A space to ground

Interview Alphabets of Flesh

Nilay Ceber was born and raised in the Schilderswijk in The Hague. She is trained as a theatre maker and teacher and is one of the founders of The Need for Legacy, a foundation that strives for an inclusive Dutch theatre history.

Nilay: “My parents were born in Turkey, near the border with Azerbaijan and Iran. They sat together in class as children. When my mother was five, my grandfather went to The Hague as a migrant worker. Seven years later, he came back to get his family. My other grandfather left for Bielefeld in Germany as a migrant worker. My father went to work at the Hilton Hotel in Munich at the age of thirteen and lived on his own from then on.

My mother married my father at the age of nineteen. My father’s family was afraid that he would marry a German and therefore married him off to my mother. In the end, my parents did find love for each other, partly because my father gave my mother the space to study.”

A place from the past

“My mother talks lovingly and paradisaically about her hometown. They lived in a clay cottage and had animals and a pear tree. She tells romantically how they swam in the river, walked to school with the donkey and made clothes from self-picked cotton. She has a melancholic desire for what is over and is sorry that everyone is so materialistic now, while she used to be happy with a game of stones. My father, on the other hand, hardly ever talked about the past. He said: ‘It was just a village. It’s better here.’”

Turkey

“Turkey is not an easy country. The longest I’ve been there is almost three months in a row. Initially, I did not want to return to the Netherlands, but increasingly ran into issues that I could not agree with, such as politics, women’s rights and the denial of certain population groups. There is a lot of tension in the country. That makes me sad. I would like to do something about poverty and inequality, but at the same time it is an arrogant thought that I could mean something. It’s such a complex problem.

What I also find difficult is that people who have not lived in Turkey for a long time still retain their voting rights. They often vote from a nationalist feeling for a regime that they do not have to live under themselves. But how do you want to determine someone else’s freedom if you do not live there yourself? Nevertheless, it makes sense that you will stick more to your own culture when you are seen as ‘ the other ’. If you are discriminated against in the Netherlands, for example because of a check in the supermarket, you are more likely to think that you have all your rights in Turkey.”

Back home

“Where do I feel at home? In my mother’s lap. Home for me is not a country, it’s always been places. Home is in moments of happiness. This can really be anywhere and I can also feel it in people, even if I have just met them. I often don’t feel at home, but that makes those moments from home feel really special. Then I feel butterflies in my stomach and relaxed at the same time. For me, home is also about smells. When I get off the plane in Turkey and then get that warm, stuffy smell in my face, that’s home.

I have always had a rich imagination and as a child I preferred to play in my own bubble. My mother taught me to ground. That’s why I almost always take my shoes off when I walk in. By making a space your own, it automatically feels like home.”

Implode

“When I’m passionate about something or speak my mind, I start talking louder and faster. White people often experience that as defensive. However, when I don’t feel at home in a conversation, I swallow a lot of things and implode. That’s what my parents did: adapt very quickly if you feel unsafe, like a chameleon. I learned from Glenn Helberg, a transcultural psychiatrist, that many people of colour do this. This is partly due to the prejudices that many white people still have. By making that inequality discussable, which I do with The Need for Legacy, among other things, and by speaking out personally if I feel unfairly treated, I hope to change things little by little.”