"I don't bend"

Asaf Ilbay recounts:

"Our house had a big garden. Our neighborhood friends often gathered and played the game called 'mancala', which was very popular in Thessaloniki at that time. It was a kind of 'one for all' game, where one person would bend down and others would jump over them in turn. He wouldn't participate in the game but loved watching it. Especially if any of us fell or stumbled, he couldn't resist laughing. One day we decided to force him to join the game. We made him jump over us one by one, and when it was his turn, he stood upright without bending down and said:

-'Come on, jump over me!'

As we insisted that he should bend his head down, he said:

-'I won't bend! You can jump over me like this.'

We couldn't persuade him no matter what."¹

¹ Niyazi Ahmet Banoğlu, Nükte ve Fıkralarla Atatürk, Volume I, Istanbul 1967, p. 2.

Source: Atatürk’ten Gençliğe Unutulmaz Anılar, Ahmet Gürel, Mayıs 2009