The memoirs are the undercurrents of human life! They occupy a place in the memory with their pain and joy. Sezai Karakoç points to the lyrical and tragic aspects of life to justify the necessity of writing his memoirs. He starts to publish his memoirs in Diriliş Magazine, revealing his own point of view. Before it is finished, he stops, continuing the publication of his memoirs. Of course, remembering the past is not easy. To be able to make a selection among all those events! In order to be a witness of his period, he tries to remember what he has saved in the depths of his memory. He cares that others benefit from his experiences, even if they hurt him. His memoirs are in every respect both a narrative of the age and his own special biography. At the beginning of his memoirs, Sezai Karakoç writes, “Biographies are like atoms of history, so they are necessary. However, every life is infinitely rich, it is impossible to give it completely. Perhaps it is necessary to make a selection, a selection, between events or pieces of experience for a certain purpose.”

“To describe oneself means to describe cities, to describe society, to describe the age. In the book, which reflects the memoirs or lives of many people of the past, we have always witnessed how important a few lines, perhaps scribbled hastily, are in terms of describing the society of that day. A note randomly recorded without significance today will perhaps become of great importance tomorrow. In that respect, of course, autobiographies are documents that can always gain value.” “Going back is perhaps a very enjoyable endeavor for some. But it's not like that for me. Reviewing the memories, which means living again from the very beginning, means a torment from fire for me. But even so, if there are a few who will benefit from our experience, it is worth enduring the torment. The past is very dear to me. But reliving it is a source of suffering. Especially telling it is even worse. It is impossible to tell everything. It is unbelievable even if told. In this respect, no matter how nakedly it is told, life will be given in a garment made of words in the memoirs. Life is the most moderate, life is wild and ferocious. But even the most ferocious memoirs remains moderate and tame compared to the life it reflects. I want to write my life story in a very general and concise way with a bird's-eye lines and main scheme.” “The life is lyrical, yes. It carries the texture of happiness as well as being tragic. Sometimes it is disconnected, intermittent. Sometimes it is like a river and is flowing. Then, maybe it's the river's lot to get lost in a lake or a sea. Or in a swamp and desert. In any case, isn't it that river, born from the mountains, fell from rocks to rocks, singing like birds, leaping over the stones to the plain. It flowed quitely in the plain. It greeted and embraced the fruit trees. It lived the summer and the sun like a dream. They drank the water of the river, men and beasts, birds, insects with wings or without wings. And the fish lived in it freely until being caught by men. And the river is also mortal.

One day, its life will end either in a bigger one, in the river of the rivers, in a much bigger one, in the sea, or in the opposite, in the one who drinks it and swallows it. It is like the dissolution of human lifetimes in society or in historical periods.” “Unlike many other writers and poets, I was not born in İstanbul from a family of well-known writers, scholars, poets or statesmen (pasha, etc.). I am from Anatolia; I am from South East Anatolia. Our family is a family among our people, like any other family. But again, as in many families, this simplicity is just an appearance. I was born in the spring of 1933 in the Ergani district of Diyarbakır. In my mother's words, "on a day in the month of gulan". Gulan is the old name of May. May was just entering the vernacular in our childhood. The old would say gulan, that is, “roses”. It means the month in which the rose blooms.” “Yes, as a member of a family that is trying to rise in the ruins of a destroyed and trying-to-reborn society, culture, a destroyed and rebuilt city (Ergani), and war, political, social and economic ruins, I was born one day in early May in that small town at the outskirts of Zülküfül Mountain. That is, coming into a world in three collapses.” “Yes, I am coming from four collapses. The first, is the collapse of the Age. “The second, was the collapse of our country, state, nation and society. The collapse of the age also caused the collapse of the society. “The third collapse was the collapse of Ergani, the city I was born in. “As for the fourth collapse, I want to tell about how, like many families, our family was in turmoil as a result of these three collapses, the collapse of the age, the collapse of the country and the collapse of the city. “It can be said that the old Ergani was not at the foot of the mountain, as it is today, but on its back. The older one was inside the castle and on top of the mountain. The inner part the castle became a part of Ergani, which later descended to the ridge and slopes. If I say mountain, it should not be thought of as a high and big mountain; but for us from Ergani, it is a beautiful, magnificent and charming mountain. There is a mystical bond between us and the mountain. It is like an example of Mount Arafat, Mount Sinai in our town.” Being capable of taking responsibility is possible by being honest with oneself and one's nation. After all, nothing can be produced without suffering and willingness to suffer. To aspire to a life that can be enjoyed without suffering is the result of cheapness in every way. Sezai Karakoç, who made the ordeal the sharpener of his life, tells in his memoirs the grueling days that tired his childhood memory as much as he listened to it. As a witness to the years of poverty, the listener of the years of deprivation, he experiences the trauma of suffering, longing, and homesickness. The deprivations he has faced since his primary school years gradually became inseparable from his personality.

Sezai Karakoç's student status, which started in Ergani, continues in Maraş after he passed the exams within the exams. Maraş becomes the one who ignites the Anatolian thought in him. He relieves the pain of the days of captivity, which he heard from his father, with the openness of the principles of belief that he freely adheres to. Sezai Karakoç, who graduated from primary school in Ergani, takes the free boarding education exams as per the conditions. When the exam results are announced, it is understood that he has to go to Maraş. He is sent off at night with the prayers of his mother and father. The journey that starts with the train ends in Maraş on the back of a truck. It is Wednesday. Leaving his suitcase in the dormitory of Maraş Secondary School hastily, he joins the class. He is a little surprised at this hasty introduction. He has the excitement of meeting new people in a new place. But he quickly warms up to the classroom and the classroom environment. He draws attention with his intelligence from the first lesson. He doesn't care that he has just arrived in the city, that he is a stranger. In his memoirs published in Diriliş Magazine, he writes the beginning of the Maraş days, "We completed our procedures and moved to Maraş. They placed us in Maraş. At night, my father and my mother with a lantern in hand bid me farewell with tears in their eyes. I climbed onto the sacks on a wool-laden horse-drawn carriage and went to the station. At the station, I took a last look at the dim lights of Ergani (there was no electricity) and set off at the third class wagon of the train. We went by passing through tunnel to tunnel until Gölcük. Gölcük, is the first big water body I saw. Yolçatı, Malatya, Gölbaşı, finally we landed at Eloğlu (today Türkoğlu) station in Maraş. This time, I went for hours on the back of a closed truck and arrived in Maraş. This road, twenty-nine kilometers, would have taken a very long time back then. From now on, I was going to go back and forth on this road for years, I would make this train journey.” “When I got off the back of the truck and entered the secondary school building in Maraş, they took my suitcase and left it in the dormitory. Then, they took me to the administration. An assistant principal put me in class right away. It was Wednesday. Third lesson. The lesson was mathematics. I sat down on a bench and started watching the lecture.”

His childhood memory fed with ghavazatnamas, the Epic of Battal Gazi, the wars of Abu Muslim Khrusani, the battles of Hazrat Ali enriches with the narratives of the liberation of Maraş from French occupation and Sütçü İmam. The stories about the liberation of Maraş from the occupation contribute to the stimulation of his awareness of attention: The stimulated spirit of independence is spurred on. In his article titled 'the Milk and the Gun', emphasizing that the war against the French was actually waged against lack of mysticism and metaphysics, he states that the foundation of this war is as solid as Süleymaniye. Emphasizing that the whole of Anatolia was summarized in Maraş in the first place, he makes the observation that, “The liberation of Maraş is not just a reaction. The direction in which Sütçü İmam puts down his milk mug and points his gun is not only French, it is the lack of mysticism in its background, the lack of metaphysics in its backdrop. The milk and the gun… This is Maraş, this is Anatolia. People of Maraş know that the Friday prayer cannot be performed when the flag is lowered from the castle. They know the unbreakable relationship between the flag and the Friday prayer. The foundation of this war is very solid, like the foundation of Süleymaniye mosque...” The act of reading and writing sparks in Maraş, where he has set such heavy, special goals. He scrutinizes the underground landscape of contradictions, with his readings evolving from the East to the West. For him, Maraş takes its place in his memory as a core of resurrection and resistance. In his own words, Maraş becomes the place where his childhood soul caught fire. To the city, the stimulus of his childhood chirping in dreams; referring to the epic places of this city and the reasons why its world, candidate for depth, shines, he says, “Maraş is the place where my child's heart caught fire. Maybe before that, I was the owner of an inner world like a dream world. A world which is candidate for depth. It can be said that this world caught fire in Maraş.

From Uzunoluk Bath and the clumsy monument next to it to the portrayal of Sütçü İmam's shooting at French soldiers who wanted to molest our women in chador, the story of the flag waving in the castle, the liberation story of Maraş, as a living memory at every moment, it was as if there was a wind of divine grace that scattered a handful of seeds of hope and action into our sorrowful hearts.” He can't help but remember his school and the difficulties he faced at school. He engraves in his memory that Maraş Secondary School reflects all the difficulties of the time. Seeing that although the building made of stone had central heating, the heating problem was tried to be solved with a stove, and the classrooms remained in smoke because the stove did not draw well, he says, “Maraş Secondary School was a building that foreigners built as a college and left after the Republic. A huge stone building. It had central heating. In any case, it was the only building with central heating in Maraş. We had heard about the heater when we were in elementary school, but it was like a legend for us. The first building with central heating I saw was Maraş Secondary School. However, this heater was not working. It hasn't worked once in three years. They said they froze the water in the pipes, which cracked the radiators. That’s why it does not work. The stoves were lit in the classrooms. And most of the time, it didn't fume well, so the classroom would go up in smoke.”

He also narrates his observations about the physical establishment of Maraş in his memoirs. As it was on that day, the parade of Maraş never loses its vitality in his mind. With its snowstorm, northeaster, storm growing in Ahır Mountains, Maraş becomes an everlasting treasure of memories. He reveals the Maraş of those days with its realism, “Maraş was built on a hillside. A large plain stretched out before it. At the bottom, Aksu was seen as a silver line. Behind Maraş, like a wall, the Mount Ahır was rising. In the winter, when there was a storm, the blizzard would break on the top of Mount Ahır. The snow would rise so high that it would be a sight worth seeing in itself. If there was a storm, it would be quite a problem for students from Maraş to come to the School, which is at the upper section of the city. Twenty students could only come, holding hands. Next to the school was the Governor's Mansion. It was really hard for the kids go up the narrow road between the two of them on those days. We, on the other hand, were quite cold because of the stoves that did not work.” “There was no high school in Maraş, only a secondary school. The school had both day and boarding students. The boarding students were also divided into two as paid and free (in the old words, day students were called nehari, and free boarding students were called leyli meccani). The school was formed by connecting the two buildings with a wooden passage. The school had a large garden. There were plane trees and olive trees in the garden. I saw the olive tree there for the first time. There were no olive trees in my hometown. When the olive tree yielded, we put one or two in our mouths. It was something like pain, poison. It turns out that olives go through a lot of processes to make them edible. Then they said, and we learned. Free boarding students from all over Türkiye came to Maraş. At that time, there were few schools with free boarding houses in Türkiye.” In the city, which betrays its privacy as it is approached, he internalizes the majestic stance of the Ahır Mountains and the stories about the Kanlı Dere flowing through the middle of Maraş. With a sincere approach, he fuses the daily with the historical in his memories. The author, who captures the underground murmur of the stories of Kanlı Dere with the settlement of Maraş that evokes a mountain town, continues the quest to grasp the past time of the city, “Maraş looked like a large mountain town leaning on the slope of Mount Ahır in those days. It had been the scene of many bloody events in the past, such as the name of a deep-bed creek flowing right in the middle of it. It was rumored that there were once quite a few battles on both sides of the Kanlıdere. It was added to the rumors that it got this name because the bloody heads rolled down the stream. Kanlıdere was a redly painted witness to the fights between lords or feudal lords.”

In Anatolia, there are structures that give direction to the cities and knead the yeast of the city. They stand firm against the shaking impositions of time. It is as if they were made in the sky and lowered to the ground. They do not lose their entity in snow, winter, and storm. Grand Mosques, Grand Bazaars, which help us to find our way in the cities, and bazaars where masters learn and teach crafts such as drapery, coppersmithing, woodworking, which become endearing by master hands, are the waterfalls of the Anatolian spirit that resonate from the inside out. With its castle, Grand Mosque, Coppersmiths' Bazaar, Maraş is also the bed of deep structures and fine skills. The Great Poet, who reveals the blend of memories with these structures that give the eye to the ones seeing and the power to the listeners, says that, “The Castle, Grand Mosque, Coppersmiths' Bazaar reminded us of the antiquity of Maraş. One of the best copper working places in Türkiye was the Coppersmiths' Bazaar” and looks with admiration at the building blocks of the city that will make the muses run around. Every season comes to the city with a different beauty. It puts a thousand and one graces of the sun and the sky embracing the earth on the houses. With its sparkling waters in the spring, the reign of grapes with amber grains begins in the houses and markets in the autumn. In this city, where every season is filled with the gift of different beauties, what happens if you can't be a poet or a writer? Sezai Karakoç writes the rainbow of these beauties, “In spring, water would start flowing all over Maraş. At that time, on the roads, which were usually dirt slopes, little springs of water would flow down in a clear line. Thus, the melting snow of the Ahır Mountains would turn into a thousand and one sources in Maraş.” “In autumn, this time the victory of the grape would cover the bazaar. There was the reign of the grapes with amber grains. The ice-cold grapes from the highlands.” The people of Maraş live in their own worlds. Their attitude towards life cannot be understood from the outside. The sadness is something that is read on the face of the people of Maraş. It does not reveal itself unless approached. They protect the appearance of their valor and youth, which become childish with the child, against the evil eyes. They are impatient with what they do. He is the man of the worlds that have no calculation business in every way. The inner depth in people of Maraş can only be read with a careful look. These features are clarified in Sezai Karakoç's memoirs as follows, “The people of Maraş are valiant, clean-hearted folk man who is joking, smiling, becomes a child with children, or rather looks for an excuse to become a child. They do not get too close to casting up accounts. They like to sweetly show his astonishment, often with “abov!” Every Anatolian city has a watcher. They fulfill their duty to keep the city and its inhabitants vigilant against negligence and vagabondage. The primary contribution to the urbanization of the space also belongs to them.

Even if there are floods, they fulfill their responsibilities. They are the spirit heroes of Anatolian cities. In this sense, Ukase b. Mihsan and Malik al-Ashtar are the spirit architects of Maraş. The prevalence of Ökkeş and Ejder names in Maraş comes from this! It is naivety to look for other reasons. Sezai Karakoç ends his narration about Maraş with his poetic expression by reminding the following: "Below, on the plain, Malik Ejder's tomb, like a spiritual beacon at the top of a hill, made sense of the whole image. Three names are the most common names in Maraş. Memmed, Ökkeş and Ejder. They were common because one was the name of the Prophet and the others were the names of two companions. These two companions were Ukase and Malik al-Ashtar.” Can a man get away from snow, winter and the apocalypse without approaching the first spring of the soul? This is where the Anatolian spirit ignites. It is the point of attention to the calls of the watchers. It is to direct the senses to the host of seminal spirit architects! It is to turn hearts to the door to be free from rusting and contamination. The real truth is in climbing the bastions of the blazon of being human and remaining human. After all, this is the necessity of the responsibility that should be undertaken at the expense of not getting tired and breathing life into life. As he stated in his memoirs since the first grade of secondary school, Sezai Karakoç continues his reading activity and researches ways to learn Arabic and Persian. He studies Arabic and Persian by himself. He secretly conducts his work with the books he brought from home. He also reads a selection of writers in the first year of secondary school. He describes them as follows in his memoirs: “With a few books I took from home, I was also secretly studying Arabic and Persian by myself. These books were prepared as secondary school textbooks in the Ottoman period. Because: At that time, Arabic and Persian classes were compulsory. I also memorized "emsile” (Arabic conjugation bok), one of those books I found at home and took with me, and improved my Persian language considerably. On the other hand, I was reading the poems and writings of M. Akif, Namık Kemal, Abdühak Hamid, Süleyman Nazif, Tevfik Fikret, Ziya Gökalp and others from one or two old selection books that mostly included writers from the Tanzimat and constitutional period. I was not confining myself to the school books. The love of religion, nation and country, which was strengthened by what I read, was the lofty feeling that filled my heart in those years.” When it is clear that he has passed the class even before the holiday, he returns to Ergani for the summer vacation. The war was over, the atomic bomb was used. On the front pages of the newspapers, there are news that the war is over. Everyone has great excitement. The word ATOM is now a news that takes up half of the newspaper pages.

“While there were plenty of Jewish jokes in cartoon magazines at first, these slowly turned into Hitler jokes over time”. When the schools start, he returns to Maraş. For three years, he spends the summers in Ergani and the school term in Maraş.
Meanwhile, he watches the liberation ceremonies of Maraş from the French occupation. In celebrations, he sees the liberation of the city from French occupation almost re-enacted. Deputies such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Hasan Reşit Tankut and Kazım Karabekir also participate in the February 12 liberation ceremonies.

He writes about his reading activities in those years, “At night, I continued my lessons and extracurricular studies. Islamic classics began to be published among other classics. Although my pocket money was very limited, I was buying books. I read Attar's pendname during the refectory watch. A friend said they had very old books in their house. We went to his home. There were commentaries (presumably manuscripts) nearly human-sized. I took a Masnavi commentary and a few books that teach Persian. The Masnavi Commentary contained both the text, the vocabulary, the meaning and the explanation. This was helpful for me. I was beginning to understand the Masnavi. I was in the second year of secondary school. It was a very early awakening of my mind. I was reading books about Ziya Gökalp. I was reading İsmail Habip Sevük's book. I had found the book called Sarıklı İhtilalci Ali Süavi at that time and had read it. Arif Nihat Asya's book "A Flag Waiting for the Wind" had just been released at that time; I had read it. I found and read Carlyl's "Heroes" in a classroom library." In those years, besides Hakka Doğru, Tanrı Kulu, İslamiyet, Sebilürreşat magazines, Orhondan Sesler, Altınışık and Kızılelma magazines were just beginning to be published. He memorizes the poems of many divan poets from Necmettin Hâlil Onan's divan poetry anthology in these years. He finds the opportunity to meet with folk poetry and many poems from the notebook and books of a student in the upper class.

Autumn begins as an especial feast in Maraş. Sezai Karakoç, who tells the colorful revels of the autumn season in his memoirs, records “In the autumn season, while Maraş was burning brightly in the resonating sunlight with red peppers laid on its roofs, my secondary school years were spent in dealing with Islam on the one hand, studying on the other hand, magazines and poems, books, Arabic, Persian and French on the other.” When he is in the second grade of secondary school, he is noticed by his Turkish teacher: The thinker, the Grand Poet of the future. This wise Turkish teacher is a student of Arif Nihat Asya. Sezai Karakoç writes his first poem during his secondary school years. The conference he gave on Namık Kemal and his reciting the Hürriyet Kasidesi brings him to be known as the "big philosopher". While walking around the bazaar on a Saturday, his consciousness is enlightened with the banner of "Büyük Doğu” (The Great East), which is heralded as "white fire". He is destined to be the founder of the mind of “Serdengeçti” and “Büyük Doğu”. After that, it is the high school years that start in Gaziantep.