2022 CREATIVE GLOBAL WINNERS
The Global Round essays are 1200-1500 words in length and are an elaboration of your Regional essay (see Regional Essay Examples for comparison).
CREATIVE
FIRST PLACE: Thanja, Botswana
SECOND PLACE: California, United States
THIRD PLACE: Kalani, United States
ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER: Ali, TURKEY
First Place
Describe the Perfect Day
Thanja, Creative category
botswana
pioneer academy
Rose-Colored Glasses
Leaves of ivy dance with the wind outside, tapping on the window, shadows waltzing on the floor. Blurred rays of early-morning sun dim the courtroom, casting a ghostly iridescence amongst the melancholy eyes of the jury, all trying to analyze my demeanor.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Do I strike you as a gentle artist who admires impressionist paintings in museums on rainy days? The prosecution asks you to paint my face at the brutal crime scene they describe, but you just can’t seem to. I see the confusion on your faces: just how on earth did this man find himself in this room?
As clouds obscure the remaining sun, the prosecutor steps towards the bench and lays before the palpable minds of the jury a final piece of evidence to chew on, Exhibit #3: A myriad of photographs showing my fingerprints at the scene of the crime.
Amidst the echoing pitter-patter of sudden rain, some of you steal a glance at me; I wonder, what do you see? Do your despondent eyes look upon my screaming orange jumpsuit and see a handsome, falsely incriminated man, or do they see the bloodlusts of my alleged crimes?
Interrupting my monologue, the prosecutor’s knife-like tongue cuts up my daze with his closing argument, slicing cleanly their final statements before the court:
“Your Honor, members of the jury, not only was the defendant’s DNA found at the scene of crime, witness testaments further prove that he was in the vicinity at the estimated time of death of the victim Rose Clark.”
“Rose.” Hearing your name pours petrol on my burning heart, my thoughts in a smoky haze of you, again.
Swiftly, the prosecution continues: “The evidence presented here today prove the twisted mental state of this man” (look at the way they’re looking at me, Rose. Such disbelief! How could this man be so cruel? Inconceivable!) “-a fact shown by his lack of remorse and responsibility for his crime. Ladies and gentlemen, may these photos of Miss Clark’s marred body sway your verdict towards justice. Due to the nature of this crime, I implore you to find this man guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Solemnly sent away, the jury shuffle past. I return their passing gazes, thinking: I dare you, feel the cunning of my smirk in your bones; look upon my thorned lungs and breathe the sweet poison of my darling, painted red, Rose; see her manufactured tempest raging in my mind – raging, raging, raging. Only then would you understand the excitement I feel, the anticipation!
The sun peaks through the clouds for just a moment as my attorney approaches me.
My Rose, my perfect day I owe all to you: I’ll be acquitted of the law, yet never acquitted of you. But don’t fret, my darling Rose. My perfect day starts here, and will end with the end of you.
Golden hands of the clock melt away as my attorney attempts to enlighten me on the vantage points of my case; their droning voice blocks out the rest of the courtroom, building stairs for my imagination to climb up, elevating my mind out of the commotion – higher and higher, passing clouds, vividly dreaming up my latest reality, floating into the stratosphere. It is here, between infinite space and crashing waves that I find myself gouging out the miscalculations of my perfect day’s schedule: the trial ended late, but soon enough my verdict should reveal itself from the mouths of the jury - that is the beginning of our new love story, Rose.
Amidst my bubbling concoction of ideas, a few of my attorney’s silky words manage to streamline through my ears, rippling in my head; some heavier stones, like “loophole” and “definite win” disturb the waters of my mind with greater force, creating a waterfall, rushing water in my veins. My excitement burns like a flame I dare not grasp, not yet. Is it improper to smile at a murder trial?
The judge calls my attorney aside, and her scuttle brings me back to the courtroom’s desolate hearts, beating in sync with the tedious tick of the clock. Waiting. My eyes flicker like candlelight to the roman numerals on the clock, following the stride of the minute hand: Rose should be here soon.
Silent melancholia slowly morphs into reticent gossip, accompanied by the murmurs of wind outside, increasing in velocity: a storm is coming. Reclining in my chair, I return to my wonderland, not focusing on the echoes of background chatter. Instead, Rose ambles about in the corridors of my mind, stumbling into obscure rooms of my brain: every luminous thought of her taking over my train of thought, steering it off of its tracks; reclaiming what she had tried so hard to do away with.
Eventually I slip into the rabbit hole of my memories: the acute heartache, the moment I walked into Rose’s room that night, how it seemed that all sound had left the room with my breath; my heart stopped as I grabbed her hand, soft, still warm. The disfigured corpse held me as I sobbed into what was left of her chest. You would have fooled me, Rose, if it wasn’t for the tattoo.
Abruptly seizing me from my thoughts is the ear-piercing screech of the courtroom’s great wooden doors being driven open: a frail hand appears, followed by their owner, advancing towards the front bench – she glances at me, holding me hostage with her eyes, smirking - within moments a tangle of thorned vines slither across the courtroom, writhing up the defendant’s stand, twisting and squeezing and weaving around my neck – with my last breath: “Rose.”
Rose! You expect me to be surprised, of course. When will you realise you couldn’t fool me? You pretend you don’t notice me watching you take a seat in the front bench, gracefully folding your legs one over the other, tilting your face up just enough so I can glimpse at your honey eyes, analyzing the scene from under the hat you’ve decided to wear today; smooth curls dangle out from underneath the hat, a newly dyed shade of blonde, shining the way Amanda’s did. The hat, I now realise, covers your brown roots.
Someone is talking to Rose, offering his condolences. I can’t help but contort myself around my seat to listen in: words float about me, some out of reach, others land in my hands:
He spoke in broken pieces of glass: “-he stalked her, I heard? Relentlessly pursued- “
Rose spoke convincingly, too sure of herself, not realizing her mistake: “-so irreversibly mad about her, it has to be him, the DNA evidence-.”
A thought (I am willing to sacrifice a few words of their conversation to express): I am truly so irreversibly mad about you – but you, you turned mad because of me.
“-it is truly an awful loss, Miss Clark.”
Rose lifts her eyes to him for just a moment, long enough to imitate emotional torment, speaking in a voice close to tears: “Please, call me Amanda.”
Realizing my eyes are on her, she turns my way, meeting my gaze with her honey eyes, overflowing, drowning me in their thick intensity – for a moment, I can see it: Rose’s golden, calculating eyes stealing the last glimpse of light of Amanda’s, enclosing them in darkness forever; Rose’s soft hands carving, sculpting my crime scene.
Throwing my words strategically, “You thought I didn’t know.”
She catches them without anyone noticing, and whispers,
“You wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to.”
You turn away from me, leaving me tangled in threads. You think you’ve gotten the better of me – your demise is yet to come.
“Rose- “
You don’t look back, but a jerk of your shoulder tells me I have your attention.
“-this is my perfect day.”
A minute, or two, or three, or forty pass before the jury returns, and the head juror hands the judge that fateful piece of paper – Rose sits up, watching me. Waiting to see my reaction. Waiting to see me rot. A few calls to order and the room is silenced: everyone too scared to breathe, unsure of what to anticipate. The thunder booms again as the judge speaks, roaring throughout the courtroom.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the court, the jury has concluded the verdict of the defendant John Mason.”
My head throbs – just wait Rose, just a moment, then you’re mine. Just wait. You’re yet to see you shouldn’t have killed Amanda; you couldn’t throw away your identity to get rid of me.
“After hours of debate and discussion, the jury has concluded that defendant John Mason is guilty of the atrocious first-degree murder of Rose Clark, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.”
Ruins, my world disintegrates to ruins; crumbling pieces of my shattered world slip through my hands. Before the guards seize me, Rose leans over, smiling slyly, cunningly and coldly whispering:
“It’s my perfect day now.”
second Place
Describe the Perfect Day
CALIFORNIA, Creative category
United States of America
DOVER SHERBORN REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
Magic
On the perfect day, there will be no green, faux-leather chairs or stiff blue beds wrapped in wax-like paper. There won’t be any flimsy plastic cups of too-sweet grape juice, sealed with foil lids that I struggle to remove, nor will there be any medications that I use the grape juice to wash down. There won’t be any fluorescent lights to reflect off the nonexistent beige tile floors. I will not awake to the pain of a needle in my arm and there won’t be an inch wide mark where a bracelet squeezed my wrist too tight. When I do, eventually, open my eyes, I will not be greeted by a drab color pallet of sterile while and teal, but by a multihued world of oranges, and pinks, and yellows so bright even the sun would be envious. I won’t struggle to swallow thick barium, and its synthetically sweet taste will be replaced with equally artificial but immensely more jolly maple syrup, and for the first time in a long time, I will feel ready for the day.
I won’t hear the thunder of an MRI, but instead the howling music of a subtle wind, a gust too shy to show its full strength. Instead of smelling the piercing metal of a head CT, I will smell the perfumes of flowers that will not mind when the wind brushes against their cheeks, and neither will I as it knocks my hair from side to side. It will carry with it a certain chill, but not the kind that makes the world seem impossibly cold, the kind at makes one feel awake and fresh. It will be a chill like the one on the days where the air is just cold enough so that only half a river freezes, and if one is fortunate enough, they can see the reflection of the sun not once but twice. One time in cold, hard, solidity, and a second among the liquid uncertainty of water. On those days, I wonder how my reflection would look, and if I too would be able to maintain such steady brightness amongst the constant turbulence of a running river, but for the time I will rejoice with the leaves as they skip about a ground that is shining with the reflection of the sun in its fresh puddles, adding their own percussion to the symphony of the sky.
I will not have the false joy of watching the sunset from a window that refuses to open. Instead, I will watch from a tree as the sun bleeds like a rogue drop of watercolor paint, spreading infectiously across the papered sky until, with a certain remorse, the last glimpse of day surrenders to the emerging kaleidoscope. It will be exactly the tree sat in the day before I was diagnosed, but this time I will have no diagnosis to anticipate, and for the first time, I will be able to enjoy it only as it is. I will take the time to notice how its branches are uneven and rough, and how they leave my hands stained brown so that my sister will ask me if I’ve been playing in mud, and I will be able to do nothing but laugh, taking small pleasure in the fact that not she, nor anyone else on Earth, will be able to understand the beauty the beauty I’d witnessed. Even if some daring clouds attempt to impinge upon my perfect day, I will always find beauty in a sunset on a cloudy night. The vibrancy of a color was only meant for the birds and the sky would be reflected by the stubborn clouds, which would be like mirrors, amplifying the hues for all the words to see, and what would I do but stare in silent awe as the world is painted purple before my eyes. The spectacle would move swiftly, with a purpose; it will not have my newfound luxury of simply stopping and marveling at its grace, and I will wonder if, maybe, I am like that too.
On the perfect day, I will be an adventurer. It will be like my salad days when the whole world seemed to be a mystery, like a geode just waiting for me to crack it open and discover the magic within. It is this magic that I will adventure for, and when I am able to see in the plain, partially cloudy day, that even the thickest grey whisps cannot conceal the light of the sun nor the blue of the sky, I will realize that perhaps it is these simple things that were meant to be the magic all along. I will see it in the leaves that danced across the pavement, which twinkled the sun reflection in its large, weepy puddles, and in those flimsy, grape juice cups and in the dreaded green faux-leather chairs, and I will realize that even in the most indistinct, shadowy places, the depths of that once terrifying liquid uncertainty, there is always some magic. It is these moments of magic that will remind me of how complete and consistent nature is, and I will take some comfort in this consistency, knowing that the moon does not hide simply because the sun can no longer be seen, and on the rare occasion that it does duck its head, we are left with the stars as promises that eventually day will shine again.
At night, I will climb down from my tree and surrender to the grass to gaze up into the sky, studying the promises above my head. I’ll find one that’s brighter than the others and wonder if it’s a planet or just an exceptional star. I’ll think about how far away it is and how it’s possible that the speck of light could no longer exist, and I’d have no idea. I’ll feel a sudden awareness of time like it is both frozen and fleeting, and at once, I’ll realize that even the stubborn, sunset-hiding clouds had departed, knowing that even they had no chance at concealing the power of a night sky. I will try to fall asleep, feeling the earth’s coolness under my back, but I won’t be able to. I’ll hear the whispers of the weeds as they gossip amongst themselves, communicating some secret that, even on the perfect day, I can’t understand, but I’ll be ok with that unknowingness, appreciating that the secrets of magic are never revealed. I’ll feel the bugs, busy about their lives beneath the surface of the dirt. They won’t make me squeamish, but instead, I will be absorbed by their energy, unable to find a moment of rest in the presence of such monumental life. I'll think about how, at night, in the car, the streetlights fly by like streaks, and though I only pass them for a moment they shine so bright it seems as though they go on forever, and I’ll wonder if somewhere, amongst the monumental life, I will be able to find my own exceptional star, and then I too will shine forever. As I lay there, the night sky smiling back at me, I'll feel sorry for the people who manage to fall asleep under the stars. I think if ever I were able to close my eyes while in the presence of all that beauty, it would surely be that I had lost my mind.
third Place
If you could be the very best in the world at something, what would it be?
Kalani, Creative category
United States of America
paso robles high school
A Monster, Grown
I first spit out a tooth after lunch one cloudless day, when I’m getting ready to go to class. A lump had risen in my throat, blistering and sudden, and I panickedly thought I was going to puke.
I did not.
The first thing I notice is that it is not mine. My teeth are straight and white and do not come from the chest. This tooth, though, is yellowing, and sharp enough to cut. Before I remember disgust, a feeling darker than excitement curls deep in my gut. It looks like a tiny golden dagger, and there is something inexplicably fascinating about the thought. Of strangeness resting under my skin, just waiting to be called forward.
Then my friend Bethany asks, “What is that?” with a tone that bites. Her gaze is tilting. She is a predator ready to pounce in a pleated skirt and headband. Fear seizes me.
I tell her, “Nothing.” I throw the pretty thing in the nearest trash can, and it disappears under a sea of half-eaten apples and empty milk cartons.
A scale comes next. It nudges its way from under my skin and shines on my wrist, looking like a beautiful, intricate tattoo. When my mother sees it, her eyes go cold, and she ushers me to confession.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I plead through the confessional wall. Still, I am compelled to hang my head until my hair falls in my face and lace my hands together until my knuckles are bloodless, bones jutting out. Utterly devout.
I have known Father John for a long time. He attended my Baptism and my First Communion. My grandfather’s funeral and my aunt’s wedding. And now, the mere thought of his torpid, unchanging eyes suffocates me more than my wooden surroundings ever could. “No one is without sin,” he says, not unkindly, and I wonder if he's right. If the guilt that darkens my chest is the human birthright and the sin —could it really be sin?—that marks my body is our legacy.
I learned shame before love.
My earliest memory is being made to sit on a stool in my dining room, not allowed dinner as punishment for something I’d done. I don’t remember what, but I remember the tears burning down my cheeks like fire to skin, wondering if my parents would forget about me. Wondering if I would stay there, a portrait of pigtails and despair, for the rest of my life.
Since then, I have done my best to avoid punishment. I do not speak more than I need to in my classes. I keep my hair straight and my nails tidy. My clothes, modest, skirts never cutting above my knee.
This is how I keep them from noticing.
A wing sprouts from my back in the middle of a math test. I glance around to see if anyone has noticed the tent in my shirt and when I don’t pick out anyone looking back, I smooth my hand over it. It is soft and warm and feels like it belongs to a bat. I am almost proud.
When I arrive home from school, my father rips it from my back the same way he pulls weeds in our backyard, his thick fingers steady and hand fisted. He has always hated imperfection, both in gardens and daughters. The wing flutters weakly when he first touches it, resistant, and I try to move away, but that does not deter him.
The pain is like nothing I’ve felt before, overtaking my senses for a few seconds as I scream and scream and scream until he yells at me to stop. He tells me to be grateful that he has fixed me. He is saying: All of this is your fault. I desperately tug on the memories I have of him, happy and loving, and find myself looking at a stranger.
Afterward, he does not apologize. His mouth is set. My mother watches on with her lips parted. Does she wish he would soften? Or has she come to terms with the self-righteousness sown in his planted feet and hard eyes? Does she too bear scars from wings clipped, from too-strange limbs amputated?
Will I look at my husband the same?
I am still breathing through my mouth, heaving, the ache from the attack not yet subsided. A quiet kind of terror filling me when I realize the moisture sticking my clothes to my skin isn’t sweat, but red-hot blood.
The look on my father’s face tells me to leave, so I don’t say anything. I just go.
I tell myself this is a thing he learned from his father, and his grandfather, and it is a thing he never unlearned. It is a thing I cannot teach him: how to look past his ideals and see me, how to loosen his jaw and ungrind his teeth.
I do not doubt he loves me, but when the bleeding starts up again near midnight and I have to venture to the bathroom to rebandage the wound, I doubt he understands me. And, looking at myself, with dark circles like spilled ink, I wonder if I understand me either, or if that is another impossible thing.
There is a girl in my English class who is like me.
Her name is Jude, but I doubt she remembers my name. We’ve only spoken a few times and from these instances I didn’t discern any desire in her to converse further. I don’t blame her. She bursts out her answers in class with such passion you can’t help but believe her, even when the words spill from her mouth scrambled with enthusiasm. She wears bold eye-makeup but leaves her freckles showing. The tips of her hair are dyed.
And atop her head are two beige horns. They’re symmetrical and unmistakable. She wears them like they are another arresting accessory to behold. I think they look like a crown. Bethany and the others call her, freak.
I run into her after school while I’m trying to find my way to somewhere private, where I can figure out what to do with the talons that have sprouted from my left hand. Distracted, we bump into each other, and I reel back.
“Sorry,” I mutter, curling my hand in front of my chest to hide the irregularities. My cheeks are warming.
Jude shakes her head, unconcerned. “It’s all good,” she says. Her smile is small, a first-quarter moon, and I notice a chip on her front tooth. She moves to go past me at the same time I do, but we choose the same direction and find ourselves facing each other once more.
She laughs. “We’re dancing,” she tells me, and I allow myself to relax a little. Then, her gaze drifts down and she gasps. I follow her eyes.
She’s looking at my suddenly lax hand. I realize my talons are visible.
Reason leaves me. In its place, there is panic. “It’s nothing,” I rush, loudly, because if she sees she will know, and if she knows I will be knowable. “I—”
“Hey, it’s alright,” Jude interrupts, all overly-familiar and overly-concerned. It does not help. There is shame in the fact of her comprehension and there is elation in her kindness because she is looking at me and she is not scared. She is peeling back my skin and peering at my ghastly bones. She is preparing to pick her own out, hold them together, and show that we are the same.
And she is not the only one who is already too comfortable— Afterall, she is Jude in my mind and not classmate, nor freak—I notice her and I know I should scorn how she wears what she’s been given proudly, because I should know stories about curving horns, hoofed feet, and temptation more than anyone.
But I don’t. I admire her, despite everything.
My mind betrays me. My shoulder throbs. My wrist aches.
So I leave. She shouts something after me, and I ignore her. When I am safe in my room, I become a storm of talons fisted in pillows, cheeks wet, and I imagine flooding the whole world in my sadness and starting something anew.
I do not usually take baths, but today I do. I imagine my scaled wrist feeling at home as I lean back until my hair fans out in the water around me and I am weightless.
Listen: I am no Sleeping Venus. I am no soft-faced Mary with a halo of gold behind her head. I let thorns grow up my legs and roses bloom at the creases of my hips. Leaves cluster around my face.
It feels more natural than breathing.
I cannot hide, laid bare like this. The truth is, if I could be the very best at anything, it would be at this, at acceptance, at washing my mind clean of purity and allowing myself to be imperfect. Monstrous. Free.
english language learner
Write about your greatest inspiration.
ALI, Creative category
TURKEY
NUN IB WORLD SCHOOL
A Fearless Smile
"We hereby declare that, from now on, women with hijabs or men with any religious indications on their bodies, will not be permitted to renew their university records. Any attempt will be considered a protest and will face a penalty."
The nauseatingly cheerful voice of the announcer flowing from the radio's speakers filled Fatma's ears. As the speaker uttered these horrendous words, the sounds of a few uneasy steps arrived from the kitchen; Fatma loomed from the living room entrance with detergent stains on her hands. She glanced at the radio, and then she turned towards her weary mother sitting in front of the radio, presenting a face of nothing but sheer shock. As their eyes met in the dim light, her mother wondered why a simple fabric would violently rip the right to education from the sole person in their family ever to achieve a university education. Neither Fatma nor her mother could bring themselves to utter a single word. A stinging stillness merged their anguish as if they were a single individual.
Until dusk, not even a drop of sleep visited Fatma's eyes. Instead, she watched the blank ceiling with a dazed expression. After a while, the thoughts that twisted her head became excruciating. She slowly got out of bed and wore the hijab her mom gifted her. The harmony of the lime green and the golden engravings always stunned her; it was her absolute favorite. She prayed in the dark to free herself from the weight of what she had heard on the radio. Just as she finished praying and got into bed again with a lighter heart, her mother knocked on the door. She sat on the edge of Fatma's bed. "Please don't go to school tomorrow," she whispered, "I don't know what they would do to you." Fatma shook her head and wearily uttered four mere words "I must face it."
It was a sunny, warm day at the university. The guards were coated with shiny silver shields with matching pistols clutched tightly in their hands, eyes looking around as if they were guarding a shrine. Fatma approached the place which she previously deemed safe; her university.
As her steps brought her closer to the gate, she straightened her shoulders, fixed her hijab with her face held high, and attempted to pass through the gate. In the blink of an eye, the soldiers with their silver armor broke their noble stance and struck her like hungry vultures, preventing her from entering the university. The familiar breeze collided with the tip of the lime green hijab and moved through the golden engravings.
They knocked her to the ground; she could not fight back as she endeavored to keep her hijab steady. She tried to stand up, but they knocked her down with sheer hostility as if that soothing lime green was a menace to them. The chaos stirred inside her head and made the world spin.
***
"The new rector of the Istanbul University invites students with hijabs to sit down for a friendly talk!" read the freshly printed, meticulously edited newspaper with giant, happy letters that struck Fatma's eyes like bullets.
After two months of limiting her contact with the university after they brutally prevented her entrance, Fatma finally built the courage to pick up the newspaper her mom brought that morning. But the moment she read this news; she quickly crumpled the newspaper. No matter what they called it, she knew there was nothing friendly about those interactions. So many of Fatma's friends told her about what they experienced in, as they called it, "the persuasion rooms." Dimmed lights, emotional mobbing, and fierce pressure to remove the hijab. "Look at your bright and gorgeous hair. You cannot hide this beautiful aspect of yours under a piece of fabric; it would be a shame!" said the woman who maintained the "friendly talks" on behalf of the rector. Many of those women didn't take their hijabs off, but they left the rooms with emotional traumas.
No matter the damage those rooms have caused, those students originated protests and initiated movements to eradicate the consequences of the post-modern coup in Turkey with sheer diligence. People from the right, the left, communists and liberals, anyone with a genuine heart attended these rallies to go against this violation.
Once the valedictorian students with hijabs started protesting, the movement gained momentum. They weren't allowed to attend their graduation ceremony, to give their valedictorian toasts, their parents couldn't see their daughters graduate with honor. However, one dear friend of Fatma disregarded this rule. She was the valedictorian, she had earned her degree, and her hijab was going to shine while she was giving her toast. She ran up to the stage during the ceremony, but they closed her mouth. "You have no right to speak!" they screamed. They dragged her from the stage.
Fatma knew what her friend would say. She would scream her pain; she would lament how easy it is to steal the future of a generation. Even though she couldn't physically articulate those words, Fatma and many others comprehended the message she tried to convey by going up to that stage with a hijab on her head. "You have no right to speak" echoed throughout Turkey for years.
***
"We regret to inform you that your record to our university is terminated upon three unsuccessful renewals. We wish you success with your future endeavors." Fatma stared at the letter she just got, hoping that the wording would spontaneously change in a matter of days, and she wouldn't have to confront this brutal note. Nothing happened. Those months-long intensive protests and rallies hadn't changed a thing. After the new academic year, the government took profound precautions to prevent the protestors. Under no circumstances was the hijab acceptable.
At this point, like every student with a hijab, Fatma ought to decide. She could remove it and carry on with her education, but she refused. So instead, she tossed the letter to the back of a drawer and promised herself to never open that drawer ever again. She knew she had to move on; no matter how heartbreaking it was, this chapter of her life had come to a sorrowful end.
Three years of university had matured her emotionally and intellectually. She was eager to find new jobs and grounds to develop herself without a diploma but with her hijab. So, she wrote a book about contemporary Muslim leaders to inspire many. It was her first work, but definitely not the last.
Years passed, and not only did she raise a modest career, but she also raised three beautiful children and became an outstanding mother who met her kids' expectations. Along with being the best mother her kids could ever want, she preserved her desire to contribute to people intellectually. For that, she kept on writing and producing. But she also planted the importance of maintaining one's identity in her kids' heads. Her biggest wish was to share her productions with her kids when they grow old.
After eleven years, while she was rising in her editorial career, the government issued a new law allowing people with hijabs to enroll in universities. Even though she was five months pregnant, she renewed her record the day after the government's announcement. She was 32 when she graduated with honor.
After Fatma graduated, she wrote an article on the 20th anniversary of the 28 of February 1997. This was the first time Fatma could ever cry about the post-modern coup and her stolen eleven years; drops of tears soared through her face as she pressed the keyboard. This was a catharsis for her. She acknowledged that someone out there is listening to her voice, is inspired by her, and most importantly, believes none of it was her fault.
***
The word inspiration has many equivalents in many languages. But to me, it can only be associated with a feeling; the pride I felt when I placed my mother's pictures when she earned her Ph.D. into our family albums. When she smiled fearlessly, wearing the lime green hijab with golden engravings on her head, holding her degree, she was no longer Fatma; but Dr. Fatma.
It has been 25 years since the 28 of February 1997, the post-modern coup announcement. For these 25 years, no one could grasp why the people with hijabs were targeted. Yet, my mother showed incredible resilience and courage to an unfairness she couldn't thoroughly understand throughout the years. No matter how hard it was, my mother preserved her identity and taught her son to never give up, just like she never did. Growing up with her stories and anecdotes, I recognized that a figure, a mother, in my life showed me what strength is.
The smile that she wore as she fought for everything she believed in throughout the years never ceases to fill me with mere inspiration along with the will and courage to fight for others—my mother's fearless smile.