One day my mom said there was no room for these books, bring them to another place, and then she threatened me and said I would throw them in the stove, I guess she needed to get warm. And also I said to her that I will throw all your clothes in the oven if you do something like this. We met halfway; she did not throw the book into the stove, nor did I throw her clothes.
Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan
These are the words of Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan, a bookseller. He was inspired by the words of seyahat ya resûlallah, seyahat ya resûlallah from the book ‘Seyehatname’ by Evliya Çelebi, then he started to discover the world of books.
Everyone has his own story. We have interests and passions that change according to our experiences and memories. Lezgin’s love and interest in books and reading began in his childhood. Due to an accident, his father could no longer work, so he was forced to support his family. On Mondays, he went to work to support his family instead of going to school. He takes his books to work and studies there to close the gaps with his classmates.
Newspaper coupons gave opportunities to reach more books
In 2006, Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan tried to buy books in Gaziantep when he was a high school student. However many of those books were pirated, so he could not get reach books. He could access the books thanks to newspaper coupons. In those years you could buy books with newspaper coupons. At the end of high school, he had two boxes of books.
After I graduated from high school, my mom asked me, what are you going to do with these books, did you save school, didn’t you? I said these books are not lesson books of high school.
Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan
In 2010, he went to İstanbul with half a box of books in his luggage. He went to the festival of second-hand booksellers for a week and bought at least 50 books.
Instead of food, I bought the books”
I had a scholarship, I always got books with my scholarship, that is, sometimes I forgat to food.
Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan
Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan says that he was sharing a room at the dormitory with four people but one of his friends didn’t come to the room so he used his wardrobe as a shelf and bookcase. However the manager of the dormitory noticed that he collected the books in the room, and he showed his displeasure that he should not collect the books here anymore. At the end of the year, he had about 2000 books.
He says I was the first that hold an auction books in his friend’s cafe in the university years in Üsküdar. He promotes himself and bring people together there.
After he left from dormitory, he rented a house and lived there from 2014 to 2022. Lezgîn Kitebçiyan built half of his library thanks to the auctioneer from Palo of Elazığ.
In 2018, in a flood in Istanbul, his home was demolished, and many of his books were destroyed.
He tried many ways to sell his books on several websites like Pirtûka Kurdî, Amazon, and Trendyol but none of them didn’t work very well. Finally, he decided to sell his 8888 books on Nadir Kitap which is an online second-hand bookstore.
Lezgîn Kitêbçiyan wants to be a writer
He is the editor of several books, and he wrote for Yokuş Yol magazine. Although he has done multiple works related to books, now he wants to become a writer.
Yonca Sarsılmaz translated this news
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