Most of the Bektashi-dervishes living in Kanatlar, a muddy tobacco-growing village in North Macedonia, see Ayten as a motherly figure and she tries to offer them support and guidance as much as she does for her two children and four grandchildren. Her husband Erdogan is a dervish priest of the highest rank in their local temple. This hard-working couple shows how equality blooms where you would least expect it – in a rural community of Muslims devoted to religion, family and tradition in one of the poorest regions of the Balkans.