I went to sleep with my parents because the cold was severe. My father put wood in the stove to try to heat the room a little more. Once the wood caught the flames, I looked up. I saw the shadows on the dark ceiling in the firelight. I went back to sleep.

In the morning, when my father was going to the mosque to pray, I really wanted to go with him. However, only men could go, not women. At that time, I was only five years old, so I did not understand why I couldn’t go. I was very stubborn and determined to go with my father, no matter what. When my family told me that I was not going, I slammed the door, causing the door’s glass window to break.

Broken glass pieces cut my mother’s hand. It bled heavily. When my brother saw my mother’s hand, he fainted. My big sister helped him by raising his feet up. My hands trembled because I was scared. What had I done? Everything had happened so suddenly. I said to my brother: “Please! Can you open your eyes?” But he didn’t seem to hear me. My father helped my mother. He found gauze and wrapped her hand. I was relieved when I saw the bleeding had stopped. We were standing around my brother when he opened his eyes. First, my dad and my mom kept silent, looking disapprovingly at me. I was crying. Then they looked at each other, and my mother said to me, “Your clothes are not good for the mosque, but if you change into clean clothes, you can go with your dad.”

We went to the mosque by tractor because my father did not have a car, and the mosque was too far from our home to walk. The tractor was big and red, and it had a roaring voice. It was the first time I ever rode in a tractor. When it shook me, I was scared, but my father hugged me.

We came to the mosque, but I didn’t know how to pray. While my dad prayed, I was playing, running, and jumping up and down inside the mosque. With my friends, I played games near the entrance, even though the air was very cold because there was no lobby. Our mosque had beautiful handmade decoration, frescos, and miniatures. Then my father finished the prayers, we hopped into the tractor, and went home.

Upon returning home, our living room was freezing because I had broken the door’s window. My mother burned wood on the stove, but our home did not heat enough. I sat with my parents and siblings in the living room. We were all wrapped in blankets over our warmest sweaters. Everyone in my family gave me a sad look. I really regretted what I did. Because my father did not have enough money to repair the door’s window, he closed it with a piece of plastic to block the cold from coming into the living room.

Now, when I go to the village, I see our abandoned house, its walls cracking from age. The door’s window is still broken because after we moved from there, nobody lived there. The broken window reminds me of the hard life we lived, and of my fight to go to the mosque with my father.

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Fadime Komurcu writes, “I am 24 years old. I come from Tokat, Turkey. I finished university in Turkey, majoring in nursing. I came here in 2018. I am studying in a CLIP class, and I would like to learn Spanish. I would also like to play piano. I would like to continue to study medicine to become a gynecologist.” Fadime Komurcu’s teacher at CUNY’s College of Staten Island is Polina Belimova, and Blerina Likollari is the program director.