Chapter 17

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I was born in Diyarbakir, a city in southeast of Turkey. I had my law degree in Istanbul, Human Rights Law in Salzburg /Austria and International Criminal Law in Norwich/UK. I started my career in our family business in hospitality industry and restaurant management. Due to the content of our company and my infinitive desire of cooking I went to Paris to study at Le Cordon Bleu, the oldest culinary arts and cuisine school in the world. I did not recognize how my life was great until I started to work as a human rights lawyer, mostly voluntarily to support children and women.  Great experience! It was a revolution for my transformation. I stopped to complain and suffer from small things because I discovered what the other people’s life with real challenges. 

I want to share some of those people’s stories who made me feel very lucky and grateful. 

By Nesly Ann Brulee 

The First Travel of a Newborn Baby
 

It was before the last world cup. I had no idea what it would mean when I saw that photo on a news site on the internet. I knew nothing about how terrifying the story was.  In the ancient city of Diyarbakir in southeast of Turkey, where civilizations lived thousands of years by enriching the city, I was preparing the menu for lunch at the workplace I was managing then. There were celery soup, baby spinach and red beet salad as starters; risotto with seafood as the main course; and crème caramel as the dessert. Since the most delicious seafood comes out of cold and deep waters, those were the last days to enjoy the taste of shrimps, squid and mussels before the water heated up. I was a meticulous person. It was the beginning of May. An extraordinarily beautiful day. The azure and clear Middle East sky embraced everyone in joy, without discrimination. Thanks to the shadow of a few clouds, the awakening nature was breathing. 

A woman whom I assumed was my age, but later found out was twenty-eight when I read the news, a Syrian refugee, was seated in a wooden chair. The embroidered white cheesecloth covering her head made her face look plump and round. Her pale eyes looked almost nowhere. To the right of the photo frame was an x-ray device and a cardboard case which apparently came out of it. There was the image of the checkpoint at the entrance gate of Gaziantep State Hospital. My story, which sent me thousands of kilometers away from my homeland, started when this photo shattered the relationship I had with the truth. 

No reality could be personal. I was the culprit. 

As for the content of the news, I could not fully concentrate on anything again after reading it. The menus of the following days began to move away from satisfying my French, American and local customers who were accustomed to my sensibility. I devoted myself to putting together the missing pieces in the woman's story. It was not happening. I just couldn't get out of it.