“...This is how Tezer is; makes those whom she loves friends with one another; has a generous heart, not distinctive or abductive, but a connector; such that those who were introduced to one another by her are like lifelong friends now...”
L.E.
She knew even when she was a child; she came to the world to leave.
In 1943, in the borough Simav of Kutahya, she said “Hello!” to the world. This warm “Hello” was the start of a one of a kind adventure. Every morning, she started the new day with the sound of a whistle that her father blew with a military order.
Her childhood, that was spent with strict rules, seemed to create the building of irregularity deep in her soul.
Her family, who came to Istanbul after her brother secured a place at Kabataş High School, enrolled Tezer in "St. George Austria Girls High School". The curiosity of the nuns’ physical appreances even overbore the lessons. Tezer could see the “sameness” in this deep difference between cultures. Even if it wasn’t mathematics, she gained the ability to live in European countries where she would spend almost half of her life in this school. Once she returned after a trip to Vienna with the school camp, she found that she now had the courage to "go". No matter where ... Now, there was a Tezer who would follow her own truths and beliefs; not a Tezer whom they squeezed into molds, what they wanted her to be. She left her education in the last year of high school and went to Berlin.
How could "coming and going" be so intertwined and close to one another? So, like these opposites, the "unity" in these seemingly opposed concepts was beginning to form the "essence" of Tezer.
She traveled almost all of Europe by hitchhiking. At a young age she learned to compare the sunless mornings of Berlin with the hot nights of Italy. Although a woman's hitchhiking among countries was considered to be contrarian in the conditions of the society she lived and grew up in, Tezer Özlü became the sole ruler of her dreams and curiosity.
She was collecting her experiences. She knew that one day her soul would vomit all of this out. The "knowledge of life" she acquired through her travels would gradually be put into words. She started writing her first practice essays. When she returned to Turkey she had become a totally different person. With the effect of what she had lived and seen, her desire to write which was evolving inside her was also increasing.
She decided to write until she didn't have a single word left inside of her. She knew that she had to take a journey to "herself" for this. She would continue her search until she reached all her words, facing her deepest and perhaps darkest sides.