Somer’s Preface

The 1970s was an eventful decade in Turkey, and not only because I was born then. In 1971, the military staged a coup for the second time (the first one being in 1960); left-wing students and right-wing militants supported by the government were at war with each other; and day and night curfews were in place.

I grew up knowing the difference in sound between a gunshot in the next street and a bomb in the next suburb. Even in the midst of civil war, my babaanne (grandma) retained her sense of hospitality. ‘Do not close the door, Somer—our neighbours might think we want to keep them away’, she would tell me every time I shut the door to the family apartment in Istanbul.