“About letting go, whichI thought meant maturity.”

It was during one of my movie nights with mykids. A captivating song transported me to a version ofmyself from years ago—a person I now barely recognize. A wave of melancholysweeps over me as I yearn to reach out to that younger self, but he remainsjust out of grasp.

In the intricate tapestry of life, certain decisions, oftenmade in the heat of the moment or the depths of despair, leave an indeliblemark on our souls. One of the most profound choices I ever grappled with,almost subconsciously, was relinquishing my belief in love. This wasn’t merelyabout distancing myself from romantic entanglements, but a deep-rootedabandonment of an idea that had, for the longest time, been the cornerstone ofmy existence.

Love, in its many forms, shapes us. It provides hope inbleak times, offers solace during despair, and paints our world in vibranthues. But when that very belief is cast aside, the world doesn’t just lose itscolor—it becomes unrecognizable. My decision to forsake love was akin toremoving the compass that had guided me through life's labyrinth.

Without this anchoring belief, I found myself adrift. Itwasn't just about the absence of romantic partnerships or the lack of warmth incasual interactions. The very essence of who I was began to fade. The joys andsorrows, the passions and indifference, the dreams, and nightmares—all seemedto blend into a monochromatic existence. Without love as my guiding light,every experience felt dulled, every emotion muted.

Growing up, especially within the confines of a middle orslightly lower-middle-class upbringing, there's a latent expectation. Itwhispered promises that once the educational journey, especially the pivotaluniversity chapter, was completed, life would unfurl in all its grandeur.Awaiting me was a world ready to embrace my potential, a stage set for my grandentrance. These promises painted vivid dreams of love and life, shaping myyouthful hopes.

I belong to a generation that was used to hearing phraseslike: 'Tomorrow you'll be in college and conquer the world,' 'Just do whateveryou want after college,' or 'After college, you can love however you want.'

Back in the eighties and nineties, the shrinking middleclass found the costs of education, private lessons, and necessities, coupledwith the responsibilities of childrearing and discipline, increasinglydifficult. Regarding repeating this for two children, my parents preferred tofollow up on the less skilled child and leave the more skilled and intelligentchild to the wind and the vicissitudes of life alone. The truth that Iunderstood later was that their interventions were only to make things worse.

The ideas of positive parenting were not yet in vogue, andit did not mean anything to parents at that time to teach their children morethan the concepts of right and wrong, and the concepts of halal and haram. Thenfollow-up with a whip for those who spoil their mood. And children’s feelingswere not something that my father could pay attention to at all, but he alwaysmocked it.

Life in adolescence, for me as a teenager who suffered inthese circumstances, was like hell. I was waiting for the days to pass until Iwas no longer “a minor”, the painful word that was thrown in my face every nowand then. I was looking for a way out of this house with all its surroundingbehaviors that I reject and sometimes hate.

Throughout my social development, a notion quietlyinfiltrated my subcon- indirectly mostly - that real life would be in theuniversity stage, and after that …? After that, I had no idea what could happen.I had no idea how life could be after that, and what I would like to do afterthat.

University life was a golden fantasy in my imagination andin my mind, for then, I would have grown up enough, but I would also still beyoung living under the care of my parents. And I could remind them that I amabout to become independent, so that the pressure of belittling me and myfeelings would lessen.

After the university period ended, life as it was in myimagination ended with it. During college, I began writing poetry, embracinglove and the idea of living. I was enchanted by the notion of two people, a boy,and a girl, from different backgrounds yet sharing the same dreams and lifevision, agree on a goal, and their fingers intertwine as they go on their way togetherto repair what was wrong in their lives, vowing not to repeat the follies ofadults.

I fell in love with love itself, that miracle that unitesthe disparate and the scattered ones, that brings hearts closer to each other,that heals wounded souls, and fills the eyes of dreamers with hope.

All these thoughts converged on my perception of women. Iimagined the feminine as a mythical being capable of performing miracles. Iconfess that this view lingered with me for a long time, and perhaps I still harborremnants of it today as I envision women as the true heart and soul of anysociety, capable of molding it according to their inherent spirit and moralvalues. I could never have imagined them engaging in the capitalist strugglewith men, vying for a place in a world that's as grimy and decayed as pigswallowing in the muck, merely to satisfy their hunger.

Perhaps that’s why I was shocked when I discovered thatwomen want to be seen merely as men with a different physical form. I learnedthat they simply want to step into the labor market and work in the mill likemen, all while failing to recognize the uniqueness of their nature and thenobility of their spirit, which was meant to rise, move, and lead everything.

I know that this is a result of capitalism, the absence oflove in society, the need to secure the future, the loss of trust in others,the urge to prove oneself, and all the other rubbish that surrounds me fromevery angle.

Ironically, it was men who gave birth to Capitalism.  the big imaginative perception that framedexistence, historical progression, and the dialectics of its movement with theirmaterialist perspective. They positioned materials as the sole determinant ofall else. Perhaps they were men who couldn't perceive the true essence of loveand comradeship. They failed to comprehend the paradoxical thinking that womenmaster, and transformed history into a linear, intricate, and winding path thatultimately transformed people to mere shadows of forlorn perceptions.

I, too, grew up in an environment where love was rarelyacknowledged, even ridiculed if someone mistakenly expressed their feelings.Maybe the generation that raised us was ashamed to express love or unable tolove. It seems like it was a generation incapable of seeing anything beyondthemselves. My mother constantly searched through my belongings, afraid I wouldget involved in typical teenage activities, like smoking cigarettes or hashish,drinking with the wrong crowd. But the first time she discovered a paper onwhich I had written some poems. Her face brightened and she looked at me inastonishment as she realized what kind of teenager I was. She kept making surethat these words were not written for a specific girl, then when she understoodthat I wrote them for an imaginary girl I dreamed of meeting, signs of regretappeared on her features, then mixed with looks of pity for years after. Myfather hit me on the head and said: “What is this nonsense.” Then he continued:“Go study something that will benefit you.”

When I graduated from college, I received the biggest blowin my life path, and the ugliest period I have ever been through, as I enteredthe army for three years.

The worst part of that period was not the physical effort,although I did come out with a high level of fitness. It was dealing daily withsmall-minded people focused on exploiting influence and power, with a racistview of everything and everyone. As an officer, I had to interact with otherofficers and senior leaders. I was not just a soldier living with his fellowrecruits and kept away from the ugly truth.

For a civilian young man who suddenly carries a militaryrank on his shoulders and is thrown among officers who have lived the militarylife since their youth until they became old men, it was like going from hometo hell, as the saying goes.

Imagine a world where military ranks have turned into ranksin humanity, and not just a hierarchy of military skills and capabilities, butalso a hierarchy of your rights as a human being. This is the worst form ofexploitation of power and racism. You suffer from the condescending view ofthose with higher ranks, so you repeat the same thing and psychologically passit on to everyone who is below your rank, participating in their practices.Then you suffer from guilt and a feeling of inner dirtiness, and yourconscience kills you.

 When I left the army,I carried its weight deep within me. In the following years, I discovered thatthe behaviors I encountered in the army were not exclusive to that place butwere repeated – albeit to varying degrees – in the souls of all those I met. Iworked in different places, in government sectors, in private sectors, in civilsociety, in activities and NGOs. The only difference was that some pretendedthat these ideas and behaviors did not exist. Then you lift the veil of one ofthem to find it lurking deep within.

The shocks came to me individually and in groups, and Isuffered from the disgusting feeling of loneliness. I am alone with mythoughts, nothing resembles me, and nothing pleases me (as Mahmoud Darwishsays).

I was living in the kingdom of solitude by myself, as thesong says:

'A kingdom of isolation

And it looks like I'm the [king]

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside

Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried'

Gradually, I found myself unable to write poetry. I long forthe days when I was able to imagine and write, I try to write about love, but Ionly write about hatred, violence, and shocks. I am unable to get out of themire and unable to see it from outside.

At that time, I decided to give up on the idea of love. In amoment of despair and anger, it seemed to me like a childish idea incapable ofdoing anything, just the fantasies of a teenager looking for a way out, lookingromantically -to the point of bitterness - at things. So, I decided to give upon love.

At first, it was comfortable. You are worthless and I am asworthless as you, you are materialists, and I am like you, materialistic. Lifeis just matter, as your god Marx and his followers of fools said. But the deepsadness was accumulating inside me, and I suppressed it. Many years passed,during which I gathered their cherished material possessions. But I foundmyself throwing them to the wind, for I never had any respect for money, andperhaps I spent nights, months, and years thinking about an economy that couldfunction without money, before I learned about the non-monetary economy, whichis quite different from what I imagined.

I would take out my old papers and poems and feel nostalgicfor them, but I also felt free from them. Free from that period during which Isuffered so much. But I discovered that I had become another person. Someonetrying to find his way back to his old self, wondering in amazement how allthose years had passed so quickly.

Yes, I regret giving up on the idea of love because itshaped my understanding of myself for many years, but I remember my father'sknocks on my head whenever my mother found a scrap of paper here or there onwhich I had scribbled some part of myself.

 Now, aquarter-century after those incidents, I sit by my father's bed - he is nowover eighty - and we talk. He tells me about his adolescence and youth, how heused to go to the movies and then come back and write his thoughts and feelingsabout the film in his notebook, how he used to sit and draw the girls incollege, and how he spent decades of his life immersed in love, sacrificing alot for those he loved, for his sister, and for his large family, without anyreward. In fact, he may have suffered greatly because of it and lost a lot. Hesadly discovered the futility of these ideas and behaviors. And I wasastonished to discover that.

He doesn't remember blaming me for repeating what he haddone. But I understood that he hated me repeating his mistakes. He hated for meto drown in a non-existent romantic world. And he wanted me to know the realworld as it is, with all its filth and crap.

Despite my understanding and appreciation of his choices, Icannot find justification for what he did to me. I may feel sorry and sad forhis experience and for what life compelled him to do, but I do not find itjustifiable for him to turn against me, to punish me for what he had done, orto vent his anger at life on a young teenager who knew nothing about life.

I asked him, "Why didn't you tell me what you werethinking? Why were you harsh on me? Why didn't you tell me that you wanted meto be strong?" He sarcastically replied, "Would you haveunderstood?"

Now I try to reconnect with a person I lost almost twodecades ago. I try to understand, from my perspective, his motives, andthoughts. I try to rise above them, and I wonder: Was there wisdom in myfather's treatment of me? Or did he push me into another tragedy opposite hisown?

I look now at my son. I shower him with my love, and I talkto him like a grown man even though he hasn't reached ten yet. And I wonder,what tragedy am I leading you to, and how will you blame me in the future?