Food for Body, Mind and Soul

By Heidi Trautmann

Right there where you turn off to Bellapais, opposite the Erduran Medical Laboratories, we find the Streetart Bookstore and Café. It invites you to sit comfortably on fresh green lawn in coloured cushions, drink and eat something, relax for a while and READ. Yes, read a book from the shelves reserved for the Coffeehouse reader, put it back in a separate place and continue reading when you have your lunch break or coffee the next day. And while you are there and wait for one of the delicious dishes, you can walk around in the pleasant bookstore among rows of books in Turkish and English, and buy one to take home.

That is the idea, Ayça and Ayşe had in mind when they were dreaming of their literature café, the like Ayça had seen in Istanbul, or as Ayşe said, like the one in Nicosia, Khora Bookstore and Café. It is there where the idea ripened,  supported by the experienced Khora-Bookstore owners.

Shortly after their opening in Doğanköy, I had my own book launch there, that was in early May, and I was impressed by the fresh, young and creative urge these two young women, owners of the Bookstore and Café were displaying. I wanted to hear their background story and visited them again for an interview one early morning. The evening before they had had a children birthday party in their garden, all was decorated and a birthday cake had been made especially for the occasion.

“I love cooking and Ayşe and myself are doing it together, we do everything ourselves, cooking, cleaning, organising and delivering….Yes, we deliver food and books…our clients have our menu card and order,  and when they want a special book, we get it for them, should it not be on our shelves and deliver it too. Full service.”

Ayça speaks very good English and so we do the talking together. Ayşe joins us with a Turkish coffee for me and listens to what Ayça is saying, going back to the beginning, going back to the young days as students when they all wanted to change the world.

‘My youth is quickly told. I was born in Nicosia in 1979, lived there until I got married in 2005. My mom was a teacher and my father a civil engineer. I was not a romantic girl, more for reason, right and order, for freedom and equality, so I joined groups with ideals in this direction, young union groups with bi-communal activities, already in 1996. There were all kind of activities, also folkdance and theatre and youth camps and we met with like-minded in the South, already before the gates opened.  We believed in justice and in peace and non-military existence and also used the theatre to express this. So, in 1997 while I was a university student and while together for one of our activities in the Karpaz, a play by Yılmaz Erdoğan, we were arrested, because such criticism was not permitted.”

You had graduated from High School, you said it was Turkish Maarif College in Nicosia.

“Yes, since I was rather pragmatic, I chose Architecture-Urban Planning and made my undergraduate and Master in Science at the Istanbul Technical. I was working for an urban planning office while I was a master student to gather more experience and I came back in 2004 and started working in my subject for the Nicosia Turkish Municipality.”

During your stay in Istanbul did you continue with your social progressive group work, I was asking. “Yes, I did, however it was linked to Cyprus, rights for Cypriot students within the university and society. I learnt a lot there.”

You joined the Municipality in Nicosia and started Urban Planning…

“I worked for the Municipality for ten years. In those years I developed many things to help the tourists to find their way in the city, for example, the street maps positioned all over the city indicating where you are, the signs for historical sites and/or foot prints on the pavement to lead you to important places; we developed the Asmaltı Pedestrian Area and did the traffic planning around the city. We worked together with the EU urban design in many cases.”

Why only for ten years? What happened?

“Several reasons. I had got married in 2005 and have two children now, a girl born in 2009 and a boy in 2012, the work and family building caused a physical breakdown and I had to stop working and another reason was that the work did not satisfy me, there were too many difficulties within the authorities…and I talked to myself and realised that life is just too short and important to make myself unhappy and sick. In the back of my head I always had the dream of a bookstore and I saw myself in it and so I discussed it with my friend Ayşe, who is also a distant relative, and we both started planning to realise our dream. Ayşe had been working as a sales woman and later had a café in the New Harbour, so the idea developed to combine both.”

That was when?

“That was in 2013 and we started acting with the help of friends and family. We asked for a bank loan and started building; this house we are sitting in is an old house of an aunt of my husband and we renovated it and laid out the garden: Ayşe, who is born in Limassol in 1968 and who came to Girne after 1974,  is responsible for the restaurant section - the kitchen equipment was very expensive - and the Facade was artistically done by Batu Gündal, a painter and a relative too. I was doing the book section and had the help by Merter Refikoğlu.  I have always loved books and have tried my hand in writing as well, especially when I become emotional which does not happen very often.”

What kind of books have you got for your store?

“First I have stocked up basic literature, books, I was told, a bookstore should have, then I selected the ones I liked and I was always on the lookout for new ones, intellectual and poetry but slowly I get the understanding of what people and customers like because they come and ask for them. They can discuss it with me.”

There are regular readings of newly published books but also literary meetings; it is the first Turkish Cypriot bookstore on the northern side of the Kyrenia mountains, compared to Nicosia where there are four, except Deniz Plaza, they also have a book section. But this small bookstore has become a gem and becomes more and more known.

I have been studying the menu card and you’ll find small things for in between, salads, sandwiches and pasta and homemade burgers but also one dish of local Cypriot food a day. There is also an Ice Cream Bar and the coffee is good, I have tasted it.

“We plan to improve it still, and have many more ideas. We work hard to make our dreams come good and true, first of all we have to pay off the loan and then we take it from there.”

What are your plans or your dreams for the future, I asked.

“First of all I must get my PhD in Architecture which will be this year still. I have done it at EMU (Eastern Mediterranean University) in Famagusta, because I am still very deeply interested in my country’s infrastructure and with the new mayor in Nicosia my old crew will hopefully be able to realise things. Then, as I said, get my dream bookstore really working because you know nothing compares to the smell of a book freshly opened. Today we have the opportunity and the awareness to recycle paper, so the danger of destroying our forests is much decreased.”

These are good words to finish our talk. I smile.

The Streetart Bookstore is open daily from 8.00 – 22.00 hrs except Sundays. You find them on facebook where there is a regular update of books coming in, of reading events and also….very tempting….a photo of the dish of the day.

You can call them: Tel: 0392 815 16 05

Mobile: 0533 857 51 52

www.streetartcyp.com

info@streetartcyp.com