I thought it was like my toys and dolls playing and making fun. When I was playing with my toys and dolls, I would marry them to each other, and sometimes even throw them away. Dolls are too peaceful; it is we who make them harsh. They never harm each other though they do not know the language. We human beings with all the similarities and understanding of the same languages play to harm. We don’t know what they feel until we become a puppet.
In the midst of my childhood, I was married to a young man from our village, Rafi, a man whom I never met or seen before. It was not a regular marriage based on love or mutual acceptance, but a child marriage. The marriage, which engraved my dreams and hopes. The first days of marriage were the hardest and burdening. Rafi was a drug user and a gambler. He was always violent and beating me with no reason. He stopped me from going to school and family gathering; I was living like a prisoner. With all that, I was trying to be a good housewife for him.
The first years of my marriage went the same and I gave birth to three children. I was worried raising my kids in that environment. From one side Rafi’s addiction to drugs and from other side our low financial situation. He was too violent and beating us so often. He took everything we had and sold them for drugs and gambling.
I couldn’t tolerate the situation anymore, I wanted to change; I didn’t want to be a toy anymore. One day in my loneliness I thought to myself: how long I should continue like this and drag my children to darkness and distraction? I wanted to change my destiny and create something for myself and the kids and put an end to this miserable and puppet life. In the absence of my husband, I borrowed money from a friend and started cooking cookies. I was making cookies at home and selling them to neighbors shopkeepers.
Rafi didn’t show for three days and nights. I was worried and had concerns that something might have happened to him. How could he disappear all of a sudden?
I couldn’t hear for a month about Rafi. Later I found out that he was living in Turkey. I was alone with my three small kids. With the money I was being paid selling cookies, we were carrying on our lives. I enrolled my kids in school. My cookie business was getting better day by day. I liked to read and write and with the passion for learning, I joined literacy classes.
When I completed my literacy classes, I expanded my business and created a large tailoring, carpet weaving, and cookies workshop; in which I recruited some of the women who had the same life experience as I had. We were all working so hard and putting our products on the market. We had very quick progress in our business, and everything was in line with our needs.
Today, despite the fact that I have no contact with my husband and he had never even contacted us once, I am very pleased with my life. I am happy that all three of my children attended university and I have also profited with the blessing of literacy. I have filled my free time with reading books and have planned to study higher education to reach my goals.