Şanslı

Well, friends, the time has come…

I say friends and I mean it: everyone reading this letter was my friend. Sometimes right beside me, sometimes from far away without ever meeting me, you loved me, you prayed for me, you were my friends.

Eight years… A whole eight years I lived in Beytepe. I was not born here, but the place where I was happy was my home, and even though we can no longer look into each other’s eyes, even though you will not see my smiling photographs around here any more, I know you will not forget me. Perhaps your eyes will look for me on the grass; perhaps every time someone says “Şanslı” your eyes will fill and there will be an ache in your heart — but I am in an endless, peaceful sleep now.

Some things in life do not let go of you. When I first came to this campus I had cancer, and I got better with love and care. I arrived in a wretched state and in pain; it seems I had babies, but I do not know where I left them. Treatments, good people, good food, friends who looked like me… nothing was left of the day I first set foot here. At one point I got as round as a table from all the eating, and Haydok even banned ice cream for me… but sometimes, whatever you do, illness does not let go. I was named Şanslı — Lucky — for that very reason, but this is as far as it goes.

I had wonderful days among you, I was so loved… I was in all the Haydok posters and so on; I was so beautiful that I had become something of a brand face.

I have so very much to write, but what is the use? They give me so much medicine to quiet the pain that I am terribly sleepy. So sleepy and so tired… The Haydok people were beside me, they loved me and talked to me, but I could not answer much; I did not have it in me. In these last days I stopped eating too. I gave in. They had come to say goodbye, really.

For eight years I learned Beytepe inch by inch; it was my home. I leave many friends behind, and all of them are wonderful children.

I leave you trees whose shade I will not be in, grass I will not lie on with you. I leave you my friends, who love you dearly, who watch for you, for whom you are a source of happiness…

Do not forget me; my smiling face, my fighting spirit…