In this ethnographic poem, Yağmur Çağatay focuses on the fractures of migration, gender, and literacy through the lived experiences of Kurdish women in Istanbul. She explores how language reshapes urban boundaries while simultaneously tracing the tensions that arise as literacy creates barriers of who is seen, heard, and included in the family and in the city.
five women,
from a small neighbourhood,
five women who, for five months,
sat in a room,
learning letters, learning a new life.
each word, a negotiation
of what they were allowed to be
tracing how literacy
binds them to the city,
how it is lived, how it is felt
how it isolates them from it
or how they map new borders with words.
Zahide, Dilber, Emine, Dilan, and Hacer.
between thirty and forty-six,
except for Hacer, the youngest,
who cleaned tables in a restaurant,
all the others stayed at home, unpaid.
yet, in their childhood,
they all worked
in the fields of their hometowns,
gathering the harvest,
planting the seeds
bound to the land and to one another.
Now, in moments of trust,
moments of vulnerability,
the women lean into each other,
as they speak of the city, of learning,
of motherhood, of men, of kin
and of those ties that bind.
today
they all live in Şişli,
Kurdish women,
who moved to Istanbul
for reasons of necessity,
just as Zahide said:
“I married in Batman,
moved to Manisa as a bride,
the jobs there were only for women,
so we couldn’t get by
and came to Istanbul.”
the men’s work brought them to the city,
they followed,
as if the men’s destinies were drawn first,
and the women’s lives were woven around them.
their migration was not their own,
but “our husbands’ fate became the map we followed,” Dilber said.
the other day,
Zahide’s brother-in-law came from Manisa.
“I heard you’re going to literacy classes,” he said.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” she told him,
“I take care of my children,
I cook, and I go to the course afterwards.”
her mother-in-law stayed with them.
she talked behind her back,
as if Zahide was doing something shameful.
she said,
“After all this time,
you think you’ll become a teacher?
What will you do with words
at this age?”
Zahide and the others,
unable to write or read,
it had never been needed before.
but here in Şişli,
when they arrived to see the city,
literacy
became a currency,
a measure of belonging
Şişli stood before them,
demanded the proof of
a name written cleanly
you must translate yourself,
shape your tongue to their words,
measure your worth in their terms
“When I first came here,
I didn’t go out at all.
but I lost so much weight.
When I went back to my hometown,
my family was so upset.”
in the city,
the unspoken rule to navigate the streets,
and in that silence, Emine struggled,
feeling that perhaps the city was swallowing her
five women,
from a small neighbourhood,
five women who, for five months,
sat in a room,
learning letters, learning a new life.
each word, a negotiation
of what they were allowed to be
“If I had learned to read and write earlier,
I wouldn’t have married again.
I would have raised my daughter alone.
I could have had the chance then,
because back there,
I couldn’t get any job,
illiterate,
Who would hire you?
You have no skill,
You could only clean,
wash the dishes.
Then, how could I raise my child?
I cried so much for my daughter,
but what could I do?”
Dilan’s new husband refused her daughter
she had to leave her in the arms of her mother,
who raises her as her own.
language,
the price of belonging,
their children already knewwith their hands already fluent in its curves and lines,
women followed
tracing the shapes
each letter a promise of a place
they struggled to earn
their right to the city
it was how they helped with the children’s homework,
how they signed the papers
no more leaving their names in someone else’s handwriting.
now
they read the numbers on the bus,
the ones that led them to places
they never dared to go before
writing words their husbands could not
and never wanted to
“My husband didn’t want it,” Dilan said.
“He liked me the way I was.
Sometimes, we fought
just because I came here.”
“Maybe he was jealous.
‘People do everything on computers,’ he said
His ex-wife did that,
and left him. That’s why he’s jealous”
literacy,
a doorway,
a threat,
a threat to her place at home,
the fear that she might step out
yet,
in the quiet spaces between sentences,
five women
hoped that their children
might adore them
for learning the shapes of a language
that would never be theirs.
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Image credit: Chinhiz T
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