Emir stood in front of the bookstore window, the card still in his hand.
He didn't go inside tonight.He didn't need to.
The Circle had done something to him.Not in a dramatic, revolutionary way.But like a single word that makes a sentence finally make sense.
"You've seen the wound now," the voice said."The real one."
— "And what am I supposed to do with it?"
"Press your hand to it.And don't flinch when it bleeds."
At work the next morning, he opened the school e-library.Not for the IT update he was supposed to implement,but to check something.
He typed in:"History – 20th Century – Republic of Turkey."
The first file loaded.
Colorful. Well-designed.Too clean.
He scrolled.Page after page.
Reforms were listed like bullet points.No context.No voice.No name.
Until, finally, he reached the very bottom.A single line:
"Led by early political leadership, the new state sought modernization."
No mention.Not even a title.The man who had once been a chapter was now reduced to a vague silhouette.
He closed the file.Opened another.Same result.
No Mustafa Kemal.No Atatürk.
Just silence where legacy used to live.
He sat back in his chair, dizzy.
"They erased you."
"No," the voice answered. "They buried me.But the soil was shallow."
—
That afternoon, he printed a single page from an old archive.It contained a quote:
"Authority, if not based on free will and reason,becomes not power—but oppression."
He pinned it to the corkboard in the hallway near the cafeteria.
By lunch, someone had already scribbled "brainwashed" across it.
By the end of the day, it had been torn down.
—
That night, Emir sat by the window in his apartment.City lights blinked like warning signals.The page was gone.But something had begun.
"You knew they'd tear it down," the voice said.
— "Yes."
"But you put it up anyway."
— "Yes."
"Then you've already chosen your path."
Emir leaned forward, forehead against the glass.
The city wasn't sleeping.
Neither was he.