Pteridophyta

My aunt was one of the few adults who truly played with us when we were children. She played like a child herself, as the other adults used to say. In the summers, we would often visit my aunt and uncle’s house in the village. We spent endless hours running around in the yard—mainly used for drying fresh hazelnuts—playing games like tag, dodgeball, and stop. My aunt would run alongside my brother, who was a year and a half younger than me, and me, wearing rubber slippers that were usually a few sizes too big for her. Sometimes, the children of seasonal hazelnut workers would join us. We would leave the yard, follow the narrow path through the fields, and enter the vast hazelnut orchards. As we walked, we swung the large ferns we had picked from the roadside like swords, inventing games along the way. Every time a fern brushed against his leg, my brother would jump and shout, “Snake!”

We drank ice-cold spring water from a fountain called Anzurlu, then continued on our way, cheerful and carefree. We climbed over the stacks of wood set up to keep the cows from wandering off and entered the hazelnut grove known as the “flat orchard.” If we were brave enough, we climbed the “flat rock,” from which we believed we could see the entire city. If not, we would find a soft patch of grass and sit down to rest. Tiny ticks—known in our region as sakırtlak—would seize the opportunity to crawl onto us. If we didn’t notice them in time and brush them off, they would settle in and begin sucking our blood.

Unwanted guests: children

My aunt and uncle would sometimes speak German to each other. We knew they had lived and worked in Germany for twenty years before returning permanently to Turkey, investing their savings in apartments and land. They had brought many things back with them: a dishwasher, a bed with a built-in radio, a large stereo system with its own cabinet, and boxes of cassette tapes. They were always relatively well-off and generally cheerful, though my uncle could be quick-tempered and irritable. One of their daughters had married and remained in Germany—a decision that caused them deep hurt and anger because it had been made without their consent. Their life in Germany always felt distant to me. Only recently did I realize that it wasn’t such a distant past. Considering that Germany began recruiting “guest workers” from Turkey in 1961, they must have returned only a few years before I was born.

Years later, I found myself living in Germany. Ten months after giving birth to my daughter, I visited my family in the city where I had grown up. Another aunt told me, “My sister came back when her son was only three weeks old.” My aunt had given birth in Germany and returned home just three weeks later—not to visit or settle permanently, but to leave her baby behind and go back to work. Like hundreds of thousands of other women, she had to leave her child in a place she could visit at most once a year and return to her job, likely without any real choice.

By the time I fully grasped this, I already knew that my aunt and uncle had once left their children in the village with their grandmother so they could work, living apart from them for years. I also knew that many children today still grow up separated from their parents under similar conditions. My aunt and cousins were not the only example in our extended family. A few years ago, I watched a documentary about parents in small Chinese towns who leave their children with grandparents and move to big cities for work. They live in dormitories, work long hours, and return home only for the short New Year holiday—sometimes after journeys lasting days, like hundreds of thousands of others. I had also read about women who came to work in East Germany in the 1980s and who, if they became pregnant, faced only two options: forced abortion or deportation. Still, none of this knowledge softened the impact of what I had heard. My aunt had come home “on holiday” with her three-week-old baby, left the baby there, and returned to Germany to work. My cousin grew up separated from her parents; three children and their parents never truly had the chance to live together as a family. There was always a sense of longing between them. And my aunt—who loved playing with children—could not play with her own.

Three weeks after giving birth to my daughter, my stitches had only just healed, and my blood pressure had only recently returned to normal. Until then, I had slept with her during the day on the sofa and at night in bed, always side by side. If we were even briefly apart in our small two-room apartment, I felt overwhelmed by postpartum sadness. I couldn’t imagine returning to work for months. Had may aunt and uncle planned the trip before or after my aunt gave birth? Had they calculated the due date to book cheaper tickets? Had they waited for her body to heal, for the baby’s jaundice to pass, for feeding to become easier, for the first vaccinations, for the uncertainties of those early days to settle? I am certain my aunt never wanted to go back. The first year after I moved to Germany, when I visited my family in Turkey, my aunt—then nearly eighty—looked at me in a way I had never seen before and asked, “But you can come back here to visit whenever you want, can’t you?” That look was an answer in itself.

My aunt is still playful and full of humor. She tells stories about my childhood over and over again, never tiring of them. Though she can no longer run around, she played cim cim makarna with my daughter the moment they met. She speaks the language of children. She is mischievous—she’ll quietly reach across the table with her long fork and steal food from your plate. Once, she even convinced a German colleague traveling to Turkey that she needed to shave her pubic hair for a customs inspection, leaving the woman terrified. She carries life lightly. If you become too serious while telling her something, she teases you by mimicking your tone and gestures. She still loves the coffee, chocolate, and French fries she tasted in Germany. She doesn’t speak of longing, doesn’t want her unhappiness to be seen, and refuses to complain about her life.

A ritual

Years ago, a young artist preparing for a solo exhibition at the contemporary art gallery where I worked spoke about the connection between children’s games and ancient rituals. According to him, each game had evolved from a ritual over time. Intrigued, I looked into it and read that the moving ball in many games symbolized the sun—and sometimes the moon—the cycle of day and night. This made me want to reconsider the game of istop, which I used to play with my aunt, as a kind of ritual. In the game, played by at least three, the player who is “tagged” throws the ball into the air while calling out another player’s name. If the player whose name was called catches the ball before it hits the ground, they shout “Stop!” and everyone freezes where they are; then they call out a new name. If they fail to catch it, they pick up the ball and shout a color, while the others rush to touch something of that color before being hit by the ball.

Now imagine the players standing in a circle, generating a shared energy. The ball, thrown into the air and caught, becomes the movement of the sun and moon—the passage of time bringing children closer to their mothers. The players freeze, merging with nature as they cling to green grass, brown wood, gray stones, or pink rose petals. And in that suspended moment, everyone—child and adult alike—focuses their energy on a single wish: to reunite separated mothers and children.

In the end, I think that is exactly what my aunt and I were doing all along.