Yeliz's home

Yeliz has always been the kind of person who does whatever work she can do.

Just like her mother, grandmothers, aunts, and all the other women in her family. She sews up torn clothes, makes dresses out of fabric, knows every kind of knitting—lace, towel edging, baby booties, table covers...

She cooks all sorts of meals, prunes her garden, fixes most things that break in the house, and even paints her own walls. She can also plaster crumbling walls. But above all, cleaning is her real job. A mother of four, Yeliz cleans both her own home and other people's homes. And she proudly says, "I'm my own boss."

She started cleaning houses with her mother when she was just nine years old. She knows all the tricks to getting windows spotless. She’s mastered the art of folding clothes, and she could draw the crease lines of a pair of dress pants from memory. She learned weaving from her mother as a child and even knows how to spin wool into yarn. There’s nothing she can’t do.

According to Yeliz, no one cleans like she does. She takes pride in doing things properly. Back in her village, before they had vacuum cleaners, she would scrub the brick walls from top to bottom with soap, throw the dirty water into the garden, and then dry everything with a cloth. She always said, "If a house can be washed, it won’t get dirty." That’s why, when she got married, the one thing she wanted in her home was tile floors.

Years after getting married, with help from neighbors, she first became a cook. For two years, she worked in an industrial kitchen, cooking for ten men. Over time, that job led her back to cleaning, and eventually, she started taking on what she calls "odd jobs." But when she was told to do both cleaning and cooking for half the pay, she put her foot down: "I’m either a cleaner or a cook. I’m not doing both for peanuts." That job ended in a shouting match.

So Yeliz spread the word and started looking for new work. The floors in her own house are made of concrete, but she still washes them every spring. One evening in early spring, while scrubbing her home, she had a sudden realization: She could clean houses for a living. She started at a relative’s home, and from there, the jobs kept coming.

Over time, she worked in Diclekent, 75. Yıl Mahallesi, and several other neighborhoods, but she barely makes 20,000 liras a month, if that.

Through the years, she has set her own rules. "I may not be like Türkan Şoray, but I have my own boundaries," she says. She refuses to babysit at any of the homes she cleans. She won’t cook, either—if she’s going to eat, she picks her own food and orders it from outside. She prefers the house to be empty while she works, if possible. And while cleaning, she listens to Sezen Aksu, Bergen, Ahmet Kaya, and Yıldız Tilbe. For her, cleaning is a kind of therapy.

By her own admission, Yeliz knows how to have fun, too. Despite her fear of heights, she never hesitates to clean even the highest windows. Finding mopping inadequate, she insists on wiping floors by hand. But the work is exhausting. She scrubs 3+1, 5+1, even duplex and triplex houses inch by inch with her bare hands. At the end of the day, she returns home exhausted to her house in Benusen.

Benusen, a neighborhood where community life is still intact, has low rent prices. Most of the houses are single-story and heated with stoves, overlooking the historic Diyarbakır Walls.Yeliz lives in a three-bedroom house with a living room and a stove. The floors are concrete, covered with wall-to-wall rugs to keep the cold out in winter. But when summer comes, those same rugs become another chore, needing to be cleaned of the soot from the stove.

In the living room, there are two couch beds, while the other rooms are lined with floor cushions. The stove sits in the corner; she usually doesn’t light it, but today, because she has guests, a small fire of wood and coal burns lightly.

Across from the stove, there’s a glass cabinet holding two Ahmet Kaya cassettes, a photo from her youth, a few sets of teacups, and, on the top shelf, a copy of the Qur'an. The bottom shelves are carefully arranged with her children’s schoolbooks, all neatly bound and labeled.

Next to the cabinet stands an old television. Yeliz loves watching movies—especially sad ones, which leave her in tears. She remembers going to the movies a few times in her youth, particularly a visit to Dilan Cinema in the late ‘90s, which still stands out in her memory. These days, her hair is streaked with gray, and her favorite TV series is Bahar.

Yeliz lost her husband, Ahmet, in a car accident in 2017. She rarely visited her mother-in-law’s house back then, but now she goes regularly. Speaking about her late husband’s family, she says, "They gave me a hard time when I was young, but after their son died, they started treating me better. Well, they had no one left. And me? I always loved and respected them."

Yeliz loves quoting song lyrics. Whenever she's asked about the hardships she's faced, she turns to music as her refuge.

After years as a cleaning worker, Yeliz knows both the advantages and struggles of being good at her job. She pushes herself to the limit, always making sure no younger, faster, or more high-tech alternative takes her place. But the cost of that effort has been herniated discs in her neck and back. When asked about her back pain, she brushes it off: "Don't worry, I’m fine. Sometimes it's doomsday, sometimes it’s a will to live."

Then, with a laugh, she adds, "Though really, it’s not a will to live—it’s just the struggle to make a living."

Yeliz works about 4–5 hours a day. But if you don’t count the time she doesn’t get paid for, she actually works 24/7. She thinks her 20,000 lira income is decent, but because she has no job security, she describes herself as "a freelance cleaning worker."

She compares her 40 years of life to a curtain bought on an installment plan: "Whether it's open or closed, from the outside, it always looks bright—just like poverty dressed up to look presentable." (ED/VC/VK)