The Beginning (For Now)

I was born in Hatay, Antakya.

My first relationship with writing started in primary school. Our teacher used to collect our poems, drawings, and short stories into a small class magazine. We would sell it at graduation night and use the money for a school trip the following year. I don't remember what I wrote back then, but I remember the feeling — the quiet certainty that something inside me could take form on paper.

Writing never left after that.

In high school, I studied web design. Later, I began studying mechanical engineering at university. Because my education was in English, I spent a preparatory year learning the language — a year that unexpectedly opened another door for me. I did not complete my engineering degree. I left before finishing.

Around that time, I gathered the poems I had written during my university years and published my first poetry book with a publishing house. That book still exists. So do many other drafts — poems and stories that are waiting for the right time and conditions.

Arabic is a language I learned from my family. I learned to read and write it in Qur'an courses when I was young. Over time, as my connection to that world faded, so did my fluency. Today, I speak it conversationally. Turkish is my native and strongest language. English became part of me through education. French is the language I am currently building, slowly, deliberately.

After leaving university, I moved to Canada. I now live in Montreal. I've worked temporary jobs — mostly in restaurant kitchens. I've done small translation work when possible. For the past six months, I've been studying French full-time.

Somewhere along the way, I collected certificates in editing and life coaching. Not because I had a clear destination, but because I kept touching different directions, trying to understand where I fit. On paper, they do not define me. They simply mark the paths I explored.

I am twenty-six.

As a child, I wanted to be a football player. Later, I wanted to be a writer. At different times, I imagined being a farmer, an engineer, a programmer. I have always been drawn to animals, plants, and the natural world. Some of these desires turned into effort. Some remained hobbies. Some passed through me and left.

The earthquake of February 6 changed the geography of my childhood. I do not write about it as a headline, but as a fracture — a reminder that places we think are permanent are not. It did not define me, but it rearranged something inside me.

If I describe where I am now without judgment: my body is in Montreal. My days are filled with language study, work, reading, and writing. My ambitions are still forming. My identity still resists a single word.

I cannot say, with certainty, "I am this." Not in the way society prefers. I am still becoming.

This blog is not a declaration of arrival. It is a record of movement.

If there is a pattern in my story, it is this: I keep searching. I keep writing. I keep learning new languages — both literal and internal.

I am, like most people, a story still looking for its ending.

Maybe a little more undefined than some.

And for now, that is enough.