When Kenan was three years old, he didn’t know much about the world. He only knew that his father, Raga, often spent time at the family-owned printing office.
One day, Kenan was looking for him. Curious, he pushed open the door to a room at the end of the office.
What he saw froze him in place. Raga was with a woman — not his mother. They were tangled together on a bed that Kenan didn’t even know was there.
Before he could say anything, Raga snapped at him and drove him out of the room. The little boy could only back away, confused, tears welling in his eyes.
His uncles — his mother’s younger brothers who also worked there — knew what had happened, but none of them dared to tell his mother. Kenan grew up carrying that memory. Strangely, though he was only three, it never faded.
Years passed. Raga and Kenan’s mother divorced. Raga remarried, not once but twice. Kenan stopped keeping track of how many times his father had cheated. What he did know was that Raga never truly provided for his children, never gave them the support they needed.
One day, when Kenan was already an adult with a job, Raga came asking for money — supposedly for medical treatment. Out of some lingering sense of duty, Kenan gave him the money. Later, he discovered it hadn’t been used for treatment at all, but was given to Raga’s new wife.
That day, Kenan made a decision.
There would no longer be a place for Raga in his life.
“Even if he dies,” Kenan thought one night, “I will never visit his grave.”
And he meant it. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t revenge. It was a principle — one that had been carved into his heart since he was three years old, since the day he opened the door to the room at the end of the office.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
