Café Fresco Whilst having lunch at a local Canton café, Glenn and Wyn started chatting with the proprietor.
He is a Kurd from Turkey who started telling us his history. His father was killed by the Turks when he was 9 years old, “for being a Kurdish speaker”. His mother then came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 1996, gained refugee status and then brought her kids over to live in London. Other workers in the café are also Kurds, but from Iraq. They can understand each other, but sometimes with difficulty, because one has many Arabic words entering their language, while another has many Turkish words.
He also mentioned how him and his brother (who runs the Tuck In café), were recently visited by the CID, accusing them of supporting terrorism (the PKK). Kurdistan, of course, is spread across four different states: Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. We don’t yet know the name of the young man, but he is very chatty and is keen to talk about his experiences. It occurred to both of us that we should talk to him again and maybe think about building some work around the subject, e.g. Kurdish culture moiréed differently in each state of the four states.
WM
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