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writermuses · 5 months ago

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About Emirhan Halil

Age: 30

FC: Alperen Duymaz

Fears: Becoming a POW; slow, painful death

Height: 6'0

Role model(s): His brother, Yasin

Things they hate: Capitalism

They will love you if... you wait about 15 years to let him realize y'all have been in a relationship?

Favorite film(s): Kingsman, The Drop, and secretly Testament of Youth

Favorite tv show(s): Broadchurch or Happy Valley

Abdullah and Fadime Halil were newlyweds, young and in love. Abdullah felt lucky to finish university and to obtain a government job as an accountant. When the 1977 elections held no victor; however, he could feel the tensions rise in the city. One by one coworkers fled or disappeared or they asked him for money and favors. Arriving to work to find his desk in disarray and records missing, he called home and instructed Fadime to pack their bags. To his surprise she was quietly already doing so, a terrifying note left on the door. Abdullah, despite the lowly appearance of his job, had come across evidence that could sway support in a coup d’état. His choices were to lose his honor or his life; moreover, failure to decide fast enough would result in his and Fadime’s death.

The decision to seek asylum in the United States was not an easy one, but Abdullah had hoped he could find another accounting job in a big city. Having heard the great New York City immigration stories of old, he thought it would be a nice place to start his new life. It was a long process to be approved to leave Turkey and a longer process still to become U.S. citizens. Abdullah had tried and tried again to find a respectable job as an accountant, but no one would take him, prejudice and politics slammed door after door in his face. With family back home expecting him to pay their way to America too, he took a job as a cab driver and Fadime cleaned houses. After a few smart remarks, Abdullah wiggled his way into an accounting position for the cab company, giving it the opportunity to expand and for him to get the letters of reference he was lacking in his field so that he could get that ‘respectable’ job.

If there was one thing the immigrants never pictured it was a life lived paycheck to paycheck. With time it became more complicated with both of their parents crammed into their one bedroom apartment. While this provided Fadime and Abdullah with free childcare, by the time their third child was on the way, they had enough and Abdullah applied to jobs and pled with people to pass his name along. He did the taxes of people in the building, offered his services for minimal fees for the shops on their streets, and, then he got an unexpected call for a phone interview. The town of Cape Elizabeth, Maine was looking for an assessor and a friend of a friend had heard of him, a hardworking family man looking to get out of the big city. Naturally, they took the plunge.

Moving to Cape Elizabeth proved to be an absolute blessing. The government job provided them with temporary housing until they could buy a home on Abdullah’s new salary. That salary and the cost of living gave them a three level home where the grandparents took the basement, family time was shared in the center, and the upstairs rooms gave a master to Abdullah and Fadime, a soft pink room to their eldest child, Ayşe, a room off equal size and painted green to their middle child, Yasin, and a small nursery to their incoming boy, Emirhan. Unfortunately, life could not be so simple for the Halils and their extended family. On November 3rd, a heavy snow had fallen and as the ambulance took Fadime and Abdullah to the hospital for the birth of Emirhan, the crowded station wagon carrying all four of Emirhan’s grandparents and his two siblings lost control and crashed into the woods. The ambulance drove on, sending out a call for help as the stress sent the couple into further panic.

Only Ayşe and Yasin had survived the crash, but the trauma of sitting in a freezing car with blood and death of their love ones haunted them. Ayşe, who was nearly ten, suffered from night terrors. Yasin, at age six, began to act out or refused to speak at all, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason behind his extreme mood swings. While Abdullah continued to work, Fadime stayed at home, caring for the children to the best of her ability, and pouring as much hope and love into Emirhan as possible. He seemed, for all intents and purposes, a happy baby. She had tried to have him made aware of his grandparents by wrapping him in their clothes and telling him stories, but once he could crawl he seemed to roam around too much for such things. Fadime packed up the rooms and left little of their memories out, which seemed to help Ayşe and Yasin. Then, Emirhan began to talk and the family was given a great shock.

Despite Ayşe and Yasin speaking solely English, Emirhan’s first words were in Turkish. He would walk to the shelf and touch the pictures and say “Merhaba dede!” or “Seni özledik”. While some parents may have found that sweet, the Halils were staunch Turkish Muslims that believed in Jinn and the Evil Eye. They feared for their son and put talismans in his room and Qu’ran verses in the common areas of the home. As he grew up and became more curious, Emirhan stumbled across the boxes of his grandparents belongings and found himself fascinated by them. He snuck item after item back to his room. Where he found stories and communication in the objects, relaying that to his family had concerning responses. For example, he brought up Dede’s watch and the inscription on the back, a verse about love and how it had been recited at Fadime and Abdullah’s wedding. They were surprised to hear it, but then more concerned when Emirhan looked to his siblings and said Dede wanted Ayşe and Yasin to carry love and happiness in their lives too. Was it wisdom or a curse?

They hoped their son was observant and intuitive, but they scolded him when these things happened in public to strangers. Emirhan learned slowly to keep his psychometry to himself, his own parents refusing to believe it, despite the evidence. The Halil children went through school and were considered to be odd. This led to different lifestyle choices and interests for each of the children, but also increased the bond between them, despite their age differences. However, Emirhan remained the sort of odd child out. Regardless of people believing in Heaven or Hell, ghosts and demons, a spirit world or intuition, Emirhan believed in what he saw or heard and always trusted his gut. In the end, that decision, despite his decision to not discuss his belief in psychometry (once he could put a word to the skill) would save lives and put others at peace.

With no fear of death and little interest in spending an excessive amount of money or time in school, Emirhan chose to be a mortician. However, to prevent being a burden on his father, who was already paying for the tuition of his older siblings, he chose to do so in the military. The idea alone terrified Abdullah and Fadime, but they let him go because they knew he was too strong willed to be told no. With their consent, he enlisted in the United States Navy, completing his training at Fort Lee, Virginia in 2011 before finding out he would immediately be sent to Afghanistan. Emirhan was fluent in Turkish and English, understood Arabic and could read it, and he was competent in Spanish, which he had taken in high school. Knowing he would be going to the Middle East encouraged him to learn Pashto and Dari, two similar languages, and to perfect his Arabic.

On paper, the job description was this: In a small unit of two or three Hospital Corpsmen and with volunteer security or local support, Emirhan would search areas for hasty or unmarked graves, unburied dead, personal effects, and identification media. They would also prepare, preserve, and ship the remains. This meant that he would frequently be in danger and then travel out of Afghanistan to Germany, Korea, or Puerto Rico, depending on the circumstances of his findings. In most cases, his trips were back to Germany and the remains made the next trip without him. As a result, Emirhan decided, after a couple of years of living on the Ramstein Air Base when he wasn’t in Afghanistan, he decided to rent a flat in Frankfurt.

Given the significantly higher rates of PTSD in his field, the military morticians were given longer and more regular periods of leave. Emirhan regularly uses these breaks to attend funerals in the states, leaving letters on the graves of those that have passed, to be found by the families. Passing on what he is given has largely been his way of coping with the terror of the world he lives in, but he does still have moments of overwhelming empathy that have impacted his personal life. From shaking a blind date’s hand and brushing against a bracelet that belonged to her mother, Emir could find himself catching flashes of a person’s personal life or the sorrow of a grandmother long gone. Other times he could be carefully moving through an antique store where his date had insisted they visit so he could get a second chair or more lamps, his fingers could brush the keys of a piano and he could be overwhelmingly compelled to sit and play. Then, despite never having training, if he indulged the urge the tune would come out. His partners had always, eventually, come to the conclusion that he was emotionally unstable or weird.

Despite the difficulties of his job, his interests, and the conflicts with his faith, Emirhan explored the world with hope and optimism. From learning Spanish guitar in Catalonia to praying in the Hagia Sophia before exploring the streets his parents grew up on in Turkey, traveling on the Lattice opened his eyes. Emirhan believes there is a delicate balance of cruelty and love in the world and that through travel, the balance can be tipped for good. While you may see him pausing awkwardly while exploring a museum, crying when he picks up items that spilled out of a stranger’s purse, or rubbing his temple as he tries to recall something he’d just said in a language he doesn’t actually know, Emirhan prides himself in his life having purpose.

#ref: emirhan bio #ref: emir bio #death tw #mental health tw #ptsd tw #ghosts tw

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