Selma Yıldız — Wedding-Müllerstraße, Schneiderei since 1989

Wedding-Müllerstraße, Tuesday eleven-twenty. The corner shop has a hand-painted Schneiderei Yıldız in the window in a font from the late eighties.

I had been told about Selma by Aysel from the Stoff-Großhandel two streets over. Die Schneider-Frau, dritte Generation Kundinnen schon — die hat alles gesehen.

Selma was at the cutting-table with a half-cut piece of cream raw-silk, three pins between the lips at the right corner of her mouth. The position that has etched the deeper laugh-line on that side after forty years. She put the pins into the cushion on her wrist before she spoke.

Bitte. Was suchen Sie.

Born 1961 in Trabzon. Father came to West-Berlin February 1971 on the Anwerbeabkommen-Welle, textile-machine-Werker at Schöneberg Bekleidungs-Werk. Selma and the rest of the family followed February 1972. She was eleven. Es war kalt wie ich es aus Trabzon nicht kannte.

She trained on the machines her father brought home from the Werk on weekends. From 1985 she assisted Herr Erich Pohl, a Multi-Gen-Berlin-Schneider who had run the Müllerstraße corner since 1962. In 1989 Pohl handed the shop to Selma without payment. Er hat gesagt: Selma, du bist die Hand die das hier weiter macht.

Three generations of bride-fittings in the same fitting-room now. The mother of a bride who came last March — Selma fitted her own wedding-dress in 1989. The grandmother — a Goldene Hochzeit in 1992.

The half-eleven appointment came in. Selma stood up. The kind of standing-up that uses the table for leverage but never names the leverage. I asked if I could come back tomorrow. Halb-zwei ist Pause. Kommen Sie halb-zwei.

Field-Book BER-2026-Q2-041. Berlin-Wedding-First-Generation-Turkish-Tailoring-Multi-Gen-Cohort-Anchor.