Aras Hasso
This is neither the Library of the US Congress nor the Louvre. This is Rody and Parwin’s library, which is a small planet of this world. In the alley, love would mix with blood and drip onto the pages. Rody and Parwin are two bright stars, two best friends, two-night butterflies of hidden feelings, and two mother tongue teachers.
Rody and Parwin, two quiet friends, grew up in two neighborhoods about 200 meters apart. They tasted two of the most delicious apples on earth. In this neighborhood, they followed each other's dreams and sang love poems together. Sometimes the path was hard and sometimes sad.
Rody, the friend of study and night standing, unflinching, with a book in one hand and a shovel in the other, a shovel that had injured his hands. I don't know what soul or body he had. Once I asked Rody: Why do you collect so many books? What do you do with them? “Aras,” he told me, “Until we get married, we have to collect about 400 books and have a small library together,” I said who would read books with you and make a library? He shook his head and didn’t tell me. I later realized that he wanted to marry their neighbor's daughter, Parwin.
I saw Rody buying books at the expense of his own food and drink when he worked as a house worker. For his brothers and sisters to finish their education, he sacrificed himself for them, stopped his studies, and always worked for them. One day, we saw Rody become a groom. Parwin's gift was a carton of novels, poems, and stories. On June 5, 2015, Rody and Parwin got married and they both hugged me and said, "Come on, we are waiting for you." A few days later, on the evening of June 24, Rody spoke to me and said, "Come tomorrow and I'll show you pictures of our wedding." "I'll come tomorrow," I said.
As if a terrible evening awaited them, the clouds moved heavily that evening. It was neither evening nor morning. Rody and Parwin, along with their families, mothers, brothers, and sisters, were killed by killers with black and dark flags. About 300 people, women, children, teenagers, and the elderly were killed in Kobani that morning. Rody and Parwin died hugging each other.
No words or anything can heal the pain of this wound. It’s an unhealed pain in this city. When we heard the stories of Dersim and Halabja on our grandmothers' knees, we asked ourselves how this massacre happened. Who can do this? As we grew older, I realized that millions of people had been killed in this way. I knew we were going to die, but how? Rody and Parwin; before each of them had pain on one side, they cried, then they expressed and said their pain together and left many letters that we still don’t understand and are trying to understand them.
In order not to close the doors, windows, and alleys and make their dreams come true, the family opened the Rody and Parwin's library in their memory and wrote their words on the door: "Live our dreams and enjoy life". It became the sanctuary of their people, and people stepped right foot into this library, touched the walls softly, and looked carefully at the library and its surroundings. In winter we read books and had literary discussions in front of their wood stove. In front of a bright fire, red tea, and black coffee, life flashed in their eyes with a colorful world. They shared their anger and beauty in this small room of the world.
There we met the literary world and thanks to their dreams. Life is a story that some tell to others and it goes on. Most interestingly, when I got home from work, instead of going home, I went there and occasionally fell asleep in the arms of the books Rody had bought with his own hands. In the corner of the library, there was a notebook and pen, in which he had written dozens of poems and memoirs. We collected his poems and memoirs and published a book entitled "Rody and Parwin" to keep their memory alive forever.
