Stories of Our City

Alaeddin—yes, like the famed movie character, though pronounced correctly—sprang up from the poverty-stricken streets of Amman, Jordan, to become a successful civil engineer. But something wasn’t right. Though he had a good job, he was thoroughly dissatisfied with the standard nine-to-five lifestyle. So, he turned to the only thing he knew and loved: hip hop.

We never know when—or even if—and where love will find us. It happened to find Nazife Uner of Izmir, Turkey, as she travelled home from high school in the early 1960s. At that time in Turkey most marriages were arranged by family members, but the mysterious stranger of fate seemed to have orchestrated Nazife and Mustafa’s relationship as their eyes met on a ferryboat one afternoon 57 years ago. One could call it love at first sight, but sometimes a simple, silent glance speaks powerfully. After Nazife transferred to a bus for the final leg of her journey home, she looked back as the bus began to push off to see if Mustafa was in pursuit. He was. And after their eyes locked for a second time he began to run after her bus. Listen as Nazife shares the rest of her and Mustafa’s unconventional Turkish love story and learn how dedicated devotion can overcome even the most ingrained cultural customs.

At eleven years old and suddenly an orphan, Sandy found himself without a home and on his own. All he had was a friend with a plan for how they could make it rich. But as Sandy and his friend set off on their adventure, events quickly took a turn, and Sandy found himself even further from home and now even more alone.

From collecting scrap metal to make a buck to sneaking into a church to catch some shut eye, learn how perseverance, helping hands, and encouraging hearts propelled Sandy along, moving him from orphan to education sponsor who seeks to pay the blessings forward—or pass a dollar, in his words. May Sandy’s story encourage the downhearted and alone and remind us all that life often has many pleasant surprises up her sleeve.

It had just started to drizzle again. My family and I were headed to Richmond, Virginia, via Interstate 64, confronting a bit of rain along the way. We had just taken a timed family selfie at the Virginia is For Lovers sign outside the state welcome center, when a man on what I thought was a motorcycle pulled up—camouflage jacket drenched with rain. He asked if I would take a photo of him. I obliged, taking his cellphone, thinking that if he’d arrived a minute earlier we wouldn’t have had to use the timer on mine.

Given the amount of gear he was carrying, it was clear this was a man on a mission. Detecting an accent, I asked where he was from. He said he was coming from San Francisco, a city we had also recently departed, but by air. Pressing further, I discovered this sopping, sociable sojourner came all the way from Germany and was on the tail end of a remarkable journey.

Sixteen thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles. Eighty days. Eighteen countries. Three Vespa scooters. One man. A few weeks later, Markus Mayer would become the first person to complete a solo scooter trip around the world in just 80 days.

Technical project manager by day. Folk dancer by night. This is the life of Rima Sliat, of Amman, Jordan, a practitioner and teacher of dabke—a type of Levantine Arab folk dance. Aside from traversing between the worlds of Information Technology and dabke on a weekly basis, Rima also works at bridging the gap between the historical roots of dabke and its more modern manifestations which sometimes challenge prevailing gender stereotypes and the status quo.

Meet Cemre (Gem-ray): a researcher, scholar, and prolific writer in the field of child psychology. Much of her career focuses on the weighty subject of child exploitation and abuse, and she spends many hours in counseling sessions with children and their families working through a variety of problems—trying to bring wholeness to broken family systems. Cemre’s passion for children has led her to write children's books that help them and their families process big issues in a way that young minds can digest and in which they can have discourse.

In this podcast, Cemre highlights one of those books, which was born out of her own feelings during the 2013 Gezi protests in Istanbul. These protests started as a demonstration to save the Gezi Park greenspace from being turned into a shopping mall but evolved into an historical event where thousands of Turkish citizens from all walks of life gathered to protest the policies and general direction of the government.

Listen as Cemre explains how this book came to be and how she uses it to engage with children in their world.

Sami Malik (ma-lik), an Uber driver from Pakistan, and his wife have devoted much of their adult lives to fostering children in the United Kingdom. Since his arrival in Scotland more than 25 years ago, Sami and his bride have fostered nearly 70 children—ranging in age from newborn to five years old. Hear Sami share about his heart for fostering, its joys and challenges, and what keeps this couple carrying on as they help care for humanity.

In the middle of the ongoing Syrian War, Esra, a Syrian national from Kuwait, and her father founded a small orphanage in Istanbul, Turkey, where she is helping oversee and care for a group of high-potential, yet vulnerable Syrian children. Esra credits her father with inspiring and motivating her to do good even when it goes against others’ expectations and to be a source of change in the world. He also encouraged her, she says, to set the standard for attitude and behavior rather than simply letting her thoughts, attitudes, and actions be dictated by her surroundings. In her father’s words, she was taught to “be a thermostat, not a thermometer.” Listen as Esra recounts the endeavor this father-daughter duo began on behalf of their family and other Arabs worldwide who want to make a difference in the lives of those affected by the Syrian crisis. 

Editor's note: The subject’s name in this week’s story has been changed to protect her identity.

Sarah Abu Shawish (sha-weesh), of Amman, Jordan, is using her love for sports to challenge commonly-held gender stereotypes throughout Arab society and help her country progress toward gender equality.

Nuray (nur-eye), an accomplished teacher who runs her own language school in Istanbul, has been teaching the Turkish language to foreigners for over a decade. Although an experienced educator, Nuray still considers herself a student of sorts who is consistently learning something new from her diverse pupils who have taught her everything from basic cultural lessons to different parenting techniques. Some of these lessons arose from cultural mishaps that still make her laugh to this day. Listen as Nuray shares the joys and challenges of cross-cultural education and how the "yabancilar" (ya-bon-ja-lar), or foreigners, help bring the great, big world a little closer to her heart and home.