A Minor Detail
I" don’t feel happy in either country."
"Because I didn’t know the German word for 'salt,' we ate our food without salt for months."
"My friend was deported because she was pregnant."
A Minor Detail takes its name and inspiration from two women: the Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who draws attention to the place of small details within grand narratives, and the Zaza migrant Beser Sonar, who told us during one of our gatherings that, when she first moved to Germany, she had to cook her meals without salt for weeks because she did not know what the word “salt” was in German.
Developed in 2025 by İpek Çınar and Ece Gökalp as participatory sessions with different groups of migrant women from Turkey, A Minor Detail creates an archive of small stories that have been lost or nearly forgotten within the larger—and often heavy—narratives of migration. The stories told become visible by being inscribed onto small clay tablets, which are shaped and molded together with their storytellers; in this way, each detail is woven back into the fabric of collective memory.
"During the Metal-İş strike in Turkey in 1975, we went door to door collecting money."
"We have our own specific problems, separate from German women, and we still have rights that we need to obtain."
"My mother arrived in ’74, but she could only get her work permit in ’85 ,can you imagine?"
"To be able to teach a typewriter course, I first took a typewriter course myself."
"Women like me, who were illiterate, depended on the help of the other residents to have their letters read and written."
"When shopping, we always used large bills because we didn’t understand the amount we had to pay."
"When I went to work, my older children looked after the younger ones."