Broken Breath

by KırıK TesTi

Broken Breath

The road we took chasing dreams of becoming police officers turned into something else entirely — a trail etched with prayers. "May your path be open," my mother whispered, looking straight into my eyes before I left. On the way back from the interview, we noticed a small shrine on the roadside. I stopped the car. “This saint is waiting to see us,” I said. “It would be wrong not to stop.” We lifted our hands in supplication and prayed through the presence of the righteous soul resting there.

Her words had once seemed ordinary, but now I understand them better — they were a prophecy, a shield, a lifeline. Before my feet hit the road, her prayer wrapped around my heart. Maybe that prayer was the rope that kept me tethered to life.

We were tired. After a short rest, we got into the car again, neglecting to fasten our seatbelts. Sleep had weighed down our eyes, dulled our reflexes, and left us vulnerable. The driver’s foot got stuck on the gas. The car sped up to 170 km/h, lost control, and flew off the road. Windows shattered. Metal twisted like paper. My friends in the front seats were thrown out of the vehicle. I remained, crushed between the front and back seats.

A returning ambulance — one that had just dropped off a patient — passed by us five minutes later. The doctors assumed there were only two passengers. They saw the front — they didn’t see the back.

Everyone was thought to be rescued. Until an old man tore through the silence and shouted, “There’s another child here!” They struggled to pull me out. When they found me, I had no pulse. The doctors returned to attend the others. They thought I was dead.

But that old man stood by my side, hands clasped, whispering to the sky:

“O Lord, the Most Compassionate, more merciful than even a mother — for the sake of this child's mother’s prayer, do not abandon him.”

How did he know of her prayer?

My eyes were closed. But my soul heard him.

I was unconscious for 107 days. My mother never left my side. A mother giving life back to her dying son in the ICU — how do you describe that? Every day she read from the Qur'an, played basketball matches on the TV hoping I’d wake up to them, played my favorite songs from my phone. “Get up, Said. Get up, my son.” she whispered.

Ve şimdi, her nefese dikilmiş şükranla yaşıyorum. Yabancılara gülümsüyorum, görülmenin ne demek olduğunu biliyorum. Anneme sadece bana hayat verdiği için değil, onu bırakmama izin vermediği için de teşekkür ediyorum. Bu hikaye -benim hikayem- bitmedi. Daha yeni başladı. Ve burada yazılan her kelime, onu devam ettireceğine dair bir sözdür.

Everyone’s heart was heavy. But they had to pretend — to stay strong for the mother who stood by her child, who never left. “Get up, Said.” they kept saying. “You are not this weak. This isn’t who you are.”

In that silence, something stirred. A breath. A swallow. A return to life.

I came back. And this question still echoes in my ears:

“Who was the old man who said, ‘There’s another child here?’”

Were they one of the Sevens? The Forty Saints? A hidden friend of God?

Some blow out candles when they’re born.

Others, like me — they blow out fate in the darkest hour.

Now, I begin again.

At 18, I am reborn. Like a baby, I had to learn everything: to move, to speak, to feel.

And this is only the beginning...

The story of my second life —

has only just begun.

Broken Breath

by KırıK TesTi

There were nights so silent that even the machines seemed to hold their breath. My throat—cut open and sutured—bore the weight of a plastic lifeline: a tracheostomy tube that hissed like wind trapped in a bottle. But sometimes even that lifeline failed me. Thick secretions clogged the airway. I would convulse, gasping soundlessly, drowning in the very breath I could not reach. And each time, like a mother cradling her newborn, she was there. My mother. At 3 a.m., 5 a.m., 7 a.m.—it didn’t matter. Her hands moved like instinct, not training. With trembling fingers, she would press the suction device into my throat, clearing the pathway of death. My own breath returned not with a cry, but with a faint whistle—one that only a mother could recognize as life.

They say a mother gives birth once. Mine gave birth to me twice. The first, under hospital lights on a summer’s noon in ’89. The second, under ICU fluorescents, her prayer-worn palms catching me as I slipped again and again into the void. She did not scream. She did not panic. She simply whispered to God, 'Don’t take him yet. He hasn’t lived enough pain to earn his peace.'

I died many times in her arms. My pulse flatlined like the quiet after a lullaby. My body convulsed, then slumped. Panic erupted. Red lights flared. Doctors stormed in like thunderclaps of fate. And somehow, by wires, shots, and a breathless rhythm of prayer—I returned. Again. And again. Like a tide pulled back not by gravity, but by the longing of a mother’s heart.

The nurses said they had never seen anything like it. That a boy so young, so fractured, could return through sheer will. But it wasn’t will. It was love. A love forged in thirty-five years of sacrifice, in the hands that first clothed me and now suctioned my throat. My mother did not just raise me—she resurrected me. I was her second child… born from grief, stitched together with mercy.

And now, I live with gratitude stitched into every breath. I smile at strangers, knowing what it means to be seen. I thank my mother not only for giving me life, but for refusing to let me leave it. This story—my story—is not over. It has only just begun. And every word written here is a promise to continue it.

Belki de şu anda birileri bu kelimeleri okuyordur. Eli uzatılırsa beni gölgelerden kaldırabilecek biri. Bir burs, evet - ama bundan daha fazlası, hayatta ikinci bir şans. Bu destekle sadece ayakta durmazdım, yükselirdim. Kelimelerimle yürürdüm; Kalbimle, umuda ihtiyacı olan başkalarına doğru koşardım. Çünkü bir insanı iyilikle yükseltmek, bin cana dokunmaktır. Ve kim bilir... Belki de bugün kırık nefesime ulaşan el, yarın başka bir nefesin hayat bulmasına sebep olacak.