Сафіє Лентер-Кизи Safiie Lenter-Qizi

"I have experienced a lot of bullying because of my appearance and background. Mostly because of my appearance. Kids are pretty cruel, and when you add my background to that... Probably they brought to school all the things they had heard at home, all those narratives. I was often called ‘Sofiyka’ [by a Slavik name], even by the teachers. I remember a time when we had optional classes in the Crimean Tatar language added to the curriculum. We did not have these classes in the official curriculum, but our community was strong and managed to get them added. There was a house in our neighbourhood where mostly Crimean Tatars lived, and it was an apartment block. I think it was because there were so many Crimean Tatars that they decided to allow these optional classes. As it turned out, our teacher was my father's schoolmate — Sabriye Enverivna. So we were sitting in a classroom, it was the first lesson; there was me and this boy, Arsen, a Crimean Tatar. And then a woman comes in, a strange woman, so tall and scary, and she says, ‘Crimean Tatars, stand up.’ And because of all the stories in your head, that something bad is going to happen, that you are in danger, you do not feel safe. So she comes in and she says, ‘Crimean Tatars, stand up.’ We stand up and she says, ‘Follow me.’ And we follow her, we go downstairs and then down this long and very dark corridor and there is a window at the end of it. We go, I am seven years old and I have it in my head, ‘We are going to be shot.’ Or arrested, or something. Or deported. We walk and I am very scared, but I walk as I am told. And the door opens, this little cell, and this Sabriye Enverivna is sitting there. And I breathed a sigh of relief. And she [the tall woman] says, ‘You will learn your Crimean Tatar language here.’ And she slams the door and leaves. It was actually a cool class. It closed soon enough because there were not enough children. Not everyone wanted to go, or something like that. But I was there for three years, I think, or until the end of primary school. We even had our own Crimean Tatar theatre, we put on some performances based on Crimean Tatar fairy tales, and we even visited other schools. I enjoyed it very much.”

"When there was a meeting at the Supreme Council [of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea] in 2014, there were mostly Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar flags, people showed up. We were at university, we had an exam that day. I do not remember, it was a Russian language module or something like that. And I heard some voices in the street. We had our Foreign Languages University building in the centre of the city, and the road to the Supreme Council ran right under our windows. And I stood up and looked through the window, and a few people joined me, and someone asked, ‘And what is going on?’ I said, ‘There's a meeting in support of Ukraine, against the occupiers.’ And the professor said, ‘Oh well, these Tatars are demanding something again.’ They didn't even... People didn't want to analyse anything, they didn't want to educate themselves or others on the subject, so it was easier for them to say, ‘We are out of politics, we are simple people, we are not interested in this, it is not for us, let them decide what they want, the main thing is that we have food for tomorrow.’ This has always been the atmosphere in Crimea. Speaking of the Crimean Tatars, why were they the ones who knew the most about political issues and the country's politics in general? Because our fate directly depended on that, on our development, on whether we would live tomorrow or not. Because our lives depended on who was in power in Ukraine. Because we were fighting for our rights, we were always involved in this political activity in Ukraine — some of us more, some of us less.”

"As time went by, I began to pay more attention to our Crimean Tatar music and songs. When I found myself (after the start of the full-scale war) in the company of people who cared a lot about traditional Ukrainian singing, I was asked, ‘Oh, so you are from Crimea, are you? Sing something in Crimean Tatar.’ And it was so cool. I began to try. It is a big responsibility for me and sometimes it is hard because I try to show the best we have so that people are interested in it. In 2022, my music friend and I recorded a song that is now on Spotify and all the sites. It is a song my grandmother used to sing to me, it is called ‘Göğercin’ (‘A Dove’). We first recorded it as an acoustic version, with just the sound of the sea waves in the background. And later we recorded... A friend of ours... It was a music band, we got together as VIA Kvartyrnyk [Home Concert vocal-instrumental ensemble], and we had musicians, a couple of female vocalists and a male vocalist, who had actually got us all together. In 2022, we'd been travelling around for a few months, performing at various benefit concerts, organising these concerts ourselves, collecting money for the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine], i.e. all the income we received (apart from cases when we had to travel to another city, then we used part of the income to pay for fuel)... But mostly, when we played in Lviv, we donated 100% of the income to the AFU. There we sang Ukrainian folk songs. They were Ivasiuk's songs. My song was ‘Try trembity’ (‘Three Trembitas’), I really liked the arrangement we did, with the violin, it was all so beautiful. You can find it on YouTube, I think, you can listen to the song there. And some of her other songs. Or even very old unknown ones, written by Ivasiuk as well. It was a cool project. At the same time, I started to delve deeper into our Crimean Tatar music. I am now planning to work with a nice local band from Lviv and record a Crimean Tatar song ‘Sari tülpan’ (‘A Yellow Tulip’) by Noman Çelebicihan, because the band sings songs that are based on the lyrics of the Executed Renaissance, and Noman Çelebicihan was in fact a Crimean Executed Renaissance, he was also executed by the NKVD. He was only 33 years old. I mean, his songs are somewhere close. Nowadays you can just come to ‘Facet’ in Virmenska Street and sing or even teach there. Some of them already know some Crimean Tatar songs that I taught them, and we can sing them in a multi-part version. And that is really cool, the most valuable thing for me personally is that our Crimean Tatar songs can be heard on the streets of Lviv. It is such a cool cultural exchange: I learn Lemko and Boyko songs, local or old traditional songs, and I can sing them and share my own songs as well. Because everyone says that even if I sing something Ukrainian, it still sounds a bit... I sing Ukrainian songs in a Crimen Tatar way. I don't know how, but they can hear it. I can't. I think I sing in Ukrainian, but they go like, ‘No, no, you add some trills, some twists to this melody and you can feel it.’ That's why music is always close to me, I can't exist without it. I always have something in the background or I sing myself, and it always accompanies me.”

"I would like my fellow citizens, the people of Crimea, the Crimean Tatars, to be able to find the Crimean Tatar part of themselves and to cherish it. I believe that we all have the potential to finally receive that development which Russians and Russia have always stopped and tried to destroy, our ability to develop ourselves, our culture, our crafts and so on. That is true. We have our own jewellery, it is so beautiful, we also have our abstract art — drawings, ornaments, embroidery, woodwork, and metalwork. Every existing art has its analogue of Crimean Tatar origin. I have a great desire to discover it and show it to people. Our pottery is simply incredible — these are things of enormous beauty. Every time I see traditional Ukrainian culture being reborn — I admire it and can't stop thinking that we need to do the same, we need to develop it and show it because it's beautiful. Both Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars are creators, these are people who can't live without art, without creating something beautiful. This is how I see both of our peoples. And I strongly believe that we can live in harmony, promote new narratives in Crimea, eliminate those imperial Russian narratives and support activities aimed at creating something new and cool, while still looking back to our traditions. Sure, provided that we develop as a society, and our people have developed so much, the Crimean Tatar people. It has Europeanised so much, more than ever before because the Crimean Tatars have always been quite a European nation. If you look back to the old times, not the times under Russia or after the deportation. If you look in general, you think there is so much work to do, it seems like it will never happen, it is very hard to achieve. But culture works on a personal level. And even though we are drops in the ocean, this whole ocean is made up of us, these drops. And then it seems that if you personally do something, even the smallest thing — even telling people that the Swallow's Nest is not a symbol of Crimea, or doing some more important things — it is enough. You are already doing something, some steps towards a better future for your people. It is bad, on the other hand, if you do absolutely nothing and think that nothing depends on you. It is similar to sorting waste. If a hundred people say, ‘Oh God, anyway, nothing depends on me’ and throw a plastic bottle straight into a rubbish bin or outside, then there will only be a hundred bottles. But if that person sorts one bottle — there will be a clean place.”