Ali Kılıç works in a hypnotizing rhythm, mixing hummus or garnishing plates with pickles and olive oil to serve to customers. The phone rings occasionally, and Ali answers while working at the counter next to the window, looking at one of the semi-destroyed alleys of Antakya’s Long Bazaar.
“Alo, come again?” Ali answered one of the calls. “Two hummus. I’m sending it right away, brother,” he told the person on the other end.
The restaurant is named after Ali’s father, Edip Usta, and it reopened two months after the February 2023 earthquakes hit Turkey and neighboring Syria. His father suggested reopening, not because they expected many customers, but to regain a sense of routine. “It wasn’t important whether customers would show up or not,” Ali said.
During lunchtime in early October, there was a constant stream of guests, mostly tradesmen working in the bazaar, female shoppers, or other locals enjoying the hummus, bakla (a mashed fava bean spread), kebab, or soup, the latter garnished with a flavorful garlic-cumin olive oil.
The Kılıç family did not have many expectations when they opened. Antakya lay mostly in ruins, but they were trying to find healing in doing what they used to do, with familiar faces around. Financially, they managed to support both their own families and those of their employees’ during the difficult times.
Now, things are about to change once more. Antakya’s Long Bazaar, the heart of the city’s centuries-old trade history, is under construction. Step by step, the remaining shop owners are being relocated. At the end of November, Ali will need to move to a temporary bazaar and set up in one of the shipping containers that have been used as houses or shops by hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors in the region for over a year and a half.
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