Skip to main content

The Staircase

Biology
One of the most crucial roles in the coagulation process is assigned to coagulation cells, known as platelets. These are actually cell fragments, not complete cells, and are named platelets because of their flat, plate-like shape.
| Zuleyha Ozturk | Issue 163 (Jan - Feb 2025)

This article has been viewed 3847 times

The Staircase

In This Article

  • How is it that the bleeding can be stopped so quickly when the vessels that carry our life-sustaining blood are damaged?
  • Limiting coagulation is just as vital as stopping bleeding. Without molecules such as prostacyclin, clots formed in a period of seconds would extend along the vessel for meters, and organs deprived of blood flow would face gangrene.

One night as my abla* and I were talking

about our hoca*, Mr. Gulen

she told me that he is a step in a staircase

which leads us closer to The Truth, and I agreed with my impressionable mind.

But now I writhe with guilt, what I have lived and sewn,

that metaphor seems awfully inaccurate.

My “hoca” is actually my friend

and he is not a step in a staircase,

he is one who carries wood and nails from his life into mine.

So that we may build a staircase together

our hands both callused with work.

When I fall and twirl deep into my nafs*

like a broken record stuck in static darkness,

he still carries wood but with tears and prayers for me to return.

Not lose me in myself, that pitted black hole.

Then our Beloved calls me again with morning prayer

and I ache on the inside to the time lost at night

jolt back into an awake reality with the sun pouring into me.

I cry with the wood again in my hand, and I cry for my friend

for not forgetting me and gathering wood as I lost time.

I cry for his prayers and how he spoke to The Beloved

to send morning prayer a little earlier than usual,

so that I may remember what it felt to live for others.

we build with our pearl tears and carve wood into marble stairs

our hands extend to the circumference of the earth

enveloping everyone with invitation to walk the same path, be our guests


*hoca: a Turkish word meaning teacher, mentor

*nafs: is an Arabic word occurring in the Qur'an and means self, psyche[1] ego or soul

*abla: Turkish word for bigger sister, used as a term of endearment for women who are older than you.


More Coverage

A mysterious object discovered in the Milky Way Barr DE et al. A pulsar in a binary with a compact object in the mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. Science, January 2024. Astronomers using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope have made a groun…
After the exhausting hustle and bustle of the day, you finally throw yourself into your seat and take a deep breath. For a while, you keep on staring at a point, and your past life, which you are about to leave behind, plays like movie scenes in fro…
I have given myself approximately two hours, 12 minutes, and 14 seconds to write this essay. The amount of time it takes me to get to work and back on the train. Now, I have eight seconds less. I never timed how long it took to write a sentence. I…
The tragic events in the last quarter of 2023 have exhausted our hopes for a brighter future. With no power to change the course of events, we would like to start off 2024 with a prayer in the Lead Article, turning to the only One who has power to d…