Matilda E-Book

Nurgül Sönmez

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 265

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

"Life can't go as fast as a butterfly flapping its wings." Matilda! A flower that tried to bloom in the middle of World War II when she was just four years old. Her struggle begins with gloating at people and the terrible blows of life. Unaware of what awaits her next, when she thinks that fear and apprehension are finally over, but life does not proceed as she thinks. Matilda will never think about giving up after all. She'll fight because she wants to live, but will she make it? Will she finally be able to throw open her wings and fly? lt' s a real life story! The traumatic story of a little girl.

Leseprobe

Matilda

Originally translated from German, published in 2021 ©

Nurgül Sönmez

Translation: Nurgül Sönmez

Compilation / Editor: Berna Arslan

Proofreading: Ömer Faruk Arslan

Cover / Artist: Murat Akpınar

Book Cover Design: Açelya Soylu

Illustration / Index: Gamze Tașdemir

Author Contact Information:

[email protected]

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To all book lovers...

Biography

Nurgül Sönmez

21.08.1979 Germany

Nurgül Sönmez was born on August 21, 1979 in the town of Werdohl in North Rhine-Westphalia.

She lost her mother in a serious car accident in 1995.

During this time, she was more of a mother than a sister to her eight-year-old brother. In 1999, she was appointed as the guardian of her younger brother. From then on, she replaced both parents and lovingly supported him in all his ways. She has a younger brother and three older sisters.

In 2015, she lost her father to a serious illness.

She achieved many successes between 1995 and 2000. She began writing the year she lost her mother and has written countless poems and novels. All are based on true events. Apart from her unpublished stories, rights to over 50 novels have been acquired by a well-known composer and more than 2500 poems have been acquired by various publishers. Now she is no longer behind the scenes, but on the stage with her works.

AUTHOR'S WORKS

Her first book ANA (Poem - Turkish) was published in

2014

2015

YASEMİN’İN SAVAŞI (Turkish)

2017

YASEMİN’İN İNTİKAMI (Turkish)

2021

Matilda (Turkish, German)

1001 GECE YERİNE - BİN BİR GÜN (Turkish)

STATT 1001 NACHT - TAUSENDUNDEIN TAG (German)

YASEMİN’İN ÇARESİZLİĞİ 1 (Turkish)

YASEMİN’İN SAVAŞI 2 (Turkish)

YASEMİN’İN İNTİKAMI 3 (Turkish)

2022

Matilda (English)

YASEMINS VERZWEIFELUNG 1 (German)

MAAROUF (Turkish, German)

INSTEAD OF 1001 NIGHT - THOUSAND AND ONE DAY (English)

YASEMINS KAMPF 2 (German)

2023

YASEMINS RACHE 3 (German)

2024

YASEMIN’S DESPERATION 1 (English)

YASEMIN’S STRUGGLE 2 (English)

YASEMIN’S REVENGE 3 (English)

MAAROUF (English)

All books have been translated into French and are planned for future book projects. This will be followed by translations into Arabic and Spanish. If there is interest and demand, there will also be translation in other languages.

Her works © are based on true events and she continue to support social projects with the proceeds of the books.

Soon also available as audiobooks!

Excerpts from my real life!

I like to express myself in simple colloquial language. Preferably warmly and honestly. Nevertheless, I am of course also used to expressing myself professionally and in a way that suits my environment.

We speak a little differently everywhere, don’t we? It always depends on who you’re talking to.

I have a certain talent for languages because I grew up bilingual. My mother tongues are German and Turkish. I don’t find it difficult to communicate in different languages. I can communicate with my body language anytime and anywhere. I think you could expose me to any country in the world and I would always be able to communicate with the people there. Is this an undiscovered talent?

Other countries, cultures and languages fascinate me. So is it any surprise that I have already traveled to over 40 countries in our beautiful world? Even I wouldn’t have thought there were so many countries (laughs out loud). I’ve traveled around a bit...

I didn’t actually travel to these countries as a tourist, as you might think. Most of my visits were to meet the heroes of my books. To meet books. Business visits, so to speak. That does not count as a vacation. I’ve hardly ever taken a “vacation”, if at all.

I have discovered real projects close to my heart on a few trips.

I became a sponsor for 3 orphanages in 3 different countries. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Before I finish, I would like to share some memories from these orphanages with you. I visited one of my heroes from an unpublished story in Turkmenistan. I spent about 12 days there. During that stay, we met a little boy who was crying on the sidewalk. He looked different from the other children there. We stood there helplessly with a crying, grieving child of 3-4 years old. As we didn’t know how we could help the boy, we alerted the police. Together with a policeman, we drove to the local police station. The child was a Pakistani boy and was to be placed in an orphanage. All the details he was able to provide were recorded by the police and handed over to the orphanage. We accompanied him to the orphanage.

“Who found this child?” one of the caretakers at the orphanage asked us. “Me,” I said. “What should he be called?” he asked.

“Mohamed,” I replied. We took all the documents for a sponsorship with us. I made a promise to myself; I want this boy to go far one day. I want him to have a chance of a better life. He is Pakistani and he should not be separated from his homeland. This promise was never broken. He studied and got married one day. Yes, I have adopted him as son. Today he is a consul in his home country of Pakistan.

When I visited Mohamed, I noticed four girls who made me curious. I had to know more about them. Four sisters, inseparable. They were beautiful. Immigrant children of Mongolian Turks. Their parents died young. I felt for these four girls as I did for Mohamed, and took on their responsibility including their professional life. For some of them I was like a sister, for others like a friend, for some like a mother and daughter. They have given me many happy moments so far. Even if I hadn’t give a birth to a baby, I have 526 children.

I also played a key role in changing the law in Afghanistan to make everyday life easier for women there.

I don’t see myself as an activist, I’m not. I see myself more as a part of life.

To this day, I haven’t spoken to anyone about it. You shouldn’t talk so much about good deeds. Just do them. If everyone does it, maybe together we can make this world a little more bearable.

I am wholeheartedly committed to social projects.

The more books you order, the more help we can give to the victims.

And to you, dear reader. If you have a life story that touches our hearts, write to us!

Together we are strong.

Thousands of voices can be hope for a voice.

Social Donation Activity

Your donation is in safe hands

I would like to donate a certain percentage of the total annual income from the books to charities and those in need.

If you want to be a part of this donation, you can do so by purchasing my books. My works are available in all known bookstores. It can be purchased or ordered from bookstores. You can also order from all online bookstores worldwide.

To buy a signed book, you can contact me or send me an e-mail from my social media accounts. Signed books can be dispatched anywhere in Europe.

Together we are strong

“Life can’t go as fast as a butterfly flapping its wings.”

Matilda! A flower that tried to bloom in the middle of World War II when she was just four years old. Her struggle begins with gloating at people and the terrible blows of life. Unaware of what awaits her next, when she thinks that fear and apprehension are finally over, but life does not proceed as she thinks.

Matilda will never think about giving up after all. She’ll fight because she wants to live, but will she make it? Will she finally be able to throw open her wings and fly?

It’s a real life story! The traumatic story of a little girl.

The story and characters are taken from real life.

Artist individual hand drawing by: Murat Akpınar

My name is Matilda, I was born on March 12, 1941 in a small town in Hesse. My mother was a housewife and my father a factory owner. He lost his factory during the Second World War. In the years when I was born, potatoes and other vegetables were grown in the fields. We also had seasonal workers. We were a wealthy family, but we lost everything. My father was not happy about it. I also remember from my childhood that he had a very irritable, strict and almost dictatorial character. I remember that he often beat my mother. Of course, at my age, most of these experiences have been erased from my memory and I no longer remember them. But a little analogy refreshes and reminds me of my past like a spark...

As my father was a very strict person, I don't remember playing like children do in my childhood. I don't remember the time when my father had a factory. I know from stories that he had a lot of employees.

We lived in a detached house and had fields nearby. There were no other houses to the right or left of us. Nobody had any money during the Second World War. We lived a little better than the others. Of course, you couldn't see that from the outside. What we had was also confiscated. Everything we had was transferred to other names. So our fields were always in use. As children, we were away from our games. I certainly wasn't a cheeky or shy girl, and the circumstances didn't allow it.

I felt so sorry for my mother, I can't even remember the poor woman sitting down and catching her breath, and yet my father always scolded her and even beat her. Whatever she did, however she did it, she was always in the wrong, she did everything wrong if my father had his way. I also remember him beating me as a child, not just scolding me. I know very well that my mother was beaten by my father, even when she was pregnant to my sister. I clung to my mother's stomach and when I tried to stop him from hitting my sister or my mother, I was also beaten. "Oh, my poor mother".

That's how he tortured my mother and me in the middle of the war. But experiencing the Second World War alone was cruel enough. To make matters worse, we also had to endure my father's cruelty. Now bombs were falling on our town. There had been war before, but the bombs had never fallen on them to this extent. We were not allowed to leave the house. I remember that we hid the servants in the cellar of the house. Maybe only a 1000-liter bucket would fit, but my mother hid the four men there.

We were afraid! The soldiers were merciless. We couldn't go out the door, we couldn't move from one room to another in the house. We were hidden in the cupboards. Sometimes my father would go down the stairs to the cellar through the hidden and locked hatch under the carpet in the kitchen and hide my mother and me in this one-eyed and dark room next to the supplies. As soon as my father had closed the hatch again, he put the carpet over it. Every sound could be heard from outside, because the soldiers had left neither doors nor windows in the house. The houses were literally in ruins, people had fled in their distress. The memory of those days alone is cruel to me. As my father was also a soldier, we were under special protection, but my father had a special function. My father was a member of the Schutztruppe, one of the units that served as Hitler's bodyguards. So he was an SS soldier. That was a unique opportunity and reason enough for the Russian, British and French soldiers to massacre my father. That's why I no longer believe that he was a simple soldier. I didn't believe it at the time either. They surrounded our house to protect my father. To this day, I still don't know why.

We kept to the curfew. We were only allowed out with a written and authorized document. Even those who had permission walked along the street, close together, without leaving much space between them. They held on tight and were afraid. After the bombs had fallen, everything had been reduced to rubble and there were only a few houses left. It was hard to buy a loaf of bread. We had no more land, no more harvest. The soldiers drove their tanks over all our fields and destroyed them.

The situation was hopeless.

When the war broke out, my father had to go to war as a soldier. In the years that followed, I learned that he had nothing against it. He was one of the German SS soldiers who were known all over the world. Obviously, my father was an anti-Semite and, from today's perspective, a xenophobe. So my father was a Nazi! When he was wounded in the war, they sent him home. Apparently they thought: He's no use to us anymore. When he came back, the atrocities at home were endless. As if it wasn't enough that he was extremely irritable, he also drank alcohol. I remember that he often beat my mother to death when he was drunk. The war was too much for my father too, he didn't care about anything, his behavior didn't change.

On May 8, 1945, one night, the end of the war was announced. We thought it was a trap to lure people out, so we didn't go out. We didn't believe it and were very scared, because the end of the war was announced again, and when the people came out of their hiding places full of joy, they were all mercilessly massacred.

Women, men, old, young, children...

It didn't matter who they were or how old they were. They were all shot, without mercy, without compassion. Half the town was killed in this way, only a few survived. We were among those who survived.

When the war ended, I was four years old, my mother was pregnant and my sister was about to be born. The birth was only a few days away. It was May 17, 1945 and my sister Isabell was born. She was a little girl. She was born without having experienced the war, without having seen what happened. When Isabell was born, nobody was with my mother except me. My mother gave birth to my sister Isabell at home with my help. Up to that age, I had experienced many traumas, and being present at my mother's birth was one of them. I don't think a child should be present at a birth, shouldn't have to help. Of course, the circumstances at the time forced me to do so. Who knows what a desperate situation my mother was in and what she went through. The end of the war hadn't changed anything, we were still living in very difficult conditions. The streets were full of rubble and debris, people were living in misery. We had difficulty finding clean water and bread and had to be very frugal with what we found.

My father went back to the fields. He shouted and drove my mother and me to work in the fields. My father said everything had to go back to the way it used to be. The fields had to be cultivated again, it was important for our livelihood. There were only a few people left in our village and everyone was unemployed. Only a small number of people who had emigrated from the city returned after the war and began to work together to develop the village. The war was really over and the soldiers left the town blowing whistles. This time our fields were not trampled by tanks. They drove through the bombed streets and disappeared one by one.

Although my mother had only given birth two days ago, my father dragged my mother to work in the potato field. Of course I went with her. My father didn't care that my mother had just given birth. My mother tied the baby to her back with a cloth and worked in the field. Of course, it wasn't just the field, all the work, all the responsibility for the house, the children, my father ... Everything weighed on my mother. She could only sleep three, maybe four hours a day. Was that enough for all the tiredness?

No, not at all!

Of course, that wasn't enough.

There was unemployment and people were starving. Food and drink were very hard to come by. Instead of playing and romping around in the fields, I had to work hard even as a small child. We couldn't feed ourselves and the others with just the potatoes and other vegetables we harvested.

When our town was completely cleared of soldiers, all the citizens gathered and began a census. I almost said they went from door to door, but the war had left no doors and no solid houses to hide in. The result of the census was sad, even frightening: the town, which had nineteen thousand inhabitants, had only three thousand four hundred people left. Everyone was called to work to rebuild the town. In order not to lose any time, a list was kept of who was strong in which area and who was assigned to that area. This was the only way to make progress together. When a small number of the emigrated families returned, they didn't even have a roof over their heads. The saddest thing was that there were no children left to play on the street.

A shed with a smile in it is better than a palace crying in it.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

18. BÖLÜM

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

Months and years passed.

After three years, the city began to recover, albeit only partially. Unemployment was at its peak. We couldn't go to school because there were no professionals to repair the school buildings. At least that's what we were told. We lined up a few chairs in a small, dilapidated building and received a basic education as best we could.

Was that enough?

No!

There was still great discord at home.

My sister was only three years old, but my father even beat her. He was cruel!

One day, my mother was waiting for me with bloodshot eyes and full of determination. I had just come out of the dilapidated building that served as our school. I saw that my father had beaten my mother and sister again. When I got home, my father wasn't there. My mother had packed some of my and my sister's clothes in a suitcase-like bag and hurriedly said, "We're leaving! She urged me to hurry. I went with her without asking her. I knew my mother would never come back. I turned around and looked back one more time, but my mother didn't look back. We walked out of the house with quick steps. My mother took my sister in her arms, putting her down every now and then and holding her arm. After walking for quite a while, we arrived at the entrance to the village. A car was waiting for us there and a woman who got out when she saw us took the bags from my mother's hand and put them in the trunk. My mother, sister and I sat in the back of the car. From time to time, I looked at my mother's face and read the answers to the questions that were running through my head in her expression.

The car drove out of the city. We stopped in front of the government building of a nearby town. The woman sitting in the front got out and walked quickly to the town hall. It wasn't long before she came out of the town hall with two women and a man. They came up to us and asked us to get out. We did just that! We were told to follow the two women and the man. We followed them and drove for about six hours.

We arrived in a very large town. They parked the car in the parking lot of a large building. Together we walked into the building, which seemed very big to me. The building still bore the marks of the war. In some places, structural changes had been made and other places had not been touched at all. We entered a room inside the building and one of the two ladies who accompanied us began to ask my mother questions. Everything my mother said was written down without missing a word. By now we were hungry and Isabell cried from time to time.

It was already late. When the questioning was over, we got back into the car and this time they told us they were taking us to a house.

When we were in the car, she said to my mother: "Here are the keys to your new apartment and here is your rental contract. The rent for three months is paid. If the situation hasn't improved after three months, I'll ask you to contact me again," and the necessary handovers were made.

I didn't need to ask a question like "Mom, aren't we going home?". Because she seemed determined not to go home. Yes, my mother had experienced a lot of violence from my father and suffered a lot of damage. My father was very unpleasant, a toxic person. Apart from the fact that he was a racist, he was a really bad person who I can't even describe.

I suspect that the people who brought us here were commissioned by the state to help people in need. I'm glad that there are people like that. Because my father's situation was unbearable. It was like experiencing the excitement of ending the old life and starting a new one. The smile of our redemption was on my face. We were free from my father and his violence.

Uncompleted matter; it’s like a wound that’s not closed or shelled.

My mother, my sister, myself and the lady who had given my mother the keys to the apartment were standing outside the door of our new home. My mother opened the door full of excitement, because this was our new home. Of course, this house was nothing like our family home. "Nothing will be the same," said my mother. Nothing!

We entered our new home with a different kind of excitement: Sounds of children crying emanated from the apartment building. And as if that wasn't enough, people were also arguing. Now we were also hearing other people's voices, and I wasn't used to that at all. As I had always lived in our detached house, the apartment building seemed pretty scary. The front door of our apartment was half glazed and the neighbors coming down from the upper floor could see our apartment. It was already late and as the electricity had only just been registered, it would be a few days before it could be switched on. So we were in the dark and didn't even have a gas lamp. We were left in a dark apartment without being able to see into the rooms. The woman walked away after dropping us off. We were left alone with the darkness and the unknown.

What address, what town are we in? Would I be able to go to school? These and similar questions ran through my head. We stumbled through dark rooms looking for a place to lie down, even a chair would have sufficed. I could even have fainted. We had entered the house without ever having seen it. A new life had begun for us. Who knows what is yet to come, what new things are in store for us, what awaits us tomorrow?

My father must have been crazy. My mother had experienced too much violence. But it wasn't just my mother, my father often beat us too. He beat Isabell when she was very little. My poor sister. I was afraid, how will life go on for us? I could hardly wait for tomorrow. The woman who had brought us here said she would be back in a few days. But what would we eat and drink until she arrived and how would we survive? How many days would we have to wait until the electricity came back? Would she bring us gas lamps until then so that we didn't have to sit in the dark? While these questions were running through my head, we fell asleep on the concrete floor.

We woke up in the morning in an old, run-down apartment. Of course it was better than nothing, but I wished it wasn't like that. It was a very old house, it had survived the war, but it was very damaged. I went into the kitchen, there was nothing left of our old kitchen. I stood in a tiny, crammed kitchen with a small, old table with wobbly legs and only one chair. It was an old building where you needed a fire to cook. But at least there was a sink. We had to light the stove in this kitchen, just like we light our ovens. There was a wall cupboard, but the door wobbled. As I said, it was a very old kitchen.

I tried to be very quiet when I viewed the apartment because my mother and Isabell were still asleep. The apartment we lived in consisted of a bedroom, a living room with a balcony, a kitchen, a toilet and a long, narrow hallway. My mother didn't know how to run the household because she had never worked, except in the fields. She had always been a housewife. She had never worked.

Isabell woke up and came running to me, followed by mom. In the past, the breakfast table was always set when we got up. Now there was nothing for breakfast. We could only eat when the woman who had brought us arrived. When I looked out of the window, I thought: "This doesn't look like our neighborhood".

From the balcony I shouted to the people outside: "We are the children of war! We are the children of war!" There were no more smiles or expressions on people's faces. Everyone was pale and sullen. The woman who had brought us said, "Don't leave the house until I come back." She should at least have brought some dry bread.

It was almost evening, it was getting dark. We hadn't eaten anything all day, nothing had gone down our throats. It was hard to bear this situation. It was fine for mom and me, but what about Isabell? What was fate going to do with this child? I wasn't much older than her, but I had grown. In a few days, I would be eight years old. And if you asked me today, I wouldn't know what it means to be eight years old. Cooking? Working in the fields? Washing clothes until your hands peel off? Years of paternal violence? Being in the middle of a war? Being hungry? Being your sister's mother? What was it like to be a child? What was it like?

Before the evening was completely over, my mother was knocking on the doors of the neighbors in the apartment building. There wasn't a door she didn't knock on that day: "My children are hungry, do you have any bread for them?" Of course, no one could give all their bread. Some gave a piece, others nothing at all. Everyone was in miserable situation. The war had brought poverty everywhere. On the second day, my mother couldn't stand it any longer and knocked on the neighbors' doors in the evening. "My children are hungry, can you share a piece of bread with us?" Some put their hands on their conscience and shared a slice or two of bread, but no one could give more. Everyone was right in their own way and thought about tomorrow.

Everyone rolled up their sleeves and tried to help Germany return to prosperity. But what could be done? The war had left behind huge amounts of rubble. No houses, no schools, no hospitals, no roads. Many people had died. Who was supposed to repair what damage?

After a few days, the woman she had promised finally arrived. A man carried a shopping bag into our apartment. "You'll have electricity again from today," said the woman. "We've brought a truck full of household items: beds, blankets, household goods. It won't be everything you need, but there are plenty of things you can use for now," she said. People we didn't know brought things to our apartment. My mother, Isabell and I went to the shopping bags and pounced on everything edible with hunger. That's the thing about hunger!

The burden of the world is usually always on the shoulders of women...

About four, maybe five months had passed. We had settled in well and Isabell was four years old. A certain amount of money was now paid to my mother every month. I was responsible for Isabell, and I was only eight years old. My sister and I had an age difference of four years. The war was over, but not much had changed in our lives. I still couldn't go to school because I had to look after Isabell. Mom said she worked for a lady in the mornings. So it was just me and Isabell at home in the mornings. As I said, all the responsibility for Isabell was now mine, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night. I couldn't even read a fairy tale even if I wanted to, we didn't have any books. If I could have carried on, I would have been able to read and write by now. The war had shown its cold face here too, I couldn't read. I would have been the child of a factory owner, a rich dictator and a Nazi father if the war hadn't uprooted us. Before the war or after the war? Of course, apart from the fact that I was the daughter of a rich family, I would have preferred the pre-war period and the dictator father to the war. People's faces were still cold and dull. The colors seemed to have disappeared and I couldn't even see a flower in those days.

My mother drank at home every day, I can't remember a day off. She also had a boyfriend now. On the days when her boyfriend came to visit, she didn't want us to leave our room.