“So what,” the reader might say; “My father is a worker, a tradesman or a banker… What is the difference?” The difference is that the immune system of the officer children, develops to a greater extent, while they are only children... Why? In general there is a town where you grow up. Your childhood passes over there. You make friends and make a big collection of memories together over there. If your father is not a soldier, you probably, grow up and get married in that same town. You say goodbye to your childhood friends, when they get drafted, then you welcome them and go to their weddings. You can buy a bottle of wine from the same store, which you have bought cinnamon hard candy 15 years ago and sit down on a sidewalk and talk about your worries. People around you know your past just as you know their past. This fact resembles just like a book which is read by sharing… However, if your father is a soldier, it is impossible for you to grow roots in one town. You answer the question: “Where are you from?” saying “everywhere”. The whole country is where you are from.

            You can leave the first green almond tree you have seen, when you were 3 years old in that town and pass all the academic years of the primary school in different towns! Your classmates always see you as a “stranger”, because you have joined the flock later on and you continuously make funny jokes in order to prove that you are not a “stranger” but rather a kid who just showed up late. You leave your friends in every town, while your childish heart is aching. With your head down you set off to become an immigrant in another town… Your family album pictures are so weird that they look like they are a collection of stolen pictures all of which are taken from different families. Every piece of your youth gets to be partially divided and thrown out to different towns of the country. This fact along with

the hunger for friendship shapes your personality and gives you a character, which always volunteers to be friends with. Your tolerance draws out branches from your soul and you fit in the places you go just like a chameleon. You become very social and ready to take the initiative. However, you bury a memory in every place you have left and become accustomed to melancholy. Melancholy is beautiful. You need to be able to wear different pair of glasses in order to get to know the melancholy without feeling pain. Melancholy makes you notice the yellow plane leaf in the mud, when everyone else is passing by with hurried steps. The ones who have learned these have read the songs, poems, books and especially the human itself with a more greener soul!

- Where are you from my child? 

- I am the Ayşe from Izmir, who was swaddled in Elazığ, loved her childhood in Lüleburgaz, left her youth in Ankara , and earns her money in here.

You have soldier camps most of which are encircled with barbed wires, where you are able to see the sea 20 days of a year for which the outsiders say, “Oh, my goodness what a holiday!” Camps, which have previously dictated hours of going by the seaside and getting out of the sea! The camp commander makes an announcement: “It is forbidden to pass the barges! The ones who have jumped of the raft; I’m telling you!” Child or soldier, it doesn’t matter. The rules are rules for everybody. The lunch service starts at 12:00 pm when you take the aluminum food trays and get into the line and it finishes at 14:00 pm. If you couldn’t make it, there is French toast for you in the canteen. On Sundays some soldiers come by the sea to swim at certain hours. They go by the sea in a single line and they swim and come out of the sea marching. We watch these brothers whose names we do not know as if our oldest relatives are cooling off with happiness and so we smile. For this reason whenever we hear the news of a martyr, it is our hearts which break the most. Because a close relative of us, whom we had been together more than anyone else, whom we had spent our life together has passed away. Our conscience is greater than our passion. For that reason we get hurt by people, who live life selfishly since we unconditionally accept everyone as our neighbors, our colleagues and as our friends.

            At night time we have tea at the club, have sunflower seed conversations and listen to jazz music on Saturdays. Then we have to go to bed. At 12 a.m., everybody should leave for their tent or motel; it is forbidden to make noises. The children of the soldiers learn how to respect the others without any uneasiness. And that the rules cannot be differed from each other as “less forbidden” or “more forbidden.” The children of the soldiers learn the structure of the discipline while they are still children and when they grow up and have a job one day, they are never late, they never make people late or have any hardships.