“Jale” means dewdrop.

It wasn’t easy at all to drop like a morning chill into the bigotry she was in. The damage caused by all those difficulties she had been through on her “weak” body couldn’t be healed. Afife Jale's solution was to stay in a hospital. With the help of her friends staying at Darülbedayi, she began treatment at the morphine addiction ward at Bakirkoy Psychiatric Hospital. In the hospital ward where she was discharged from and checked in to from time to time, she left her exhausted body. She was now free from the body that she was trapped in and took her place in eternity as a star for those who sought to find a way. The thing moving humanity forward was not the societies’ blinded loyalty to the lines drawn for them. Those who were likely unaffiliated to the norms of value in the societies were moving the societies forward. At the end of their determined fight against darkness, even though they were condemned, outsided, undesired in their times, they were to be valuable in moving the society forward.

 

Today, Afife Jale who has one of the most important award shows in Turkish Theatre named after her,  was all alone when she died in her hospital room! At first glance this somewhat "miserable" situation, actually turned Afife Jale into exactly what she desired to be. During her last stay in the hospital, she was declaring this situation in an interview:

“Remember me by thinking, loving and embracing, not by pitying. As long as the theatre will last, so will I!”

 

Although her exact grave location is not known today, Afife Jale’s memorial is Turkish culture. Her shroud became theatre curtains, her gravestones became theatre stages rising all over the country continuously. Her light came to life in the bodies of tens of thousands of sacred women today.

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halil