A Reflection on My Journey

Who is Dilay?

Greetings, dear reader. Allow me to introduce myself, though I suspect you may already sense a strange kinship…

My name is Dilay, family name Zafer, though my mother, in her own affectionate whimsy, insists on calling me “Dilosh”— a nickname that suggests warmth to her. It’s fitting, as I’ve come to see myself as, at the very least, someone marked by a familiar yet complex journey. Each choice I’ve made feels as though it’s been carved by both destiny and determination.

Perhaps it’s best to begin with the facts, although I think even they are imbued with a certain peculiar charm. I’ll soon turn twenty-one—November 17 marks the day precisely. Sports have been a foundational part of my life: football, beach football, volleyball, basketball, and even the strategic intricacies of chess. And to keep things interesting, I embraced athletics with the same vigor, feeling the way both physical and mental rigor could mold a person.

Yet there’s more to me than the structure of sports. Music and performance have also woven themselves into my life, no doubt spurred by an insatiable curiosity. I play the guitar, piano, flute, and cajón—a range that once marked me as a staple in my high school’s band. I can imagine myself there still. And then drama found me; I’d taken lessons and even found my way into one or two plays, a brief but telling flirtation with the art of becoming someone else, one’s other selves. However, it wasn't for me.

Finally, world of languages is where I found my true depth. For me, languages are not simply tools of communication; they are portals into other worlds. I speak Turkish and English with native ease, Old Turkic (Gokturk) and variations of most of the Turkic languages as though they were second nature, and Norwegian alongside the structured grammar of Latin. I have a taste for French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, and the complex syllabary of Ancient Greek, Sumerian, and Hieroglyphics. I often find myself drawn to these tongues as though they were relics of far-off lands and centuries, patiently waiting to be unearthed and understood. I suppose, in my quiet way, I am an archaeologist of languages, eager to excavate meanings long dormant. I tell you these just to give you a sense of the roots that hold my character.

Here lies a curious paradox: while I am drawn to solitude, I also find a thrill in rhetoric, teaching, and engaging with others. My voice, I imagine, is rather measured, perhaps compelling rather than simply audible.

I am, without question, my mother’s daughter. Night after night, she unfolded for me and my little sister the tapestry of history, science, arts, music, literature, religions, and myths. Picture, if you will, a young girl, rapt with attention as her mother’s stories transport her to realms as distant as ancient Mesopotamia or the Scandinavian forests. Those tales were more than entertainment; they were my introduction to the pleasure of intellectual examination, of following a question to its logical end and then pushing further.

For us, she was—and is—a fairy, one of those figures who seem imbued with a gentleness that verges on the otherworldly. The care she showed us was nothing less than enchanting, her every action a testament to thoughtfulness and grace. I recall her sacrifices with a vividness that hasn’t dimmed; the quiet heroism with which she relinquished her own ambitions, her career, to nurture two lives into something greater than their beginnings. In a world often starved for such figures, she remains for us a hero, and her influence is a foundation on which so much of who I am rests.

In this sense, my aunt as well—on my father’s side—played a role of quiet significance, a figure who deserves mention for her impactful influence. She was a sales manager for a worldwide construction company, a career that, in those days, involved extensive travel across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. I admired her intensely; there was a certain elegance to her presence, a refinement in the way she dressed and spoke that seemed deliberate yet effortless. And she knew it well.

With a perceptive eye and an intuitive grasp of her influence, she assumed a role beyond mere relation. Long before I entered primary school, she had begun teaching us the fundamentals of English with the company of my mother. They were, in fact, the first to introduce us to a structured method of learning, laying out lessons with the precision and clarity of someone accustomed to meticulous planning. There was an art to their pedagogy, a rigor that mirrored their own standards, and specifically I responded to it with an almost religious zeal.

It’s thanks to them that I acquired a fluency with language early on, long before most children even held their first book. By the age of five, I could read and speak sensibly, a skill that has defined so much of my intellectual path since.

Through middle school (I’m not sure whether it is called “middle” in English or not), it became increasingly clear that my mother’s early influence set me apart. My classmates, though brilliant in their own ways, often seemed to still be wrestling with basic concepts while I—fueled not by arrogance but by a sheer love of learning—had already begun quietly pursuing knowledge for its own sake.

At the third year of high school, when the time came to choose a field to prepare for further studies—liberal arts, mathematics, both, or linguistics—my course was apparent. Linguistics was not just an academic choice; it was an inheritance, a gift my mother had unknowingly passed to me. And yet, high school was only the beginning. By the time I entered university, my gaze had already begun to shift, not to the modern or even the early modern, but to the folds of antiquity itself. From the popular modern novels to Shakespeare's sonnets, to Medieval history, to the philosophy of ancient civilizations…

The first three years of university in the English Language and Literature department were almost a formality, a prelude to deeper, more exacting studies. But even as I delved into English, American, and European literature in lectures, something within me felt unfinished. I had, it seemed, reached the limits of the comparingly modern world for myself and felt the pull of something older, something foundational.

That longing eventually led me to Classical Philology and Ancient History, a realm where language is more than a tool; it is a bridge to civilizations long past. This wasn’t a decision I took lightly, nor was it a choice born of ambition. It was a culmination of years of quiet preparation, a natural progression from the countless stories my mother had woven into my life. To study the ancient, I realized, was to seek out truths that underpin human experience, the myths, legends, and histories that speak to something eternal.

In many ways, I think of myself as a person whose ambition lies not in fame or accolades, but in understanding. This path I walk has been crafted with intention and shaped by reverence for knowledge. Through what seem to be small decisions, I have created a life that connects past and present, one that speaks to the enduring power of curiosity and quiet strength of purpose. As I stand on the brink of my twenty-first year, I can only imagine what worlds I will discover, what heights I will reach, and what inheritance I will leave behind.

In a world that often prizes speed over substance, my path is a reminder of the beauty of patience and the quiet pursuit of something beyond oneself. Perhaps I am, in my truest sense, simply a testament to the impact of a single mind devoted, wholeheartedly, to the love of learning.

Now, I’d like to discuss the outlines of my literary preferences and the fields that have captured my interest.

As I mentioned, I’ve already navigated the sprawling landscapes of English, American, and European literature. Were I to chart my journey from the start—if we are to proceed chronologically through the layers of my reading history—I’d say I am drawn to works that are, in essence, distinct in their timelessness, laden with philosophical depth.

I gravitate toward the ancient and the classical, texts that sit at the very foundation of human thought. This includes, naturally, the myths, epics, and specifically speaking, Homer and Plato. I favor works that explore the nature of human existence, grappling with questions of morality, fate, and the elusive search for truth.

Authors and writers I favor:

Prose

Herodotus, Plato, Aesop, Petronius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Jean de La Fontaine, François Rabelais, Niccolò Machiavelli, Michel de Montaigne, Boccaccio, Madame de Lafayette, Voltaire, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jonathan Swift, Denis Diderot, William Thackeray, Alexandre Dumas, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fyodor Dostoyevski, Gustave Flaubert, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel García Márquez, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Julio Cortázar, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Toni Morrison, John Fowles, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Umberto Eco, Donna Tartt, Barbara Tuchman, Noam Chomsky, Charles Segal, William R. Maples, Callimachus, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Berger.

Graphic Novel

Takehiko Inoue, Hajime Isayama, Haruichi Furudate, Kentaro Miura, Gege Akutami, Makoto Yukimura, Mikoto Yamaguchi, Shinya Umemura, Takumi Fukui, Ajithika, Q. Hayashida, Hajime Komoto, Tatsuki Fujimoto, Koogi, Ryo Suzukaze, Tsugumi Ooba, Kousuke Oono, Kohske, Naoki Urasawa, Kohta Hirano, Mingwa, Natsuki Kizu, Youngha, Suji Kim, Kang Ji-Young.

Poetry

Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Pindar, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Sextus Propertius, Ovid, Du Fu, Rumi, Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Arthur Rimbaud, Edgar Allan Poe, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Behçet Necatigil, Nâzım Hikmet, Cemal Süreyya, Attila İlhan, Küçük İskender, Seamus Heaney, Ocean Vuong.

Drama

Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Terence, Seneca, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, George Farquhar, Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett.

My interests span Comparative, Classical, Medieval, Neoclassical, Renaissance, Postmodern, Postcolonial, and Feminist Literatures, along with Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. I’m especially drawn to exploring genres like Epic, Lyric Poetry, Tragedy, Comedy, Satire, Historical Narrative, Allegory, Fable, Sonnet, Essay, Tragicomedy, Psychological Novel, and Metafiction.

As I conclude this small odyssey into the contours of my existence, I must tell you that my pursuit is not for recognition, but for understanding—the kind that unlocks the mysteries of our shared humanity. I invite you to accompany me on this voyage, to share your thoughts and reflections in the comments, where every voice adds a note to this symphonic exploration. This space is not just mine; it is ours—a sanctuary for those who wish to engage, to question, and to ponder the great enigmas of existence.

So, until our paths cross again, may your own journey be filled with discovery and insight. Stay safe.

Note: A big thanks to Monique Einwechter for being this articles muse! Much love!