Sabiha Rıfat was stripped of the memories that were spinning in her head for a moment. It was about to be morning. The pain in her stomach was gone. She returned to bed again, to lay down again in one last effort to sleep. She knew that her life would change after the morning exam. Her grandmother and her mother, who recently came from Denizli, were sleeping in the room inside. Her memories began to circulate again in her mind...
Istanbul, where they returned with a great difficulty with their family, was under occupation. Against the occupation troops, the Anatolian forces united and started the liberation struggle. Everyone was talking about Mustafa Kemal. His friends were going to the frontlines one by one. Those who went to the frontlines were each heroes. Her father was also one of these heroes. Captain Rıfat Bey was soon arrested by the British administration, which occupied Istanbul, because he was from Kuvai Milliye (National Forces). After a long period of captivity, when he was released, he went to the frontlines to fight again.
The main hero, whom she believed in her heart, Mustafa Kemal and the heroes of Kuvai Milliye; succeeded in the struggling brutal war that took away Sabiha Rıfat's childhood, and founded the Republic.
She was one of the favorite students of her school. Little Sabiha grew up and became a young girl. During the years she started at Istanbul Girls' High School, as if the difficulties of the occupation and the national struggle were not enough, a tuberculosis epidemic started. She understood why they swallowed garlic every morning and that tuberculosis was a disease that could not be cured by swallowing garlic when her younger sibling and mother got sick. Her sibling, who was meant to be growing and devloping, was shrinking day by day in her mother's arms. On the day her grandmother and uncle who found asylum in Turkey by exiling from the lost lands of the Balkans, had arrived in Istanbul, her sibling died due to tuberculosis. At that time, her mother was pregnant with her third child. Although she had more than 1 month until birth, her mother started to suffer from contractions due to the pain she was experiencing. Her small sibling was born hours after her sibling's death. God was literally giving a heartbroken mother whose child was just taken, the gift of another...
Her mother had trouble coping with the postpartum trauma. Her mother went to Denizli with her uncle. Her tired father, Rıfat Bey, went to Adapazarı due to his job... She and her grandmother were alone in Istanbul. Shortly after, Sabiha Rifat learned that her father would never be able to return home. Captain Rıfat Bey's tired body could not fight any longer and left this world by inheriting his fighting spirit to his daughter. When Sabiha Rıfat lost her father, she would turn the growing pain into perseverance and would not void the freedom fight of her father and this great people.
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