Wie meine Familie das Sprechen lernte

"Keep to yourself what you have seen, and do not speak about things you have not seen," says an Alevi proverb. When 29-year-old Alev realizes that her family, members of the oppressed religious minority of Alevis in Turkey, has lived by this proverb for a long time, she wants to break the silence – and begins to ask questions. Why did her father migrate to Cologne as a leftist activist student in the 1970s? What shattered her uncle Cem's successful textile business in Istanbul? Alev, who lives in Cologne and has spent every summer with the Turkish side of her family, asks and collects the voices of her relatives, while the political situation in Turkey intensifies following the failed coup attempt in 2016. How my family learned to speak is proof that the impossible can be described: the feelings and wounds of a family. Leyla Bektas delves into the gaps, the questions, the pain, and the mysteries. Her language is clear and gradually carves out the necessary space for a story that needs to be told.