On June 1st, 2025, I decided to move back to Istanbul, Turkey after living in America for 18 years. As an undocumented immigrant, part of my decision to move back was an act of self-deportation; after seeing how hostile the political climate started to become for people like me. In America, I was nobody. I had no status, no documentation, and the government did not recognize me as human. Before I made the move, I chose to enroll at Montgomery College for a brief semester after not being in school for over a decade. I was blessed to meet some of the best teachers, classmates, and friends who let me enjoy life as the deadline became closer. In the past three months, Istanbul has been quite an adventure for me.
The day was finally here; I woke up at 9am knowing I had a long day ahead of me. I said goodbyes to friends and family and made my way to the airport three hours early. With not much to do until boarding, I walked around the terminal shopping for any overpriced snacks I would bring onto the flight. Just as boarding began, my heart stopped. For whatever reason, a group of police officers stood inside the boarding bridge. I already had plans set in case of any issues, but luckily, I was not stopped. I held my breath and looked as calmly as possible when passing through the men in blue. Nine hours later, I arrived at Istanbul International Airport. When I grew up, the main airport used to be right next to my house and my mom and I would watch airplanes fly in and out at night, but now this huge modern airport was located north of the city. 30 minutes later and I was back to my childhood neighborhood “Florya” (Floor-E-Ya) staring at the apartment building I grew up in.
On June 4th my dad took me to Misir Carsisi, better known as the Egyptian Bazaar or Spice Bazaar. When entering the L shaped building, your senses are overwhelmed with an aroma of spice, teas, and lokum (Turkish Delight). We walked into stall 26 called “Marmara Lokum” and I met the people who would become my friends and co-workers. For the first two months my job was simple, listen and observe. I was quickly taught how to operate the vacuum machine and label packages, which is a bit more complicated than it seemed! After a while, the long days of just sitting around and basically being a makeshift American model whenever any English-speaking customer comes along, I got tired and demanded to start learning more about the craft of being a salesperson. With the help of Ismit, Ridvan, and Kenan, the trio would teach me how to present our products, scooping up the correct amount of weight of the products and placing them into the bags quickly, and how to ring up a bill for the customer. Most of my time was spent learning how to present the product since that would be the most important part and it wasn’t long until I found myself in a position to attempt to sell our teas to a group of Ukrainians. My favorite part about the job is when we get groups from tour guides. When a group comes the entire shop becomes a collaborative machine where we all have certain roles to make sure all 30+ customers in our small shop are dealt with. Ismit presents the product in a huge presentation while other workers and I give out samples of lokum, tea, and crystal menthol. While it seems simple, the whole process can be very chaotic with orders, packages, and Turkish commands all being thrown into the air as soon as Ismit’s presentation is over. The chaos adds to the fun, I remember having to package and vacuum over 15 boxes of lokum in a quick and timely manner and the rush afterwards was exhilarating.
In august, I had begun a dental operation to fix my teeth which involved extraction of 6 of my front teeth. The healing process will take months due to my condition which left me toothless! I stayed home for around three weeks thinking how embarrassing it would be to try to sell with a noticeable gap in my mouth, but after slowly building my confidence and with the help of my colleagues, I came back to work and had my best sales to date. So far, my biggest sale has been a 9164 Turkish Lira sale, roughly around 225-ish US dollars. Craziest part? I recorded the entire sale when it happened! The customer was an Iranian American woman who came in with a group of 30 Americans from a tour guide. After the show was over, I picked her out in the crowd and worked with her for about 20 minutes. I’ve had so many good interactions with customers, some of my favorites have been a group of college kids from a school in Georgia, A south African women who was on a Christian pilgrimage, and a woman I met who had the same exact childhood as me, being born in Turkey but moving to America as a kid!
September has been a month of growth. I took the skills I learned in august and now I’m slowly building on them. My co-workers have been doing this for 10-30 years, so I have a lot to learn. One of the highlights is finally being able to sit in the “bosses” seat and learn how to run the register and take in credit cards and cash from customers. The way our system works is, once we vacuum sealed everything, we then weigh the order and punch in the prices which bring out a bill and then the customer can pay with cash or card. In the bazaar, your total price is determined by how much your order weighs. For example, our relax, love, and winter teas go for 3750 TL for 1 Kilogram. Meaning, if somebody wants 100 grams of whichever tea, that will come to 375 TL (7-10 USD). As “boss” it is my duty to make sure the bills are correct, and nothing is missed or out of the ordinary.
Unfortunately, not every day can be as good as the last. Since I am still in “observing” mode, the type of customers I get are classified as the “easy” ones, basically the ones who most likely won’t be spending a lot of money which can be frustrating for me. With my desire to shoot big, I end up misfiring. I once unknowingly sold perfume as tea because I was so determined to make a sale. I felt so bad once I realized what had happened, but luckily my co-workers were always there to help and correct any mistakes I made. However, there are times when my misfortunates can help in future endeavors. One time I gave a woman a 200 TL (5 USD) discount on an order containing three of our pre-packaged lokum boxes (which normally go for 1200 TL). I was quickly told that I gave too much of a discount for something so little and Ismit taught me how to deal with haggling customers. Ismit’s advice paid off last week when I had two Argentinian women try to take off 500 TL off a 2500 order. I took off 10% of the final order which ended up around 2275-ish TL, but it wasn’t enough for them. I called Ismit over and he turned two tough customers into a big win by selling them over 4000 TL worth of spices, saffron, and teas, which proves how good of a salesperson he is with over 30 years of experience.
I believe making the life decision to move back to Turkey was the correct one. I do miss life in America every day, missing all my friends and family, but this needed to happen. I could no longer be a ghost while my life drifts away. This is just the start of everything, and I am so glad I was able to experience college at MC before I left. I’m excited to see what the future holds as I grow more into the shop and fix my health.
