The Weight of a Single Prayer

For thousands of years, the roots of the family ran deep into the same earth.

They had been kings and farmers, merchants who traded silk and spice, scholars who wrote poetry in the margins of scrolls. Their history was written not just in books, but in the creak of wooden doors, the scent of saffron in the air, the way a grandmother’s hands folded dough the same way her grandmother had. They were a tree—ancient, wide, rooted in a land that had seen empires rise and fall.

Then came the fire.

Ziya’s grandfather was a boy when the world turned to ash. He ran, barefoot, through smoke and screams, clutching a single photograph of his mother. The tree was uprooted. The roots snapped. They crossed borders, and decades, finally landing in a new city, a new language, a new sky. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs and the memory of a home that no longer existed. They built a new life, brick by brick, with quiet dignity. They learned to smile in a way that didn’t betray their grief. They taught their children to be good, to be quiet, to be invisible.

Ziya’s father grew into a man, strong and kind. He married a woman with eyes like moonlight. They had Ziya, a bright-eyed eight-year-old who loved the smell of fresh milk on a cold morning and the sound of his father whistling while he fixed the broken faucet.

But the world doesn’t forget. It only waits.

Then, the war came.

It wasn’t a war fought only on battlefields, but in headlines, in classrooms, in the way people looked at each other. It began with whispers, foreigners, not like us, not welcome. Then it became slogans. Then it became laws. Then it became violence.

And in every country, in every city, the first to be blamed, the first to be punished, were the migrants.

One morning, the sky was still dark, but the city was already awake. Birds sang. A dog barked. Then-screams.

Not distant. Not muffled. Close.

Ziya sat up in bed, heart pounding. The sound came from the street, wails, sharp and broken, like a child’s toy being crushed. He pulled on his slippers, his fingers trembling. He didn’t want to look. But he had to.

He opened the door.

The air was thick with the smell of smoke and something metallic. A neighbor’s house—just across the street—was a wreck. The front door hung off its hinges. Inside, the walls were smeared with something dark. And on the sidewalk, a woman’s shoe. A child’s shoe.

Ziya didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He just stared.

Then he saw the paper.

It was taped to the door of their own apartment. Yellowed, crumpled, as if someone had pressed it in with a finger full of hate.

“Leave now, or tonight we’re coming for you and your family”

His breath stopped.

His hands shook. He wanted to run. To hide it. To pretend it wasn’t real. But something inside him-something small and fierce-whispered: Give it to your father.

He ran back inside. His mother was in the kitchen, humming softly, cracking eggs into a pan. The smell of butter and toast filled the air. She didn’t look up.

“Mom,” Ziya said, voice cracking. “Dad… there’s something on the door.”

She turned. Her eyes widened. Then, slowly, she looked at him. No words. Just the quiet, terrible understanding that had been building for years.

His father stood at the window, his back to them. His shoulders were rigid. He didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. He had heard.

Ziya handed him the paper.

His father read it. One sentence. Then another. His hands trembled. Then he folded it carefully, like a letter from a soldier on the front.

“Call John,” he said, voice low. “Now.”

John was a friend. A man who had once helped them when the papers were lost. A man who had a voice. A man who could make things happen.

The call was short. The voice on the other end was calm. “I’ll see what I can do.”

But Ziya knew. This wasn’t a favor. This was a reprieve. A temporary stay of execution.

The family sat in silence. The milk sat untouched on the table. The eggs were burned.

They could run. They could leave. But where? There was no permanent escape. The world had no safe place for people like them. They had been here for decades. They had paid taxes. They had raised children. They had been good neighbors.

But in the eyes of the mob, they were still foreign. Still other.

They could live in fear. Or they could become too valuable to lose.

So they chose the second.

They reached out. They told their story-again and again-to anyone who would listen. They helped their neighbors. They volunteered at the school. They donated to the food bank. They became the family who always had a spare meal, a warm coat, a kind word.

They became the heart of the community.

And when the next threat came, when a new note was taped to the door, this time with a bullet inside, they didn’t hide. They stood together.

Because now, the community stood with them.

They were no longer just a family. They were a fortress.

And Ziya, now a man, would one day look back and say:

We didn’t survive because we were strong.

We survived because we were loved.

And he would cry.

And so would the world.

The Boy Who Read the World

Years passed.

The city changed. The sky grew taller, the streets wider, the voices louder. But inside the small apartment on the corner, the walls still held the echoes of fear. The door still had the scar from the bullet. The milk still sat on the table, though now it was never spilled.

Ziya was no longer a boy.

He was a teenager—tall, quiet, with eyes that missed nothing. He walked through the world like a ghost, but his mind was a storm. He carried books like armor. He carried stories like breath.

The bookstore was his sanctuary.

It stood at the end of a narrow alley, tucked between a bakery and a shuttered photographer. Its windows were fogged with time, its sign hanging crooked, the letters faded to a soft gray. But inside-inside, it was a universe.

The air smelled of old paper and dust and something warm, like sandalwood and memory. The shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, crammed with books that had lived through wars, love, and silence. The floor was wooden, uneven, and always slightly creaky underfoot. Ziya would sit on the cold tiles, legs tucked beneath him, a book open in his lap, and lose himself.

He read everything.

The Odyssey, where Odysseus wandered the seas for ten years just to get home.

The Diary of Anne Frank, where a girl wrote her dreams in a hidden room.

The Prophet, where a man spoke of love and sorrow in poetry so beautiful it hurt.

The Tale of Genji, where a prince loved a woman who could never be his.

Books taught him how to feel. They taught him how to speak. They taught him that words could be more real than the world.

He read aloud-first in whispers, then louder, until the shopkeeper, Mr. Soliman, would smile and say, “Ziya, you’ve got a voice like a river. Let it flow.”

He didn’t know it yet, but he was learning to be a man not by what he did, but by what he knew.

One rainy afternoon, he found a book tucked behind a stack of old encyclopedias. It was small, leather-bound, its spine cracked. The title was faded: The Language of Roots.

He opened it.

And then he saw the drawings.

Not of trees, but of people. Faces. Children. A woman with a scarf wrapped around her head, holding a child. A man with a beard, standing in front of a door that looked just like the one in his own apartment. A map, drawn in pencil, with a single word in the center: Home.

Ziya’s breath caught.

He turned the page.

There was a letter.

It was written in a shaky hand, in a language he didn’t recognize. But beneath it, in English, the words were clear:

“We left our home because the world said we were not welcome. We built a new life, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. We did not ask for this. But we will not forget. We will not disappear. We will write our story. We will live.”

He looked up. The shop was empty. Rain tapped against the window. The world outside was gray and quiet.

But inside, something had changed.

He had found the truth.

He had found his family’s story.

And he had found his voice.

He didn’t cry. Not yet.

But he whispered the words to himself, over and over, like a prayer:

We will not disappear.

The Day the World Went Silent

It was a Tuesday.

The sky was the color of wet concrete. A cold wind cut through the city, biting at exposed skin. Ziya had decided to go for a walk-not a purposeful journey, not a mission, just a need to feel the world again. To breathe air that wasn’t thick with memory. To move without fear.

He walked through the park, past the old oak tree where he used to read. Past the bench where his mother once sat, crying after a dream she couldn’t name. He passed a group of children laughing, their voices sharp and bright, like glass breaking. He smiled. He didn’t know why.

Then the world changed.

One moment, he was stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. The next, hands grabbed him from behind. A cloth-scented with bleach and metal-was pressed over his mouth. He struggled. He kicked. He screamed.

But the world went black.

He woke in a basement.

The air was thick with mildew and something sour. The walls were concrete. The only light came from a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, flickering like a dying heartbeat. He was tied to a chair. His wrists were raw. His mouth was dry.

A man stood in front of him.

He didn’t speak. He just looked at Ziya with eyes like stone.

Then he reached into his pocket.

Ziya saw the gun.

He saw the cylinder.

He saw the bullet.

And he knew.

Russian roulette.

The man spun the chamber. He laughed-a low, hollow sound. He pressed the barrel to Ziya’s temple.

Click.

Ziya closed his eyes.

Then-bang.

The bullet was in the chamber. But the gun was empty.

The man laughed again.

“Next time,” he said, “you’ll be lucky.”

Ziya didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He just sat there, trembling, his mind racing.

He thought of the bookstore. Of the book he’d found. Of his mother’s voice saying, “We are not alone.”

He thought of the letters in the box. Of the photograph of his grandfather, young and afraid.

He thought of the world.

And he thought: I will not disappear.

The man left.

Ziya was alone.

He sat in the dark.

He didn’t know how long he was there.

But when the door opened again, it was not the man who came back.

It was a woman.

She looked at him, her eyes wide. She didn’t speak.

She untied his hands.

She handed him a glass of water.

Then she said, “You’re not alone.”

Ziya looked at her.

And for the first time in his life, he cried.

Not because he was afraid.

But because he was seen.

The Move

The war didn’t end.

It only grew.

The city became a battlefield of silence. The streets were filled with fear. The air was thick with whispers. The government cracked down. The neighbors turned against each other. The police began to arrest people without reason.

And Ziya knew.

He had to leave.

He had no choice.

He packed what little he had. His papers. His books. His memories. He left the apartment at dawn, under the cover of fog. He didn’t say goodbye to the neighbors. He didn’t look back.

He went to the airport with his passport and visa.

Stood at the edge of a new country. A new life. And a new day.

And there, in the cold morning light, Ziya looked at the paper in his hand.

It was a letter.

It said:

“We will not disappear.”

And he smiled.

Because he knew.

The tree had been uprooted.

But it had also grown.

And now, it would grow again.

The Mute Room

Hate knows no borders.

Indifference knows no color.

And pain-oh, pain-has no mercy.

It came without warning.

A car. A scream. A burst of gunfire.

Ziya was standing by the window, gazing at the blue sky-the same sky that had been his only friend for years. The sky that had watched him grow, had seen him cry, had witnessed his silence. He was lost in thought, in a dream of a world where he didn’t have to flinch at every sound, where he didn’t have to count the seconds between breaths.

Then-crack! Crack! Crack!

Bullets tore through the air. They shattered the window. They hit the wall to his left. They ricocheted off the table to his right. Glass rained down like frozen tears.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t run.

He stood there, frozen-his body locked, his mind blank, his heart hammering like a trapped bird.

He couldn’t believe it.

This was his home.

This was his sanctuary.

And now, it was under attack.

He looked at the bullet holes. He looked at the blood on the wall. He looked at the sky again-still blue. Still beautiful. Still indifferent.

And then he realized:

He was still alive.

Not because he was lucky.

But because he had been seen-even if only by the sky.

But the silence that followed was worse.

Not the silence of peace.

But the silence of the mute room.

The one he had lived in for the first five years of his life.

The room where words were forbidden.

Where fear was a language.

Where he could not speak-because didn't dare.

He had thought he had left it behind.

But now, it had found him again.

He sat on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. His hands trembled. His breath came in shallow gasps. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. But he couldn’t.

Because the words were gone.

They had been taken from him.

By war. By hate. By silence.

And so, he did the only thing he could.

He reached for the paper.

He reached for the pen.

And he began to write.

The Friend That Was Not a Person

For years, Ziya had believed that a friend was a person.

A warm hand. A shared laugh. A voice that said, “I’m here.”

But now, he knew the truth.

A friend is not always a person.

A friend can be a note.

A letter.

A page.

A voice that speaks when no one else will.

A friend is a net.

A meal.

A shield.

A sword.

A text that says, “I’m here.”

A presence.

A dream shared.

A secret revealed.

A promise kept.

“Welcome home, dear friend.”

But for Ziya, the friend that sees him and would accept his call, was not a person.

It was a paper.

And a pen.

And that's fine.

Because words-only words-could save him now.

So he wrote.

He wrote about the sky.

He wrote about the bullets.

He wrote about the fear.

He wrote about the silence.

He wrote about the man who shot at his home.

He wrote about the woman who untied him in the basement.

He wrote about the book that said, “We will not disappear.”

He wrote about his father’s voice.

His mother’s hands.

His sister’s laughter.

And he wrote about the moment he realized:

He was not alone.

Because the words were his friend.

Because the paper was his home.

Because the pen was his voice.

Ziya in his own words:

“Find your voice,

They say.

I have found my voice.

They say pretend,

Misunderstanding,

Paper cuts on my soul.

They sting, they bleed.

This is not fine.

My voice to you is

Described as a whisper of a ghost.

However, to me

It is like thunder in my mind .

When told to speak out loud by you,

There are words that

I must take from the deepest part of me,

With every syllable

Struggling against my throat

And clawing to be let out.

On the other hand,

What you hear seems dry.

But for me, it feels

Like fresh wounds.

But if I have to

Call out to someone

In the next room,

I find myself falling into myself,

And my voice coming out

As though it emerged from the dawn of time.

It leaves me panting, empty,

Sometimes it sounds

Like I’m yelling

A cry in your ears;

While for me this is an earthquake

That breaks my soul.

The effort leaves me gasping, drained.

Peace is a soft shawl

Within silence.

At last,

My mind breathes.

In stillness,

And in mute moments,

I am complete.”

And then, he wrote one last sentence.

“I am not afraid. I am not silent. I am not alone.”

He looked at the page.

And for the first time in years, he smiled.

Because he had found his friend.

Not in a person.

But in a word.

Not in a voice.

But in a sentence.

Not in a hand.

But in a handwriting.

And that-was enough.

The End: The First Word

The world didn’t change.

Not all at once.

But it began to listen.

Ziya didn’t publish his story in a book.

He didn’t speak at a podium.

He didn’t fight for justice in the streets.

He did something quieter.

Something stronger.

He wrote.

A compliment on his writing is an acknowledgment that he is seen.

He wrote in the margins of old notebooks.

He wrote on the back of receipts.

He wrote on the walls of the bookstore-where no one could see, but where the ink whispered to the air.

And then, one day, a woman walked into the shop.

She was young.

Her eyes were tired.

Her hands were shaking.

She saw the book on the shelf.

The Language of Roots.

She opened it.

And there, tucked between the pages, was a new letter.

It was written in Ziya’s hand.

“I am not afraid. I am not silent. I am not alone.”

And beneath it, a note:

“You are not alone.”

She didn’t know who wrote it.

But she knew.

She sat on the floor, like Ziya once had.

And she began to write.

Years later, a child stood at the window of a new city, watching the sky.

He saw a car drive by.

He saw a man with a gun.

He saw a woman with a book.

And he didn’t flinch.

Because he had heard the story.

Because he had read the words.

Because he had found his voice.

And he said,

“I am not afraid. I am not silent. I am not alone.”

And the world listened.

Because now, it knew:

The voice is not a whisper.

It is not a ghost.

It is not a wound.

It is a thunder.

It is a beginning.

It is a home.

The tree was uprooted.

But it grew.

And now, it will grow again.

Not in silence.

But in words.

In stories.

In voices.

In hearts.

In the quiet, relentless act of saying:

“I am here.”

The End

What if we experience before we name?

What if we live before we label?

What if we feel the sun’s warm claim

before we call it “day” or “amber”?

What if we taste the fruit, untaught,

its sweetness sharp, its texture wild,

before a word is ever brought

to cage it, tamed and mild?

What if we love without a role,

a son, a mother, friend, or wife,

just presence, breathing, soul to soul,

the pulse before the name of life?

What if the world, in pure delay

of judgment, lets us truly see?

Not wrong, not strange, not far away,

just being, vast and free.

Then maybe, when the names arrive,

they’ll fit like gloves, not chains or walls,

born not to limit, split, or divide,

but to honor how it feels, to be.

And so, the world began to listen.

Because Ziya had spoken.

Because we are all Ziya.

And we are all here.