Am I Living Someone Else’s Life?

I don’t believe in lots of things. Not in God, not in “nazar”, nor in fate. It is pretty funny giving that I live in Turkey, and was raised to believe in stuff, maybe not in God but in something. I always only believed in myself. It probably comes from my little egoistic side, that I only believe in me. I am the only one who change the world I live in, I have the power over my life, no one else.

These thoughts have occurred to me when I was in fifth grade, after my first class of religion. I went home after and asked my mom if we were muslim. She said sure, my grandma said of course then I asked if we can change it or did we have to follow our families beliefs. My mom said you can after you are 18, my grandma who actually never showed that she was muslim in any way said no, it was already decided. I didn’t gave it much thought till I was 15. Then I decided I was a non-believer. A non-believer of everything.

Two days ago, my philosophy teacher emailed me about a new project: to read a book about “sufism” called “Aşk” or “Love” in English by Elif Shafak, and discuss it with bunch of people from our school and from Switzerland. I told my mom about it and said that we should get the book. She told me she already has it in her library and when I went to check it, it was there in all its glory. I started reading it and it captivated me with its first few pages. Then as usual, I started looking through the book, read the last page (I know it’s weird but I can’t help it) and saw some notes written through and some marked pages. I asked my mom if they were hers. She said no and told me that she never read that book (my mom loves getting books and then never reading them, I am the complete opposite, I hate when there is an unread book in my library). I asked her whose notes were those and she was as surprised as I was since she never liked second-hand books. (I love them, I get one each month. I just love reading someone else’s notes and thoughts on the book while I am reading the same thing.)

I took the book with me to vacation and thought I would read it there. While I was on the road, reading the book, I found some little sands through the pages and noticed that some pages had been wet by the sea and dried like that. I did not give it much thought. When we came to our destination, we rushed to the beach cause we were literally burning from the sun. I started reading the book on the beach (after we went into the sea) and somehow despite how careful I am with my books, it got some little sand and rocks between the pages and when I got out of the sea I accidentally spilled some sea water on my book.

I couldn’t help but think this was my book all along. I would have never read this book if it was not for my philosophy teacher and it would have rotten in the library of my mom but they picked this book. I would have never take this book to the beach but I had to finish it on the summer break and I couldn’t help but get curious about it.

I thought of the first owner and connected with her or him or maybe myself from that time. It was like it was this book’s “fate” which I do not believe in but let me tell you maybe after this, some little, very tiny part of me started believing. Not in God, or this big power that controls the world, but just in this person that read this book before me. Maybe I once again started believing in “myself”, just maybe.