JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Lobna Allamii's life changed forever two years ago in the Gezi resistance, when a police tear gas canister struck her in the head. Today Lobna, who experienced serious brain damage and has had to re-learn speech, says that youth must not forget what they learned in Gezi.

Pervin Metin of the magazine Nokta interviewed 36-year-old Lobna, currently waiting to learn if she will have to have yet another brain surgery. It would be her fourth.Since she was shot in the head by a police tear gas canister during the Gezi Park protests two years ago, the police who shot her have never been punished.

Lobna graduated from Turkey's top public university, METU. Her native language is Arabic. She has been educated in English throughout her life and learned Turkish at age 14. When she woke up from surgery to find that all of this was gone, she became suicidal.

"I studied philosophy. Learning new things, reading, writing were things I couldn't live without," said Lobna. "Then I woke up, and half my brain was gone. But my consciousness was there. I was saying things to the people around me. I thought words were coming out of my mouth, but I was just making strange sounds."Doctors told Lobna that she could not speak or read. "I wanted to throw myself out of the hospital window. I wanted to die," she said. Her boyfriend started to sit by the window in her hospital room.

"Everybody was really unhappy. There came a time when I said to myself, 'don't make your mother and sister any sadder,'" she said. That was when Lobnaresolved to receive speech therapy alongside her physical therapy. "I was a different person every month; I was developing."The last language Lobna learned in her life, Turkish, became the first one she learned when she awoke from her coma. She began to read novels again, starting with those of Turkish writers Can Yücel and Tülay German. Lobna latertraveled to Denmark for English therapy, and she is currently working on her Arabic by speaking with her mother. She read her first book of Arabic poetry (by Nizar Qabbani) two weeks ago.

"There was music at the times when I couldn't do anything. It kept me alive," she said. "In places with a lot of people, I couldn't understand what they were saying, and the roar in my head was deafening. Music was the only place of refuge for me. It still is." Lobna hopes to give a concert when she can be active again for the first time since Gezi.

"I have no regrets about being there. I was objecting to something I didn't want and I was just sitting on the ground," said Lobna of the day that changed her life. "I've been researching the people who shot me for two years. I've seen a lot of camera footage. I watched myself singing, rolling a cigarette, sitting on the ground. But there's nothing after that. In the footage, suddenly everyone is gone and I'm lying on the ground groaning."

Lobna noted that throughout her struggle and her search for justice, she hasn't had a single notable figure visit her hospital bed."Because my name is Lobna Allamii. It's not Ayşe or Deniz," she said, referring to Turkish names. "We were always the other."

Still, Lobna says she counts herself lucky for returning from the brink of death; others, like teenager Berkin Elvan who died in a coma 269 days after police shot him in the head with a tear gas canister, did not survive the police violence of June 2013.

"I think we all learned something in the Gezi process," she said. "Some forgot, some remember. Some tripped out and ran away, like me. But this is what I have to say to people now: Write, read, research. Don't accept things right away; don't deny them right away. The world is round. See what's going on in other countries. Make music, art, pictures. Speak out; don't stay silent. Love, and love some more. Say no to weapons, nuclear energy, bridges and absolutely vote. Turkey, wake up!"

(şg/fk/cm)