Fazile Zahir - Biography

Faz was born on a cold winter’s morning in Oldchurch Hospital, the first child of Turkish Cypriot parents, Yonter and Servet.  She spent her childhood being brainwashed by nuns and despite her Muslim background can recite a Hail Mary with the best of them.  She has never forgiven Sister Scholastica for threatening her with scissors.  At eleven she went to school in the heart of London and discovered an urban wonderland.  Her secondary school was packed full of scintillating girls and teachers and the journey was one of both emotional and intellectual development in the most positive and exciting of environments.  Having fallen in love with London she stayed for university.  The LSE was a warren of friends and frolics combined with the serious study of history, it’s also where she started writing at the Beaver newspaper.  A few years out in Cyprus learning to horse ride and teaching English and then she returned to London to do a masters in Central Asian Studies at the brilliant and multinational SOAS.

 

  

Finally finished with her formal education at 26 she hawked herself around the job market and found herself working for Shell.  Everyone involved tried their hardest to help her fit in but she was a round peg in a very square hole (chastised on her first day for making a joke with the boss) and after three tiresome troublesome years she left.  A brief stint working for a much smaller company taught her that the real issue lay with her and her dislike of being an employee so she left and set up her own business.  Travelling for five years to Turkey while pursuing this venture broadened her mind and improved her rusty language skills and she came to see Turkey as her second home.  After a failed plan to move to İstanbul she finally got to live in Turkey in 2004 but down on the south coast. Now she is happy and healthy, doing what she loves and only regrets how bloody sunny it is there.

Fazile regularly writes for: