Mujde was the reason that I first prayed to God. She was also the subject of my first prayer. There was no God in my life before. I was in primary school, around the age of seven, eight or nine, in Ankara, Turkey’s early and mid-1980s.
Mujde was my best friend at that time. I loved her deeply. I do not remember clearly how our affection first started so that we were always together. There are bits and pieces in my memory. I remember having sharing our lunch together with great appetite and joy; sharing a desire to meet in the weekends to do our home-works together; being always together in the breaks to play in the school yard; putting our weekly pocket-money together every Monday to buy a new sticker for our Care Bears sticker books to passionately complete a happy, loving child story.
I feel blessed to have such pure, innocent, joyful, playful, mutual and unconditional love in my life, to have such a childhood memory whose trace has been following me throughout the years.
We were either in the second or third grade; it took me some time to realize that she was not joining some of the classes. I neither paid attention what these classes were, nor did she tell anything. Then I asked, as far as I remember to my primary school teacher, the reason of her absence. The reply was that she was Christian, and so was exempt from our “compulsory” classes on Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge, to which I never had paid special attention beforehand.
I did not know she was. I never had a proper family education on religion, either. My parents were secular, Ataturk follower, Republican people, uttering that they believe in God and the prophet Mohammed, but never showing-off, never turning this belief into daily, regular, symbolic ceremonies, or maybe leaving this simply to The State, on which they have an extensive, unbreakable trust as Republicans.
Out of this trust, things eventually worked in the opposite way and these classes on “religion” turned to be a class of interest to me. In the end, I had to understand the reason behind our separation.
I remember one thing that affected me deeply: a weekly subject on Heaven. Because after this particular one hour in class, I could not stop thinking some repeating sentences in my head following with the axiom that “only Muslims are allowed to go to Heaven”, but “people of good faith with good deeds can also go to the same place”, because in the end “heaven was a place where all the loved ones are together”.
Paradox continues. I was confused. She was my best friend, she was even a living angel, and goodness had to be awarded with Heaven. I should not have taken any risk; we had to be together in heaven as well. I had to pray to intervene, because “God accepts the prayers of innocent and sincere ones”.
“Dear God! I beg you to accept Mujde and her family into your beautiful Heaven. Please! I beg you! They are all about goodness. Let us all be together, as we love each other”.
Sounds innocent.
Totally paradoxical as well. I was praying and tied to a concept to unite us, which divided us in the first instance.
We were already together, and it was heavenly.
But a newly emerging belief on a concept called heaven was requiring us to be divided, in a place where the mission of belief finally comes to an end.
What kind of mental process was that all about?
Plus, it was indeed the end of “innocence”, if this another concept bears the condition of lack of knowledge of “evil”, and hence certain degree of directness, without calculating a possible future outcome or reward.
Looking back, I thought I was captured, not simply by an idea of God or Heaven but deeper than this, by a feeling of some kind of superiority, presumably giving me an authority to act on behalf of the future of some one, whom was taught to be “different”, hence with that capacity, more disadvantaged than me.
All based on a conceptual and mental division, acquired through learning.
While we were already one.
And simply playing was much more fun.
Writing these lines, I also thought it was a sad realization that I am now moving upon the ground of same mental division, maybe with just another mean, i.e. public writing.
Or simply through confession.
My belief to love and oneness was under scrutiny in these days.
Maybe she had already found her heaven, just like the time when I made my first prayer.
I had indeed a kind of no-hope ending for this letter. Then I sent it to Mujde, to take her informed consent in the first instance, but indeed deeper than this, to listen her story deeply, maybe for the first time after so many years we did not see each other, yet still with the dream of pre-division innocence and affection.
I was thinking, questioning and theorizing things for nothing. She was already there, with a big heart and open arms, telling about her self and her belief, and even thanking me for the privilege to be in my first prayer. She asked the reason why this entire dilemma is about.
She made me realize.
I had to change the ending.
All I had to do was to communicate, to talk to her in the first instance, to understand.
Before pondering upon things within my own mind-cell.
And to keep up with the belief in affection, which was already there, much before our acquired division.