The Pendulum
The Pendulum A story about memory and power
Elif was born into a world where some things were simply done without explanation.
Her mother wore a headscarf. Not to send a message. Not to make a statement. It was what the women in her family had always done, like kneading bread a certain way or wrapping herbs in cloth. For some, it was tradition. For others, quiet faith. For most, it was habit. Unremarkable. In the neighbourhood Elif grew up in, people prayed differently, or not at all, but still shared sugar, sorrow, and summer shade. No one paid attention to what was on your head.
But in buildings far from where Elif lived, that same scarf was seen as something else. A threat. A hindrance. A sign that someone belonged to the wrong version of the future. Laws were passed. Doors quietly closed. And one morning, at the gate of a university, Elif watched her mother turned away because of that scarf. No shouting. No protest. Just a long pause, a deep breath, and a quiet walk home. That silence stayed with Elif longer than any explanation could have.
Years passed. The wind shifted.
A new era arrived. This time, promising to restore what had been taken. The bans were lifted. Those once excluded were invited back in. Headscarved women re-entered classrooms, courtrooms, ministries. Elif watched it unfold with cautious hope. For a while, it felt like something had been repaired.
But freedom, she would learn, is not always freedom when it arrives dressed as reward.
The scarf that once marked you as suspicious now marked you as safe. Not everywhere. Not officially. But enough to notice. What had once been personal had become political. And the expectation was no longer to remove it—but to wear it, and to represent the right kind of belonging.
Education began to change, too. Textbooks were rewritten. History softened. Philosophy disappeared. In their place came lessons on obedience, pride, and faith. Questions slowed. Answers hardened. Thought became structure.
And something else began to grow: a divide.
Private schools began popping up everywhere, sleek buildings with glossy banners and English mottos. Some were expensive but ordinary. Others, reserved for the elite, offered education at a level comparable to top international schools. Their students had access to foreign languages, technology labs, debate teams, and global university pipelines. For those, most of whom never returned homeland, it was a version of education built for movement, confidence, and choice.
But many of these new ‘private’ schools looked better than they truly were. They promised innovation but rarely encouraged real thinking. What mattered most wasn’t whether students asked good questions, it was whether they learned to follow the expected answers.
Public schools, meanwhile, shrank from the inside. Resources thinned. Classrooms swelled. The best teachers quietly left. And in the gaps that remained, religious instruction expanded, not as one path among many, but often as the only one left. The libraries were still there, but the books had changed. Complexity was trimmed. Doubt discouraged. Science blurred with belief. Literature became lesson.
Education was hollowed out, so the ability to question would fade.
And Elif saw, even if few dared say it aloud: It’s easier to control minds trained to follow, not to think.
Meanwhile, the economy weakened. Families worked two jobs to afford tutoring. Graduates held diplomas but no direction. And still, those in power offered sermons, slogans, and promises of virtue.
Protests were punished. People who dared to question, academics, artists, and even those politicians elected by the people, were imprisoned. Many weren’t charged with anything clear. They simply no longer fit the narrative or were posing a threat.
Elif never shouted. Never stood on a stage. But she listened. And she remembered.
And in a time when forgetting was rewarded, that felt like its own quiet form of defiance.
One evening, walking home from the subway, she passed a weathered alley wall. Someone had spray-painted a single word across the concrete:
F r E e D o M
The letters were uneven. Already fading. The kind of word written quickly, maybe while looking over a shoulder.
No one else noticed it. But Elif did.
Because she remembered when that word meant visibility. Then silence. Then permission.
And now - now it meant something quieter, but harder:
the right to know, and the right to choose.
The pendulum was still swinging.
But maybe, she thought, memory itself could be an anchor.
Not to stop its motion,
but to slow it -
and steady the ground beneath those still willing to think.