Ayman Dagestani

full interview

Where are you currently living?
Do you mean my current address?

I want you to talk about your life here. Where do you live?
I live in the Yeni Bosna area in Istanbul, Turkey. I live in a regular rented house.

Can you describe the living conditions in general?
Do you mean the financial situation?

In general.
My living situation is normal.

Are you married?
I am married, and I have a 9-year-old son. I live a regular life.

With whom do you live?
I live with my wife, my son, and also my mother-in-law.

How do you spend your time here in Istanbul? Do you work?
Currently, I am a partner in a pizza restaurant, and I work as a pizza chef.

What are the things you do and bring you happiness?
These things are like dreams for me. I feel like you are now making fun of me.

I mean, for example, some people feel happy when they work on a specific thing, or when you make pizza, you feel happy.
In general, when you work and see results in your job or when a customer comes to the shop and looks satisfied with the pizza you served, at that moment, you feel happiness. Also, one of my hobbies is photography, so when I go out to take photos, I feel happy.

How has your life been since you came here? What are the positive and negative things you found here?
Since my arrival in Istanbul, I didn’t know the language at all, and the situation as a refugee or a stranger was not good. The situation was not well organized for refugees, especially those coming from Syria. The language was a major challenge. It was difficult, and it is the main gate to finding a job, especially with the Turks. You must master the language unless you find work within the Syrian community, and even this was limited. There were difficulties in finding a job initially, but we adapted to life here, integrated within the community, and things improved. As for the positive aspects, we can say that there is now some comfort in the country, and as a community, I feel that it is good.

Can you explain how you feel about living here?
Honestly, living here is difficult. When I first saw Istanbul and started living here, I used to call it “the mill.” There are challenges in life, but you can see the results in the future.

Do you feel comfortable?
No, I might feel safe here, but I don’t feel stable. The situation in this country feels unstable.

How do you feel away from your family and home?
After 13 years of being away, when you look back, you feel a strange feeling. Everyone wishes to return to their country, see the area they lived in, their home, and their family.

What does the 13-year separation evoke inside you?
You feel that life is shattered, you also feel like you are emotionally shattered.

How did you imagine dealing with this situation?
What do you mean?

Did you imagine that you would reach to this stage?
Certainly not.

How did you deal with the situation?
When I first left Syria, I had dreams and plans, but none of them came true, and all my dreams were shattered.

How did you address this issue or cope with it?
I was forced to do that. You have to adapt to the situations because, as a human, you are forced to adapt to the circumstances you live in or are forced into.

Were there any strengths that helped you deal with the situation better?
I believed that something better would inevitably come in the future.

Were there people who helped you?
Absolutely. Your family will always be supportive in everything in your life, even if it’s just a word.

Have you developed skills to overcome these conditions?
Yes, there has been an adaptation to this issue, so the feelings of fear about things that could happen have diminished. Whatever can happen, will happen.

Why did you leave your country? Can you explain what happened?
To be honest, I left before the events in Syria. Like any young man finishing his studies and trying to establish himself, especially given the situation in our country or in the region in general, which is not like other countries, my dream, like any young man in Syria, was to travel. I got a job opportunity abroad and traveled.

Was the travel for work?
Of course, it was for work, so you can secure your future. Even before the events in Syria, if you wanted to buy a house, which is considered one of the simplest things, it was an impossible dream to achieve through work in Syria. My journey was a plan for a new beginning. I traveled two years before the events and went to Kuwait. The living conditions and the political situation in the country were what made me leave even before the events in Syria. So, considering the conditions after the events, they will undoubtedly be worse.

At that time, when you decided to leave Syria, what were your feelings?
Honestly, the feeling that bothered me the most was that I would be far from my family. Especially in the first year or year and a half in Kuwait, it was difficult because I used to live in a tight-knit social environment, a cohesive family, and strong family relationships. Suddenly, I lost all of that, and the first year and a half in Kuwait were very tough. After that, I started to adapt, and the feelings started to fade.

How was the journey until you reached Istanbul? What ultimately brought you here? What difficulties did you go through?
In Kuwait, the financial situation was good, but living there was not easy. During the events in Syria, I couldn’t bring my wife to be with me. Kuwait was not issuing visas to Syrians at all, and the situation in Syria, especially in Homs, was very bad. I had to find a way to get my wife out of there, and Turkey was one of the countries that didn’t require a visa for entry, making it relatively easy to enter. My cousin was in Turkey, which encouraged me to come here. What made me stay here was initially the ease of reaching Europe. However, what kept me here today is the similarity of the community here to our community in Syria.

How do you feel about this journey that started from Syria to Kuwait and then Turkey?
I expect this feeling is in the genes. We originate from Dagestan, and our ancestors also migrated. We have the genes of migration, and it’s written in our fate to remain migrants. As I told you, the first year and a half was the hardest, and then a person develops immunity against these things. The fear or obsession of moving from one country to another disappears.

How did this affect or reflect on you?
It reflected negatively on me. There were many aspects in work or outside of work where I could have developed myself. The events in Syria, the constant moving, and the lack of stability make you mentally exhausted. A tired mind cannot be creative or perform like a person who is mentally at ease. It affected on trying to develop myself or bring out better things.

What strategy did you follow to overcome the hardships you faced?
There is no strategy to overcome difficulties; you have to fight to try to get something better.

What was your dream before the revolution and before everything happened in Syria?
Before the events, my dream was like any young person’s dream, to secure my future, buy a house and a car, and start a family. That was my big dream. As a personal dream, I dreamt about being a photographer. There were many dreams, I also dreamt of having a restaurant in Syria.

To have a restaurant in Syria has become true, as now you have a restaurant, or, let’s say, half a restaurant, in Turkey. What was your dream when you left Syria?
My only dream at that time was to leave Syria.

Due to the bad situation?
Definitely, both the living and political situations, and mandatory military service were a concern for every Syrian young man. The main dream was to leave Syria and escape the situation there.

When you were in Syria, what were your strengths?
Honestly, it was family. This is something you feel after leaving the country, realizing that family was your strength and support.

What was the hardest thing you faced in your journey that had an impact on you and changed you?
There were two stages that were the most challenging for me. The first was leaving Syria and being separated from my family. It was a difficult feeling, and it took a lot of time to overcome. The second stage was when I arrived in Istanbul. The first 5 or 6 months were indescribable, whether in finding job opportunities or dealing with the work conditions I was in. The living conditions were tough.

What is your dream for the future?
To be honest, life has shattered our dreams. We can’t even dream anymore, especially as we get older; nothing seems easy to achieve. I’m struggling with a sense of despair. Sometimes, there might be a period of optimism, but life’s circumstances and everything that happened to us have made it difficult to dream.

Can we say today that your dream is to dream?
Yes, I do have a dream, but I feel it’s impossible to achieve.

What is your dream?
To have my own business.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We have become accustomed to the issue of refuge. Our roots are in Dagestan, and we sought refuge in Syria. Now, we find ourselves as refugees in Turkey, and I feel like this is something we’re destined to remain as refugees.