The History of Reading Books*

The period in which I started reading books coincides with the last year of primary school. There was a school trip to the library. We went there holding hands. It was a time of no internet world. Children didn’t sit at home or go to internet cafes. Rather, they played marbles in the streets; turned hula hoop; played pogs to collect more of them, and we played football with kids from back street neighborhoods.

The road has just been paved asphalt. The neighborhood used to have an earth road, and it was recently paved asphalt back then. We were madly fond of running after earth movers. Their work was equal to landing on the moon in our eyes. It was just asphalt after all. However, it was so important to me back then that I fell into a trance while watching the vehicle leveling the road, and I couldn’t hear the big truck coming towards me and horning. If it weren’t for a worker pulling me aside on the road, I would have been crushed under the huge truck whose driver hadn’t noticed my small body until he got too close to step on the brake. Probably my adventure of reading books would come to an end before the school trip to the town library the next day.

We were passing by the newly asphalt paved streets holding hands. Our Turkish teacher was controlling us just as a shepherd so that we wouldn’t be separated from each other. He was guiding the herd, when we wobbled around. I was happy to be a sheep as our shepherd was so unique; at least I felt this way when I was at my age. It hasn’t changed a bit now as well. I still remember my teacher with respect. When the herd was moving, the shepherd commanded them to keep walking with slow steps. The shepherd crossed across the street with quick steps, opened the waste bin lid, and spitted. I never forgot the shepherd’s this considerate attitude that day. The people who spitted on the streets and kept on walking as if nothing happened probably didn’t have a shepherd such as mine. How could it be possible for a child to spit on the floor, if that child’s idol person, his teacher, acted in such a sensitive way?

When we reached the gate of the library, my admiration for my teacher had increased much more than before. Now the gigantic door was waiting to open and let us in. I cannot describe how dreadful that door seemed to me, who had a tiny little body. It was an old building probably going back to Ottoman times. It was in the city centre and it was a long-lived structure. The door reflected the power and glory of those times. Probably I should have been proud with this structure; however, the door only seemed gigantic, ragged, and scary to me at that time.

Appearance is mostly the mirror of reality. The goodness of people inside is reflected on their face or you can buy a book only because you like the design. That dreadful door was reflecting the gloom inside. I was aware of it when I went in. It was a multiple floor building stuffed with books, shelves on whose sun-lighted parts dust flitted, wood parquets that disturbed the peace a library should have with its creak every time you stepped on it, chandeliers that make you feel you went to a ball rather than a library but had a gray light than a white one because of the dust on it, windows whose glass that seemed to fall at any instant with worn-out wood and layer-by-layer dirt.

It was the best method to bring children to a library to endear reading books to them and raise their awareness, yet not to a depressing place such as this. Really, were all the libraries like that? I was too young to answer that question back then. Maybe it was because I thought that I couldn’t think of seeing another library. You live in a small city and that is the only library you can go. Could anyone have been to a library other than this one in another city? Would they take me in even if I went there anyway? What would I have done if they understood that I am from a different city, caught me, and put me in jail?

I bummed about for a while, looked at the thick books and got surprised. How could they have read these books? Let alone reading how could they have written those books? Whereas I got bored of writing a two-lines assignment, how could they have written pages-length texts? For some reason, the gloomy air in the room, dusty shelves, wood parquet that I stepped on carefully in order not to squeak, windows that shivered when the wind blew, and the chandelier that I was afraid that could fall on me started to engulf me in themselves. Swirl was engulfing me in itself. I found myself engulfed in books. I couldn’t keep my hands off books with a hesitation of touching a precious jeweler, but I couldn’t touch them in any way. I wanted to take any one of them, and I didn’t care which genre it was. I just wanted to turn pages, and see what is inside, but I was afraid at the same time. What could I have done if any harm is done to a page or the other books fell when I was taking a book. The excitedly beating of my heart was equal to the thrill when I got a football as a gift in my circumcision feast. They have given me a pile of precious presents, money, and gold, yet that football was the most precious one for me. Who knows for how many days I slept with it together, and I even didn’t bring it to streets for fear that it could get dirty. Just as I reached out to a book with the same desire I touched my football and left all the question marks aside that I kept my hand off of the books when I heard the monotonous and freaky voice of a library staff.

“Don’t touch the books!”

What could have happened if I touched them? Was I committing a theft? Was I hurting somebody? What harm a little boy, a tiny one, could have done to a book? The minutes I spent there went by thinking of it. Maybe that is why I didn’t take it all in my stride that I didn’t have even a kurus with me to buy some of the cheap books sold at the library. After a day which was fun at the start, scary when we reached the library gate, shy when we first when inside, adapted after a while, and unhappy after the warning of the woman who works at library, I came back home leaving behind an awful day with ups and downs.

My family who surrounded to the rush of the life didn’t notice the inertia in me. I couldn’t know if I should be happy or get upset about it. How could I have explained this situation to my family? My father would straightly go to the library and beat her a frazzle, and I couldn’t say that I would be upset about it.  However, it wasn’t what I wanted. It was heart-wrenching that they didn’t notice my sadness. They could have asked me about my languishment, listen to my problem and want to solve it. Of course, they should have understood first, but it didn’t seem possible in the circumstances of that time. I told myself that I won’t behave like this. I will look at my child’s face every day; I will fuss over them, and try to understand if they have any trouble at all.

-Please judge, I haven’t done anything wrong. I just touched a book, and I didn’t even turn a page.

-You surpassed a forbidden place. You touched something that you shouldn’t have touched, while didn’t we tell you not to touch anything?

-No, no, nobody told me not to touch anything. In fact, our teacher told us to touch books so as to feel them. He told us that that was the way our wish for reading could have increased.

The person I was addressing as a judge was actually my teacher. How could have my teacher who advised me to touch books judged me now?

-You are telling me a lie. We told you not to touch. You tried to reach something that is forbidden. You didn’t obey our order. You aren’t a good kid, and you need to be punished. Type it girl! It is considered by the court. Inasmuch as this boy’s grades were always the highest grades in his schooling years, as it is understood that he didn’t get a good education it is decided that he should repeat primary school from the first grade.

Tears broke down my cheeks, and I couldn’t say a single word. How could any of this have happened to me? What I have done apart from touching a book? How it happened that my father couldn’t save me? Where was my mother or sister?

When I opened my eyes, I realized that my pillow was wet. My tears in my dream had really fall down my eyes.

Ban and punishment attracted me. Although I had a fear of going into jail, I took the documents delivered at the library necessary for having a membership, and I examined them. It didn’t require so many details, and I had to go to the library after school that day.

My first meeting with libraries and adjustment to books started like afore mentioned. It didn’t happen that not any situations dispirited me. When I was looking through some books on shelves, one day the librarian woman scolded my by telling me that, “Don’t disorganize the shelves! Tell me the name of the book you want!” In another day on my next visit to library, she could tell me that, “How could I know? Just go and look for it somewhere there!” Probably she did almost everything to disincline me towards libraries, yet reading had already turned into a passion for me.

In the passing years library culture became outdated, it was like that at least for my sake. I could buy any book whenever I wish by paying its price. I even had a small scale library at my home. In fact, naming it as a library would be very selfish. I don’t know if it was because of that woman who had a trauma effect on me, but I don’t like sharing my books with people. If it happens that someone asks me to borrow one of my books, when I started to tell people terms of use, they would give up from borrowing the book and go to bookstore to buy it. I don’t like anybody touching my books.

Whenever I stop reading books, a feeling of regret invades me. There are a deficiency, and an emptiness that are indescribable. Later I start reading books that I borrowed from here and there one after another. I again stop reading books when my brain gets tired. A vicious circle goes away by oneself.

The favorite genre of a person changes over time. Whereas I read adventure books, I confronted with books that had “love” as the leading character, which was the most inexplicable feeling people could experience; therefore, I learned what love is theoretically from books.

It is in every work field that there is a difference between theory and practice, yet when the topic is love the cliff increases more and more. The love in books is very unlike to what is lived in real life. Well then how it was possible that those romances were written? How could a person have told love in lines without actually having it?

In a time period when I was suffering the pangs of love, I found myself thinking on this issue. I had believed that love as it is told in the books actually existed until she deserted me. Much as I had ebbs and flows in my life, I had moments and feelings that were enough to make me believe the existence of love stories. When I was together with her reading books were meaningful for me, and I read more and more books. For some reason I couldn’t enjoy other occupations as much as I enjoyed telling her the things I read about. I just couldn’t.

My words wouldn’t suffice to describe her looking at me with full of admiration, her stance seeming as if she is hanging on my words, her sweet scent she scattered walking around, the softness of her hand holding mine, her skin clear as a baby’s skin, yellowish hair on her lily-white skin, freckles on her dislocated cheekbones like growing snowdrops on her snow white skin, and her flawless nose that is understood to be off a master sculptor’s hands.

These were the things that pushed me towards reading. It was about living these moments, these feelings, and knowing that she was looking at me. Reading doesn’t make any sense to me unless I could recount what I read to her.

Actually the woman working at the library pushed me towards reading. By calling it a ban, and releasing the charm of ban, she probably unknowingly encouraged me to read.

A baby took this charm off my hands after some years, this time knowingly, and leaving nothing to recount on my side.

*Originally translated from "Kitap Okumanın Tarihi" by Ms. Koc. (Akdeniz University)