We were both on the run – seeking refuge for survival from the dangers that our work had brought us.
I was a human rights journalist, he was a controversial freedom fighter, agitating for the liberation of his Kurdish people from the oppression by the Turkish regime. Getting into the nitty-gritty of these historical hostilities between the Turkish and the people of Kurdistan would take forever to unravel. But he, alongside many of his ilk – brave Kurdish human rights activists had defiantly risen against the Establishment.
In a small wooden cottage tucked in the belly of a quiet traditional Northern German village, we sat around the dinner table, just him and I eating some sweet and sour soup which he had prepared and he was good at it.
“One day, you are going to make a woman very happy with your soup-making skills” I teased him.
With his cigarette between his fingers, he puffed and blew up smoke on the side, his thick moustache getting obscured by the smoke, his eyes assuming a distant gaze.
“Yes, the soup is all I will give her, right from my loins through my bleeding soul – only the soup”.
His response to my quizzical look was as painful as the reality of his fate. In the hands of the Turkish soldiers, in yet another detention that he had endured, they had almost smashed his entire manhood as they tortured him to a submission he never succumbed to.
“They shattered my entire generation. They finished me while I was still alive”. He lamented.
The bizarreness of this night was not yet over.
Somewhere as our conversations lingered I looked directly at him and suddenly realized that his front tooth which had been there just moments ago when we started our dinner was now missing!
“Damn!” He exclaimed. His reaction was forlorn, frustrated, resigned.
We brushed the table napkins and moved over the bowls and plates and sure enough, there was his tooth. It had slipped off without us noticing.
I was baffled.
“It is the effects of the torture – the electric torture. The impact manifests long after you think you have survived and then you realize just how much they have literally broken you”. He explained.
That night by my cottage door as he embraced me goodnight, he repeated his deep torture-inflicted loss; “The very worst is to claim to be a man living inside a shell that can never sustain that title”.
Many days later we went for a walk down the lush sprawling cornfields, through silent peaceful forest along a lonely country road. Once as we walked, we bumped onto a family of squirrels sneaking in and out of burrows and my friend suddenly stiffened at their appearance.
“You know, back then, when we ran through the fields with the police dogs hot in pursuit; it was a matter of life and death. Sometimes, we could run into mine-fields and many of our comrades were blown up in the process. We devised ways of detecting the mines. We trained monkeys and squirrels to go ahead of us as mine detectors. We survived.”
I nodded speechless because the sheer enormity of their ordeal was beyond my comprehension.
As we picked up on our walk, he murmured to himself; “But we survived and lost our manhood – no heritage to carry fourth our name”.
Many years later, I received a post card. The news was great. He had finally married a long-time friend and comrade in the struggle - a single mother whom he used to tell me about. They tied the note and he earned a six year old daughter.
“These days I have a new name – Papa” He wrote.
Today I salute my friend and all the broken men walking the face of the earth, bearing both visible and invisible scars - with or without the ability to conceive but still deeply committed to the callings of fatherhood. Not even electric torture should deny you that right!
Happy fathers’ day my friend.
Happy Father’s day to you all ardent fathers with numerous scars!
