A silent dervish in the crowds: Mevlana İdris Zengin

Mevlana Idris was a self-sacrificing person, a friend of children, who spoke little, concisely and without backbiting, who loved to travel and who was addicted to conversations with tea, soup, food and sunflower seeds.

He Made Everyone Feel Special He left us early, but he said goodbye in a way that was right for him. He had shouldered the burden of the whole world, he was 56 years old, but his heart was 80 something years old, his doctors said. All his friends from near and far came to his funeral. Good prayers were said, past memories were talked about. Telling memories about him continued the next day, and will probably continue for a long time.

When I asked his friends, everyone had a different 'Mevlana Idris', but there were many things they agreed on. He would build friendships with everyone that would make them feel special. His friend of 34 years, Kemal Sayar, says, "If you met thirty people at a table, everyone would know Mevlana as their closest friend." Sayar met him when he first came to Istanbul and they have never been apart since then.

We would be silent together at a tea house, sometimes the phone would ring at 2 a.m., and Mevlana İdris would wake his friend up from his bed one night to tell him a joke. “Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not,” says his friend Ertuğrul Fındık, but he adds that they are all original, “He would pick up the phone, invite us for tea. We would be silent together at a tea house on the edge of Istanbul. During the Eid prayers in Süleymaniye, he would break simit on long tables. I don’t know what to say or how to explain it. It’s been 30 years, my brother. If I wrote a poem, it’s a little bit of that, if I wrote a story, it’s a little bit of that, if I wrote beautiful writing, it’s a little bit of that. Everyone I know has a little bit of Mevlana abi. Like a rose on our collar.

As his friends say, Mevlana was everywhere, they went to an exhibition in Paris with Mehmet Şeker. He says that after the opening ceremony, they toured the city and then left the group to go to the hotel and rest. But the outcome did not always match the intention. “We got lost because the streets and buildings were very similar. When we mixed up the streets, we had to walk a lot. It was late in the evening. One of our phones ran out of battery, the other had no internet... When we finally reached the hotel, we saw other friends who had chosen to tour. They had arrived a minute or two ago and were resting in the lobby. Mevlana and I decided, whispering to each other. ‘Master, let’s not tell anyone about this.’ There are so many things to tell that the memories do not fit on the pages. Some friends also have a lump in their throats, and they need time to tell. He is now in the graveyard of the Mihrişah Sultan Tomb of Eyüp Sultan, the neighbor of Eyüp el Ensari and the saint of Allah who has been buried in Eyüp Sultan for centuries.

When we say Mevlana İdris, the first thing that comes to mind is his kindness, silence, in other words, his dervish-like nature. His children's literature works and poems are also among his legacies. If we briefly recall his life, Mevlana İdris was born in Kahramanmaraş Andırın in 1966. He graduated from İstanbul University Faculty of Law in 1989. We saw his signature in magazines such as İkindiyazıları, Diriliş, Dergâh, Albatros, Geniş Zamanlar and Gerçek. He received the Gökyüzü Publications Children's Literature Award in 1987 with his poetry book "Kuş Renkli Çocukluğum". In 1998, he received the Children's Literature Award of the Turkish Writers' Union. The posters with poems he prepared in Gerçek Hayat magazine attracted attention for many years. The upper title of the page was called Teneffüs, which was a small break from the seriousness of the publication. In this page, which he edited, he included poems and essays by young poets every week, along with posters. After Mavikuş, he published an important magazine called Çeto, which focused on children's literature. Çeto stands for Children's Literature Translation Office. In addition to his poetry book called İyi Geceler Bayım, he also greeted literature lovers with many children's books such as Dangerous One, Sufi and Pufi, The Shop of Kindness, Acayip Hayvanlar, and Ironless Shoes. These works have been translated into languages such as Persian, German, Arabic, Urdu, and Hungarian. Mevlana İdris, who passed away after suffering from a heart condition, was buried after the funeral prayer held in the Eyüpsultan Mosque.

With mercy…