I was in Poland last week on a business trip. As soon as it was evening and dark, I threw myself into my hotel room, I wanted to go to sleep immediately, but I found an English novel in the drawer that I thought was left for tourists. Although I had my own book with me, I was in the middle of an incredibly enjoyable and impressive saga, I could not put it down, I could not put it down, I could only finish it here.

His country was wiped off the map, razed to the ground, divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Just like Anatolia before the War of Independence. With his tiny body, he wrote a letter to the huge German Emperor Wilhelm and told him to get out of Poland.

Poland's legendary writer HenrykSienkiewicz thus became the darling of the Polish people... His fame spread with his struggle for the independence of his country and the Nobel Prize for literature he received in 1905 for his book "QuoVadis" (Latin: Where are you going).

The book begins with the "QuoVadis Epic" and, with its fairy-tale-like narrative, became one of the most widely read books in Europe.

The Polish writer HenrykSienkiewicz described the persecution in first century Rome and the epic resistance against persecution.

The story began as follows...

Fleeing from the persecution of the Roman Emperor Nero, who killed even his mother with his own hands and committed mass murders with incredible tortures because he was a Christian, St. Peter met Jesus Christ on his way, who disappeared from the tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. The last time he saw Jesus was when he was climbing Golgotha Hill with his cross on his back. He asked Jesus, "QuoVadisDomine", "Where are you going, Lord?" "I am going to Rome," said Jesus, "because you are running away from the people I saved, so I will go there again and be crucified"...

He was the most faithful disciple of Jesus. He had been tried with Jesus in Palestine, condemned to death by King Herod, traveled to Rome via Antioch, and for twenty-five years had spread Jesus' teachings and told people. At the Last Supper, when Jesus told him that he would deny him three times before daybreak and before the rooster crows, he said, "If anyone could do it to you, it would not be me." But when Jesus was arrested, the rooster crowed the first time when he said he was not a follower, the second time when he said he did not know him, and the third time when he said he had not seen him. Again, when he saw him being dragged away with the cross on his back, he disappeared into the crowd.

This time St. Peter was ashamed of Jesus, whom he had captured while fleeing from Rome and returned to Rome, and later, when he was sentenced to death by order of Nero, he wanted to die on the cross like Jesus. He was crucified upside down.

When Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his book about the fears and heroism of St. Peter, he certainly did not know that one day his own heroism would become legendary. Just like Che or Fidel Castro. Just like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk or his comrades in arms.

Although it is not possible to compare them to anyone else and such heroes, as Churchill said, come along once in a hundred years, no hero does his heroism just to be one. He has no calculations, he just jumps in with the most refined form, he is a hero because he is reckless. They consider the peace, trust and courage they carry on their backs but cannot give to others as the greatest burden. They never underestimate individual suffering as well as social pain and threats. They are people who can see even in the dark, or it doesn't matter, they still grope their way through.

You don't become a hero, you are born a hero. Even if a born hero has fears like St. Peter, the mask of fear is finally lifted from his face and the courage he hides somewhere in his innermost depths appears in its most sparkling form. In short, there are heroes of every time and place, whether they are born brave or not, and the world is built on their stories.

The world is full of these stories, but the stories of this land are crazier, crazier. People here are patient. They don't look for evil intentions before they are invaded in the north, south, east and west, they don't raise their voices if they are robbed of the food in their mouths, they are naive but not stupid, they are smart but they don't use their intelligence for evil. It is impoverished, exploited, deprived, played with like a cat with a mouse, yet it is optimistic.

And yet we...

No matter how deprived and poor we are, even if we are deprived of the rights that the west provides to western people because of the geography we live in, even if it is considered too much for us to live humanely. This geography, because of them, so that they can live happily, richly and safely, even if every moment and every second of our lives is pregnant with trouble, even if darkness descends like a curse, even if the garbage heaps of the west form piles at the bottom of the walls of Anatolia, and even if they are not enough, even if they dump the unbearably smelly garbage of the Middle East in our gardens...

The fact that courage rises from the deepest recesses and becomes flesh and bones, that the taste and smell of freedom, which seems like a dream, is recognized by the heroes as if they knew a friend, that the belief in them is beyond the greatest madness that a human being can do, and that epics are written, has been seen and seen in every age and time. Because the water and air of these lands are like no other and because they have taught us to live in blood and roses for centuries, the heroes of these lands are also different.

We are tired of these people crawling in our shadows, sneaking into the dark areas of our unity, touching our invisible wounds, bleeding our old familiar wounds. There must be a way or ways to heal wounds. We are tired of the fake aid and crocodile tears pumped in by the dark forces of the economy in the name of total depersonalization.

This land does not run out of restless heroes waiting to be discovered like the "Those Crazy Turks" of the War of Independence... I told you!... This land is different...!!!! I am not even talking about the born heroes of this land...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber