Ayşe is Tolgonay's neighbor and her comrade during the most difficult years. Although she did not experience the war directly, she is a sickly but loyal village woman who has long tasted the tragedy of widowhood and being left alone at home in the wake of war. Having lost her husband before the war, she is experienced in suffering. Throughout the war, she is generous enough to give Tolgonay a sack of wheat she owned, and brave enough to look after and help her orphaned and desperate daughter-in-law when needed. Her life wears out at a very early age, but she leaves behind an honorable son like Bektaş.
She was married to a husband named Chamanbay; because her husband passed away long ago, she spent her youth as a widow preoccupied with raising a boy (Bektash).
A thin, frail widow, worn out by illness, always wrapped in felt blankets behind the stove, with wool shawls and rags perpetually wrapped around her waist, yet eyes that radiate mercy.
Aliman
The daughter-in-law she sympathizes with due to her own experience of widowhood.
Bektaş
The son she loves like the apple of her eye.
Tolgonay
Both a confidante and her other painful half.