FEROZ ANKA

Everyone was speaking; I fell silent. But in truth, something silenced me. Maybe it was the excess of voices. Maybe the emptiness of words. Or maybe the weight of everything piling up inside me that I could never quite bring myself to say. I don’t know exactly what it was. But I went silent. And in that moment, I realized that silence is not just a moment; it is a calling. A silence came and sat beside me. No one noticed. It whispered, “Without all the voices, who are you?” And right then, something cracked inside me. It was as if I had been in a room filled for years with other people’s voices, and now, for the first time, I could hear my own echo. But that echo was not familiar. I had never really heard my own voice. I had been speaking as someone else for so long that I had forgotten who I was. For years, I was surrounded by crowds. I lost myself among their laughter. In every conversation, I left a piece of myself behind. Without thinking, without questioning. I felt eyes on me, waited for someone to understand me. But one day I stopped. And I noticed. Crowds had been nothing but an echo. I had been inside that echo but speaking with a voice that was not my own. In the silence, I took my first step toward finding out who I was. But that silence was not an emptiness. No, silence did not appear to me as a void. It was more like a space I could finally fill. A well I had to dig to reach myself. I was afraid. Yes, I was afraid of the silence. Because I was afraid of myself. I had grown so used to being wrapped in noise that in the silence I stood naked. All my masks fell away. I learned to look with my own eyes, but at first glance, I didn’t recognize who I was. Has this ever happened to you? When you surrendered to silence, did you notice that the noise inside you did not stop? As if all the conversations you had postponed for years, everything you had left unsaid, suddenly rose up at once. It was exactly then that I began to confront myself. This was a journey. But I had no idea where I was going. What awaited me at the end of this road? I had no idea. Maybe my own voice, maybe just another echo. But I knew one thing: This journey was the first step I had to take to reach myself. And this book tells the story of those steps. The paths that lead me back to myself. Solitude. Silence. And perhaps the courage to learn who I really am. “This voice—does it really belong to you?” silence asked. I stayed silent until I found the answer.