Jasin lived in the city for many years. Originally from one of the districts, Jasin could not get an higher education because of the miserable living conditions of his family. After finishing high school, he worked as a shepherd in his village for a while, but later had to come to the city.

During his high school years, he fell in love with a classmate named Jamila. Back in those years, Jasin could not express his love to Jamila for a long time because of his shyness. There are some words and decisions in life that seem small, that do not matter whether they are present or not, but over time, they become the most important part of human life, directing the human destiny. Jasin’s inability to express his feelings to Jamila at the time and his timid behavior were decisive in his later years.

Jasin’s family was not large, he had two younger brothers. His father worked in the village to meet the basic costs of his family. In fact, no one lived comfortably in the turbulent environment of the 1990s. In the state of anarchy that prevailed in the country, while the poor, who formed the majority of the population, were in need of a loaf of bread, the rich were in danger of losing their properties at any moment.

Jasin faced many difficulties in his life. When he was only a high school student, his father died at the age of 44 from a heart attack. After the death of his father, the burden of the whole family was on his shoulders. After graduating from high school, he began herding sheep in the village. Jasin, who earned only 10 shirvans a month, actually lived better than many in the village. Although he promised his mother that he would make his younger siblings to be educated, fate threw away Jasin out of his village and life put him to a more difficult test.

***
It was the last days of high school. After the death of his father, Jasin, who became even more silent, had a dream in recent days. In general, the death of his father showed Jasin the real reality of life – death – in all its nakedness. This sudden loss not only gave Jasin certain thoughts about the life he had just begun to grasp which affected his whole life, but also the suddenness of death made all the glittering passions and pleasures of life meaningless to him. Unlike his peers, Jasin did not make plans for the future that sometimes are impossible to happen.

For him, such illusions about the future, which were attractive to many young people, were extinguished by the death of his father. But Jamila was the only being who added color to her simple, colorless, monotonous and stagnant world. He thought of her when he came home from school, when he got up in the morning and went to school, and when he went to bed in the evenings, Jamila’s eyes, which were very attractive to him, dominated his dreams. It had been several years since Jamila’s feelings had deepened, but he still could not open his heart to her. Now, as he neared the end of high school, he felt as if he would lose Jamila, and this made Jasin to sink into thoughts. While thinking about whether or not to confess his love for Jamila, new events began to unfold in the life of Jamila, the woman he had dreamed of for many years and who gave meaning to his world.

It was a custom in the village. People who had once moved from the village and built a new life for themselves in the big cities did not forget their native villages, and came to their father’s hearth whenever they had a chance. Although the custom of marrying off one’s children from their own village which was seen as a bond that bound the next generation to the village lost its power over time, but conservative families still tried to marry their children from the regions where they were born and raised. For a girl in the village, it was a blessing to marry a boy who lived in a big city. Most important, it was a prosperous and comfortable life for the woman who left this village in the eyes of villagers. And now, there were rumors about Jamila that began to circulate in the village. Aunty Susambar’s granddaughter, whose lives in the lower part of the village, came to the village to look for a girl to marry. According to rumors circulating in the village, they asked Jamila’s father to marry her with the boy, and initial consent was obtained.

For the engagement, they had to wait for Jamila to finish high school. Even there were rumors that Aunty Susambar’s son, Jamila’s future father-in-law, promised to send her to one of the universities in the city. This rumor, like everyone else, reached Jasin. After hearing this news, Jasin began to go back and forth between the two ideas. On the one hand, he decided to throw all his feelings and his love for Jamila, and on the other hand, he didn’t want everything to end so suddenly, so he left home every morning on his way to school promising to talk to Jamila about everything. But every time he saw Jamila at school, he lost all determination and his mind. Thus, although the worries increased every day, he postponed the talk.

It was May 1998. All school leavers at the school were already preparing for the last bell. At the turning points of life, the simplest habit, the ordinary place you go every day, the person you see on the road every day, from the moment the “last time” label is affixed to it, it acquires a value disproportionate to its existence. The school now had the same meaning for the students who had not studied, who had not come to school, who had tried to avoid school under excuses, and almost all students were saddened that they would leave school. For them, school was the end of a period in their lives, the beginning of a new era, in which they now had no chance to return. For only students who got a chance to pursue their education at universities, this sadness was sometimes replaced by the excitement of a new life on the horizon. Some students wrote kind words about each other in their notebooks. At such a time, one day, which Jasin did not expect, Jamila handed him her notebook and said:

-Jasin, I would like you to have your heartfelt words in my notebook. She said he had time to write until tomorrow and smiled away.

Although these words shocked Yasin, he hardly collected himself and nodded his head with agreement. Throughout the day, he tried to understand Jamila’s words and why she had given him the notebook. That night, on the one hand, he considering Jamila’s behavior and the expressions on her face as she spoke to him decided that Jamila loved her, and in fact wanted to say something by giving her a notebook. That times, he had a strange pleasure that was not very clear to him. On the other hand, he thought it was normal, and everything became worthless and ordinary in his eyes. However, Jasin clearly felt that Jamila was not indifferent to him, but he could not be sure. As he returned the notebook, he decided to talk. The next day, he was a little embarrassed and stumbling talked to Jamila, but he did not receive a positive answer from her, and he did not try to find out the reason for her answer. The last star in Jasin’s world was gone. In the summer of that year, Jamila married Aunty Susambar’s grandson.

***

Two years after graduating from high school, Jasin worked as a shepherd in the village. His earnings were not bad. As he had promised his mother, he tried his best to get his younger siblings education. Since Jamila lived in the city, he no longer heard anything about her and began to forget her. He even decided to marry Gulnaz, the daughter of a poor family like them from the village. In the fall of 2000, the wedding took place in a small party. Although Gulnaz was naive, unassuming, and illiterate like himself, she loved Jasin and cared for her family. Jasin was also happy with his life.

But that winter, Jasin’s life was destroyed again. Namely, a man named Vahid bought all the sheep by paying a large amount of money to the villagers, and offered Jasin to be a shepherd the sheep by offering him twice as much money as before. Jasin was very happy at first, but later it turned out that Vahid was Jamila’s husband and he rejected the proposal. On the same day, Jasin decided to move to the city, the trend of those years.

***

They say that the poor are very proud. It was the same with Jasin. Years ago, he refused to shepherd the sheep of family of the woman he loved. With the power of this pride, Jasin, in fact, for the first time in his life rose against his own destiny. Like the inappropriate and sudden revolts against fate, Jasin’s revolt costed much to him, a heralder of difficult and painful years. Years later, Jasin would have understood this better, when he thought about ups and downs of the life.

Jasin, who has been living with his wife in a small hut in a small town on the outskirts of the city since the spring of 2001, had no children in the early years of his marriage. Jasin, who was obedient to all the cruelty of life, silently coped with this problem, treated Gulnaz well and tried to continue his life, even under difficult conditions. In the sixth year of his marriage, his fate finally smiled at him and had a daughter. Although Jasin, who named his daughter Lala, worked all day from morning till night, the birth of his daughter gave a new meaning to his life, which was monotonous with Jamila’s dissipating years ago, and as if the sun came his world again. He now worked for 20 dollars in a day from 8 am to 8 pm and lived in that small hut, but Jasin felt really happy.

***
The years passed quickly. Lala was already 6 years old. Jasin took Lala’s education seriously who now began to study. Although he and his siblings could not study due to difficulties and misfortunes in his family, Lala had to read. So even when she had not yet started school, and when he returned home from work, he was eager to teach her daughter to read and write. Now Lala was among the best students in school and was everyone’s favorite. After school, Aysun’s mother, Khadija, would sometimes take her daughter home with her. Lala, who was playing with Khadija’s only daughter Aysun, saw TV for the first time and watched a cartoon with Aysun.

Lala told Yasin that evening what they were watching as if she had encountered a great miracle. Jasin was crumbled when his daughter spoke so enthusiastically about television and cartoons. Immediately, he remembered his childhood when the villagers gathered around the TV, which was rare in the village. At that time, they would gather in the village and watch Indian films shown on TV with curiosity. But now, everything had changed. Jasin, on the other hand, could not afford not only to buy a television set, but also to buy many household items, as he brought home a loaf of bread with a thousand hardships. Now that he had seen her daughter talking so eagerly, he decided to buy a TV.

The next day, Jasin went to a store to find out the price of the TVs. The cheapest TV was 600 dollars. Jasin bought the TV set six months later, taking a hundred dollars from his monthly salary, and happily brought it home. On that day, Lala was overjoyed. Jasin, who hurriedly hung the TV on the wall and wanted to make Lala happy. He took the remote control and turned on the TV which was not well fastened too, but the TV fell off the wall.

The destroying of the screen of the TV he had just bought in front of his eyes had shattered something inside of Jasin. He froze for a moment, unable to believe his eyes. Then, suddenly, tears began to flow from his eyes. Gulnaz and Lala also joined him. As a last chance, he explained the situation to the staff of the store, hoping that maybe the TV will be changed. However, the store did not take back the TV and needed an extra 150 dollars to replace the screen. Jasin was determined, albeit with the fragility and sadness of those who dreamed of something, but suddenly lost something they dreamed about. For another 1-2 months, he would save for his daughter, put it aside, repair the TV and make her happy. With this decision he had made as he left the store, and with the comfort that the hope in him, he took a deep breath and began to walk home. (To be continued)