“Do not talk to your father and mother while looking in their faces. Do not frown at, make sour face to, them. Do not behave badly to them. If they order something, then do it.” 

Be as wise as your grandfathers and as merciful as your mothers!

My dear Türkmen Nation!

The mother is a sacred being. Then talk of the mother is sacred too.

One can understand the value of sacred things only after one has lost them. The values of certain things can only be perceived after they are lost. A man’s real nature can be understood by looking at his respect toward his mother. A Türkmen saying expresses how beautiful a mother is to her child:

“Fatherless, I am orphan; motherless, I am captive.”

Türkmen people compare the mother to the father to express the fact that the privileged status of the sacred mother cannot be compensated for by anything.

(319) 

I was both an orphan and a captive. This double suffering is recognized only by those who have faced it.

I can say that the severest pain is the need for maternal love. The pain felt by the heart is sharper than bodily suffering. Bodily pain abates, but the pain felt by the heart goes on, bleeds all the time and remains with one, as long as one’s heart remains beating.

The Türkmen combines the words mother and heart, and tells us that sacredness has nothing to do with material benefits or values.

The mother’s lap is the second homeland where the child lives, is taught to speak, has his mind and feelings developed from infancy toward adolescence. Compassion originates from the warmth of the mother’s lap.

Allah creates; He is the Creator. The mother is the reproducer, the deliverer.

Human beings other than Adam and Eve gain life in their mother’s wombs and are prepared for worldly life there. The 

creation of Eve shows that Allah reserved creation for Himself, but shared the power to reproduce humans with mothers.

Thereafter, Allah did not create another human being without a mother, except in one instance. This instance was the creation of Jesus Christ. Magtymguly says the following on Allah’s creation of Jesus Christ:

“He is the one that came into being without a father.”

Allah Almighty is definitely powerful. He could have created Jesus Christ without a mother too. But that’s not how He did it. I think this a sign of the special value placed upon the mother by the Creator. It is an obligation upon every Türkmen to praise and love the mother, who is given a special value by Allah, the Creator of you and me and all, Who creates everything out of nothing by His Will and Command, Who is the Creator of the whole universe.

If any word at all has the quality of a miracle, if any word at all has superior qualities about it, that word is mother. Life has its origins in the mother.

Once upon a time the great Seljuk poet Enweri approached a saint with great enthusiasm. The saint said:

“Allah has given me a special privilege; ask of me any wish you desire and it will come true.”

“I wish to see my mother who is the ultimate direction I turn to, and my father’s face for one last time. Let them see that their child lives in the world in a benevolent way, causing no harm. Let them be in peace in the other world knowing this,” asked Enweri of the saint.

By Allah’s will, the saint let Enweri see the faces of his mother and father. They met and were happy.  
  The saint said:

“You could have been given wealth or a Sultanate if you had wished. But yours was the most sacred of all desires. Go and you will be rewarded with the Sultanate of hearts!”

Under Soltan Sanjar’s patronage, Enweri the Poet became the most famous poet of all Seljuk Türkmens, Arabs and Persians. He is deemed to be one of the three poets who followed the way of the Prophet.

There is a myriad of anecdotes and stories about mothers. Man can understand that the most miraculous thing in the world is the mother, although he does not necessarily understand everything. He elevates the status of the mother with wise sayings.

Once there was a couple in love. The girl wished to learn how much her beloved loved her:

“Tear apart your mother’s chest and bring her heart to me, if you really love me,” she said.

The girl’s beloved was mad about the girl and he tore apart his mother’s chest and took the bloody heart, which was still beating, in his hands. He ran to the girl’s house. A stone on the way tripped him and he fell down. At that moment his mother’s heart in his hands gained the power to speak and said:

“O my dear, you haven’t hurt yourself, have you?”

This is a mother. No matter what happens, she feels and lives for her child with such love, compassion, attachment and dedication that it can never ever be given up. After a long and painful delivery, between life and death, every mother gives birth to her child in difficulty.

(323)

“On some occasions, it is really hard to save the lives of some mothers. Realizing the dangers, those mothers always say, ‘Save my baby. Leave me but deal with my child and save it,’ and so give life to their babies.”

The following story is attributed to a poet who lived in historic times:

The poet’s mother wishes to eat apples when she is with child. There are dark red apples hanging in the trees in the gardens that belong to their neighbours. She cannot ask for apples from the neighbours since she is at odds with them. She cannot buy apples because she does not have the money. She goes back and forth to the gardens wishing for some apples and thinks she should not take them since the apples do not belong to her, so it would be wrong to take those apples. Then the baby is born and grows to be the famous poet. The poet says:

“Our neighbour’s garden is a fertile land for apples. I sometimes wish to fulfil my mother’s wish and eat those apples. But I don’t, because I do not want to hurt my mother’s soul. Therefore I control myself.”

The Türkmen nation does not know much about the great poet Enweri. I sometimes think:

“Enweri was so happy that he saw the faces of his mother and father once again, and I would also give all that I have to be able to see the faces of my parents.”

The women who knew my mother say, “How dear and affectionate a woman your mother was!” Those who knew my father say, “Saparmyrat, your father was a bold and fearless man. He would help people, and if he couldn’t help others himself, he would try to find others who could. He had such light in his face, he spoke courteous and beautiful words, and he was a man to be heard with joy.”

(325) 

We say the mother is the soil, the father is the homeland.

The mother teaches us to love the soil, and the father teaches us to love the homeland through their painstaking efforts and their lives.

It is not proper to pay the slightest respect to a person who does not take care of his parents. Even Allah’s angels would not pay any respect to the person who does not take care of his parents.

The Türkmen have a beautiful saying: “Only my mother’s tears are real, others’ are fake.” The mother always takes care of her children. Respect mothers! Love mothers! We wouldn’t be paying them the respect they deserve, even if we carried them on top of our very heads. People who are respectful of their parents are happy and productive in their lives. Don’t believe in the greatness and goodness of those who are disrespectful of their parents. A man’s real essence can be understood in the respect he displays toward his parents.

Continue serving your parents even after they pass away. The services you render to the homeland will be of use after death, as well. Don’t forget about your homeland.