For This Soil, For Home

My beloved Ayşe,

The night is quiet now, which is strange. All day we charged the enemy lines on the ridge — wave after wave, over the bodies of our brothers. Our commander, Kemal Bey, stood in the open under the enemy’s fire and shouted to us: “I do not order you to fight — I order you to die.” And we did not hesitate. We died. But we held the ground.

The enemy ships are still out there on the sea. I can see their lights from here, tiny pinpricks on the water, like the stars reflected in the Sakarya River on a summer night. They are so far from home, these men, just as we are. I do not hate them, Ayşe. They are farmers and shopkeepers and boys who have never been away from their mothers before. I see them fall and I think: someone in a distant land will receive a letter just like this one.

Tonight I carried a wounded officer to the medic. He was an Australian — barely twenty, fair-haired. He looked at me and said something I could not understand. But his eyes said everything. He was afraid. He wanted his mother. We are the same, all of us, when the bullets fly.

Bugün bu toprak için, evimiz için savaşıyoruz. Onlar da bizim gibi evlerinden uzakta. Ama bu toprak bizim.

(Today we fight for this soil, for our home. They too are far from their homes, like us. But this soil is ours.)

Kemal Bey is a lion among men. He walks among us as if the bullets cannot touch him. Perhaps they cannot. When he speaks, the men listen. When he commands, we follow. I would die for him. I almost have, today, twice.

I remember the wheat harvest last summer. The golden fields stretching to the hills. The smell of fresh bread from your hands. The call to prayer echoing across the valley at dusk. I close my eyes and I am there, lying in the tall grass, your head on my chest, the whole world peaceful and good.

Do not worry for me, my heart. We fight not for empire or for sultan, but for this soil, for home, for you. When this is over — and it will end, all wars end — I will come back to you. I will walk through the door and I will hold you and I will never leave again.

Until then, my love, my life — wait for me.

Your Mehmet