The moment I knew: in Goa, we had no money, no nothing, but I was so content

‘Nothing else mattered. I became the hippy I never knew I was’: Feryal Ozdemir and Baykal on the beach together in Goa. Composite: Feryal Ozdemir

In 2004 I had just finished uni. I was leaving Australia to go around the world, supposedly for just one year. I’d promised my family that after that I’d come home, put my studies to use and get a job in HR.

My family was OK with me travelling, but they weren’t OK with me going to Turkey. My parents are Kurdish, and my father had left Turkey before I was born, in self-imposed political exile. But while I was staying in Spain, I had a friend who was in Istanbul. I thought: “I’ll just go there quickly.”