A Sad Life Story: Autobiography

By Kemal Sobe

Childhood, even though it is difficult, is actually the best period of a person. A person realizes the value of his childhood in later years, when he comes under the burden of life. However, I couldn't stay a child, I had to face the pain and difficulties of life. As I got older, my fear of the future increased and the people around me decreased. As I saw the bitter side of life and people's relationships based solely on materiality, I began to deeply question why people live and what they aim for in life. Did people live to love or to dominate each other? When I saw that there was all kinds of material competition between people, I began to think that people had put their love for humanity aside. Like every child, when I was young, that is, young enough to be considered a child I was not very emotional. However, as I got older, as I took part in life, as life took away more and more from me, I became more emotional; and the human factor began to become more important to me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823087223

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© 2024 Kemal Sobe. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  04/08/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-8721-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-8722-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907375

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 1

I n this chaos of life, I was trying to find my direction. It was like I had hit a dead end. I was like a leaf shaking on its branch and about to fall to the ground at any moment. But even though it was shaking on its branch, I was actually like a leaf holding on tightly to its branch. No matter how bad my childhood and youth life was, I was never hopeless about the future. But I didn’t have a very happy childhood either. I have had a somewhat happy and somewhat unhappy life. Happiness and unhappiness were experienced intertwined in my life. To prepare for life, I sacrificed my life. In fact, I had a life that was not lived. In other words, I grew up in conditions where everyone gave me advice.

Not having a father and not having a proper family caused many people I knew to take care of me in some or other way. Sometimes I was bombarded with advice. This situation bothered me very much. In other words, the advice of those who did not provide material or moral help seemed unnecessary and annoying to me.

I finished primary school in the village with good grades. I was quite successful in Social Studies and History classes. My theoretical explanation skills were strong. I had the ability to interpret topics. Because I used to read simple life sciences books outside of school lessons, and this led to theoretical competence. I would prefer books that are fluent, novelistic, and have an adventure dimension. Adventure, but realistic adventure, that is, a life story lived, would attract me.

When I became interested in political issues, I read more ideological books and articles, and after a while ideological issues dragged me along and became an inseparable part of my life. I loved reading. As I grew older, the burden of life became heavier, the difficult side of life was confronting me day by day.

I stayed in the village until I was twelve years old. Childhood, even though it is difficult, is actually the best period of a person. A person realizes the value of his childhood in later years, when he comes under the burden of life. However, I couldn’t stay a child, I had to face the pain and difficulties of life. As I got older, my fear of the future increased and the people around me decreased. As I saw the bitter side of life and people’s relationships based solely on materiality, I began to deeply question why people live and what they aim for in life. Did people live to love or to dominate each other? When I saw that there was all kinds of material competition between people, I began to think that people had put their love for humanity aside.

Like every child, when I was young, that is, young enough to be considered a child, I was not very emotional. However, as I got older, as I took part in life, as life took away more and more from me, I became more emotional, and the human factor began to become more important to me. As a person gets hit by life and encounters the bitter side of life, he turns to a different point in life or takes a different route, just like he cannot find what he is looking for where he goes and chooses to go somewhere else. I was the child of a middle-class peasant-farmer family, and village life was not bad for me. After a while, I entered city life and started living both lives together. Both lives brought me different cultural and social riches and experiences.

When I question my private family life, I can say that it suffers greatly. I was so, so lacking in what a child needs most. So, I had a family life like living in water and staying thirsty. More accurately, it would be more accurate to say that I did not have a family. So, I was experiencing familylessness within the family. Just like experiencing absence in existence. I never saw my father and my father could never see me. He died at a very young age as a result of an accident. And I was an orphan when I was born, and they called me an orphan every time, and it made me bitter. In fact, a person is never an orphan, but the lack of emotionality or lack of emotion in people eliminates the sense of ownership in people. To me, being an orphan was not fatherlessness or motherlessness, it was being homeless. I had my family but I had no one. So, I was always alone in the crowd. When I started primary school, I lost my pencil at some point. When I was in first grade, I was afraid to tell the teacher that I had lost my pencil, and I started crying. When they asked me why I was crying, I said my stomach hurt and they told me to go home. In this case, I went straight home and started playing ball.

In the first grade of primary school, I failed the class, but in my second year, I came first in the class and successfully passed to the second grade. The school was down by the stream from the village, but in a quiet and quiet place. I went to the same school for six years. Every day during the winter, I would get up early in the morning and go to school. Whenever I had the opportunity, I would go out and play games. Sometimes I would stay out with my friends until late at night.

We were living a village life and naturally we had animals. We ate fruits and vegetables according to the season. In our village, snow would reach one meter in winter. Sometimes it snowed so much that even the door of the house was closed. Sometimes there would be a storm and we couldn’t even open the window of the house. When it snowed, the earthen house would be covered with snow. To clear the snow from the house, people would throw the snow down with a kind of shovel made of wood. In rainy weather, they would cover the top of the house with a round and heavy stone cylinder called log, so that the house would not drip in the rain. In snowy weather, I would go outside and slip, but I would get wet and when I came home, I would get little beatings from my mother. My mother would sometimes beat me with a broom. However, I was doing what a child should do in the naturalness of life. I used to play hide and seek, slide on the snow and play different games.

In the summer, I would take my grandfather’s lambs to graze. When I took the lambs to the mountains to graze, I would graze the lambs in places close to the village until the night hours, but I would do this with a few friends, I would not go alone. While we were grazing lambs at night, the stars would multiply so much that it was as if we could touch the stars if we stretched out our hands. In nature, the sounds of grasshoppers at night would add a different melody to the naturalness of the air and we would feel like we were experiencing a natural romance. In fact, we were experiencing the naturalness of life. While today’s children are trapped in the internet and social media, our generation was living in the village, in the naturalness of life in those difficult conditions.

People living in the city would come to the village every year and I would ask myself what the city was like. I thought the city was a different world. However, the city was actually nothing more than a swamp where people lived. While city people were experiencing the bondage of material things, pursuing economic success, and planning different goals, village people were able to maintain their purity, naturalness and clarity.

Living in nature strengthens people more than city people. When I was ten years old, I would go to the mountains and bring various plants, such as crocus and kangaroo. In the summer, I would take my adze and knife to make kenger gum. When I went to the mountains to eat kenger, I would cut my fingers repeatedly while cutting the thorns of the kenger. While today’s children cannot go even a hundred meters away from home, I used to go to the mountains alone in the village at a young age and get in touch with nature, and nature strengthened me tremendously. Being alone in nature gives people natural self-confidence. When the cold but clean air of the mountain touched my face, I felt fit.

I was never afraid in nature. Because man actually belonged to nature and was a part of nature, and therefore, he did not need to be afraid of nature. I was barely a child when I started working in our fields, gardens and vineyards, but doing my own business gave me great pleasure. Entering and working in production at a young age would bake a person in the warmth of life. I started to learn day by day that working people learn life better and are more self-sacrificing. When a person is a child, his horizons and goals are as much as the places he lives and sees. As a person grows, his goals grow and multiply. Because growing up means seeing more and discovering more. In the summer, we would hit the road and go to the plateau, and we would live in tents on the plateau for about three months, with our animals. We would return to the village again towards autumn. The village environment was a natural environment. I mean, we wouldn’t pay for certain things in the village. Living in touch with nature would have a price, but it wouldn’t cost much financially.

But to live in nature, I had to be physically resilient and durable. I would drink water from natural springs, sometimes hunt birds, collect various edible plants in nature, and collect wild fruits. All of these were free, but it was enough to work hard to get them. When I went to the city, I saw that nothing is free, even people have a price, and the relations between people are entirely based on materiality and interest.

Living in nature strengthens people more than city people. When I was ten years old, I would go to the mountains and bring various plants, such as crocus and kangaroo. In the summer, I would take my adze and knife to make kenger gum. When I went to the mountains to eat kenger, I would cut my fingers repeatedly while cutting the thorns of the kenger. While today’s children cannot go even a hundred meters away from home, I used to go to the mountains alone in the village at a young age and get in touch with nature, and nature strengthened me tremendously. Being alone in nature gives people natural self-confidence. When the cold but clean air of the mountain touched my face, I felt fit. In the village environment, there was not much class difference between people because everyone had some land and property, animals, and people lived a simple, humble life. When I encountered the cold face of the city, I saw the existence of classes and the deep gap between them. That’s when I realized there were two different worlds and it started to get me thinking. I realized that poverty is not a personal problem, but a social problem, and a regime problem. Especially in a very big city like Istanbul, class differences were clearly evident and everyone acted within the boundaries of the class they belonged to. The elite looked down on the majority of the people. People from the majority below would compete to be included in the elite class. Because people were living in capitalism, where money and property were seen as sacred, and people had no value in capitalism. Only money and property were valuable, and those who had money and property were considered the smartest and best people. As I grew up, I was getting closer to a life where materiality and money were blessed, and as I saw the harsh, cold face of money, I began to question life. In fact, as people grew up and became acquainted with money, they moved further away from the reality of life and became disconnected from it.

However, many people thought that life began with money and property. There is no life without material things, but I cannot accept that people lose their humanity in the face of material things. Humanity was almost experiencing extinction. I wonder what the existence of wars, occupations, governments and states were? What are imperialist wars and domination but the extinction of humanity? After my childhood ended, the most painful side of life began to surround me. I was in a constant search. From time to time, I would wander in a vicious circle and come back to the point where I started. I started to live both in the city and in the village. People think they are living their lives as they grow older. However, a person actually lives his life when he is a child. Life after adulthood is the worst, dirtiest part of life.

When I got bored in the stifling environment of the city, I would run to the village and rest. When I saw city life, I felt like people were putting themselves in prison with their own hands. In the city, people constantly live in extraordinary conditions. There is no stopping, pausing or resting in the city. The urban environment and material conditions forced people to compete with each other. People had to swim in this great sea that they entered willingly or unwillingly. No one could see the other side of life. Everyone was living the life given or imposed on them. I was always questioning why it was like this. Evil and ugliness were everywhere. Everyone was trying to get rich. Making money, owning property, and having a position and position were people’s primary goals. There was no compromise or value that people would not give for this.

They were ready to trample any dignity and honor for a position. I, on the other hand, hated flattery and still do. I had no problem trying to please anyone in order to get a job or a position. Most of the people were waiting in line for flattery. People’s value would depend on the amount of money and property they owned. In capitalism, those who had little money were not considered valuable, those who had much money were considered very valuable, and those who had no money were considered not human at all.

Because of this, people were in a terrible competition and race. I have always competed with life, tried to win life, and have never deviated from my values in order to get somewhere in life, and if I was going to get somewhere, I had to get somewhere with my own efforts, not by trying to benefit someone else. I didn’t want to be bound by any rules or regulations, I would make up the rules for myself rather than obey them. I was rebellious and rebellious against life. Crossing borders, rebelling against classes, being against exploitation, and stopping wars were the direction of my life. If we were to be successful, we had to be successful as a society. I never aimed for individual economic success. Individual economic success was not salvation for me. I was considering salvation socially. Because I knew that individual salvation in capitalism was based on the oppression and captivity of others. However, I was aware that social salvation would not happen in a short time. I was living life to the fullest and trying to understand his theory and learn more.

The more I lived, the more I learned, the more I learned, the more depth I experienced and the more I walked forward. I was closed to materialistic friendships and fake emotional relationships. For me, friendship had to be realistic and natural. I considered all friendships and relationships based on self-interest as very dirty. Relationships based on interest had no human aspect for me. I never waited for someone to take me somewhere or give me some opportunities, and I didn’t allow it to my pride. If I was going to get somewhere, I had to do it with my own efforts. The bitter life I lived would give me much more than it took from me.

I didn’t get along very well with my mother. My mother saw me as if I was a nuisance. My grandmother’s early death left my father an orphan. My grandfather, who can be called cruel, married a woman who was equally cruel. It would be wrong to call her a woman, she was actually the devil with a human face. That’s how she was called stepmother. The stepmother’s entry into our house turned our house into a dungeon. My grandfather had literally become the servant of the woman who could be called his stepmother, and she had become uncompromising. We were living like prisoners in our own house. Because of the stepmother, we were afraid to even eat the food we wanted. Financially, we were one of the wealthiest families in the village. But the stepmother’s entry into our home left us in a difficult situation, not only spiritually but also financially, in the following years. My father’s departure from home, as if he were exiled, and his death a year later as a result of an incident, was the beginning of the end of our home. I was born two months after my father’s death, but I actually died at birth. I stayed with my mother until I was twelve years old. Then I went to my grandfather. So my grandfather’s house was my father’s house. Years later, I went to the house whose title deed would be inherited from me. Here in this house, very difficult and bad days were waiting for me.

I was a child and I had no intention or power to harm anyone. I loved everyone with a natural feeling that came from me. But I couldn’t understand why people were cold-faced and insensitive. However, I was a child and I needed attention and love. Love is spiritual food for a child. I have always been deprived of this spiritual food. Lack of love and care meant death for me. Therefore, I too died with my father’s death. My grandfather was a blacksmith and blacksmith. He was earning good money from blacksmithing and blacksmithing. We were also engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. But due to the stepmother’s cruelty, we were living in poverty despite being rich.

Or, even if we were full, we could not be happy. A person could be happy if he was loved. Our bellies were full, but our hearts were hungry. I was standing in such a place that all around me was like a cliff and it seemed like I had no branch to reach out to. I had a very large family and relatives, but one of them was worse than the other and they almost competed in ungratefulness. They were all a bunch of loveless, emotionless people. The fact that my family consisted of insensitive people destroyed the financial resources we had.

They said that my late grandmother was a very good person. The period in which my grandmother lived was the best period for my family. Grandma’s death would actually turn us into living dead. My father and my aunts suffered greatly from the cruelty of their stepmother. I, too, had my share of stepmother’s cruelty. I was only twelve or thirteen years old. There were even times when I was left half-starved. Sometimes, I would only be given a loaf of bread and I would eat it, but I wouldn’t feel full.

I would hesitate to ask for the second loaf of bread. Anyway, the stepmother wouldn’t give him more than a loaf of bread. Of course, this wasn’t something he could do all the time. He sometimes behaved very badly. There were even times when he wanted to kick me out of the house.

After graduating from primary school in 1985, I went to Istanbul to study secondary school with my aunt. For me, village life was over for that moment. I was on the journey of a new life. I learned about a huge city like Istanbul, which I visited when I was a child, in one year. In middle school, I had many different friends, each in different cities.

I seemed to like city life more. Living opportunities were more diverse in the city. So I had the opportunity to visit many places. The places I visited in the village were very limited and they were always the same. But life in the city was more colorful. After living in the city for many years, I learned that village life is much simpler and more modest. City life may offer many social and cultural opportunities, but sometimes it can put people in an unexpected swamp. I knew many people who went to the city and experienced exhaustion and corruption. Some of them had gone to the city to gain positions and positions and make a career. Some people would go there to become millionaires.

There were even people who went there to become artists and actors. I can’t say that my secondary school life was as successful as my primary school life. I was at the top of my class in History and Social Studies, but my other subjects were a little weak or I wasn’t very interested in them. We used to get into a lot of mischief in class. Sometimes we didn’t listen to the teacher and didn’t even know what he was talking about. I was successful in History and Social Studies, just like in primary school. No one could compete with me throughout the school in history class. I was the most successful student in History class in the whole school.

I started reading newspapers daily in Istanbul. I used to read daily news. I started watching cowboy movies and local movies for the first time in Istanbul. When I first started watching movies, I thought the deaths in the movies were real. I later learned that the deaths in the movies were part of the role and not real. It was my first time on a ferry in Istanbul. By the time I was fourteen years old, I had learned the most important centers of Istanbul and now I could go everywhere on my own. Once upon a time, I went to catch fish near the Kadıköy ferry pier with a friend, but we returned empty-handed without catching any. Anyway, we went there for fun, not to catch fish.

On weekends, we would sometimes go to the market to sell scourers and clothes elastics. Sometimes I would help my uncle. My brother-in-law did roofing and plumbing work and would travel to many parts of Istanbul for this. I would go along too and that’s how I learned every aspect. Sometimes, I would visit places known as Yeşilçam. Yeşilçam was where movie artists lived and film companies were located. The place known as the back streets of Beyoğlu was where both the art world, drug addicts and gamblers lived. It was one of the oldest parts of Istanbul and no matter how old it got, it was always new and a place where new things were born. It was the center of cinema, art and theatre. It was also an area with the most beggars and poor people. Most thieves lived here again.

At night, this area was a hangout for drunks. It was a place where life was active twenty-four hours a day. Life was always alive here, but a zombified life was lived here. Beyoğlu in particular, and Istanbul in general, was actually a consumption center. Anatolia produced, Istanbul and Beyoğlu consumed. This fact is still the same, it has never changed. Those who wanted to be artists and actors would choose Beyoğlu. Beyoğlu and Yeşilçam were like Turkey’s Hollywood. The majority of those who wanted to be artists and actors did not find what they expected, they either became waiters in a restaurant, found a job in a beer hall, or worked in construction and the textile industry. There were also people working as porters. Istanbul was a city of hope for many people, but many were lost in this huge city.

Another name for Istanbul was Byzantium. Byzantium was the center of intrigue. Those living in this city had to be ready for anything. In this city, no one trusted anyone. Byzantium was a city where money, power and power were represented. Those who had no power in this city were doomed to defeat. At the same time, it is a stinking city stuck between concrete piles and millions of people living in decay. People in Istanbul were constantly living in extraordinary conditions. Nothing can be delayed or waited in Istanbul; everything needs to be done on time in this city. Otherwise, being successful in this city would be not only very difficult but also impossible.

Istanbul was a city of eight million people when I first went there in 1985. In the intervening thirty years, Istanbul has grown twofold. Istanbul is a city where ninety-nine percent of the population is immigrant. In order to stop the flow of immigration to Istanbul, a government minister once said that a visa requirement should be introduced, but the government was not interested. Stopping the flow of migration to Istanbul could only be possible by developing the country’s underdeveloped rural areas and opening job areas. The majority of the population living in Istanbul are the poor peasants of Anatolia. If agriculture and animal husbandry had been developed well in Anatolia, people would not have migrated to Istanbul.

The uncontrolled increase in the population in the villages and the lack of job opportunities caused people to go to the city. This departure was actually partly out of necessity. Because in many villages of Anatolia, there is no infrastructure, service or job opportunity. With this dimension, Istanbul was almost like the center of life. In other words, those who did not live in Istanbul were not considered living. Living in Istanbul was perceived as being privileged. However, man built his first life in villages.

So the first civilization developed in villages. The first production and work started in the villages. Villages are still places where grain and food are produced, feeding cities. Without villages, cities will starve. But the high society snobs and clowns of the city do not like the villagers whose bread, fruits and vegetables, meat, cheese and yoghurt they eat. However, in Europe and America, peasants and farmers are seen and valued as landowners. In Turkey, peasants and farmers were despised and humiliated as ignorant and uncultured. A country and society that regards its peasants and farmers as despised and ignorant cannot develop. I saw this reality clearly when I lived in the city in Turkey.

I am fifty years old. Thirty-five of these fifty years were spent in cities, but I saw myself as a village person. When I went to the city, I would be a city dweller, but when I went to the village, I was proud