Nalan, a trans activist from Ankara, recounts their childhood and the story of their mother, who, forced into marriage and sold several times, abandoned them. Nalan has overcome their resentment: no woman, they argue, should be forced to marry or have children.
Please note! If you have not accepted the website’s cookies, viewing contents from YouTube may be disabled.
Vuoi ascoltare e leggere altre testimonianze? Sostieni l’archivio vivo di Lunàdigas!
Ecco la trascrizione completa del video:
NALAN: «My name is Nalan, I live in Ankara and I am 27 years old. I am an activist of the “Pembe hayat” (“Pink life”), I am transsexual, or rather not a trans man or a trans woman, but just a trans person. I lived my whole life as trans and still do.
I was very impressed by the docufilm and for this reason, I would like to tell my mother’s story.
Since you want to expand your project, I have to say that not always there are stories with a happy ending.
My mother was forced by her family to get married at 16, brought home by her husband as a “kuma” (the second wife) since the first wife couldn’t have children. She was sold to that man for 16,000 Turkish liras. The saddest part of the story begins now: in fact she gets married, gave birth to 3 children although she did not want them, then follows the man she married abandoning her children. She is sold once again by the family to another man, my father, and when I was three this man leaves, too. But this time my mother decides to put her whole family aside and to live her life, with her own strength.
When I was three, she decided to leave me with my father and to go her own way. She left me with my father, but he didn’t take care of me either. After that, throughout my childhood, all through my teenage years, I’ve always felt resentment towards my mother. I wondered why she had done it, if she had abandoned the others, too. I met my older sisters only at the age of 14, and I discovered their very sad stories, too: someone had been forced to marry, like my mother, someone had always lived in an orphanage, in squalid conditions. But then I started to think that maybe my mother had done the right thing: a woman who gave birth doesn’t necessarily have to take care of them. No woman should be forced to have children, nor does she have a duty of care. She was in a position of strength, she was at her eighth husband, she managed to build a future for herself, the man had land and an apartment. After my father, everything changed: her life revolved around weddings. It’s like revenge, maybe a little cruel, but she’s an uneducated woman from Anatolia, who thus takes revenge for the pain she has suffered… There is no better revenge.
I haven’t talked to her in years. I thought it was me who didn’t look for her, but she hasn’t been looking for me for 8 years. I would like to tell her something, though she probably won’t see this video: she did the right thing, and should never regret or look back. She has no obligation towards choices that are not hers and should continue to live doing what she wants most. In Turkey, there are many stories like this, many women forced to marry and have children with no chance to refuse. They should never feel obligated towards their children, they shouldn’t be obligated to have them study, to raise them, they don’t have to take care of them. They can live life as they wish, like I do now.»
Vuoi ascoltare e leggere altre testimonianze? Sostieni l’archivio vivo di Lunàdigas!
