Running a tea house would be enough

Turks are generally a society that has lived in rural areas.

During the Ottoman era, they sustained their lives as sipahis, whether with or without a land grant (timar).

They even had a history of acting tough from the countryside, saying, "Tell the Sultan not to rely on my belt and declare war here and there."

There was a similar sociological structure in Europe, as depicted in Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart.

The industrial revolutions of the 18th century changed the sociological way of life.

The rural population began to flow into the center and work in factories.

A similar formation occurred here with the founding of the Republic and especially after our NATO membership, as can be understood from Kemal Sunal’s film Düttürü Dünya.

We are among those who migrated to the city quite a while ago.

My grandfather moved to the city right during the NATO membership period due to his work in transport, shipping, construction materials, scales, and arms manufacturing.

We were born in the city.

We studied in the city's high school and university.

My mother and father were civil servants.

My grandfather was the enforcement officer of the period.

We had bread to eat according to the poverty of that time.

Our situation was relatively good.

With the pocket money I received from my mother, who was a teacher at the Yavuz Sultan Selim school on the Taksim slope in Trabzon, I would devour one and a half portions of Iskender with tomato sauce and plenty of butter at the famous Antepli Seyitoğlu on Uzun Sokak, if not every day, at least 3-4 times a week, which could be considered a sign of wealth at the time.

We would go to the village for summer vacation.

We would especially meet the need for labor during the hazelnut harvest, and I still remember both the weight of the sack and the struggle I put up against the bugs, and I never set foot in a hazelnut orchard again.

It was during my days in the village that I understood what poverty was.

The situation of the laborers coming from different villages and the children of close relatives was bad.

They wore rubber shoes called cizlavit.

Their clothes were quite tattered.

They lived as if in the Stone Age with what they earned from the daily jobs they went to.

They would eat blackbirds they hunted with their single-barreled handmade rifles as protein, as they had no money to buy meat.

They were skinny.

They tied their pants with rope instead of a belt; they were so thin that their pants looked like they would slip off their backsides.

It was obvious from under their eyes that they were having nutritional problems.

They were not literate and were very weak in mathematical operations.

They had barely learned to read and write by the time they were finishing primary school.

Their vocabulary was similar to those on the Central Asian steppes.

Their language was not enough to explain complex problems.

They would get stuck on words.

They would make some kind of "fös fös" sounds.

Although those of us who came to the village in the summer did not understand much, others could easily understand what they meant.

Their body language was very weak, and their gazes were dull.

For some reason, despite all that food scarcity, they were tall.

Some were making an effort to change the poverty and fate they were experiencing.

They loved my father very much.

They saw him as a role model.

They would take his word as an order and wait at attention because they loved him.

Some came to the city.

My father found a job for all of them according to their abilities.

No one was left hungry or homeless.

He placed those who knew how to read and write in jobs at Karadeniz Technical University.

He got driver's licenses for those who drove trucks in the village and made them drivers for the institution.

He made the person who made single-barreled smoothbore rifles in front of the bellows in a makeshift workshop at the corner of his house in the village a technician in the workshop.

He did not put his nephew, who carried all the poverty characteristics I listed above, into the institution, but he did not leave him helpless either.

With the support of the mayor, he built an illegal room in a corner of the family apartment and opened a tea house for his nephew.

The poor nephew got rich, became robust, got married, and had children thanks to the tea house.

He sent his children to university and gave them professions.

Despite all his efforts, my father must not have been visionary at all, as he could not think of putting his nephew who ran the tea house to work in the federation.