Don’t follow your dreams

The Reception Desk

In 2021, I lost the man who raised me. The guy who taught me how to swim. The guy who taught me how to play football.

So I did what people do when everything falls apart: I changed cities. I moved to Istanbul.

I had no money for rent, so I volunteered at a hostel in exchange for a bed and started working the reception desk. Here’s the thing nobody told me: that reception was also the green room for the biggest comedy club in Turkey.

I worked that desk for a full year without a single day off. That means I watched two or three comedy shows a day, every day, for a year.

One night, a comedian (he’s cancelled now, for harassment) invited me to get on stage. It took me a month to say yes. When I finally did, I bombed.

But something stuck. I loved the idea of telling stories and making a room laugh. At the beginning of 2022, I started doing comedy.

The Other Thing I Started

Comedy wasn’t the only thing I started in 2022.

I was still deep in depression from my loss. One day, some European hippies I’d met at the hostel handed me something for it. It was called drugs.

I got addicted fast. And I told myself the story every addict tells: this is making me more creative. Bullshit.

A year and a half later, on November 3rd, at 3 in the morning, I went to the hospital because I couldn’t stop puking. I thought I was pregnant.

It was cancer.

I don’t wanna talk about that part here, because I have comedy about it. Haha.

But here’s what I will tell you: back then, humor and laughter were my only friends. That’s when I decided to do comedy for the rest of my life, turning the hardest, saddest moments into something people could laugh at.

First, though, I had to not die. And thanks to Allah, I didn’t.

$200 and No Fear

After a year of treatment, I came back to Istanbul. I went back to work and back to open mics. But life wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t peaceful.

So I quit my job, closed my house, and decided to travel the world with no fear and 200 dollars.

Because I’m smart, I planned a tour from Russia to Malaysia. The goal was to do a show in every country along the way, including Afghanistan.

Yes, I wanted to perform for the Taliban. Yes, I like bombing.

Moscow

First stop: Moscow. It was −20 degrees, but Russian women were hot, and the show sold out in a venue a short walk from the Kremlin.

Then I made the room go cold, very fast. I screamed, “Stop killing people in Ukraine!”

That was the punchline.

I was on the first flight to Georgia the next morning.

Tbilisi

I landed in Tbilisi with a fake GoPro and 50 dollars. I did five shows and didn’t make a single lari.

I think I did it to make Georgia a slightly happier place. After every show, I screened my documentary about my cancer journey. Some people cried. Some people took pictures with me.

Nobody paid for a ticket.

I was homeless and hungry, so I decided to move on to the next country.

The Border

The next country was Armenia. I was supposed to be the first Turkish comedian ever to perform there.

They didn’t let me. At the border, they refused my visa, and that visa cost the last money I had.

I hitchhiked back to Tbilisi with nothing. Then my doctor called and asked me to come in. I sold my analog camera, bought a ticket back to Istanbul, and went home.

I felt sad and humiliated. I didn’t reach my goal. I never got to tell jokes to the Taliban.

The Shitty Cafe

Back in Istanbul, I took a job at a shitty cafe for less than minimum wage.

One night, while I was at a party spending that salary, I met a guy who knew a guy. The guy was Ammar, owner of my favorite Palestinian jazz bar and restaurant.

I told him, “I do comedy. Let’s do it at your place.” He said yes.

The shows were good. The crowds were small, because the cafe was eating all my time. For a month, I worked by day and did shows by night for whoever showed up.

Then the cafe owner asked me to clean up puke. (Technically it wasn’t puke, but it was disgusting.) I said no, because it reminded me of the cancer.

He kicked me out and handed me 5 dollars. That was my monthly salary.

The Promise

That day, I made myself a promise: I will never work for anyone again. I’ll do what I want. I’m poor anyway.

So I started a comedy club: The Figs Comedy Club.

The goal is to make comedy in Istanbul professional, and to make this city the best English-language comedy scene in Europe after London.

I’m tired of watching artists work shitty jobs and still struggle to pay for their lives. I want to build a club where a comedian who performs four nights a week can pay their rent easily and live like a human being.

But I can’t do it alone.