Goodbye's
Şimdi, az kalda. We only have three more days at the Eyup çocuk yuvası and then we will say our goodbye’s and head back to America. It will no doubt be a huge shock, after six weeks of going to the yuva every day, to suddenly leave Turkey and not see any of the kids again. Certainly, it will be hard for to leave, that much is easy to say. As for the kids, some of them more than others will be upset when we leave, but the thing I had been wondering is how hard it is for those children to say goodbye.
If saying goodbye to people you care about is the sort of thing that people could get used to, the kind of thing that you are eventually numb to because its just a part of life, then our departure shouldn’t be too hard on the kids. They, after all, have said more important goodbye’s as seven or eight year olds than I have yet in my life.
For the children who have parents nearby, they have become accustomed to seeing their parents maybe for a while and then saying goodbye to their own family for some indefinite amount of time. For the ones who don’t have parent’s nearby, its been even longer. Utku told me one day how sad he was that his dad was coming to visit, because its hard to always say goodbye again. That was about three weeks ago, and Utku still hasn’t been back to the yuva, but I assume that when school starts again he will come back to the yuva. For the children whose parents decide that, after leaving their child under the government’s care for some number of years, they can take them home again, there are new goodbyes. When Nermin’s mom got out of prison, and when Akın’s mom decided to bring him back to Ankara, they left their best friends and the community which had taken care of them for so long and headed out on their own. After Celal’s birthday, he was too old to stay in the yuva any more. He headed out to a “dorm” for children who have grown too old for yuvas. He left behind him the most desolate crowd of children, sitting and staring at the ground and telling us how long they had been friends with Celal and how they missed him. Gulben, too, left for another yuva. Not because she was too old, she just came up one morning explaining, ‘they just told me I have to go to a different yuva tomorrow” These kids are uprooted and separated and left behind, and they deal with all of it surprisingly well.
Today was one of the happiest goodbye’s that I have seen. Yağmor, a teenage girl who was found on the street and taken in, has been on a waiting list for a long time now to be moved to a yuva for people with special needs and mental handicaps. Finally, a spot opened up and she is able to go. Zehra held her head and kissed her cheeks, and the kids all crowded around to see her off.
Despite the frequency of goodbye’s, this will still be a tough one. A while ago I mentioned that I would be going to America on August 16th, to which one of the kids replied “okay, and when are you coming back?” I’ll miss the craziness of hardly understanding the shouts and questions. I’ll miss responding to “abla, abla, abla”. I’ll miss Mertcan (the younger one) asking me every few hours, in English, “How old are you?” So that he can respond, “I am ten years old” demonstrating a phrase we taught him. And on Friday, it will be a very strange feeling to say hoşça kal, goodbye, without the görüşürüz, see you.