightly clenched, as if struggling to return life to a safer womb, I was opening my palms.

​I spread my small fingers completely, as if I were receiving the fate of the world I was born into, or as if I were holding seeds for a tomorrow people had not known. At that moment, the nurses’ movements stopped, the doctors bowed in astonishment, and the noise outside seemed to have subsided for moments.

​"Look... she is not clutching anything; she is receiving life," one of them whispered.

​A whisper spread through the room: "It is a good omen... the war will end with her coming."

​They did not know then that those open hands were not merely a harbinger of peace, but the beginning of the "pen" that would later trace the secrets of the "War of Masks," and that the child born amidst the cracking walls would be the one to rearrange the wreckage of this world with words, when others fail to speak.

The Dust of Disappointment

​While the city outside was announcing the end of the “era of iron and fire” exactly one month after my first cry, an absolute silence was looming inside the walls of our house. The prophecy whispered by the nurses was fulfilled, but the sky from which the smoke of shelling had cleared did not grant my parents the peace they were hoping for.

​In those days that followed the declaration of the truce, anticipation was the master of the situation. Everyone was waiting for the “savior,” the son who would carry the family name and protect its legacy in a world that no longer knew safety. And when the cover was unveiled from my features, there were no ululations, nor even a faint joy following the birth of a new life.

​I saw—with my intuition that formed before my consciousness—their faces. The faces were blackened without the smoke of war; faces covered by the dust of “disappointment.” To them, I was not the “good omen” that ended the shelling, but I was the “second disappointment”; another female added to their records, as if my existence came to prove to them that destinies do not grant them what they desire, but what is imposed upon them.

​In that house that was gathering its wounds, I was the unhealing wound in my parents’ heart. They did not realize that those hands which I opened on the day of my birth were not to ask for anything from their narrow world, but were preparing to hold the pen that would later write what is more important than the “family name”; they were preparing to write a life ruled by nothing but the logic of strength, not the logic of expectations.

​And while the capital was celebrating its victory over an external enemy, I was fighting my first battle against an enemy of another kind: a look that was not asking for my existence, but was asking for an apology for being a girl.

Shadow Features

​In my early years, my childhood was not measured by toys or memories of safety, but by the extent of my ability to be “invisible.” The house was a very vast place, but it was full of silent walls and eyes that looked at me as if I were a mistake in an equation they did not choose.

​Childhood for me was like “the rain that does not stop,” a fixed and continuous weather of alienation inside my home. I was not looking for love; I was looking for “meaning.” In those dark rooms, I learned that silence is not a void, but a language; I learned how to read the features of anger before they spoke, and how to predict storms before they began.

​There, between old notebooks that I did not dare to show, I began to write. It was not writing for entertainment, but it was an “attempt to breathe air.” When I drew or wrote, I was creating a new world in which I had the “right to exist.”

​I was like a little cat, watching and keeping silent, not because it does not understand, but because it realizes that the outside world is not a safe place to admit its weakness. That misery was the “first school” that taught me how to be strong, how to protect myself, and how to start building my own world where I—and only I—hold the reins of the story.

The Curse of Love.. and the Warmth of Paper

​Ever since my memory began to capture images of the world, I realized the first truth that walked with me like a shadow that never leaves me: I am a puzzle that fascinates strangers, and something that provokes aversion in the eyes of my family. Strangers in the street, in the shop, in the park, would smile at me, reach out to touch my hair, or compliment my brightness.. in their eyes, I was the child who carried a special light. But as soon as I returned to my doorstep, this light would extinguish, and their gazes would turn into cold walls that refused my passage.

​The first real shock to my consciousness was that moment in kindergarten.

​I remember that place well; the scent of new wooden colors and pure white drawing paper was the scent that made me feel I belonged for the first time. In my house, the presence of these tools was forbidden, as if creativity were a trait that did not suit me. But there, in that hall crowded with the noise of children, I stood before the coloring table.

​That white paper placed before me was not just paper; it was a space, it was a homeland, it was the only area where I could be “me” without anyone holding me accountable. I grasped the colored pencils, and I felt that first tremor in my fingers.. those hands that were born open finally found what they must hold.

​While other children were drawing houses and bushes, I was drawing strange shapes, sharp and overlapping lines, as if I were emptying that silent anger, that depression that was wrapping around my neck at home. At that moment, I was not a rejected daughter or a child they did not want, I was an artist putting her mark on a world that held no authority over me.

​In those papers, I discovered power. I realized that if I did not find love in their eyes, I would create it in my colors. And at that moment in kindergarten, the real war began; not between nations, but between “what they want from me” and “what I want to be.”