How small is the world? by Mustafa Kursun

Every picture has a story. So what’s that of this above? I will tell you later on this blog…

I’m back again. I guess you will say “Enough man! We’re bored of hearing your struggle with your own mind for writing a piece of nonsense!”. Or maybe it’s just my bad suspicion. But that’s a big matter for me. To write or not to write; that’s the question! Finally I beat all the hitches, my old netbook which is full of lags, my own laziness to begin writing, my annoying hand phone that doesn’t let me move the pictures easily… By the way, we also decided to write a book that’s going to tell our story from my own and lovely wife’s perspectives. Just wait and see... Don’t forget to follow us until the time comes.

Actually I was thinking to title this blog as “Waiting!” as a novel of a great Chinese author impressed me a lot. Please let me tell some about that.

“Sweatheart, will you wait for me? I will come back to you soon. We are still, still one family, aren’t we? Don’t leave me..” said Lin Kong…

I heard tell of a new author, during a class of mine which is about Asian societies, but through literature. I had no idea who he was and what he had written. As it was my task for one of the classes on Chinese literature, I read only a short story of his. To be honest, I felt disgusted as he gives too many details. Though all those details are the life itself and all of us may witness such incidents, it was still (partly) disgusting to read. Sorry, I forgot to tell the name. It was a book that contains some short stories of a well-known Chinese author (who has moved to USA to make a clean break in his life and decided to use only English as his new adopted language to write), named as “Ocean of Words”. My and Ha Jin’s was a short-dated friendship and I’ve never heard of him again till I encountered his other works in a crazy book fair as its name also suggests: “Big Bad Wolf”. Yes, it was really like a Big Bad Wolf with hundreds of bookworms rambling inside him.

She offered me the book “En(She)Klopedia”. But of course I don’t need a book to understand her!

As I have a bookish wife, we visited this fair (whereby all the books were on sale with at least 50% discounts) two times, first of which was for my wife and the second absolutely for me. During that second visit, while I was bogging down inside the books in every moment and not many things appealed me among those huge book stands, my lovely wife exhumed me from that confusion and showed me a book, which has a only a pigtail on cover. She asked me “do you know this author?”. I said no, without even looking at it carefully (sorry my wife, sometimes I can be uninterested :) However, later I checked that again and realized that it was him, Ha Jin. Later on we found some more books of his and at the end of the tiring journey, being aware of the fact that we can only afford to buy one of them, we chose that “pigtail” which is tied with a red ribbon.

Few days later I opened its first page and you will not believe that I finished it in less than five days. I said you will not believe as I’m not a good reader at all! But its flowing story simply mesmerized me. (Well, I should remember that one of the reasons was my wife got cross at me and kept silent for almost two days! Thanks babe for letting me read the book in such a short while :) The setting was a military hospital (in many of his works Ha Jin tells military stories), the story was about a young doctor (at least young at the beginning), his prearranged marriage with a countrywoman and second love story, and of course his “waiting”. He feels he’s fallen in love for the first time in his life and decides to divorce his wife, who has been taking care of his old mother and father, and later on his own daughter, all the time he’s been away for work. He comes back to his town every summer, but cannot succeed in his action for the divorce. He waits, so his lover does. Until he finally muddles through all obstacles… 

Waiting… 

For about eighteen years… 

For the whole story, please find and buy that book. You will never regret!

Waiting… 

It sounds familiar to me. I know that feeling. Ok, I’ll not wade into my long distance story now, as I did that many times in my previous blog writings. Please have a look at them if not yet you have. Just a few words… We know what is “waiting”. We waited a couple of years for each other, for seeing alive, for touching “halal”. Then we waited to make things right. And we waited for our little prince or princess, though we are still waiting. We waited to move from our lovely home, just because of people’s blindness, fanaticism, bigotry… We are waiting to go back. We will wait for new adventures. Does “waiting” have an end? I think it doesn’t. We will still wait even after we completely move from this earthly earth.

Lunch at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and my dear teh tarik!

Well… Not only are we waiting in this world. Many others also do. They wait for their dreams. They wait for their lovers. Mothers wait for their sons. Guns wait for a hunt. So does darkness, for a light… Yes, I’m finally getting back to the main point, my title, “how small is the world?”. Heroes of “waiting” find fellows everywhere in the world. Also we’ve done. We had a couple of familiars few years ago. Yes, they are Emel and Farhan, whom you see in the picture above. Last year, when we visited them for their first wedding held in Tosya town of Kastamonu just ahead of a doomsday hitting my country, Farhan’s father, Uncle Murtza insistently invited us for the next party in Malaysia. I still remember his words… “Come to Malaysia. Please, welcome to Malaysia!”. The moment, I couldn’t deem it likely as it would be too hard for us to buy tickets to Malaysia, find enough time in January and join their second wedding ceremony there. I just graciously answered him as “InshaAllah. If Allah gives this opportunity to us…” Yes! HE did. He gave us the chance to see these warm-hearted people again. Uncle Murtza, his lovely wife, my fellow Farhan and sister Emel, Farhan’s super brothers (one of them is a virtual pilot!) and other members of his family… I can’t find words for their hospitality, amidst all the “wedding hoo-hah”. They hired a room for us for one week, took us travel in Kuala Lumpur, even bought our tickets to Singapore and bid a farewell with really nice gifts…

I also shared this photo on Instagram and wrote a caption saying “Dünya küçük…”, which means “the world is small”. The world is really small. I know we will meet them again in the future. They are still waiting for each other. May Allah let them fulfill this longing for an eternal life.  And I also know we will meet for other beloveds of ours, in a good time and place…

That looks too short to tell everything about a good fellowship, but I can’t fit all inside this blog. I would like to tell more about them in the next pieces of my mind and fingers..

A nice conversation once again with the family of Medic Mesir :)

So, we were in a part of this small world. Just one day we set aside some time for our backpacker journey, leaving Farhan and Emel for the arrangements of their wedding, which was going to be held the following day. In the morning, we met some other nice people in a luxury (sorry, they took us there :) hotel, for a breakfast. They were Mr. Ahmad Rodzi and his wife Ummi Medic Mesir :) It’s not her name but she is well-known with this ekename. They manage a non-governmental organization that helps Malaysian students to study medicine in Egypt and countries nearby. I met them for the first time in my own country, to help them arrange applications of students, to universities in Ankara. We had that breakfast and left the hotel together with Mr. Rodzi. He took us to the nearest station of commuter line where we headed for our first destination, “Batu Caves”, which is a huge Hindu temple on a hill. Once we arrived, we encountered an endless staircase beside a gigantic sculpture painted in gold. We climbed till the peak under the rainfall, watched covetous monkeys and innocent chickens, took some selfies before leaving the place and asked a strange man to take our photo (whom I think cannot speak any languages available on earth!) from behind to show our hoodies combining the words of “Together-Since-20-14”.  We ordered a grab car, whose driver was a Hindu, and headed to a new place in the hope of finding an Uighur restaurant as we had been craving masterpieces of this unique, peerless cuisine. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it as Google Maps cheated us but also didn’t say no to some biryani and other Indian tastes (teh tarik too, of course). Well… I feel this story is getting too long. To avoid irking you, I will leave the other part of this story, for another blog.

“But how about the picture you put at the beginning. Won’t you tell what its story is?”. I think I will blow the gaff in the next blog. Hopefully soon… But just a clue for you: that picture clearly depicts “innocence” of my real “trouble-maker” wife :)

See you next time! Arrivederci! Or sampai jumpa! :D