In No Longer Without you we will be a witness to scathing, hesitant, sometimes fearful and precious meetings between a member of the traditional Muslim community and a less traditional family member.
I photographed fifteen brave community members who confront their relatives. These photo's, exhibited accross Amsterdam, prompted many responses. After seeing a daubed photo I thought: our dialoge starts here!
I went into the neighbourhoods of six different Dutch cities and hung the portraits in the livingrooms of Muslim families. I started a conversation and asked them to respond and I invited them to share there responses on the photos. These editted editions of the photo's were shown in several community centers in the Netherlands.
This photo series came about through these series were constituted with a cooperation between writer and actress Nazmiye Oral. We are both Turkish and grew up in an Muslim 'we-culture'. This meant a clash between the 'I' in us and the existing structures. There is no space for the autonomous 'I', with its own rules, to love and still remain within your culture.
These two structures seem to be able to exist next to each other and we wanted to merge them, hoping that they could exist within and among each other.
The people you see in the photographs have had, or are trying to repair, an intimate relationship with one another. These people allowed me to persuade them to openly display their conflict, sorrow or even solidarity. The portraits are about everybody, not just the Muslim community. Speaking love from your heart is the most beautiful thing there is. Choosing one means giving up the other. After all the rule is: If I behave differently from what the community and my family expect, I bring shame on them and will be disowned.
This series is called No Longer Without You, and is a product of the desire to be ourselves without having to forget our place in the family and in the community, so that a free space can emerge, a space with one rule only: love
Orhan & his father Ramazan
Orhan Delibas is a former world champion boxer and now a gym owner. When I asked him whether he could identify with my issues with my family and community, he nodded. He told me he’d waited years for recognition from his father, Ramazan. “In 1992, I won silver at the Barcelona Olympics. And three years later I became world champion. But my father never once said he was proud of me. Later I heard he’d keep taking my medals to his local cafe to show everyone.” “In 1993, I lost the final of the European Championships. After the match I went to my father, as usual, to kiss his hand. He spat at me and walked away. He said, ‘You are not my son’. But he’d always come around after a couple of days.” “The day I came home with a Dutch woman, he just threw me out, without second thought. I went to America with her and got married, and two years later we had a son. He was the reason I called my father for the first time in two years. He asked me what the little one’s name was, and I told him we hadn’t given him a name yet because it’s traditional that the grandparents name their first grandchild. He named him [name removed for privacy reasons]. My father has softened his tone over the last few years. I was surprised he wanted to appear in the photograph with me. And the fact he was even willing to sit on my lap was really moving for me.”
Fatima & her Daughter
Fatima was really keen to tell me her story. She was desperate to get away from her father, so the age of 13 she got married to a cousin she had only met once before. Her mother didn’t question why she wanted to marry so young, because the one thing she feared was gossip. So to her mind there was nothing more important than the tradition that a bride must be a virgin – even if that means getting married at a very young age.
Fatima is now divorced and has two children. She is giving her daughters a liberated upbringing, without restrictions or traditions: “I let my daughters live their own lives, without interference from me or anybody else.”
Enis & his son
Enis is an expert on Islamic religion. He believes the mother’s not the only one who gives birth to the child, because the father does too. ‘In Islamic culture children grow up in a protected environment that keeps other ideas and influences at a distance so their children can grow up safely in the culture. I call it the womb.” Enis sees growing from that womb as a huge challenge for the father because it’s his job to make sure the child’s environment is safe. “As a parent bringing up children, I’m faced with situations on a daily basis that are exactly at the interface of my culture and Dutch culture. And it hurts every time. Should my child have to go to the mosque? Should my child be allowed to have a boyfriend?” Enis believes fathers experience as much pain bringing up their children as mothers do giving birth. “The fathers suffering most are the ones finding themselves at the fringes of their culture, trying to free themselves from it. I teach my children that there are no cultural divides – it’s all about love and being human. As a father, I’m battling against my own upbringing, my own mindsets, other people’s mindsets, and the labels other people attached to us.”
Melih & his sister, aunt and niece
This photo is of Melih, a friend of mine. He had temporarily broken contact with his family for two years. Every time Melih went home his mother would ask when he was going to get married, to a woman. As a homosexual theatre practitioner living in Europe, he doesn’t meet their high expectations – including that he will be ‘cured’ of his sexual orientation.
The making and exhibiting of his photograph led to cautious renewed contact of their familial love. “If you want to rebuild and keep on building you need to break down what was there before. I’ve thrown off the roles by family gave me and pushed on me. I see the possibility of healing, of coming together again, as being a process. And for the first time I’m realizing we both need to listen. We’d stopped listening to each other; all we had were expectations of each other.” Prior to the taking of this photograph with his sister, aunt and cousin, Melih and his sister had their first contact for eight months.
Semra & her mother and little daughter
I met Semra when I was on the lookout for stories for these portraits. She told me that when she moved out of her family home a few years ago she took off her headscarf. “I wasn’t just any girl with a headscarf, because I know the religious texts even better than my parents. But when I was in Brussels doing an internship I started having doubts. I don’t believe the Qu’ran requires us to wear a headscarf, so when I got my own place when I was 27 I took it off. My father was furious when I told him. He said, ‘What am I going to tell people?’ The community plays a major role in my parents’ life.” “After I confessed what I’d done, my parents demanded that I come home, but I refused. I said, ‘If you’re not going to accept me, I’m not ever going to come back.’ That decided it for my mother because she didn’t want to lose me. Over the last few years she’s become less susceptible to pressure from the community. More than she used to, she thinks her children should live the way they want. But when she sees her baby granddaughter, my daughter, crawling naked around the room naked, she still calls out, ‘Ayip’ (shame). But I say, ‘No mum, no shame, she can go her own way.’ I just want my daughter to be free to be who she is.”
Soliman & his brothers
Soliman grew up with nine brothers, and they were always competing. At home it was all about the survival of the fittest – a dish of food would be gobbled up in a split second if you didn’t watch out. “It’s pretty difficult being a kid in a big family. We all had our own chores and did our best not to disappoint our parents. Sometimes I’d think I couldn’t refuse to do something or other because otherwise the family would suffer; saying no just wasn’t an option. I’m better able to do it now, but it took till I was 30 before I really felt okay about it.” “Fourteen years ago, and with a heavy heart, I became the only one of us brothers to move out from Groningen to Amsterdam. The funny thing is my parents supported my choice with complete confidence. That taught me not to imagine that I know what other people are thinking. It’s good to meet challenges because people’s reactions can be surprisingly positive.”
Ali & Serife
Ali and Serife are a couple in their eighties with Kurdish roots. Ali is head of the family, and a proud man. He exudes a sense of confidence in his masculinity and feels no need to prove himself, and the result is he can also be gentle and caring. Ali’s free-thinking, undogmatic approach to life has enabled him to lead his large family into liberty. His equally spirited wife Serife keeps the balance. They complement one another, and they wouldn’t ever want to be apart.
