As the seasons changed and the days grew warmer, foul air began to blanket our position.
The snow had melted long ago.
But what it left behind was worse.
Mud.
Standing water.
Bodies buried too shallowly.
And the stench rising from the earth whenever the sun climbed high.
Fortunately, after a series of battles in this region, the front line had grown relatively quiet.
We no longer had to remain under bombardment constantly.
There had been no major attacks for several days.
But calm on the battlefield never felt like peace.
It only felt like someone drawing breath before screaming again.
I spent a great deal of time with Naciye and Khanım.
After what happened in the forest, the three of us never truly talked about what we had seen.
Not because we had forgotten it.
Because we all still remembered it too clearly.
Sometimes Naciye woke in the night simply because she heard someone calling her name.
Khanım began checking the doors and windows whenever she entered a building.
As for me...
I began to distrust voices.
Sometimes a soldier would call to me from a distance.
I would turn around.
Then, before answering, I would make sure that person was really there.
That habit made some of the soldiers think I was strange.
I didn't care.
I had heard my father's voice from beneath the river.
I had seen Mustafa standing in the middle of the forest.
I had heard Khanım's voice from behind a door when Khanım was actually standing right beside me.
After experiencing all that, being a little paranoid felt far more sensible than being careless.
In his free time, Khanım had a strange habit.
He carved wood.
Nothing complicated.
Just small pieces from crate boards or branches found around camp.
He used a small knife to make simple shapes.
Mountains.
Sometimes human faces.
I once asked him why he did it.
He only answered:
“So my hands won't remember the war and end up covered in blood...”
Creepy... right? (^o^)
I never forgot that sentence.
Because maybe that's what people do when they can't fight their circumstances.
They look for something small to work on.
Something with no connection to death.
Several other soldiers did the same.
Some made prayer beads from scraps of wood.
Some repaired their shoes.
Some wrote letters.
Some made miniature rifles from bone or scrap metal.
And some simply sat in silence, staring at the mountains.
Everyone had their own way of holding on to their sanity.
I didn't have skills like theirs.
So I only helped other people.
Carrying supplies.
Repairing trenches.
Cleaning rifles.
Or teaching new soldiers how to stay alive.
I began to understand something.
The army was full of people like that.
They held rifles.
They laughed.
They ate.
They joked.
They could even talk about their families as though everything were still normal.
Even though some of them were already shattered inside.
A society gone mad.
Maybe that was the only way to describe us.
One afternoon, a soldier named Kemal sat beside me.
He was still young.
Too young to have a look like that in his eyes.
“Şehsuvar.”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever been afraid?”
I looked at him.
“Afraid of what?”
“Dying.”
“Weird question.”
Kemal lowered his head.
“I'm afraid every night.”
“That’s normal.”
“But you never look afraid.”
I smiled faintly.
“I've just seen too many people die.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It isn't.”
I looked at the mountains in the distance.
“Maybe part of me died first.”
Kemal fell silent.
I didn't even know whether I was joking.”