Havva Ramadan, author, poet, singer-songwriter

"Have you ever heard of a banshee? It was one long continuous scream" - Havva Ramadan

In singer, songwriter, and spoken word artist Havva Ramadan's menu: mum and dad's fish and chippy, bamya (okra stew), and baklava. 

Sides include: dealing with grief, finding hope, what it means to be Cypriot (on either side of the border), and the power of food and storytelling in healing and identity. 

Havva is an ambassador for SANE UK who provide emotional support and information to anyone affected by mental illness. sane.org.uk. 

The Australian branch is - sane.org

To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories

Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we send. And I thank them for allowing Papa to tell stories of all these glorious lands we shared.

SPEAKER_05 0:22

My guest on this episode of Three Food Memories is a spoken word artist who has lived through the kind of life that can either silence you or make you loud. And somehow she's known both. Born and raised between Kent and South London, she grew up in the heat of her parents' fish and chip shop, where food was labour, sacrifice, survival, and in its own way, love. An upbringing marked by violence and abuse, the kind that asks far too much of a child and far too soon. Sweetness found to her in the form of pastries and braises that held the language of home, heritage, and the comfort of being fed by memory. In this episode, alongside her Three Food Memories, she reminds us that healing is not linear, courage is rarely graceful, and sometimes the first act of survival is simply telling the truth out loud. Hava Rubber Nun, welcome to Three Food Memories.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Hi Sava, how are you?

SPEAKER_05 1:25

Very well. Hava meet Sava, Sava, Hava.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

We're literally a rhyme.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

We are a rhyme and we're a match. I we did not plan this. We're both wearing an leopard print. Hi, right? All right. Welcome. Now, what does the word hava mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Um, it's actually quite a universal word in a lot of different languages. It means like weather sky. Um, it's the same in Urdu, it's the same in Turkish, it's the same in most Muslim cultures. And then Ha is actually the Turkish for Hava, which is Eve in the Quran. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:03

And was it did your parents ever tell you why they named you Hava?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

I'm named Haba because my Nan is named Hava. So my older sister was named after my dad's mum, and I was named after my mum's mum.

SPEAKER_05 2:17

Now, this is a tradition we have in Greek, so you're Turkish Cypriot, and I'm Greek Cypriot, and this is a tradition that we both share, one of many that we're going to learn about during today's conversation this evening's conversation. Now, considering that English was the second language spoken in your home, you have a very strong mastery of it. Where did it come from? Where did this love of the English language and the way you use it as a craft develop?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

So I was born and raised in the UK, and funnily enough, my mum didn't really speak English to me when I was a kid before I went to school. So I had to go into special needs classes to actually learn English when I first went to um nursery and primary school because I didn't really speak much English, which is hilarious because now I'm a writer. Um so I have been a writer since I was. I I wrote my first poem when I was 11 years old. And um writing has got me through some of the most difficult times in my life. I have books on books, which I hope nobody ever gets hold of. If if any if anything happens to me, I hope nobody publishes these books. But I was writing diaries as a way of getting through very complicated things in my life from a very young age. So that kind of led to pouring my emotions onto paper. And from the poetry, I then was founded by a management company who then was teaching me how to make my poems into songs. And I went through a whole artist development thing with them, and they were quite tough. Like they would give me the most weird things, and they would want me to come with an entire project about it and an entire poem or an entire song of a very, very strange concept. But it was just it was all for so that you could walk into any room and be able to find or be able to make a storyline from whatever, not just the mundane standard things like they really wanted me to excel as a writer. So they put me through a lot of development for that.

SPEAKER_05 4:19

What did you learn about yourself from that development?

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Um, I'm a pretty relentless person. That development was very tough. And some of the rooms that I was in, some of the talent that I was with when I was a baby, actually, and I was very insecure, I think, when I was younger. My self-belief really, really suffered. And it kind of taught me that I was I could outwork anybody in the room. That's one thing I learned about myself. I wasn't necessarily the most talented, and I wasn't necessarily the best singer or the best writer in the room, but I would outwork anyone. And I would want to do that as the one thing that I drove forward with.

SPEAKER_05 4:59

How did you do that? How did you outwork them?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Um, I just never, I just never finished until until it was done. It was never good enough for me until there was a certain thing that I was looking for within it. There was a certain like music and words are emotion at the end of the day. And when you write something, you share parts of your emotion with people, and you're A making them feel seen, and B um evoking the same emotion or giving them um a way of embracing their own emotions about something that they may feel too scared to do, or feel like other people have made them feel like it's not okay to do that. So I personally found a way to speak how I've felt. And in doing so, like the reason why my book is called A Voice, and a lot of people saying like build a voice of people that don't know how to put how they feel into words. So I developed a way of being able to spill how I felt onto poetic songs and words and and poems.

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Tell us about A Voice, the book you wrote a couple uh was released a couple of years ago. It's a collection of short stories in in prose and poetry, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 6:14

You know what's so funny is all of this was a bit of an accident for me because I started TikTok very late in like end of 2021, beginning of 2022, and I was doing the singing and things like that and doing what I do as a career, and I felt really uncomfortable. I don't like doing cover songs and things like that online because I just feel like everyone, I feel like everyone's better than me, number one. And I don't like the comparison of having to do loads of runs, and that's what impresses people. I have to go really high, and that's what impresses people. A standard voice may not impress people on TikTok. So I started putting my poems out. And they just the movement just started like that. It just started, it was received really well. We were in lockdown. Um, there was nothing much that I could do, I couldn't go to many studios and things like that. So I just created a way to alchemize the things that I was going through into poetry and just putting that online. And then I put all my poems together and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna write a book. But writing the book for a person that is very neurodivergent, for a person that has like an ADHD mind can't sit still, it took me a while because it was very hard for me to sit down and concentrate. I just amalgamated everything that I was putting together because my fans kept asking for it. And then, luckily for me, um, a publisher had already reached out to a very good friend of mine uh called James, he's theundering Paddy Online. He is also a writer, he's from Ireland. And when they signed him, they asked him if he knew me and if I would be interested in doing a book deal with them. So luckily for me, I didn't really need to shop around for publishers and things like that because they'd already come to ask for it beforehand. And then yeah, I worked with them, worked really hard to get the cover and everything right, and then here we are.

SPEAKER_05 7:59

Do you think that the neurodivergency um was a superpower in the end? Once you mastered that, did it work with you in putting those words down and those feelings?

SPEAKER_02 8:11

I think every artist is a little bit, he's a little bit, and I think that our talent and our gift come from operating from a part of our mind that not everybody has or everybody has access to. And if you're lucky, because not everybody is lucky enough, but if you're lucky to be able to channel all of that into something, whether it's writing, whether it's drawing, whether it's I don't know, anything, um, you can create mastery. So yeah, I do think that the genius of it comes from the craziness of you, you know. Like there's I will have a million, I will wake up in the morning and I've written something and I don't remember doing it. So I do remember when all of this used to drive me insane when I was younger because I didn't know what it was for and what it was there for and how to channel it. So 100%, I totally believe that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:01

Which part of a voice cost you the most to write?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Um, that would have to be the excerpt of my dad. I decided to there's two things that I published in that book that I had never spoken about online. One is the story of how my dad had passed away, which is on the last page. I literally spoke like how it actually happened that night. And the other is a poem that I had published. The first poem I had published when I was in uh in a mental institute, actually, at the time, and I'd written it, and I hadn't really talked about that online either. So, yeah, those two things. Definitely my dad was the hardest part to tell that story. It's a story that's very hard to relive. And the other side of it is I suppose it's more of a secret more than anything else. Like, it's not really something that you just go around telling everyone, but here we are.

SPEAKER_05 9:51

But you've got to be a strong bugger to be able to do that. Like inside, you must you must have had to really get through those tough times to be able to deliver like that, and then not only carry yourself, but carry your audience. And we're not talking a small audience here, we're almost talking the population of Cyprus or the people that follow you.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

I will definitely say, Sava, that there are some poems that I've done that I will cry about for two weeks afterwards. I'll put them out, and then I will feel so raw about it. And it's amazing like that that people are writing and commenting on it and things like that, but it will destroy me at the same time. There has definitely been a journey that I've had to go through in the in these like years of finding a way to share myself and getting over the boundary and the barrier that you have to that you have in your everyday life. People that beat me in my everyday life is not the same, they don't meet the same person as the person that's sitting there and telling these stories, you know, and writing these poems and and singing these songs. It's definitely a different character. But that's because in everyday life you are guarded and protected. You don't want to be vulnerable like that. You don't want everyone to have access to you. So there is definitely a guard that I have to drop to be able to tell these stories and let them out. But then at the same time, there are things that happen in my life that I tell in a poem that nobody would understand. It's actually happening in real time. But I've just found a way to be poetic about it and talk about it, which is then like medicine for me. And then it's medicine for me when people respond to it and write comments on it, and then they they think that I'm healing them, but I'm not. They're healing me. It's the other way around.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

Well, that's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling pretty refreshed and upbeat now. So tell me, who am I meeting now? Which harver do I have across the screen from me right now?

SPEAKER_02 11:40

I mean, I think there's about 152 of me, but um at this moment in time, probably a more composed one. I can be, I you know, when sometimes when you read my stuff or when you come across my content, you will think that I just all I do is cry. All I do is cry all the time. But um, in real life, I have a I have worked really, really hard to have a very positive mindset. My dad was always a very, very happy man, and I'm like that too. And I'm a bit clowny, I'm a bit jokey, I'm a bit stern, I'm a bit um, you know, like I just have I have different roles that I play in life. Right now, it's probably just me. I'm trying to be just me.

SPEAKER_05 12:17

All right, let's get into that first food memory. Let's get into that shop. So your parents had a chipper in the Jills.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Tell us about the fish and chip shop. So they bought it when they first got married. So my mum and dad, my mum married my dad when she was 18. I think my dad was 24, and they moved from Millwall down to Jinningham and they bought a house in Chatham. And yeah, like I was raised in the fish and chip shop. Like I never went home after school. I would be upstairs. We had a flat upstairs, and I would watch every Disney film to the point where I knew all the words to everything. I would dance to Michael Jackson's videos because I wanted to be like him when I was older, because he didn't. And yeah, like that was. I think I definitely didn't. There was many years that I didn't see my dad very often because we would go to bed, obviously, and then he would be working to I don't know what time I'd see him on Sundays. But I think when I was younger, I didn't appreciate the fact that they were working so hard and working all the hours in the world to provide for us. You know, when you're younger, you're just like, oh, why don't I get to spend time with them? But when I got older, I realized how we were always the first thought. They just was working to be able to provide everything that they felt that we needed.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Um, and and you spoke also about your mum, you're sure she made food for the your mum and dad, they made food for the shop. But you also spoke about she cooked Turkish food. And you know, that was something that happened at the back. What are some of the dishes that she cooked in the shop?

SPEAKER_02 13:49

So that is one of my second food memories, which is bamya, which is one of my favorites, absolute favourites. I think the English word for bamya is okra.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

So um she would make kolakas, she would make bamya, she would make molahiya, she would make furam magarona.

SPEAKER_05 14:05

Like there was nothing that fudd and magaruna is, is tell us what that is.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

It's like it's the translation of it is um oven macaroni, but it's like macaroni, yeah. Did you did you have that? Yeah. Yeah, so it's like macaroni cheese, but it's not the same as macaroni cheese. Yeah, really thick, long noodle kind of macaroni, and the cheese is not all the way through, it's just at the top, which is why I would always just pick the top. My mum would my mum would hit me. I would always pick the top cheese layers and I'd leave all the pasta.

SPEAKER_05 14:38

Now, there's a there's something interesting about, you know, as a parent myself, I remember someone said to me, Oh, you only get 18 summers with your children before you lose them and they go away. I mean, we never got 18 summers with our parents because everyone was always working, and then later they bought a farm and there were the things like that. Do you regret not having the summers that the other kids had with their parents?

SPEAKER_02 15:07

There was a lot of things that I you probably relate to this. There was a lot of things that I did not have as a kid because of the fish and chip shop that made me resent it because I wanted time with my family and I didn't get that. Every summer I was sent to Cyprus and I would be in Cyprus for six weeks until just before school would start, and I would come back and I would go to school. In hindsight, I think at the time I definitely felt like why couldn't I do everything that everybody else was doing, or why wouldn't my parents take me to the cinema, or why couldn't my parents take me swimming, or all these things that you see all these parents doing that, all these activities that they're going to with their children, I didn't get any of that because they were never free to do that. So the best time for me was actually the summer because I could go and be with all my cousins and their mums and dads would take me out and you know, do every do all these activities and things like that. So it's a it's a two-sided thing. I think I was lucky because I would get to go abroad every summer to a country where I've got so much family and they would always love seeing me, and I would do so many things in this country, and it was boiling hot and it was beautiful. But at the same time, it's like I I never got the child and parent time with my family because they was always working.

SPEAKER_05 16:22

Did your parents ever communicate their their regret or that the f the the fact that the shop just took over? Or was? Let's not even say because let's be real here. These shops were lifelines. They fed us, they educated us, they gave us what they gave us, they gave us foundations to be the people who we are today. Was there any did they ever communicate we wished we did things differently? Or was was there any reflection back, or was that a luxury to be able to reflect back?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

My dad definitely did. In the few years, my dad was a very stern man when we were growing up. He was not the same person when he was older. And um he definitely expressed how much he'd regretted how much he'd had to work. It wasn't the fact that he was saying, I wish I didn't have a shop. It was the fact that he felt that he didn't have a choice but to have a shop. And him and my mum did not have a choice but to do that. And bearing in mind, my dad retired at 58. He worked in that fish and ship shop night and day, and then he passed away three years after he retired. Just at the point that he'd got to his life where he was like, right, I can you know, I can relax, I can do things with my wife, with my kids, and things like that. He died.

SPEAKER_05 17:36

After losing your father, your grief turned your voice inwards. You shut down. What did silence begin to sound like on the inside?

SPEAKER_02 17:46

It was like one long continuous scream. You ever heard of a banshee?

SPEAKER_05 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Like one long continuous scream, just like that. I think for the first year that's how it felt. It was just one long continuous scream. I couldn't write, I couldn't sing, I couldn't create, I couldn't do anything. I didn't actually think that I would be able to return to being creative. I just felt like I was locked down. You know, when you're going through sleep paralysis kind of thing? Like that. I just nothing could move. My brain wasn't functioning. I was in shock for a very, very long time because he died suddenly and he died in front of us. And um I think my my mind shut down it in that moment, and I don't think it let me go. It didn't let me go out of that for a for a good couple of years.

SPEAKER_05 18:29

Did you surrender to that? Or there was just you just didn't have the strength to fight it?

SPEAKER_02 18:34

You don't you don't know that it's going on. Like I can say that now, eight years later, because I can I've got hindsight now and I can understand what it was that I was feeding at the time and what was going on. The the way that I felt at the time, I didn't understand anything. I didn't I didn't know anything. I didn't know whether I was coming or going. I I have a lot of loss of memory. The one thing that a seismic trauma like that will do to you is make you lose your memory. I have huge gaps of the of the next couple of years of that period of time.

SPEAKER_05 19:04

Do you think that's Mother Nature's way of protecting you? So you don't carry that forward?

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah, I think that's the human body. I think we are designed like that. I think if your body doesn't have that protection, you could you could even you could pass very quickly afterwards if you felt something as as as major as that all in one go. I don't think the human body, mind, or heart can handle that.

SPEAKER_05 19:27

It's interesting, you know. I'm just reminded of a story. Um, I can't remember who was doing this, the work. Was it Dolores Cannon? I I can't remember right now, but there was a woman who picked up her husband's um hypnotherapy work after he had died. She started putting her patients through hypnosis and studying people lots and lots and lots of like large volumes of people. What she was finding in this study through this hypnosis was anybody who had died in a previous life through a traumatic death, they could see their spirit leave the body before the the the actual pain had set in. So the spirit was always escaping. So it's one thing, you know, it's one thing to be walking on this planet. We don't escape that feeling. But you know, when push comes to shove and we really it comes to the end, somehow that spirit manages to save itself, and then we on Earth have to walk the planet without damaged spirit. Yeah. How was your spirit after Dad died?

SPEAKER_02 20:27

That is a really great way to explain it. Um I don't think I had any access to it, if I'm honest. I think I went into survival mode because I was looking after my two sisters and my mum. I was the protector, I became the pillar and the glue of everything. And after about six, seven months, they didn't need me anymore, and that's when everything around me rumbled. I completely fell apart. So everybody thinks that grief is linear, like this, you're just going up, you know. But it's not, it's like this. And then I think four years later was my worst point, which is really strange. Every time I thought I was doing better, something else would happen. I had something that happened, which was PT, it caused me PTSD, and it was debilitating. I could not function whatsoever. I don't think I think my spirit was around. I don't think I had access to it.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

Well, it's here now.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Yeah, it's she's here now, but I think she was just kind of sitting on a sofa, just being like, I'm gonna be here, but I'm you, I I can't be in you right now because you will feel it too much.

SPEAKER_05 21:32

What is the driver behind your grief being so open and in real time? Is it is it is it that one way ticket to heaven?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

There was a period of time in the first year where I lost literally all the friends that I knew at that time. And it was because my grief I don't know about everybody else, my grief was just so volatile, I was so. angry with the world and I just couldn't contain it. And a lot of people just walked away from me. They didn't want the they they were used to the party girl. I was a party girl before my dad passed away. So they wanted that. You know they were like, okay, we'll come back around when you're feeling better. So whilst you're doing this, you know, we're just gonna kind of leave because it makes us feel uncomfortable. But we'll be back. And the loss that you had you grieve the person and then you grieve your life that you knew before it happened and then you start grieving your friends and your family. Family too family really let me down let my family down in the years that followed. And I didn't want anybody to ever feel as lonely as I felt when I was going through those couple of years. And I tried to find things on social media that would help me. I tried to look for things and all I found was people that were talking about it after the fact. So they're just telling you fairy tale stories of you will find yourself again one day. And it's just like you know dancing poetic but it's like I'm I'm healed now or I'm on the other side of it. Nothing was ugly. Nothing was as as torturous as it really was nothing was as real as I needed it to be and um I decided to talk about it. I just decided to talk about it and when I did I found that other people felt the same as me but they just too scared to speak about it because the same way as me everybody else had left them too. So I created this safe space for me and all the people that were going through it the same way that I was the number of people that could fill a small nation.

SPEAKER_05 23:35

Your second food memory and this is when as soon as you I read this and I was like bum yeah yes go for it I want it right now in fact I have some in my fridge that I made the other day because I was inspired by this yeah I made it with tomato probably put a bit too much garlic in it this time but there's loads of onion in it and it's like it's it's it's a fart machine in in a in a tupperware in my fridge but I love it. But it's not my memory this is yours Harvard.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Tell me about your bum yes so it's just like you know when you have this smell that engulfs your house you don't have to yes you know and it's just like it's the food we're talking about not the farts no no definitely not the farts um there is a there is certain smells that will engulf my house even to this day that I'm like I'm home you know what I mean is I'm I'm home. It gives me that feeling of home my mum is here everything's fine because I can smell that she's cooking and I know that it's something that I'm going to love because I've loved it since I was a child.

SPEAKER_05 24:41

I could see your mum preparing the bamyas on her you know with the knife on her fingers just there it is.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Literally there is no health and safety with these with that generation whatsoever so keep going sorry it's okay it's okay it gives me a sense of home like there is there is a I travel all over the world for for work sometimes seven eight months at a time my last contract was eight and a half months and there is no feeling you know that you're missing home is something that's missing from within you it's uh it smells it's tastes it's heat it's just it's just a feeling and a sense and a smell like even the way that the the food smells the person smells your sheets smell your house smells there is a sense of home that is missing from you and if I am in this house because I still live with my mum by the way I moved back home after my dad passed away to look after her and be with her so there is a feeling that I get especially if I'm asleep and I wake up and I can smell bamya I'm six years old I'm six years old I'm protected everything's fine you know life is great no deadlines no deadlines there's nothing I'm not an adult I'm good how does she make them so she fries the banya she chops her heads off fries the banya yeah yeah on our thumb completely um then women are savage like people don't understand it them women are savage have you I've seen the way mothers cut onions like I sometimes roll over in my grave and there's like these women on TikTok these Turkish mothers on TikTok that are cutting onions and they're no no but I grew up with that so I don't know why I'm panicking now. My man used to and I'm talking that like she was she's 84 now at 60 years old she used to get two potato sacks swing them and put them on her shoulders and walk to the village like from the next town like honestly they're cut they're made different they're made different they're savage so she would she'll cut the hairs and then she'll fry it and then she'll make the same sauce that you said like the tomatoy sauce with the onions the garlic paprika cumin whatever and then yeah make us chew she puts chicken in hers. Some people put uh red meat in theirs yeah but she doesn't like that and I don't particularly like it like that I only like it with chicken yeah molahia on the other hand I don't like with chicken I like it with lamb but um with bumya definitely chicken in celebration explain Molahia with me is that like kind of a spinachy ricey thing yes yeah the spinach the spinachy one yeah and um it's like leaves so my mum brings like bags of it home from Cyprus because obviously the you can't bring any food home doesn't apply to her. So she just brings like like Henlim she brings Molahia the suitcase is full of things honestly and um like even lemons I'm like why you've got lemons in this country she's like they're not the same all right cool so yeah um Malaya is uh is a plant that's grown and then you take the leaves off you dry them out and then um it becomes really really like hard and then yeah you put that into a into shoe so every Turkish dish is based off of a tomato y type shoe that we don't really spice I don't know if that's the same for you. Yeah we don't really have spice in our food at all.

SPEAKER_05 27:53

No no not at all not at all. It's interesting though as you you you you use the word okra it doesn't have the same gravitas as bamya like I can't when I see it written down as okra it's foreign to me it's not it's not even it's not even part of my fibre but when I hear when you say it bamya and in the minute we're gonna get to it from the other side of you know the division that we're saying the same thing and we have the same reaction um it just gives way to anything political. Which which actually brings me to what connects you and I we're from the same island we are both Cypriots you are Turkish Cypriot you were born in the UK I'm Greek Cypriot I was born in Australia now we know um of the the war that happened in Cyprus in 1974 I ha I was told my version of it I've never heard the version the Turkish Cypriot version of that war what were you told about this particular conflict?

SPEAKER_02 28:56

So my mum was there she was in Cyprus at the time she was a very young kid and um only she only told me this story a few years ago she didn't tell me when I was younger but um she said that they were held at gunpoint they were the whole village which is Erkadi which is where my mum's mum has had the same house since she was a since she was a child so 80 plus years now they were all removed from the village and bear in mind this is this was a mixed village it wasn't um just Turkish people there there was Greek people there there too but everybody was taken from the village they were all taken round the corner to um it's like a it's like a rural area it's like there's like a lake it's just like a a massive piece of land they were all taken there they were held at gunpoint and they were given no food or water they were they were basically gonna gonna kill them um they were held for two days and I said to her what happened like how did you feel she said I was terrified obviously I was a little girl her dad was there at the time because she lost her dad really young too and her mum and her two sisters and her brother and the Turkish soldiers saved them apparently they they came in and they and they kind of took over the day but I think that had something to do with the UN as well calling for ceasefire at that time as well so I I guess they I guess they came to whatever agreement they'd come to and my mum survived but she definitely had a gun in her face for two days.

SPEAKER_05 30:19

Did did they did your mum ever talk about what the conflict was about?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

You know what's interesting they didn't they didn't even know the people in cyprus didn't even understand what was going on because they'd lived happily as Turks and Greeks for I don't know how many how many centuries do you know what I mean? First it was the British let's just put put that out there it wasn't even Greece or Turkey it was the British that came in and decided that they wanted military bases there. I think that it I think it was the Greeks first and then the and then the Turks backfired. So that caused the the argument met up about 100 years later between the Greeks and circus to who wanted the land the UN got involved and wanted to keep peace in between them but couldn't stop both invading and then the I think it was stopped by the UN I don't think the people in Cyprus at that time really knew anything. Did they even have TVs? Did they even know what what the news was what was going on did anybody talk about political things then at that time they weren't even registering birth certificates. People didn't even know how old what they were like my dad's birth certificate was registered in the wrong year. My nan wrote the wrong year like he lived his whole life like the wrong year on his birth certificates so I don't think they had any clue what was going on.

SPEAKER_05 31:36

I think they were just I think I think there was always probably a knowledge between them that there were different cultures and and two very strong different religions did they know why there was being invaded probably not probably just assumed it was a land thing but I don't think they had a lot of knowledge about it no to give some fact and and around the um the the countries Nicosia is the last divided capital city in the world there is a border that runs through it and up until about 2004 you couldn't cross the border so you must have been a young girl then um when there were you you couldn't access freely there are like I think I don't know like dozens of checkpoints now that run that run across the island.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

What what did you think existed on our side of of the of the wall well because I had a British passport I was allowed to fly to either side with the British passport you can you can do whatever. I think I first experienced I want to say Ianapa when I was a teenager and we crossed via Nicosia. That's right we did we crossed via Nicosia because all the borders that exist now that you can cross via they're close to me now but I remember this was really really far because we've got property in Famagusta and there's two checkpoints in Famagusta now but this when to go over before it was like an hour's drive. So yeah you're right it would have been crossing Nicosia but because I had a British passport nobody obviously they look at my name and they're a bit like yeah Dodge but um you know we still I I kind of had the freedom I didn't really I knew that um because the Greek side was part of the EU I knew that it was a bit more built up and it was a bit more beautiful and it was a bit more known you know but I went to I went to party like I said I was party girl so I went to party in Ianapa which I absolutely loved um I went a few times.

SPEAKER_05 33:33

So you never subscribed to any of the politics or the news around that sort of stuff that wasn't part of your your Cypriotness I think my dad wanted me to my dad definitely wanted me to be part of it but I've always been very rebellious when it comes to culture division when it comes to religion religion I took a very strong standpoint from when I was a little girl and I've always been the same.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

My dad always used to call me a little rebel. I never wanted to follow anything that anybody said I don't I'm not going to be a sheep and believe something about people or cultures or individuals based on propaganda or what someone else felt or what has been written in books for years and has been passed down and down and down. I am a 100% I will experience you for myself and see how it makes me feel and I will like it or not like it and it won't be based on history it will just be based on my experience and that's it.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

I came across you on on on the socials and it was the video that you were went to your grandmother's village and you opened the gate once you got to the gate I collapsed and I had to go to the beginning again I actually I couldn't watch you open the gate at all it was really really really painful because why was it painful? Let's be really clear because it was taking me back to a moment of happiness and memory that was my not that house but that was the colour of my grandmother's gate in her village. And as you opened up onto the courtyard it was my grandmother's courtyard and I could see the vine growing up this was her castle she had nothing and she built it on her own. And there it was on the other side of the divide right where I was brought up to believe that the Turks were dangerous that the Turks were awful and and and XYZ and there was your story like butted up to mine and then when you opened the aluminium door that was the same aluminium door that my grandmother had and when I walked and then then I saw what was a little sofa that my grandmother would call the divanui which your grandmother it was just my story all over and then I thought how can this be how can one culture come to this point of division? What who got involved? What is it about and then I realized very quickly that the human condition and the human spirit is much stronger than anything and all we have to do is just look for it and and there it is. So watching you hop into that just it was yeah it was it was going back to my grandmother and going back to those stories going back to a part of a world you know that I kept on going back to up until recently looking for answers. You know here we are I don't know how it is for you in in the UK but we're so far removed from who we are sure this is our country and Australia is where I live but this is not where my answers are this is not this is not where I find you know the questions I find the questions there then it's really hard to answer them.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

But you know I don't know but when you're there don't you feel like you're one with the soil 100% I feel like and I'm just gonna go back to something that you actually said Saba um racism is not we're not born racist racism is taught no one is born hating another culture. No one is born believing that a a a certain religion is wrong. That's something that you are taught so you have the choice to make up your own mind and that is why you are here today and that's why we're talking about it and that's why I'm here today and that's why we're talking about it there is a something about Cyprus that when I go there what there is a there is a feeling of culture there is a feeling of like blood that runs through you you know and I I identify with it and I recognize it. And I only started investigating my culture and my background as well in the in the last sort of five years of my life because you know you just you I you grew up I speak Turkish people ask me I'm Turkish Cypriot. I don't even say that now I just sound Cypriot because I don't like I don't want to feed into it anymore. The more that I've studied it and the more that I've understood that actually most of our blood work would have both because Cyprus was actually a mixed country and unless you have a parent from Greece or a parent from Turkey born and raised Turkey with with with this with the strong bloodline you will be a mixed culture of Greek and Turkish Cypriot the more that I understood that and the more that I understood that my mum did not like have any enemies in that country and she grew up there. Her mum did not have any enemies in that country everybody was pretty peaceful there. None of us asked for that invasion I will never take it away from anyone it was huge and I'm sure that people's experiences of it were really traumatic. But and I I don't think anybody in Cyprus wanted to be invaded and wanted to be split. I don't think they wanted to be split at all and I think the way that people feel about each other now because if you go through my comments on my very homely very loving video of my nan I'm happy that you responded the way that you did but there is some hateful comments on the fact that I speak about it as if I don't want to feed into it and that we're all one and it has triggered some people there are really really nasty comments on that video of my nan and it's it's it's insane how people can really be so angry about what I feel my personal experience and me sharing my family with the internet. It's I hope that one day we don't have to have the borders anymore in Cyprus and that it will just go back to the way that it once was and there will be no more whatever was taught for this last 30 odd years will will resolve itself in the next 30 years where it's untaught because people in that civilization just decide to do so. You know, whether that will happen or not I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 39:45

You know I I look at it and I look at the situation and I I I speak to a lot of people about it because I have a lot of friends and connections there. And there is um there is a thought and a very strong belief that the Cyprus issue will never disappear and when I look at that not just the Cyprus issue the Middle East issue the Africa issue you know parts of Asia and in Europe there's no answer. There never will be but if we can just come together as a people and kind of go we are actually pretty much all the same. You know and if we just look at where we come from and our foods I mean there it all is like it's never you know I talk to people from all over the world and what really brings us together it is is really what comes at the t what what is on the table. Which takes us to your third food memory let's finish with something sweet do you remember what it was baklova too.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Bucklova please please I could eat a tray of that stuff it's so sweet it's sickly I could eat a tray of it I wouldn't even get sick of it tell me more about it don't just stop it can't be I'm gonna get too busy eating the bucklover you're gonna give me more I've got an episode to fill up here I was lost in I was lost in fantasy I was lost in fantasy of the bucklover um I remember butt club because so my dad moved us down to Kent like I said before he had children because he didn't want us to grow up in London. And um my aunties and uncles whenever they would visit they would always go to a shop it's called Yashar Halim in London and it's like the most known for the best buck club and they would always bring it for me like everyone in the family knew that I was like a bucklover crazy person. So it were it's got a really beautiful memory of not just the food but the family members that are not here anymore that used to love bringing it for me because they loved my reaction when they when they did and even if I went to their houses they would always have baklava there ready for me because they knew how much I loved it.

SPEAKER_05 41:45

Yeah it's but it's a bit more when you look at baklava or baklava or baklava well there's so many pronunciations on the same thing this is a this is kind of one of those unique dishes that has evolved over time as explorers traveled and discovered new spices and flavours it was one thing after another it just kept on adding to it.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

So what we end up now is with this gorgeous layered sweet has just traveled thousands of kilometers you know what is it about this dish that made it your favourite I've got a really sweet tooth like a a sixty sweet tooth I love syrup like anything in syrup.

SPEAKER_05 42:32

I was expecting something really profound and poetic and something that I would find in your books.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

I've got a sweet tooth I've got a sweet tooth that's it's it's just pastry it just tastes amazing there's nothing poetic about it. I can't I can describe the the layers of it poetically but um I've got a really sweet tooth it's just it's very unique isn't it it's not that's not for everybody. Like not a lot of people actually do like baklava. They think it's too sickly sweet. And there are you're right there's very many different birds of it so I worked in Qatar for the World Cup. I was there I lived there for like five months at the time and Arabic baklava is very very different. It's not sitting in syrup the nuts that they use are different the pastry that they use is different it tastes of of rose water you know it just it's so different. It's completely different so you're right it has evolved it's like it's it's in different parts of of the world tasting completely different and it's another one of those foods actually that people just go we made it no we made it no we made it and then everyone tries to claim it but you know the cake like it become so um I think bath lava for me is just because it's just I have a very very sweet tooth and I enjoy eating it.

SPEAKER_05 43:44

What are some of the other Cypriot sweets and delicacies that you like my mum makes a cake called mali

SPEAKER_02 44:00

I love it. Shit, I used to be like I remember one of my earliest memories actually standing on the chair in the kitchen and um making the making the I think it's like um it's like it begins with the S is Simolina. That's it, Simolina, yeah. And I'm not even strong enough. I don't even have the Rom to do it because it's like, you know, have the big bowl that you've got to do it in. I can't even see over the table at this point, and I'm I'm like trying to mix this semolina so thick and strong. And um, she makes a mean shum money, and she also covers that in syrup. It's the same thing, like it's because it's covered in syrup. So some people do it really dry, but my mum makes it so that like the syrup sits at the bottom. So when you take the cake out, it's like soaked all the way through. Oh, just kiss is beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 44:47

Um I'm reminded of the poet John Keats, who wrote to a mate in a letter in the early 1800s. He said something along the lines of, I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. Are you like Keats in that you believe emotional and intuitive experiences over logical reasoning provide the only reliable access to reality and beauty?

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Yeah. Your reality is what you the way that you feel and experience things. No two realities are the same. It's the same as we said, your relationship with God. Everybody can say that you need to do it like this, or you need to do it like this, or you need to pray like this, or you need to go here. But actually, your relationship with God is unique to you. No two relationships will be the same. The way you experience it, the way that you pray, the way that you are able to communicate and connect is unique to you. And that's the same for your own reality. I do believe that one of the things that has saved my life is being able to control my emotions. So emotions, I don't think hang and hang emotions. To understand, but to also control. If you are led by your emotions all the time, you will be led astray. Because as human beings, we can fluctuate in emotions continuously. It's like if you're if you're in a relationship and you've been in that relationship for 10 years, there are days that you will go through where you are so in love with this person, and other days where you just think, I just want to kill him. I don't want to be with this person anymore. So if you are led by your emotions only, you will be led astray. You will make decisions. And it's the same as that saying where you say, don't ever make permanent decisions based on temporary feelings, because your feelings can change at any time. And I definitely live by that. I had to insert discipline into me. I lost a lot of things in my life because I was too sad. And sadness really ruled me for a lot of the beginning part of my life. And sadness, I'm not really a person that can work when I'm sad. I'm a person that will lay down for three, four days. You know, days will pass by and I and I couldn't function. When I started to teach myself discipline, is when I started to be able to work through because people with depression, they know they're not dumb. They know what they need to do, you know, they're just depressed and they don't want to do it. They don't want to function, they don't want to move. So once you teach yourself discipline, you will be able to function and do the things that you need to do, even on the days that you don't feel like it, even on the days that you just don't want to be here anymore. Those things are really key things, especially for people with that suffer with mental health, to be able to insert to be able to continue and live as normal a life as possible.

SPEAKER_05 47:38

You've chosen as your social cause, and you're an ambassador of this organization, insane. What do they do?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

They're a mental health organization. They um have volunteers that they train and they speak to, they have phone lines that are open from 4 p.m. till 10 p.m. every day. They take calls of people that may feel suicidal or people that just want to talk or just anything from anyone. And sometimes you have obviously children, adults. They um hold many, many charity uh events, they do like marathon runs. Um, we did a strictly come dancing show for a gentleman named Robin Windsor who took his own life. He was a very famous dancer from Strictly Come Dancing. And his story is so heartbreaking because he was the life and soul on TV. The life and soul. He was the party guy, he was everybody's smile, he was always buzzing, he's always like so electric on screen, and he took his own life, and I think it shocked so many people because you just don't see that from that. You look at A and you don't see B. And it really is suicide is a really, really deadly silent drug, and a lot of people suffer. A lot of people um go through things that they can't speak about. And I think Sane offers the opportunity for people to be able to go to somewhere where they can find somebody that they can trust to speak to without it being a member of family, without it being a friend. They do so much for the community, and I am very, very proud to be an ambassador of theirs.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

For more information, sane.org.uk. In the spirit of Martha Stewart and her kitchen meets life wisdom, we have a tradition here at TFM where our previous guest passes their kitchen life guidance to you. Our previous guest, Australia's very own Kathy Lett, who lives in the UK, encourages you to make the most out of the human elements of the menu, the guest list. What sort of dinner guest are you?

SPEAKER_02 49:47

I'm the drinker. I'm the one that's bringing prosecco, champagne, you name it, I'm bringing it, I'm opening it, and I'm gonna be the first one with the glass. I'm definitely um the person that's in the kitchen. I don't really sit in the living room. I sit in the kitchen, I'm talking, laughing, joking with everyone. I'm probably the clown of the show. Like I'm I definitely come in with lively and bubbles. I bring the bubbles and I'm bubbly. I don't bring a dish. I'm sorry, definitely. It's just not me. It's just not me. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not the person that brings something with that that's to do with to contribute to your food. I'm just gonna bring you vibes whilst you're cooking.

SPEAKER_05 50:27

Now, what kitchen life wisdom can you share with our next guest being the daughter of chipper parents?

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Um, try everything once because you never know what might become your favorite thing in the world. Your culture food is not the only culture food that is um available. Like you should always try different cultures and experience the tastes of the world because those things will show you what life is really about.

SPEAKER_05 50:56

I've actually felt every single bit of this conversation in my body. And when I was reading your book, I came across this little bit at the very end. If you are here reading this, then you have supported my mind or my heart in one way or another. And I just want to take a moment to say thank you. No matter how many times I thought I'm not gonna make it through this one, I did. And I need you to know you can too. I hope my words bring you solace to your heart the way that you have brought solace to mine. Hava, thank you for bringing all the words, the fish, the fill law, the bamya, and zero emotionals shortcuts. Thank you so much for being on Three Food Memories.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

You're welcome. Thank you so much for love.

SPEAKER_05 51:45

That's it for this episode of Three Food Memories. Be sure to spread the plated love and check out our hundred-plus back episodes. You can catch them on YouTube as well. Just search for Three Food Memories. For all things TFM, head to the socials at Three Food Memories and at Stavasovas. For more info, send us a message, head to threefoodmemories.com. Three Food Memories is produced and edited by Lauren McQuerta with original music by Russell Torrance. Nastika La Philly, and bye for now.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Thank you for listening to Puppet's Podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe and tell your friends. Bye. Bye.